Last Call (11 page)

Indicating the chair in front of his desk, Langtree said, “Please, Jim. Sit.”

Jim complied, but he could feel the anxiety rearing up again.

Sitting at his desk, the doctor said, “So Jim, why don’t you tell us how you came to be with us here today.”

Trying for levity, Jim said, “Jesus, Doc, how long’ve you got?”

“As long as it takes.”

Jim looked at his trembling hands, too worn out to pretend anymore. He said, “I’ve...done some things, Doctor Langtree. Things I never thought too much about until recently. I’m not used to...feeling. I haven’t had a drink in a month.”

“It’s hard,” Langtree said. “I understand that. I know exactly how you feel.”

Still unable to meet the man’s gaze, Jim said, “Excuse me, Doctor. You may know a lot of things, but there’s no way you can know how I feel.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Jim. Six years ago I was sitting right where you are now. In that very chair.”

Jim looked into the doctor’s eyes for the first time.

Langtree said, “Until six years ago I was a practicing alcoholic and Demerol addict. I was a thoracic surgeon in those days, and before I opened a patient’s chest I’d sit on the toilet and crank a hundred milligrams of Demerol into my veins. At night I’d drink myself into a stupor. Seven years ago the College of Physicians and Surgeons revoked my license to practice medicine, the bank took my house and my wife left with my three kids. I spent a year on the street, sleeping in flophouses and puking my guts out on Bay Rum. Believe me, Jim, I know how you feel. You are not alone.” He leaned forward in his chair. “There is shame in addiction, Jim. Guilt and shame and constant fear. But there is honor in recovery.”

Jim nodded. Absurdly, he felt like crying, the man’s words touching something deep and long-forgotten inside of him. He said, “How long will I be here?”

“Six weeks, give or take. Exactly how long will depend on you.”

Jim nodded. “I took my first drink when I was twelve,” he said. “Right from the start I had blackouts...”

* * *

Forty minutes later, Langtree shook Jim’s hand and the nurse led him to the office door. Trish was standing there when it opened.

Closing the door behind her, the nurse said, “Okay, Mister Gamble, this is where you say goodbye.”

Startling him, Trish gave him a warm hug, almost lunging into his arms. The contact felt good and he let it linger. No one had touched him with such innocent affection in a very long time. As she let him go, Jim said, “When you see Dean tonight, thank him for me, would you?”

“I will.”

The nurse sniffed and Jim said, “I guess I gotta go. When will I see you again?”

“I have to head back to Sudbury tomorrow,” Trish said, “but Stacey’s driving down with me next week to help me get set up at Aunt Sadie’s.” To the nurse she said, “When can I come visit?”

“Not for two weeks,” the nurse said. “But there’s a family program that runs concurrent with treatment. If you’re interested, here’s all the information you’ll need.” She removed a sheath of pamphlets from her clipboard and handed them to Trish. “If you can’t attend in person, you can follow along online.”

Trish thanked the woman and tucked the pamphlets into her bag. There were tears in her eyes when she said goodbye, and it was all Jim could do to stem the flow of his own.

The nurse led him upstairs to a room with two single beds, a desk and a huge print of a tall ship under sail on a choppy sea. Both beds were neatly made and there was no sign of another patient.

The nurse said, “Take your pick. Get settled in. Orientation’s in an hour.”

Then she was gone.

Jim sat on the bed by the window and stared out at the grounds, wondering what he was getting himself into, tormented by a thirst that couldn’t be quenched.

* * *

Trish and Dean stood on the porch of her aunt Sadie’s home in Mississauga, Dean grinning and staring at his shoes. They’d eaten at an exotic East Indian restaurant on Oak Park Boulevard, the cuisine spicy but delicious—not nearly as delicious as Channing Tatum, Trish was quick to point out—and both had been careful to steer the conversation clear of their stormy past. Dean asked how her dad made out at Webbwood and Trish cried a little when she told him.

Now she said, “Thanks for dinner. And the show. I’m a major Channing Tatum fan.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, still gawking at his shoes. “I got that. Thanks for coming.”

On an impulse Trish linked fingers with him and when he raised his eyes she kissed him on the lips. Dean turned bright red and almost fell over, making her laugh. He always could make her laugh. She said, “You’ve been great through all of this. My dad thinks you’re a saint. And I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you found him.” She kissed him again. “Thanks.”

Dean said, “Does this mean you’ll go to the Lady Gaga concert with me at the Air Canada Centre next weekend?”

“That’s exactly what it means.”

He said, “Sure hope I can get tickets, then,” and Trish gave him a playful swat. He squeezed her hand then jogged back to his car, a battered old BMW.

* * *

When Dean got home that night, he found Shelley Dixon leaning against his apartment door. He hadn’t seen her since the day Trish walked in on them smoking crack in his bed, and as always her delicate beauty disarmed him. She smiled when she saw him, her eyes lighting up, but there was no joy in the expression, only need. At one time he’d believed that yearning was reserved only for him; but he’d learned different over time, and it occurred to him now that he’d do well to remember that. Shelley showing up here now, seven months after he’d broken it off with her and gone into treatment, could only mean one thing. Trouble.

“Hi, doll face,” she said, the smile widening as she swept toward him in her low-cut top and micro mini, pressing herself against him now, one firm thigh angling into the V of his crotch. “I’ve missed you.”

She leaned in to kiss him, her scent intoxicating, and Dean turned his face away, feeling the sick heat of her body through her clothing, repulsed by it...and yet deeply aroused. She leaned more firmly against him, her smile beckoning now, a tiny moan reverberating in her throat.

Backing her off, Dean said, “Shelley, what are you doing here?” His head was spinning, his mouth bone dry. “I thought we had an understanding. I told you, I don’t want to live like this anymore. I can’t.”

Shelley pushed her bottom lip into a pout, a sad parody of their first weeks together. In those days he would have done anything for her. And did. Blowing every dime he earned, including his savings, keeping her in crack, booze and slinky undies. Shelley had been his dark enchantress, occupying his every thought as she reeled him deeper and deeper into a life of dependency. Looking at her now, it was clear she was in the early stages of withdrawal.

She said, “Come on, Dean, I know you.” She slipped a hand into her knitted bag and brought out the crack pipe with the heart-shaped bowl they’d always used, and Dean felt sweat prickling through his scalp at the sight of it. She said, “Let’s go inside, okay? I know you’re holding. You always shared with me before.” That smile, those eyes, undoing him. She said, “We’ll do it the way we used to...the pipe in your mouth, your cock in mine...”

Dean swallowed hard, his resolve crumbling, and reached into his pocket for his keys. His hand closed around a fold of cash instead and he brought it out—two hundred in twenties he’d grabbed from an ATM on the way home—and now he handed it to her, saying, “Here, take it,” and she did, making it disappear. “Now please, Shelley, just go. I’m not holding, I swear. It’s like I told you before, I’m done with that life.”

But her demeanor had already changed, the girl flush now, eager to score, her ballooning pupils peering into a numb near-future, Shelley saying, “Okay, party poop, be that way if you must.” She started away and Dean caught her by the wrist, trying to capture her attention now. He said, “Don’t come back here, Shelley, okay?” She nodded, distracted, trying to pull away, and he squeezed her wrist hard enough to make her wince. “I mean it, Shelley. Come back here again and I’ll call the cops.”

Scowling, furious now, she said, “
Fuck
you, Dean,” and pulled away hard as he let her go, Shelley flailing and almost falling to the floor. She got her footing and turned to face him, sticking her wings out like a scrappy hen. “You’re an
ass
hole, Dean.” He got his keys out and unlocked the door, Shelley saying, “
Dean.
I always hated that name. Dean of what? The college of assholes? I wouldn’t suck your dick now if you paid me.”

A neighbor down the hall stuck his head out and smirked at Dean, then pulled the door closed.

Dean went inside, Shelley still railing at him out in the hall. As soon as he threw the deadbolt she clammed up, and he could hear her stilettos stabbing the tiles out there now in an eager, receding tattoo.

He leaned against the door and took a shuddering breath, craving the drug and the unhinged sex that had always followed it as ravenously as if he were the one in acute withdrawal.

Then he ran to the toilet and threw up his Indian cuisine, all of it coming in one hot, gagging bolus. When he was done, he filled the sink with cold water and submerged his face in it, still reeling at how close he’d come to letting her in, giving their old dealer a call and embracing the demon, recovery be damned.

He’d come that close.

Heart triphammering, he toweled himself dry and called his sponsor.

* * *

Jim attended his first A.A. meeting that evening in a small gymnasium in the basement of the Webbwood Addictions Centre, joining a sullen group of patients seated in a circle on folding chairs, all of them clutching Styrofoam cups of coffee decanted from a stainless steel urn by the exit. Coffee-Mate dispensers were everywhere. The meeting was presided over by Dr. Langtree, with two burly orderlies stationed at the door.

The woman beside Jim had just finished sharing, telling a version of a story everyone in the room was intimately familiar with, saying how in the early days alcohol had been her best friend, delivering her from a life of loneliness and crippling shyness; but then gradually, over the course of the next twenty years, robbing her of everything but her life, and that only barely. She weighed about ninety pounds, and Jim had seen healthier looking dead people under bridges. He wondered if he looked as bad.

Startling, him, Langtree said, “Jim, I realize this is your first day, but you’ve seen how Group works, and around here we believe in getting our feet wet right away. So why don’t you tell us your story?”

Jim glanced around the circle, seeing only curious, friendly faces, no trace of judgment in their eyes. Many of them reminded him of the people he drank with.

He cleared his throat and said, “In the eighties—”

The woman who’d just shared said, “Hi, my name is...” and Jim said, “Right, sorry. Hi, everyone, my name is Jim and I’m an alcoholic.”

The room said, “Hi, Jim,” and Jim felt a tiny thrill at the acknowledgement.

He said, “In the eighties I had a rock band. Bad ’n Rude. They were all great musicians, original, dedicated, creative...but I wanted to be Jim Morrison.” He said, “When I got drunk enough, I thought I
was
Jim Morrison,” and the group laughed. “We were even born on the same day, Jim and me. December eighth.

“I was high all the time. At first it worked for me. I played better, sang better, felt better. But before long I started missing cues, forgetting lyrics, embarrassing everyone on stage. Things really started going to hell after the album came out.”

Bone tired, his incisions burning like brand iron, Jim leaned forward in his chair and closed his eyes, remembering the night it all ended, a night like so many others before it. There had been label execs in the audience that night and Sally had warned him to take it easy, telling him that if he fucked up tonight she was packing it in for good. He remembered thinking she was just blowing smoke, having threatened the same thing so many times before, and he did what he always did.

He was stoked to the gills before they even hit the stage. Less than two minutes into the opening song, he reached for his bottle of Southern Comfort and tripped over a power cord, falling on his face and snapping the neck off his only guitar, a ’59 Les Paul Standard that would have been worth a hundred grand today. He sat there grinning at the stunned audience and Sally threw her arms up and stalked off the stage, saying, “Fuck you, Gamble,” as she strode past. “This time it’s really over.”

He said, “The band broke up after that. It took Sally a couple more years to let me go from her life. She ended up pregnant and I pulled the usual dodges...”

* * *

It was January 18, 1995, the day after the Hanshin earthquake, and Jim was sitting on the couch in front of the TV, rolling a joint and watching news footage of a huge yellow construction vehicle toppling into a fractured roadway in Kobe, Japan. Sally was in the kitchen doing the dishes, dressed in three layers of clothing against the cold in their drafty Spadina Street apartment. She was eight months pregnant.

Jim said, “Sal, you gotta see this,” and knocked his beer off the arm of the couch. The bottle spun on the hardwood floor, spewing foam, and Sally came into the room with dish soap dripping from her elbows.

Ignoring the spilled beer, Jim pointed at the screen as he lit the joint, saying, “Lookit this mess,” and Sally slapped the joint out of his hand.

“Jesus Christ, Gamble,” she said, “will you ever grow up?
Look
at us. We’re going to be parents for God’s sake. We can’t raise a child in this dump. We’ve got to
do
something. Get it together somehow. Maybe we can go back into the studio, get another tour going after the baby comes. My mother said she’d help—”

But Jim wasn’t hearing her.

“Shit, Sal,” he said, staring at the ruined joint, “that was
Thai
stick. Why’re you laying this shit on me, anyways? What makes you think the kid’s even mine?”

Tears flashing in her eyes now, Sally said, “That tears it, Gamble,” and pointed at the door. “Get the hell out.
Get out.
”