Page 3 of Steadfast
It washers. Sophie’s.
Reaching out, I plucked the bottle off the shower shelf and flipped open the cap. And the scent overtook me right away—green apples. Standing there, remembering how Sophie smelled, it was like a sock to the gut. Of all the things I’d lost—my good name, the chance to get a decent job, my carefully restored car—none of them mattered as much as Sophie. She was gone from my life, and it was a permanent condition. No way to fix it.
I realized a minute later that I was still standing there in my wreck of a room, holding my nose over a plastic shampoo bottle like a moron. But there’s no shame in missing someone. Trust me—I am well versed in shame. The pile of things I was ashamed of doing was as tall as Mount Mansfield. Missing her wasn’t a crime, though. Anybody would.
Capping the bottle, I set it down again. Then I turned my attention to the toilet, which was the real challenge here. First I flushed it, just to make sure it still worked, because I might have something I needed to flush down in a moment.
Now came the hard part.
I eyed the tank cover, wondering what I’d find inside. Probably nothing. It hadn’t been a very original hiding place. But when I’d squirreled away my pills, I wasn’t trying to conceal them from the cops, who would know exactly where to look. I was only hiding them from Sophie.
I used to besoproud of the way I kept my two loves separate from one another—the drugs and the girlfriend. Even when I was snorting an unsustainable quantity of oxy, I was still functional in the garage and still a good lover. What an achiever!
Until the night it all went wrong.
Since then, I’d played thewhat ifgame many, many times. What if she’d known? What if I’d been forced to admit my problem sooner? What if I’d slipped up in a small way, which prevented the ultimate disaster?
What ifwas a pointless exercise. Ask any addict.
Slowly, I lifted the dusty tank cover, peering over the edge as if there might be a serpent inside to bite me. And really, the pills I’d kept out of my life these past months were worse than any snake.
But there was nothing there. My old hiding place had been discovered, and whatever stash had been here on the worst night of my life was long gone—discovered by the police and parked in an evidence locker wherever they kept the contraband found on losers like me.
And thank God. Today I would not be truly tested.
Sure, I’d probably have flushed the pills right down. But you don’t know until you’ve got them in your hand. There was a chance that I would have pocketed one, just in case of emergency. But to an addict like me, that emergency would inevitably have come within the hour.
In rehab, I’d learned that the relapse rate for opiate addicts was over fifty percent. Lately that depressing little statistic rattled through my mind all day long. “But that means almost half of usdon’trelapse,” some cheerful soul had pointed out in group therapy. “You can choose to be inthathalf.”
Easier said than done.
Feeling the first hit of relief since I’d rolled into town, I set the tank cover back in place. Then I got to work straightening up. When I stripped the bed, a cloud of dust rose up, making me cough. So I opened the window in spite of the November chill. I needed to air out my room. Air out my lungs. Air out my whole goddamned life.
* * *
It tookme several hours to get the place halfway to inhabitable. I dragged the shop vac up the stairs to attack the dust. I made a trip to the laundromat, going to a fast-food drive-through while my sheets and towels dried and eating in my awful car. It was nothing like the home cooking I’d been eating on the Shipley farm, but it got the job done.
By nightfall, I was able to put clean sheets on the bed and then collapse onto it. I shut off the lamp and let my eyes adjust to the shadows of my old room. These days, falling asleep was always tricky and staying asleep was impossible. On the Shipley Farm, I’d roomed in a bunkhouse with three other guys. I used to lie awake listening to them snore.
My room here at home was going to be much quieter—just quiet enough to make room for all the demons in my head. Lying here made me think ofher, too.
Sophie.
I wondered where she was right now. New York City, probably. She’d have a small place somewhere, because singers who were just starting out didn’t make any money. She’d have roommates.
Or a boyfriend.
I forced myself to imagine who she might choose as a partner. He’d have to be my opposite, since Sophie wouldn’t want to be reminded of her unfortunate choices. That made him a dark-haired guy, maybe with olive skin, and wearing an Italian suit. Hopefully he had a high-paying job—in finance or real estate. He’d earn enough to live in a safe neighborhood and take Sophie out for expensive dinners.
Of course, the Sophie I knew wouldn’t want to date a banker. That smacked of her father’s choices for her. But maybe she’d met this guy during intermission at the Metropolitan Opera. Her banker had an artsy side and season tickets in a private box. He probably invited her to watch from his excellent seats. And since Sophie had a standing-room ticket, she accepted…
My brain snagged on one detail. Were private boxes even real, or were those just in old movies?
In prison I’d had to entertain myself like this for hours. When there was nobody to talk to, I went on journeys inside my head. Before prison, I was a talker. Too much of a talker, probably. But these past three years I hadn’t had a lot of conversation. Even at the Shipley Farm, where there were always people to talk to, I didn’t say a whole lot. They were such a nice, normal family. I preferred to listen. Who wanted to hear a lot of sentences that began, “In prison, we…”
Nobody, that’s who.
A single set of headlights illuminated an angled section of my ceiling from left to right. Then it was dark again. The nighttime sounds were different here. I was used to the call of the barred owls on the Shipley Farm, punctuated on some nights by coyotes howling nearby.
