Emergency Contact(16)

He listlessly thumbed through the discarded copy of the city’s alt-paper of record, the Austin Chronicle, on the coffee table closest to him. Ever since he’d moved in upstairs, his world had become tiny. He wondered if he still possessed the necessary antibodies to venture outside. Maybe he’d get some ancient disease that we thought we were done with, like polio or smallpox. Did people get smallpox anymore? He needed to read a book once in a while. Isn’t that what people in recovery did? Get a hobby? Christ, “recovery” was so dramatic.

Sam could have killed a beer right now. Hell, he could tear through a six-pack lickety-split. He thought about the yeasty bite of a Shiner Bock, his mother’s favorite and the first beer he’d ever tasted at six years old, and how it had been months since he’d held a cold one to his mouth.

Instead he took a long pull from a glass of water and cleaned. He needed something to do with his hands while his thoughts churned. Sam fluffed pillows, bused tables, wiped down counters, recycled the papers, twisted the group handles from the espresso machine, dumped their filter baskets with a series of satisfying snaps, and rinsed everything out with scalding water. He was reassured by the way his knuckles felt tight and parched afterward.

Sam imagined his rough hands entwined with Lorraine’s. Liar Lorraine. His ex. She’d had beautiful hands. “Hand-model hands” her friends had called them. Long, articulate fingers with slender nail beds. But Sam worshipped her feet. Stubby-toed and flat, she hid them as a policy, refusing to wear sandals in the summer, which only served to make them more desirable. They were hilarious, full of personality. Clever feet that picked pens up from the floor when they thought no one was watching.

The rest of Lorraine had consistently been too cool for him. As aloof as a black-and-white photo of a French girl. Sam knew from the second they met that he had to ask her out. He had to.

He was seventeen to her nineteen. She was DJing at a tiny club with no sign called Bassment, wearing a white silky slip dress. Her hair was pale pink and shoulder-length, dyed ultramarine at the tips. Huge swoops of black encircled her shimmering hazel eyes. She was unmistakably sexy. Sexy. Sam hated that word the way other people hated “moist” or “panty,” but there was no other way to describe her. The Great Love of His Life was plain sexy. And terrifying.

Not that Sam was all the way innocent when they met. From the time he was eleven, he hung out with a ragtag assemblage of derelicts who thought it was hilarious that this little kid had no curfew and drank as much booze as they did. “Little Sam” had a smart mouth and the ladies loved him. He was selfie bait for older drunk chicks.

There wasn’t a bar that the kid couldn’t get into—he knew everyone, or at least his dad did and he was the spit-and-image of his old man—though precocious as he was, he’d never been in love. That was until he saw Lorraine up there on the dais, neon green headphones, ignoring him. Sam was a goner. Sucker-punched and clobbered.

He waited an hour to talk to her. Then another. Another two passed.

At three a.m., when the lights came on, he nodded and asked, “So, where we going?”

“Food,” she said, tossing her bag at him.

They drove to a diner, where she devoured a heaping plate of migas. Sam ordered coffee, and when they were finished and walking out into the street, without warning she hoisted herself into his arms, wrapped her legs around him, and kissed him. Sam was stoked—stoked that it was happening and stoked that he’d grown three inches over the summer and could lift her. Her breath tasted of green peppers and cigarettes and her confidence was mind-blowing. His mother used to say you shouldn’t marry anyone you wouldn’t want to divorce, and he understood that now. Lorraine was the emotional equivalent of a hollow-point round; the exit wound was a shit show.

Sam restocked the almond milk, consolidated the baked goods into a single cake stand, and switched out the bar mops. The new ones smelled good, bleach-clean. He held them under his nose. Sobriety meant a low-level boredom all the time. Taking pleasure in small, repetitive tasks was the big show of the whole day. Sure there weren’t dazzling, dizzying highs anymore, no careening around town with the most enigmatic and emotionally toxic woman he’d ever met. There would be no screwing each other’s brains out in a dazed, compulsive panic, but at least there were clean bar mops. He admired the neatly folded squares of cotton and rearranged one so the blue stripe lined up in the stack.

Right then, as if she begrudged him this tiny victory, Liar texted him.

Call me.


Shit.

Sam’s hands got clammy when his fight-or-flight response was triggered. Under the right light you could actually see the sheen of moisture appear on his palms. He’d made a time-lapse video of it once.

He felt equal parts sick and excited when he heard from her after an absence. The last time they spoke was twenty-seven days ago. Just one day more and he would’ve kicked the habit for good. At least that’s what the books on substance abuse told him. He thought he’d turned over a new leaf. In fact, he’d even begun jogging. Okay, so he’d hopped around the block twice in his busted shoes, but he’d cut back to three cigarettes a day, which for him was the same as completing a half marathon.

He thought about the pressure of her lips on his. The lemony scent of her hair. He closed his eyes and considered their last meeting and the bad ideas that followed. She’d stormed his newly small life and disappeared in a mushroom cloud of devastation. Again.