The Rivals

I tucked the winning ticket into my suit jacket. We sat quietly for the next ten or fifteen minutes, watching a story on CNN about some pharmaceutical company being investigated for selling a knock-off Viagra that supposedly caused some people to stay hard for up to four days. I wasn’t impressed; Sophia had done that shit even longer using nothing but her attitude.

Mr. Thorne clicked the TV off. “So, talk to me, kid. How are the urges these days?”

My gut reaction was to respond the same way I would if my father or grandfather had asked that question, which would be to lie and say I was doing great. But there was an old saying about the four people you always tell the truth: your wife, your priest, your doctor, and your lawyer.

But that was the sober man’s creed. The rest of us had five: your sponsor.

“I’ve had my moments. I paid the cleaning woman at the hotel where I’m staying a hundred bucks to take all the little liquor bottles out of my room the other day.”

He nodded. “Have you been going to meetings?”

I shook my head. “Not in the last two weeks, but I’ve gone to the shrink my grandfather is making me see a few times.”

Mr. Thorne wagged a crooked finger at me. “Get your ass to a meeting. You know the drill. You don’t have to talk, but you need to at least listen. That reminder is key in your recovery.”

I tried to make light of things. “I’m here listening to you. Why can’t that count as my daily listening torture?”

But Mr. Thorne took his sobriety very seriously. “Because I’m fourteen years clean, and the only way I can get myself a drink is by flinging my shriveled-up body off this bed and dragging these useless legs to a store. Which we both know, I don’t have the strength for anymore. But you, you have temptation all around you. Temptation right at your fingertips. Hell, you don’t even have to get up off your ass to get yourself a drink. Just lie in your fancy bed, in your fancy hotel room, and pick up the phone and call room service.”

I ran a hand through my hair and nodded. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll find a meeting.”

Walter Thorne and I went way back. Nine years ago I’d wandered into his hospital room drunk one night when I’d meant to visit my sister. I’d tripped over my own two feet and woke him up, laughing hysterically from the floor beside his bed. Turned out, I hadn’t even been on the right floor of the hospital. But the ornery bastard nevertheless sat up and asked me what my problem was.

I spent the next three hours unloading shit to him that I’d never said aloud to another soul. When I was done, I was pretty much sober, and Mr. Thorne proceeded to tell me he was in the hospital for his sixth surgery in five years since becoming a paraplegic when he crashed his car into a tree while drunk.

I didn’t visit my sister that day. But I came back sober the next day and sat with Mr. Thorne for a few hours after I visited Caroline. In fact, I visited with Mr. Thorne for ten days after my sister was discharged. He spent half our time together telling me dirty jokes and the other half lecturing me about sobering up. It would be a much better story if I could say that had been a turning point for me. But it wasn’t.

A few weeks later, I was back to partying, and I’d tossed the number Mr. Thorne gave me in the back of a drawer somewhere. Then five years ago, I dug it out and called him the night Caroline died. We started talking, and eventually I let him help me get sober.

“How are things between you and that jackass grandfather of yours?”

I forced a smile. “Everything’s pretty good. As long as he continues to get outstanding reports from the shrink, and I live up to the twenty other things I had to agree to in order to get my job back.”

“He’s just looking out for you.”

It was way more complicated than that; it always was with my family.

“How are things going with that lady friend you mentioned a while back?”

I had no idea who he was referencing, but I didn’t need to in order to answer. I shrugged. “It was just a date. Nothing more.”

“Boy, by the time I was your age, I was married with two kids.”

“That’s probably why you were divorced by the time you were thirty-five.”

“Nah. My Eliza divorced me because I was a drunk who couldn’t hold a job more than three months. Can’t blame the woman. A good woman deserves a good man, and eventually she sees right through an imposter.”