I get off at eleven, come home, and usually watch some YouTube on my phone and put off sleep and the nightmares, but tonight I take a shower because I had to help a man who pissed himself, and even though I had put on plastic gloves and washed my hands afterward, I still felt kind of gross.
The shower must’ve relaxed me because I nod off and have a drinking dream. I see the guy who pissed himself raise a bottle, swallow, and then pass it to me. Just as I tip it to my mouth, I feel Stacey beside me. I’m not saying a word, she says. She takes the bottle from me and polishes it off. I’m in no position to comment, she says and wipes her mouth. I wake up in the dark. What are you doing? I say to her fading image. I don’t move. The dark consumes her absence. I lie on my bed until I remember I’m in my room. I had a dream about Stacey. Stacey. Shit. She’s my AA sponsor. Was. Last month she started drinking again.
I’m an intake worker for the twenty-four-hour alcohol detox program at Fresh Start. I come in for the swing shift. This afternoon, I clock in just as one of our regulars, Walter Johns, struts through the door slick as he can be.
Look at you, my supervisor Rosemary says.
We have a fat folder on Walter but today you’d never know it. He’s wearing a brown corduroy jacket, white shirt and brown tie, and blue jeans. Lines river his tanned face and a ceiling fan disturbs his slicked-back hair, unraveling strands against his forehead that he keeps batting from his eyes. His clothes are typical thrift store stuff but clean and pressed; they fit him well. If I didn’t know him, I’d assume he was a normal guy.
Look at you, old 357, Rosemary says again, and she gives this deep ha, ha belly laugh that creases her cheeks with a smile and makes me smile too. Three fifty-seven is Walter’s file number. Rosemary avoids calling clients by their name to keep her distance, so when they start drinking again it doesn’t bother her. I think it still does. It does me. You can’t help but get to know people if you see them every day but sometimes you just have to pretend it doesn’t bother you, and I guess that’s how Rosemary pretends.
That’s Mr. 357 to you, Walter tells Rosemary and she falls into that laugh again.
Walter, where’ve you been? I ask him.
Salvation Army’s recovery center.
He raises two fingers.
Two months.
If I wasn’t as old as your mother I’d give you a second look, Rosemary says, and I swear Walter blushes.
Katie, Walter goes, give me a cigarette.
Give me? They teach you no manners at Sally’s? They pay you?
Like prison. A dollar an hour.
For two months. How many hours in two months, Walter?
C’mon, Katie.
I pull my purse from a file cabinet and give him a smoke. Rosemary asks him his plans. He shrugs.
You need a plan, Rosemary scolds. Have you signed up for a halfway house?
I’ll be all right, Walter says.
At that moment I know he plans to start drinking again and Rosemary knows it too. He has a plan; the plan is to drink. Don’t assume, Stacey would tell me, but I know.
Walter wanders around some tables in the waiting room where a handful of guys slouch in chairs trying not to pass out before we do their intakes. He pauses, greets people he knows. Almost like a guy picking up a day labor crew. He shows them his Salvation Army name badge. They know he has money. He walks toward the door. They wobble to their feet and follow him.
And off they go. Rosemary mutters, staring after them.
About fifteen minutes before I clock out, Walter weaves through the door stumbling forward like someone is pulling him by the nose. Somehow he lost his shoes and his bare feet are bloody. He’s pissed himself. He leans against a drinking fountain, picks a broken cigarette from an ashtray, and holds it uncertainly. Sinking to the floor, he shouts for Rosemary and me. A bottle of Thunderbird tilts out of his jacket pocket.
Jesus, you couldn’t even last a day, Rosemary snaps.
I go to a cabinet, pull his file—Johns, Walter, No. 357—and drop it on a desk. I pull out a chair and sit. Walter starts crying. Rosemary yells at him to get up. He lurches over to me and collapses in a chair. I search a drawer for a pen.
I want a program, Walter says, slurring.
You just left one.
I want another one.
I write today’s date in his file. Previous intakes all say the same thing: Johns says he has been drinking about twenty years. His last drink, he says, was minutes before this intake. Wants a program. No one grows up wishing to be an alcoholic, Stacey would tell me, but no one makes them drink either. They can quit if they choose. Don’t take on someone else’s sobriety. Concentrate on your own.
Stacey’s husband died of a heart attack while he was jogging. He wasn’t a drinker, never had a problem with booze. Forty something. Could have happened to anybody. Just like that. Accept the things you cannot change, but Stacey couldn’t. She had been ten years clean and sober when she started drinking again a week after he died. She lives with her daughter, Nancy, now. Nancy told me to stop calling. My mom is no longer available to you, she said.
After I finish Walter’s intake, I take him to detox, a large room on the other side of a divider that separates it from the waiting area. Twenty exercise mats with blankets, sheets cover the tile floor. Four small tables form a horseshoe around a kitchenette. Chicken noodle soup is warming on a hot plate beside a plate of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. A door behind the kitchenette leads into a woman’s dorm.
Mat number ten, Walter, I say. You want something to eat?
He shakes his head, dive bombs onto his mat, and passes out.
I punch out and walk home. I rent a room at The Bridge, a two-year transitional housing hotel for recovering alcoholics and addicts on Ellis, north of Market Street in the Tenderloin. I’ve got another twelve months before I’ll have to move out. I try not to think about that although I should, I know. Have a plan. I take an elevator to my third-floor room and throw my purse on my bed and open my window. Fog rolls in off San Francisco Bay. I have a K-cup coffee machine and knee-high refrigerator that just fits beneath my sink. I make a ham sandwich on my bed and brush the crumbs to the floor. When I’m done eating, I brush my teeth, change into pj’s, shut off the lights, and stretch out. The neon vacancy sign of a hotel across the street blinks on and off, striping my blanket with blue and red lights.
Down the hall, this chick and her boyfriend, both of them recovering crackheads, are going at it screaming at each other. The building manager, Larry, will be humping it to our floor in a minute to see what all’s going on. He’s been sober five years, lives on the first floor, and assumes we’re all chipping. He frisks visitors to see if they’re carrying booze. Residents complain, but Larry turns it around on them. If your friend’s clean what’s the problem with a pat down? He’ll check on these two idiots and then he’ll knock on all our doors to see what the rest of us are up to.
Kicking out of bed, I turn on my night table lamp and get a smoke. Might as well wait for Larry. My shadow spreads like a stain against the wall as I stand and make coffee. I like it strong to get a little speed rush. Won’t last but it feels good, and there’s not a goddamn thing Larry can do about it. Stinkin’ thinkin’, Stacey would say, but she’s in no place to judge.
I hear the elevator doors open followed by the heavy steps of Larry’s gunslinger strut and then I hear him knocking on the couple’s door. They shut up in an instant like something switched off. I sit on my bed and slouch against the wall, listening to the coffee drip. After a moment, I hear Larry knock on another door as he begins working his way down the hall. The crackheads must’ve been clean, because he didn’t spend any kind of time with them. When he knocks on my door I don’t answer. I feel guilty about my anticipated coffee buzz. I’ve done nothing, the coffee isn’t even ready yet. Still, I’m afraid to answer.
The next afternoon I punch in at work and look at a clipboard to see how many people we have in detox. Just five intakes. Walter’s still here. Rosemary tells me a social worker is trying to get him into a long-term detox but he’s been through so many programs no one wants him. Even Sally’s won’t take him back. He’s slouched at a table with a bowl of soup. Circles beneath his eyes like the mouths of caves. He holds a spoon poised over the bowl. His hand shakes and the soup slops onto the table. A woman sitting across from him rests her chin in her hands and stares at a wall. I don’t see her name on the clipboard. Rosemary tells me she’s not here for detox. She just completed an alcohol program at San Francisco General Hospital and is waiting for a halfway house. None of the women’s shelters have any spare beds and she has no place to stay. General sent her to us. She spent the morning in the waiting area. Rosemary sent her over to detox to get something to eat.
What’s her name?
I didn’t ask, Rosemary says.
Why?
She’s not in detox.
I sit at a desk and begin reading a National Geographic someone left. Every half hour I get up and check on anyone asleep in detox to make sure they’re still breathing. The woman drums her fingers against the table. A stuffed plastic bag filled with clothes sags against her feet.
There’s coffee by the soup, I tell her.
I’m OK, she goes. Thanks.
She gives a weak smile. I smile back.
You can use the showers in the women’s dorm if you want.
OK.
I go back to my desk and pick up the National Geographic again. The woman nods off, her chin bouncing against her chest. Her head lolls to one side and eyes snap open. I can see the momentary confusion in her face. Folding her arms, she rests a cheek against her hands and closes her eyes.
Why don’t we give her a bed? I ask Rosemary.
Because she’s not in detox.
She’s sitting in detox.
But she’s not in detox.
Rosemary has been clean and sober for twenty-odd years and is big on rules. She believes if you bend them at work you’ll bend them in your life, and that will lead to drinking.
Let’s give her a blanket at least, I say.
Rosemary scowls but doesn’t object. I go to the laundry room, take a blanket, and fold it around the woman. She wakes up and I tell her it’s OK, just a blanket. She pulls it around her. I pat her back and return to my desk.
Tonight, I have another drinking dream. I’m in the Mission with a bottle of Thunderbird at the Sixteenth Street Muni station. Two police officers haul me to my feet and throw me in the back of a paddy wagon. We’re dropping you off at Fresh Start, one of them says. I beg them not to. I work there, I say, I’ll lose my job. One of the officers turns to me. It’s Stacey. You didn’t follow your program, she says. You used your husband as an excuse to drink, I tell her. I was sober for ten years. You barely lasted twelve months. And she shoves me out of the van at Fresh Start just as I wake up.
In the afternoon, I bring my copy of the Big Book with me to work. I clock in and check the clipboard. Eight clients. Walter has been kept over again. He sits across from the woman. They’re both smoking. I presume the overnight shift let her stay. I walk through detox, do my head count, and then stop at their table. Her hair hangs limply around her face and she’s wearing the same clothes as she did yesterday.
You stayed last night? I ask her.
And all day today, she says.
She made the coffee this morning, Walter says.
He looks better. His hands don’t shake.
I wanted to keep busy, she says.
You should clean up, I tell her. Change your clothes. You’ll feel better.
I’m all right.
No, you’re not, I tell her. When we’re on the street we don’t take care of ourselves. You’re not on the street.
What would you call it? she says.
You’re in recovery. You’re waiting on a halfway house. Where are you on the waiting list?
One person ahead of me. Maybe I’ll get in tomorrow or the next day. What do you think?
I offer her the Big Book.
Expectations are premeditated resentments, I say, quoting from it. Focus on the good things happening now. Today you’re not drinking.
Yeah, I know, she says, a note of annoyance in her voice. She picks up the Big Book but doesn’t open it. It’ll help while you wait. C’mon.
I’m tired of waiting. I just want someone to tell me what to do. I get bored waiting.
A pitying look crosses Walter’s face. He reaches over and pats her hands.
Hang in there, right? she says. A day at a time?
Sometimes it’s a minute at a time, I tell her. C’mon.
I pick up her bag of clothes and walk her to the women’s dorm and point to a closet inside the bathroom where we keep towels, soap, and shampoo. I point to a shower.
Wash up and bring your dirty clothes out and we’ll wash them, I say.
I remember the last time I was in detox. Rosemary was doing a head count. I had come in the night before and was on a mat. She stood above me with a clipboard and put a check mark by my bed number. Do you want a program? she asked. I did, I told her. OK, she said, and went to the next person. I got referred to a five-day detox.
The morning of my fourth day, a counselor drove me to a forty-five-day inpatient program in Redwood City. When I finished, I got into Oliver House, a halfway house south of Market. Stacey ran AA meetings there once a week. She asked me if I had a sponsor. I didn’t. I’ll be your sponsor, she said. I didn’t even ask her. Didn’t have to. She just took me on.
Six months later, Larry accepted me into The Bridge. My lease required me to volunteer at Fresh Start ten hours a week until I found a job. I mopped floors and served coffee for about a month when one of the intake workers quit and I got offered his job. PA one, Rosemary called me. Program assistant, level one. I was seven months sober before she began calling me Katie.
The woman walks out of the female dorm. She’s put on a clean pair of jeans and a pink sweatshirt. Her wet, tangled hair drops to her shoulders, and I realize I forgot to give her a comb. Walter whistles. I give him a look and she smiles. I wave her over and she follows me to the laundry room. I point to a washing machine and she dumps her dirty clothes in it. I add soap, close the lid, turn the dial to warm, and press start. We wait until we hear the sound of water running. She turns to me, follows me out, and rejoins Walter. He looks up at her and grins.
Later in the shift, she and Walter wipe down the tables in the waiting room. He says something and she laughs. Her hair is tied back into a ponytail and she’s put on eyeliner. She sees me and smiles and Walter flashes me a grin—and for a moment I have this thought of a brother and sister.
You want some coffee? the woman asks me.
Sure, thanks. Rosemary has you working.
I didn’t ask. I just want to keep busy. Tell me what to do.
Work your program.
I had things to do at General. I don’t know what else to do here but wait.
Work your steps.
I sound like a textbook. Stacey had a way of talking that would have made it sound fresh. Work your steps rolled out of her mouth like, Good morning, natural and cheerful. I feel weak and worthless, because nothing I say is going to sound as good as it would coming from Stacey. I’m scared, scared to think of her so lost, scared at how fragile we both are, and scared that I can’t call her.
I watch our interloper go back to detox and pour coffee into a foam cup. Walter follows her, gives her a packet of sugar and a plastic stir stick. She takes the stick, flicks coffee in his face, laughs at his surprised look, and brings me the cup.
The phone rings and Rosemary takes it. When she gets off, she comes over to my desk. That was the social worker, she says. He can’t help Walter. No program will take him. He’ll have to leave tomorrow morning. It’s almost time to go home. Let the overnight shift tell him. I don’t want to take that on, do you?
I shake my head no. I don’t think he’ll be upset. He definitely won’t be surprised. But he’ll give that sad look that all us drunks give when for a moment we recognize how bad we’ve fucked up, and then he’ll shake it off and do what we all do and drink again. I don’t need that look right now.
The woman and Walter wipe more tables. When they finish she pours two cups of coffee and they sit down. Walter covers his face like she’ll zing him again and they both laugh. She’s coming out of her shell with him. That’s scary too, that it’s Walter she’s leaning on.
She leafs through my copy of the Big Book, closes it, lights a smoke, and exhales massively into Walter’s face. He waves a hand and pretends he’s choking, and she opens the Big Book again, closes it, and pushes it toward him, and they start laughing for no reason, the book an island between them.
Tonight, I dream about getting drunk on Ocean Beach. I’m panhandling at a stoplight on the Great Highway. No sign, I just walk from car to car when the light’s red and ask the drivers if they can help me out. Most people roll up their windows and stare straight ahead. I’m so cold, I say to the drivers, I’m so cold. I hold onto their door handles and they take off and I tumble to the pavement. An ambulance stops and two paramedics get out and ask if I’m all right. Blood runs down my left side. They clean me up and give me a blanket and tell me to be careful. Have you been drinking? They ask. No, I tell them. The truth now, one of them says in Stacey’s voice. I hold the blanket, shaking. You’re in no position to talk, I say. I wake up to the sound of my voice shouting at her, curled in a corner of my bed shouting.
When I come into work this afternoon, I check the clipboard and do a head count. I don’t see the woman.
Where’s the lady waiting for the halfway house? I ask Rosemary.
Gone.
She get in?
No, she says.
What then?
She left.
Left?
With Walter.
I let that sink in for a minute.
The morning shift kicked her out with him?
No, the night shift told him his time was up and this morning when he left she went with him. No one made her. She just walked out with him.
I try to ignore Rosemary’s I-told-you-so look.
I guess she got tired of waiting, I say finally.
Tired of waiting, Rosemary repeats, the sarcasm in her voice impossible to miss. She got tired, yeah, got tired of not drinking.
I take the clipboard and do a head count. The woman will come back and this time she’ll need detox. She’s not a number, not yet, but soon, I know. Soon. Look after your own recovery, Stacey would say. She would be right. There’s nothing I can do. It’s just me and Rosemary. I never asked the lady her name. That’s good, I guess. Rosemary’s rubbing off on me. I get it but I hope every so often Stacey thinks of me.