'Makes sense,' he said. 'On the other hand, I hadn't been there, they'd have had your ass.'
'If you hadn't been there,' I said, 'I wouldn't have gone into the stadium in the first place.'
'So you trusted me,' Z said.
'Yep.'
Z hadn't taken a drink yet.
'And you'll trust me again,' he said.
'Yep.'
'You had other people you could have called on,' Z said.
'Yep.'
'Why me?'
'Why not you?' I said.
'How'd you know I could do what you taught me?'
'This was a way to find out,' I said.
'Christ,' Z said. 'A test run?'
'Yeah.'
'What if I'd tanked,' Z said.
'I figured they'd hire some local stiffs,' I said. 'And just on size, strength, and enthusiasm, you could distract them while I did my stomp.'
Z looked at me for a while, then picked up his bourbon and drank some. He put the glass down on the glistening mahogany bar and looked at it. I looked at it, too. It looked so good, the amber liquid, the translucent ice, the squat, clear glass.
'I don't want to give this up,' Z said.
'Maybe you don't need to,' I said.
'I drink a lot,' Z said.
'Maybe you cut back,' I said.
'Everybody says that won't work.'
'Everybody is generally wrong,' I said. 'Not everybody has to go all or nothing.'
'You know that?' Z said.
'I did it,' I said.
'You cut back?'
'I went from too much to not too much.'
'You ever get drunk?' he said.
'Now and then,' I said. 'Not often.'
'What if I quit for a little while?' he said.
'You think you're an alcoholic?' I said.
'I don't think so,' Z said. 'How do you know?'
'Something about you controlling the drinking or the drinking controlling you,' I said.
'So if I could quit?' Z said. 'For a while.'
'Worth trying,' I said.
'Maybe I'd know,' Z said.
'Maybe.'
'So what if I lay off for a month and go back and after my first drink I'm right back into the booze?'
'Then you'll know more about yourself than you do now.'
'And I'd have to quit for good,' Z said.
'Maybe.'
'Be like a test run,' Z said.
'Uh-huh.'
'Like today,' Z said.
'Uh-huh.'
'No way to know if you don't try it out,' Z said.
'Sort of like the scientific method,' I said.
