wheat beers, all cloudy foam in a spindly glass. He glances at my bottle.
‘On the dry?’
The bottle fizzes as I crack it open. ‘More or less.’ Water bubbles onto my fingers.
‘For now?’
I wipe my hand on my thigh. ‘For good, if I can ever get there.’ Three men squeeze by. The barman takes their order with a nod. Three pints of Guinness stand idly, the foam rising slowly to the top. Fantasies about grabbing those darkening glasses and downing them in one go distract me from the man beside me. This isn’t good. Pubs are not places I should ever be. The music of booze plays its overture around me, all those ice cubes clinking, the bottles popping, the glug of glasses filling. Even the dull thud of an empty glass on the wooden bar has its own particular sound, discordant, and in a lower key.
‘How long have you been off it?’
‘Nearly ten years.’ Give or take, with many incidences of falling along the way.
‘Right.’ He pauses. ‘Sorry.’
‘What for?’
‘Because this is the second time I’ve drunk in front of you.’ He regards the glass in his hand.
‘It’s fine.’ I suck on an ice cube. It numbs my tongue. I can see Adam wants to take the discussion further. ‘Really, it’s fine.’ The last thing I want is some earnest conversation about addiction. My name is Eva and I’m an alcoholic. Adam is an intelligent man. No crash course in substance abuse needed there. I’m curious about him, and maybe I’d like to take it further. Let the darkness stay out of the equation for now. Plenty of time for revelation at some distant point further down the road.
We push away from the bar and squash ourselves into a corner. Adam’s jaunty confidence seems quiet all of a sudden. I rip a beer mat, piling the pieces in an untidy heap beside my glass.
I hate when the hint of dependence causes a rift in any exchange. It embarrasses me, talk of my addiction, as though it were something I should control but can’t. Isaac never let it bother him. I’d been in and out of drinking for a couple of years when we began seeing each other, but my job was too important to lose it over a bottle of booze, so I stopped. It was every bit as hard as it should have been, with no poetry to write that would keep my brain from meandering into all those pockets of darkness, but I was able to do it. I’ve always been able to; wanting to is another story.
Where is Isaac tonight? It’s late afternoon in New York now, daylight already extinguished, a cold mist rising off the Hudson. The street lamps are probably switched on, the dark mass of Central Park swelling in the half light. The park is visible from Isaac’s apartment, that gargantuan dwelling on Central Park West, between 81 st and 82 nd that he shares with his heiress wife. The importance of those street numbers was unknown to me before I fell in love with him. A professor’s salary, even at our highly regarded university, would not cover anything in that zip code. From my tiny corner of the Lower East Side, the Upper West was a place I barely thought of. The ballroom-sized dining room, five bedrooms for a childless couple, an incredible kitchen that was never cooked in.
Damn him. Isaac. Do I enter his thoughts? My nameplate is off my office door now, another’s title stuck in its place. Does he consider me, ponder our final moments together, regret what could so easily have been? I regret it, can’t stop myself thinking that it was all a terrible mistake. What I wouldn’t give to be back there, back to last spring, heavy of limb under the weight of an unexpected heatwave, slippery with anticipation, and not stuck here, empty and alone. I miss him.
‘So? What do you think?’
Shit. Adam. ‘Sorry.’
‘You’re miles away.’ He digs his wallet out of his inside pocket. ‘Another water?’
My glass of water effervesces quietly, barely touched. Suddenly I’m exhausted by it all, the being here, the smells, the presence of so much booze. I can’t
‘On the dry?’
The bottle fizzes as I crack it open. ‘More or less.’ Water bubbles onto my fingers.
‘For now?’
I wipe my hand on my thigh. ‘For good, if I can ever get there.’ Three men squeeze by. The barman takes their order with a nod. Three pints of Guinness stand idly, the foam rising slowly to the top. Fantasies about grabbing those darkening glasses and downing them in one go distract me from the man beside me. This isn’t good. Pubs are not places I should ever be. The music of booze plays its overture around me, all those ice cubes clinking, the bottles popping, the glug of glasses filling. Even the dull thud of an empty glass on the wooden bar has its own particular sound, discordant, and in a lower key.
‘How long have you been off it?’
‘Nearly ten years.’ Give or take, with many incidences of falling along the way.
‘Right.’ He pauses. ‘Sorry.’
‘What for?’
‘Because this is the second time I’ve drunk in front of you.’ He regards the glass in his hand.
‘It’s fine.’ I suck on an ice cube. It numbs my tongue. I can see Adam wants to take the discussion further. ‘Really, it’s fine.’ The last thing I want is some earnest conversation about addiction. My name is Eva and I’m an alcoholic. Adam is an intelligent man. No crash course in substance abuse needed there. I’m curious about him, and maybe I’d like to take it further. Let the darkness stay out of the equation for now. Plenty of time for revelation at some distant point further down the road.
We push away from the bar and squash ourselves into a corner. Adam’s jaunty confidence seems quiet all of a sudden. I rip a beer mat, piling the pieces in an untidy heap beside my glass.
I hate when the hint of dependence causes a rift in any exchange. It embarrasses me, talk of my addiction, as though it were something I should control but can’t. Isaac never let it bother him. I’d been in and out of drinking for a couple of years when we began seeing each other, but my job was too important to lose it over a bottle of booze, so I stopped. It was every bit as hard as it should have been, with no poetry to write that would keep my brain from meandering into all those pockets of darkness, but I was able to do it. I’ve always been able to; wanting to is another story.
Where is Isaac tonight? It’s late afternoon in New York now, daylight already extinguished, a cold mist rising off the Hudson. The street lamps are probably switched on, the dark mass of Central Park swelling in the half light. The park is visible from Isaac’s apartment, that gargantuan dwelling on Central Park West, between 81 st and 82 nd that he shares with his heiress wife. The importance of those street numbers was unknown to me before I fell in love with him. A professor’s salary, even at our highly regarded university, would not cover anything in that zip code. From my tiny corner of the Lower East Side, the Upper West was a place I barely thought of. The ballroom-sized dining room, five bedrooms for a childless couple, an incredible kitchen that was never cooked in.
Damn him. Isaac. Do I enter his thoughts? My nameplate is off my office door now, another’s title stuck in its place. Does he consider me, ponder our final moments together, regret what could so easily have been? I regret it, can’t stop myself thinking that it was all a terrible mistake. What I wouldn’t give to be back there, back to last spring, heavy of limb under the weight of an unexpected heatwave, slippery with anticipation, and not stuck here, empty and alone. I miss him.
‘So? What do you think?’
Shit. Adam. ‘Sorry.’
‘You’re miles away.’ He digs his wallet out of his inside pocket. ‘Another water?’
My glass of water effervesces quietly, barely touched. Suddenly I’m exhausted by it all, the being here, the smells, the presence of so much booze. I can’t
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