“Remember…life is just a memory, remember…close your eyes and you can see…”
“Hi. My
name’s Pete, and I’m an alcoholic.”
The words echoed around the cold room, which was on the basement floor of St. Brendan’s, a Catholic church a block away from Pete’s house in Westchester, a quiet and small west Miami suburb that looked more like Pleasantville, USA, than an offshoot of a major metropolis. Pete used to hate living here. Now the calm and quiet kept him alive.
The room was used for storage most of the time—a place to house donations and stuff the church was looking to sell at the next, inevitable bazaar. Pete was seated in a small circle of chairs with about a dozen others. He scanned the faces that surrounded him. The variety had surprised Pete the first time he’d come by—teenagers, businessmen, burnouts, stay-at-home moms. The group was like a random sampling of people living within a fifteen-mile radius of the church. They responded with a wave of nods and a unified “Hi, Pete!” He smiled wanly before he spoke.
“Thanks. I’m happy to be here,” Pete said. “Really happy. It’s…uh…it’s been a rough few weeks. But I’m sober. It’s been eighty-six days and I feel better.”
He paused for a second and scratched the stubble he’d allowed to form over his face.
“I was not in a good place a few months ago,” Pete said. “And I don’t think I’m in a good place now. But I can at least see what I’ve been doing wrong. That’s a start. I haven’t had a drink, and that’s good, too. Thanks.”
The group responded with a more scattered, less focused collection of thank-yous and applause. Pete nodded. The meeting was almost over, and as the last few people took their turn and shared about their home life, their days sober, or why they had to pray for serenity on the Don Shula Expressway, Pete let his mind wander. He still had trouble with meetings. Looking for them, going to them, and talking when he did decide to show up at them. But for whatever reason, the collection of people, all struggling with the same affliction that tormented Pete, made him feel better. Better enough to get on with his day.
The circle of people stood in unison. Pete stood up a half second behind the rest of the group. They joined hands and said a prayer. Pete mumbled along, feeling disingenuous for not really believing the words they were saying. The circle broke and splintered off into smaller groups as the attendees began to socialize—shaking hands, giving each other updates. Pete made a beeline for the exit. He felt a wave of relief overtake him as his hand touched the doorknob, which would lead him to the stairwell, which would—in turn—lead him to the outside world and away from here.
Pete felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around, hoping for a mistake but bracing himself for more AA babble from one of the other members.
It was Jack, an older, slightly chubby man with wispy, thinning hair and a salt-and-pepper beard. Pete had seen him at a few meetings and they’d exchanged pleasantries, but nothing more. The meetings were only a thing Pete did—for now. Maybe later, when he’d gotten under control, he wouldn’t even have to come.
“Hey. Pete, right?”
“Yeah, hey, Jack,” Pete said, slipping his hands into his pockets.
“Good meeting, huh?”
“Pretty good, yeah. I always feel better after these things, for some reason,” Pete said.
“Keep coming back. It gets better,” Jack said. “Got a quick question for you.”
“All right,” Pete said. Having only spoken to Jack once or twice before, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Admonishment for his lax attendance? An offer to hang out? Pete could do without both. He already knew he wasn’t a star pupil. But he was still vague on the yeas and nays of Alcoholics Anonymous. Was it possible to be kicked out of AA for anything beyond drinking? Pete wasn’t sure.
“You wrote that book, right?”
“Book?”
“Yeah, the book about the, uh, the killer, the silent killer.”
Pete hesitated for a second.
“Nah, I didn’t write it,” Pete said. “I’m in it, though—yeah.”
Jack’s eyes widened, as if he were in the presence of a minor celebrity, as opposed to a washed-up newspaper reporter whose only bit of fame had come over a year ago.
“Was it all true, though? You killed the Silent Death? That’s some heavy shit.”
Pete sighed. Part of him hated the sliver of fame he’d attained over the last year. The losses were too great. The rest of him got a weird kick out of being recognized for anything other than being a drunk. In a past life, he’d been a sports copy editor for
The Miami Times.
Before that, he’d been a sports reporter in New Jersey. He’d built a rep as a strong enterprise writer with a knack for investigative pieces. He could zoom out and put the pieces together. He had a flair for finding the story others couldn’t see. He was on the rise for a while. The drinking—coupled with the sudden death of his father—had derailed that and brought him back home to Miami. It was at
The Times
where he helped a fellow reporter, Kathy Bentley, bring down the mob hitman known as the Silent Death, a masked vigilante who killed for the highest bidder. The adventure had cost Pete the life of his best friend and his job, and sent him spiraling into a tailspin he’d only started to pull himself out of.
The case created a burst of media attention, and Kathy rode it as far as she could, writing a tell-all book,
The Silent Death: Unmasked
. She’d returned to her old employer,
The Miami Times
, as a local columnist. Pete used the money he got from consulting on the book to get ahead on the mortgage of his dead father’s house (now his) and to avoid anything that resembled a job. Unfortunately, that had left a lot of time for drinking. Now, for the past two-plus months, it left a lot of time to think about drinking.
“It’s mostly true,” Pete said. “But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t broadcast who I am to the people in the rooms.” Pete had come to learn that “in the rooms” was a nice way of saying “drunks at AA meetings.”
Jack waved his hands in a dismissive, oh-don’t-you-worry way. “No, never,” he said. “Just curious, is all. You’re probably tired of talking about it.”
Pete felt a pang of guilt, but wasn’t sure why.
“No, it’s fine,” he said. “It was just an intense time. A lot of what I’m trying to do is—well—involves trying to get past all that.”
“Do you still do that, though?”
“Do what?”
“Like, investigate things. Cop stuff.”
Pete coughed, giving himself a few seconds to mull over an answer.
“No. Not really,” he said. “I just stay at home. Read. I work at a bookstore on Bird Road a few times a week.”
“Well, listen,” Jack said. He pulled out a tiny notebook from his back pocket and wrote something on a sheet before tearing it off and handing it to Pete. “Here’s my number. Call me anytime. Even if you just want to chat. I know it can get weird out there.”
Pete noticed a flicker of sympathy cross the older man’s eyes. Jack nodded and smiled kindly before sidestepping Pete and heading out the way Pete had hoped to go earlier. Pete stood in front of the door, as if waiting for someone to sidle up to him and start a conversation.
But that didn’t happen, and he turned and left, taking the steps two at a time and almost working up a sweat before reaching the street. He was about a block from his house but he didn’t feel like going home. His cell phone rang. It was Emily, his ex-fiancée. She was moving in. Today. It was part of the reason Pete was at the meeting. The idea of Emily living in his house wasn’t exactly keeping him stress-free. It was complicated, to say the least. These things always were.
“Hello?”
“I put some boxes in the utility room,” she said. “They didn’t all fit in the guest room. Just wanted you to know.”
Pete frowned and thought before he responded. He had to tread carefully.
“Thanks for checking after the fact,” he said. He regretted the petty remark immediately.
“Well…” She paused. “OK. You’re right. I’m sorry. What are you doing? Are you coming home?”
“I’m going to work,” Pete said.
“Fine,” she said. “How was your meeting?”
“It was OK. The usual.”
The silence on the other end dragged for a few seconds too long. Pete waited. This relationship was emblematic of how his life was right now: uncertain, undefined, and somewhat tedious.
“Thanks for letting me stay at the house,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” Pete said, a bit surprised at her burst of gratitude and feeling a touch of guilt for being so quick on the draw. “What are friends for?”
“I’ll see you later,” she said and ended the call.
Pete looked at his phone for a second before sliding it back into his pocket.
He wasn’t going to work.
It took him a few minutes to reach the St. Brendan’s parking lot and find his car. He turned on the engine and AC and let the repackaged air flow through the vehicle, leaving the windows down for a few moments to try and cycle out the humidity that had accumulated while the car sat outside under a blistering sun.
He closed his eyes for a second and let his mind wander back to the meeting. Nothing really stood out to him as memorable, but he felt somehow cleaner, or more focused. He didn’t want to overthink it. He opened his eyes and looked over his hands. He still had a few scrapes and bruises from the brawl with the two guys four or five months back. And even that hadn’t been enough to make Pete hop on the wagon. He wasn’t sure what exactly got him out of bed and to a meeting that day.
The night before he quit had been like many others: a few drinks at lunch, meeting up with some friends amidst the fading glory of Coconut Grove for happy hour. The stretch of land near the ocean full of tourist-trap food and drinking spots had seemed much cooler to Pete when he was younger. Now it made him feel old—the college kids using their fake IDs to score Long Island Iced Teas and the cheesy bars with their faux Irish pub décor and fruity drinks. Every bar was packed and every drink was overpriced and every person seemed like someone’s idea of what was cool. Sad people pretending to be happy in the hopes of becoming happy with each other.
This was followed by a swerving twenty-minute drive to the neon lights and dirty streets of South Beach. Another round or five on the main strip, Lincoln Road—a pedestrian oasis in a town that forced even the blind and dead to drive. Where had they gone? Zeke’s, maybe? Or was it the Abbey again? The suggestion of karaoke. Another ill-advised drive farther down the beach. A few songs he remembered—“Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” “Love Shack,” “Old Man.”
Strangely enough, the clearest memory Pete had of the evening wasn’t the early, sober stages but the very end, when he found himself squirming in a booth packed with people, all of them screaming and singing and gesticulating at each other. They were doing karaoke at the Shelbourne Hotel on Collins Avenue—an off-white building that had seen better days, but was still desperately clinging to the glitz and glory of a time no one remembered. They were in the hotel’s tricked out basement area drinking $15 rum and Cokes with a $10 chaser shot of something fruity and singing about Brenda and Eddie. In that moment, Pete realized he was totally alone. He didn’t know anyone around him. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten to the bar, and he was even less sure about the girl whose hand he was holding. His head was already hurting—a residual hangover now snowballing into the next one, and he hadn’t showered since the morning before.
What if I die here?
he thought. He’d gotten up and stumbled to the shadowy men’s room—and had rested his hands on the sink. He scooped up a handful of water and splashed it on his face, letting it drip down his cheeks and chin. He didn’t care.
When he came to, probably a minute later, he was on the bathroom’s muted peach linoleum floor. His neck hurt. His legs were splayed out in front of him. A man wearing a dark striped shirt and a lot of gold jewelry was looking down at him as he washed his hands.
Pete started to look up, but felt his head spinning. He checked his shirt. Reflex. He hadn’t thrown up on himself.
“You all right, man?”
Pete tried to respond, but his tongue felt numb—as if he’d just shoved a bag of cotton balls into his mouth. Eventually, he croaked out a response.
“Do I look all right?” he said.
“Hey, just asking,” the guy said, raising his arms in mock defense, water splashing on Pete. “You should probably go home. Sleep it off. Press RESTART.”
“What?”
“RESTART, bro. You ever play Nintendo?”
“Yeah,” Pete said. “When I was a kid.”
“Your system ever freeze up on you, man? Like, it won’t take any games, won’t let you get past the level you want to get past?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, sometimes you got no choice. You can’t take the game out, ’cause it’s stuck. You can’t use the controller because it’s jammed. All you can do is push that RESTART button, man. Then you’re back at square one. But shit, at least you’re moving, you know?”
Pete wasn’t sure what to say, if anything.
The man dried his hands and helped Pete to his feet.
“You take care of yourself, man,” he said as he tossed his used paper towel into the trash and walked off.