Death Will Help You Leave Him by Elizabeth Zelvin

Barbara said. “My sister made that one in arts and crafts when she was thirteen. You can break it if you like.”
    “Thanks.” My sense of humor will always trump my inner drama queen, and Barbara knew it. She’d always thought Laura’s craziness had doomed our marriage as much as my drinking. I folded my arms, tucking my fists into my armpits where they couldn’t do any more damage. “The guy’s an eight-hundred-pound gorilla, and she snuggled up to him like what’s-her-name and King Kong.”
    “What do you expect in an addictive relationship?” she said. “He’s like her drink.”
    “She wasn’t like that with me,” I objected.
    “So she wasn’t addicted to you the way you were to her,” Barbara said.
    “She always pretty much led you around by the dick,” Jimmy added.
    They both looked sorry for me. I couldn’t have that.
    “Thanks a heap.” I cocked a finger and shot at Jimmy. He fired back. The imaginary recoil nearly knocked him off his computer chair. I clutched my chest and staggered. Ham on wry, that’s me. “Can we please change the subject?”
    “Murder,” Barbara said. “Luz and Frankie were a lot like Laura and Mac.”
    Hell, I was just starting to feel better.
    “Don’t say Laura and Mac, like they’re a couple. Let’s go to dinner at Laura and Mac’s. Let’s watch Mac slap Laura around. Though slap is a euphemism. The guy has hands like nine pound hammers. He doesn’t have to make a fist to have a fist.”
    “You can’t save her, Bruce. But Luz has got a chance, now Frankie’s dead— if she doesn’t end up convicted of his murder.”
    “Okay, okay. I said I’d help.”
    Half an hour later, I took the Christopher Street subway stairs two at a time and plunged into the maze of Greenwich Village. The Village had been a kind of Mecca for Jimmy and me when we were spaced out adolescents trying to transcend the neighborhood. Before we got old enough for bars, we’d hung out in pizza places and hamburger joints where they’d sell us a pitcher of beer. The toughs we usually hung out with in Carl Schurz Park wouldn’t be caught dead downtown among what they called fags and weirdos. To feel sophisticated, we only had to take the subway. In fact, we used to get girls by inviting them downtown on dates. It didn’t take much to thrill a Catholic girl who thought patent leather shoes were sinful.
    The Village had changed a lot since we were kids. The starving artist scene had moved to cheaper neighborhoods. Many of the kinky little shops had gone, though tattoo places and cheap jewelry stores where they’d pierce any body part you wanted were enjoying a renaissance. Shoe stores and four-dollar cups of coffee had crept in. But I enjoyed feeling nostalgic about those early walks on the wild side.
    As he’d promised, Jimmy had done some homework on the program guys we’d met at Frankie’s funeral. Kevin, the runty little Irish guy, was gay. He’d said so up front when he asked Jimmy to sponsor him. Kevin had mentioned that our old friend Mars swung both ways and sometimes went to gay meetings with him. I didn’t remember Mars being bi back in our TC days. Traditional therapeutic communities are heavy on testosterone. Barbara says their idea of sensitivity to sexual orientation nowadays is to put all the gay guys in a gay men’s group so everybody knows who they are. If Mars was already into boys, he probably kept it to himself.
    So here I was, walking in the door of a gay AA meeting. I felt a tad self-conscious. But it’s not like I thought some guy in eye shadow would put his hand on my crotch.
    The meeting was big even by New York standards, where fifty passes for a medium-sized group. It was held in a big chapel on the ground floor of the church, rather than in the basement. Hanging scrolls of the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions blocked most of the stained glass windows and the giant cross in the front of the room. Tactful.
    The qualification had just started when