I amble downstairs, still peeved about the message from Dougal and White. The clock in the lobby says it’s one hundred degrees. I exit the hotel—I’m late for work.
A small knot of consumers are talking and smoking by the halfway house steps. One has a broom and is sweeping butts from the gutter. He finds a choice one, sticks it in his mouth. Another consumer, a diminutive Samoan woman in a recycled surgical gown, buttonholes me. “Hey, Pastor! How are you this morning?”
I check the tubercular brown sky, the sun hiding behind a skein of tissue-paper clouds that stretches from Little Mountain to Waterman Canyon. My neck is killing me—I couldn’t swallow the carrot I had for breakfast. I squeak: “I’m maintaining. You?”
She repays my question with great news. “It’s the best day of my life. I just got accepted into a treatment program out in Highland. Near Patton. I’m going there this afternoon.”
“Very nice. For how long?”
“Twenty-four months.”
“That’s a considerable stint. A big deal.”
“My insurance pays for the thing.”
“How marvelous. Merry Christmas, sugar.”
The consumers laugh at me. Most wear plastic intake bracelets from Patton State. The oldest of them sees me looking at his bracelet. Annoyed by my curiosity, he takes his lit cigarette and expertly flicks it at my robe. Sparks dance around my feet. I’m too tired to protest. So I just leave.
□ □ □
I walk south on E Street to Fifth Street, and over to Seccombe Lake. It’s hot and muggy—I have no deodorant. At the lake I watch ducks cavort in the oily water.
I hear a crow cawing. I swivel my head. A monstrous black bird is sneering at me from a lakeside tree. My skin turns cold with dread—crows caw at me and SWAT cops and lawyers have memorized my name. I recite a self-prescribed rosary: pain explains life better than love does. Jesus in heaven, please help me get through this day. That’s all I fucking want.