all of them of Central Park. Most of them showed only grass and trees and benches, with no buildings looming in the background, but it was nonetheless clear that you were looking at a distinctly urban environment no matter how peaceful and green it appeared. Somehow the artist had managed to instill the city's hard-edged energy in the canvases, and I couldn't figure out how he'd done it.
I went to the meeting, and Jan was there. I managed to focus on the qualification, and then during the
break I went over and sat next to her.
'It's funny,' she said. 'I was thinking of you just this morning.'
'I almost called you yesterday.'
'Oh?'
'To see if you wanted to go out to Shea.'
'That's really funny. I watched that game.'
'You were out there?'
'On television. You really almost called?'
'I did call.'
'When? I was home all day.'
'I let it ring twice and hung up.'
'I remember the call. I wondered who that was. As a matter of fact—'
'You wondered if it was me?'
'Uh-huh. The thought crossed my mind.' She had her hands in her lap and she was looking at them. 'I don't think I'd have gone.'
'To the game?'
She nodded. 'But it's hard to say, isn't it? How I might have reacted. What you'd have said, what I'd have said.'
'Do you want to have coffee after the meeting?'
She looked at me, then looked away. 'Oh, I don't know, Matthew,'
she said. 'I don't know.'
I started to say something, but the chairperson was rapping on the table with a glass ashtray to indicate that it was time to resume the meeting. I went back to where I'd been sitting. Toward the end I started raising my hand, and when I got called on I said, 'My name is Matt and I'm an alcoholic. Over the past couple of weeks I've been spending a lot of time around people who are drinking. Some of it's professional and some is social, and it's not always easy to tell which is which. I spent an hour or two in a ginmill the other night having one of those rambling conversations, and it was just like old times except I was drinking Coke.'
I went on for another minute or two, saying what came to mind.
Then someone else got called on and talked about how her building was going co-op and she didn't see how she could afford to buy her apartment.
After the prayer, after the chairs were folded and stacked, I asked Jan if she felt like coffee. 'Some of us go to the place around the corner,' she said. 'Do you want to come along?'
'I thought just the two of us.'
'I don't know if that's a good idea.'
I told her I'd walk her to where she was going and we could talk on the way. Once we were outside and had fallen into step together, I couldn't think what it was I had wanted to say, and so we walked a little ways in silence.
I've missed you, I said a couple of times in my mind. Finally I said it aloud.
'Have you? Sometimes I miss you. Sometimes I think of the two of us and I feel sad.'
'Yes.'
'Have you been getting out?'
'I couldn't get interested. Until the past week or so.'
'And?'
'I fell into something. Without looking for it, which I guess is the way it happens.'
'She's not in the program.'
'Not hardly.'
'Does that mean she ought to be?'
'I don't know who ought to be anymore. It doesn't matter, the whole thing's not going anywhere.'
After a moment she said, 'I think I'd be afraid to spend a lot of time with someone who was drinking.'
'That's probably a healthy fear.'
'Do you know about Tom?' We went back and forth for a moment, with her trying to describe a long-term member of downtown AA and me unable to place him. 'Anyway,' she said, 'he was sober for twenty-two years, kept up on his meetings, sponsored a lot of people, everything. And he was in Paris for three weeks over the
