Girl Walks Out of a Bar (18 page)

“Hurry up!” I screeched at Mark as we stumbled over snow and ice on East 18th, heading to Pete's Tavern for brunch one Sunday morning in December, a couple months after we met. I flailed my arms at him. “Let's go!” It was five minutes after noon, five minutes after restaurants could start serving liquor. “There aren't going to be any booths left!” My heavy work boots and old Levi's were half-covered in snow.

The first major storm of the year had just hit New York and the city looked like a postcard. In no time that sparkly white snow would be dirt-brown-and-pee-yellow slush, so running around in it now seemed like an urban responsibility. But I had a goal. Mark, however, seemed happy to be out in the fresh, cold air and in no particular rush.

“I should have brought my camera,” he said. “Black and white pictures of this would be so cool.” He was hunting the clear spots on the sidewalk to plant his feet, careful not to skid in his sneakers. I stopped ahead of him and stood with my hands on my hips, and he said, “Just go ahead if you're that anxious.”

“OK, I'll meet you there,” I said. I left him navigating the street like an old lady trying to keep her precious Pradas out of puddles. “It's just that I'm freezing!” I yelled back at him, taking the next two blocks at double speed.

Sunday brunch at Pete's was my favorite, mostly because it was one of those bars that always made you feel respectable for drinking, even if you were the first one to dash through the door and belly up to the bar. The added festivity of the holiday season seemed to make getting tanked an obligatory act.

Pete's, one of the oldest bars in the city, had two large windows facing Irving Place, both of which had “PETE'S” written in an arch of gold letters outlined in black. For the holidays, the windows were framed from within with strands of little white lights. Outside, strands of multicolored lights hung above the front entrance, and two giant wreaths hung above those. That morning seemed particularly festive to me, with little snow piles teetering on the top of the metal gates that surrounded the empty outdoor seating area.

I pushed open the heavy dark wood door, giddy with anticipation of the bustling crowd and the long, dark bar that
reflected the bright glow of the red lights that lined the ceiling. But something was off. There couldn't have been more than ten people in the front of the restaurant. It was already ten after twelve! The booze should be flowing. Where was everybody? In the back room? Home having their cocktails in bed? And it got worse. Some of the people weren't even drinking. They were there for the food. I felt like a birthday girl, sure that she's throwing open the door to her surprise party only to find that she's interrupted a Bible study.

The room smelled of spilled beer and the soap they'd tried to clean the floor with. “Just one?” the waitress asked, appearing in front of me with a single menu in her hand. The waiters and waitresses at Pete's were indifferent when a party of one showed up. Every day they must have seen people get hammered on their own. Some of those waiters and waitresses probably did the same thing when they weren't working. The most welcoming places were the ones that employed functional drunks, and functional drunks knew where to find all the most welcoming places.

“Two, actually,” I said. “We're going to be two.”

“How about this booth right up front?” Like all the furniture, the booths were a heavy, dark wood with lots of scratches, and the tables were covered with red-and-white checkered plastic tablecloths. I had a picture in my office of my dad and me clinking glasses over one of those tablecloths on the day I was admitted to the bar. After the swearing-in ceremony, we'd gone straight to Pete's to celebrate.

“That's perfect,” I said, flopping down as if I hadn't sat in hours. The TV over the bar was tuned in to the football pregame show. I was sure that by kickoff, the place would be standing room only. “Can I get a Bloody Mary, please?” No sign of Mark yet, so I added, “Can you make it a double?”

“Sure thing. Only the one drink comes with brunch, though. I'll have to charge you for the second vodka,” the waitress said, taking her pencil out of her hair to start the tab.

“Not a problem.”

“I'll grab you another menu.” As she walked away, I rubbed my hands together for warmth and in anticipation of that fat cocktail. I was shaking badly because with Mark hanging around in the morning, I hadn't been able to take more than a couple of quick belts from a vodka bottle while he was in the shower.

Mark appeared. He stood over me and unzipped his puffy, down coat, peeled off his knit hat, and shook his hair. I could feel the cold that hadn't yet melted off of him. “Good thing you risked cracking your head open to get a booth,” he said, looking around at the empty bar.

Without lifting my head, I said. “I told you. I was cold.”

The waitress reappeared with my Bloody Mary, served in a pint glass with a grinning lemon on the side and a crisp stalk of celery standing at attention in the middle. She set it in front of me, and I tried not to grab it immediately. “Right, you were cold,” Mark said as he sat down.

“What can I get you, hon?” the waitress asked.

“Diet Coke, thanks,” he said.
Fuck you
, I thought, rolling my eyes. He couldn't seriously want a Diet Coke at noon on a Sunday.
You're not going to make me feel bad. Tomato juice with vodka is normal on a weekend, Your Honor.

Mark ordered a bacon cheeseburger, extra bacon. He felt about pork products the way I felt about martinis. There were never enough. I ordered a chicken Cobb salad, no bacon, no blue cheese, dressing on the side.

I picked at my salad and debated how long I'd have to wait before ordering my second drink. Mark was always a slow
eater, but he seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time with his burger.

“So that movie was great last night,” Mark said. “It's so much better hanging out at home than running around the city freezing your ass off between bars.”

What did we watch? What did we watch? I couldn't recall a thing about the movie, so I changed the subject. “You're twenty-eight years old! You should want to go out and party on a Saturday night!”

“Nah,” he said, swirling a long French fry around in ketchup. “It's OK sometimes, but it's different when you don't have a ton of cash. You've never lived in the city on a budget.” True.

“I'm meeting Jerry to watch the Jets game downtown after brunch,” I said.

“You're not going back to the apartment? I have my stuff there,” he said. “You know this would be a lot easier if I had my own keys.” He wasn't looking me in the eye.

“To my apartment?” I asked.

“Yes, to your apartment. I sleep there practically every night.”

“I don't have a problem opening the door for you.”

“But if I had keys, you wouldn't have to. Plus it would be kind of cool for me to work from up there sometimes. You know, without the idiots getting high in the next room all day.”

This was a genuine dilemma. Giving him keys to my place was a big deal. There was a lot that went on in my space that was not just private, but illegal. What if he walked in when Henry was delivering drugs? Actually, it was Henry I was worried about. If Mark walked in on a drug deal, Henry would freak out and disappear. And then we'd have a problem.

Mark had a point, though. His roommate situation sucked, and I was in a position to help. And I did love spending time
with him. But unfettered access to my apartment was out of the question.

“Well, it's not really a problem, but you know, I like living alone. Even though it's great when you're there. So if I give you a key to use the place during the day, you could come over only if we've actually spoken and it works for me.”

“That's fair,” he said.

“Alright. We can try it.” Right away I felt a stomach surge of worry that I'd made a mistake. “Oh, and also you still have to leave in the morning when I get ready for work.”

“Why? What's the problem with mornings? Do you not shower or something?”

“No!” I answered. “I need my space to get ready privately and get my head together for the day. I've told you that. Besides, you're just getting keys. You're not moving in.”

He nodded. We had an agreement.

13

I should have known it was too good to last.

“You know, most people don't party like that by themselves on Sundays,” Mark said while I was watching CNN one Sunday afternoon. As far as he knew, I was on my second glass of wine. And there was only a small amount of coke on a compact mirror in front of me. It seemed reasonable to me, even restrained for a Sunday.

“How do you know what most people do?” I asked, lighting a cigarette. The air was heavy with smoke and stale wine despite all the odor-eliminating candles I often burned. I was still in my boxer shorts and t-shirt. “It's Sunday. Most people have been sitting in sports bars drinking since noon.”

“Are you serious?” He was perched on the edge of the couch looking at me as if I'd just said that the Kennedys were killed by other Kennedys. I slid down the couch, farther away from him. The navy blue slipcovers were filthy.

“Absolutely. Maybe not everyone's drinking right now. I mean, some people have kids, but most people . . .” I said, as I tried to think of another rationale he'd go for. “Especially anyone with
a job like mine with huge stress all week. Sunday is when everyone with a real job is staring down the barrel of Monday.” Mark's thick eyebrows furrowed like a cartoon villain's. I could hear my tone becoming belligerent. “You're a student at twenty-eight years old. You have no idea what it's like to work a job like mine. If I want to blow off steam on a Sunday, I'll do it however I like.”

I didn't need some little college kid telling me what was normal. Isn't normal whatever you're used to? My hands had been shaking for ten years. This was my normal. And I knew how much drinking and using I could handle and still keep my job, so things were under control.

“OK, I'm just saying, most people don't drink so much and don't do coke all the time,” he said.

“I don't care about what most people do. Maybe if I were just taking some classes and day trading like you, I'd be different . . .”

“Have you ever thought of going to rehab?” he asked.
What? Has he not been listening?

“
EXCUSE
ME? Rehab? No, I have
not
thought of going to rehab.” I took a long slug from my wine glass. “And even if I did need it, it's not like I could tell my office, ‘I'll be out for a month at a FUCKING REHAB.' I can't believe you just said that.”
The balls on this kid
. He didn't really know me anyway.

“OK,” he said, sinking his fingers into his hair and dropping his head into his hands. “I'm sorry I brought it up. Don't be mad.”

“Don't ever bring that up again. Ever.” I said. We sat there quietly for a minute and I felt myself sweating. “I think you should probably go downstairs. I kind of want to be alone now.” It was Sunday! I needed to be out of my head for as long as possible before Monday rolled around. And I was about to fill my glass again.

Mark didn't fight me and he left. Too bad I was going to have to get rid of him. He was nice to have around.

Late the next morning, Mark called me at work and acted as if nothing had happened. “Hey, what's up? You want to eat dinner tonight?”

“Not if you're going to give me a hard time,” I said.

“No, no. I'm sorry about all that. I was just worried about you.”

“Well don't be. I'm fine,” I answered. “I'll call you when I'm leaving.”

As cool as I thought Mark was about my using, I should have seen it coming. He was around a lot, and even though he saw relatively little, he saw enough to make a healthy person wince. Having him around helped me sharpen my sneak skills; as he sat right there on my couch, I was managing to ingest at least twice what he witnessed. The glass bullet filled with coke was tucked into a lipstick case and sat on a shelf behind my bathroom mirror. Lipstick cases were tailor-made to accommodate the one-gram vials that a coke-addicted woman needed to carry or hide. Who would suspect it to be full of blow? A glass of wine in a tumbler was parked in the cabinet underneath the kitchen sink. During an afternoon of slowly sipping wine in front of Mark, I would steal off to the bathroom or the kitchen to bump up with a couple quick blasts of coke or slugs of wine. I knew it was fucked up, but I was good at it, so it made me feel kind of proud.

One morning I had a nine o'clock appointment for my annual mammogram. Wanting to be as “healthy” as possible for the exam, I managed to lay off the coke that morning and had only a glass or so of red wine before I left. All I needed to do was stay steady until I could get home again and balance myself out with wine and coke for the rest of the day.

Returning home from the appointment, I was in a celebratory mood. But as I unlocked my apartment door, I heard the buzz of television news.
Mark's here? What the fuck?

He was sitting in the chair at my computer desk and swiveled toward me as if I were an office pal interrupting a dull day on the job. “Hey, what are you doing home?”
Wait, is that accusation in his voice?

“I told you, I had a doctor's appointment. I had to stop back here for something I need for work,” I lied, already feeling the shaking and sweating as the timer ticked away the minutes until I would be desperate for another drink.

He stood up and walked toward me. “You were drinking this morning.”

I shut the apartment door and stood there, keys still in my hand. “No, I wasn't. And I told you not to come over today. What are you doing here?”

“There's red wine splashed in the sink. It wasn't there when you passed out last night.” He had caught me and I was livid.

“Fuck you,” I said, giving him my best angry woman glare. I stomped into the kitchen, slammed my keys on the counter, and threw my bag on the floor. The deep, double-sided kitchen sink was white porcelain. A streak of dried red wine ran down one side like a blood trail and swirled in crimson circles around the drain. Turning on the faucet, I grabbed the spray attachment and went after the wine as if I were hosing a filthy car in a summer driveway.

I walked back over to Mark and said, “There's no wine in the sink and I wasn't drinking this morning. Now get out and leave your keys.” I felt lightheaded, but I couldn't tell if it was from anger, the need for a drink, or the awful truth of what I'd just done.

“You're crazy,” he answered, not leaving. “I talked to my friend's mother about you. She's been sober for twenty years. She says you're an alcoholic and a drug addict. You're cross-addicted and that's way worse than just being one of those. She says if you don't go to rehab, you're going to die and that if you don't admit it and get help I should get as far away from you as I can.”

“Really? Your
friend's
mother?” With my hands planted firmly on my hips, I barked at him like a furious school nun. That is, if the nun has the mouth of a Bronx barmaid on a night the Yankees lose to the Red Sox. “Who the
fuck
do you think you are, talking to people about me? And I've told you that I know what I'm doing. I know my goddamned limits. I don't need fucking rehab. There's nothing to rehab. If you think I'm going to spend the rest of my life never drinking again and going to meetings in shithole church basements to drink bad coffee and crybaby my problems to a bunch of losers you're out of your fucking mind.”

“If you won't get help, I'm leaving, for real,” he said. His eyes were glassy with tears.

“Fine. Nobody's stopping you.” He gathered his school bag and the pillows he'd brought up from his apartment. Then he put on his sneakers, and I held the door open for him.

“My keys,” I said, as he was leaving. He dropped them gently into my hand and walked out into the hallway. I said “goodbye,” slammed the door, and rushed into the kitchen to pour a double-sized glass of wine. Relief, I just needed some relief, even though I felt numb.