Dry: A Memoir (21 page)

All week, I am at the office until after eight. I cancelled my group therapy and have totally blown off AA meetings. To be honest, the meetings are just not doing much for me. I mean, they’re depressing. Why talk about not drinking all the time? Why not just
not drink?
Besides, my life is too stressful now to deal with AA. And anyway, I’m fine. I’m going crazy, yeah. But in terms of the not-drinking thing, I’m fine. Fine, fine, fine.

And it’s not just my life that’s crazy. Greer is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “God, I should have been a gynecologist,” she keeps saying, over and over like a crazy person. Sometimes, I actually think Greer is the perfect candidate for complete mental collapse. On Tuesday, I caught her looking into her compact mirror, with both hands pressed against the sides of her head.

“What are you doing, Greer?” I asked.

She didn’t look up, just kind of cocked her head to the side and continued to stare at her reflection in the mirror as she said, “Wouldn’t it be strange if you had no ears?”

Yesterday, we presented our second round of beer ideas to Elenor.

“Whatcha got for me, guys?” she asked as we stood at her doorway.

Greer crossed her legs at the ankles, leaned against the door. “Ready to see some more beer work?”

Elenor mashed her cigarette out in her overflowing ashtray. “Yeah, yeah, sure. Come on in. Sit.” She motioned us over to her couch.

I sat on one end of the sofa, Greer on the other. Then Greer looked at the space between us, rolled her eyes and scooted closer to me. She rested the storyboards facedown on her legs.

Elenor tapped at her Mac. “Hold on a second there, guys. Just finishing up.”

Greer picked a framed picture up off the glass coffee table. “Is this your daughter?” she asked.

Elenor answered without taking her eyes off her computer. “That’s my Heather.”

“She’s adorable. I didn’t know you had two children.”

“I don’t,” Elenor said.

Greer set the picture back down. “I could have sworn that you just had her, like a few months ago.”

Elenor stood and came over to the chair in front of us. “Three and a half years ago,” she said, sitting.

“I cannot believe it’s been that long.” Greer turned to me. “What happened to the past three years?”

“UPS, Burger King, Credit Suisse . . .” I said.

Elenor laughed. “Yup. That’s advertising. All blends together after a while.”

Greer sat motionless, somewhat stunned by this timecompression event.

Elenor reached for her phone. “I’m just gonna pull Rick in here,” she said, holding the phone to her ear. A moment later she said, “Get your ass in here, I’m about to look at Wirksam with Greer and Augusten.” She hung up.

Great. The asshole has to be here too.

“Hi, Greer,” he said as he entered the room.

“Hmmmmm,” Greer said back coldly. Greer is the only other person who sees through Rick’s Nice Mormon act to the black, charred soul underneath.

He smiled at me and took the seat next to Elenor, crossing his legs.

“How are you feeling, Augusten?” he asked.

I smiled and said, “I’m great, Rick. Thank you so much for asking.”

He closed his eyes briefly and smiled tightly. “You’re welcome,” he said, except no words came out. He just sort of mouthed the words.

“Anyway,” Elenor said. “Let’s see some work.”

We took Elenor through the storyboards. “This campaign would take place in real bars in modern Berlin,” Greer began.

“Uh-oh, do I smell a travel bug in this room?” Rick said in his annoying, high-pitched perky voice.

Greer ignored him and continued. “And the bars would be filled with really hip, eccentric characters. Dwarfs, albino waitresses, cross-dressers.”

Before we were able to even take them through the whole storyboard, Elenor interrupted. “I don’t want to get into the whole weird Germany thing. I can just tell you they’re not gonna go for that. I mean, it’s totally true, the Germans are all perverted, but they’ll never go for it. Sorry.”

I looked at Greer. “Let’s show her the next one.”

Greer pulled the next campaign out. “Okay, no weird Germany. How about playing off all the other German imports. Like Claudia Schiffer, BMWs, Albert Einstein.”

“That could be cool,” Elenor said, nodding.

As Greer led her through the visuals, I read the copy out loud.

A look of concern spread across Elenor’s face. “It’s too much like Apple. Got anything else?”

We presented our German perfectionist campaign, which made both Elenor and Rick think of concentration camps.

“What else?” Elenor asked, lighting a cigarette and then chewing on her lip while she exhaled through her nose.

Greer coughed. “We were looking into this direction of old German stereotypes, like milk maidens and lederhosen. Making them new and hip.”

“Sort of a ‘Germany isn’t what you think’ kind of thing,” I said.

“I like that concept,” Rick said as I held up the picture of the blonde with double braids.

I studied his annoying face, the ponytail years out of style, the Diesel jeans that no forty-four-year-old should be wearing. He struck me as sad, if not pathetic. I silently willed him under a bus, soon.

“What?” he said pleasantly, catching me staring at him.

“Nothing.”

“Listen guys,” Elenor began, “I don’t think we’re there yet. Keep working. We really want to push the envelope on this one. Think outside the box. Think Nike.”

Greer forced her mouth into a smile. “Okay. We’ll keep going.”

“I agree,” Rick said. “Keep going. But I’d stay away from anything that’s gonna cause problems.” He clasped his hands in his lap. “And stay away from the whole
New Germany
thing, that’s just not a safe space to be thinking in.”

Elenor glanced at Rick, puzzled. As if to say,
What New Germany thing?

I looked at Greer. We hadn’t presented our New Germany campaign. We decided between us that it was wrong. The New Germany campaign existed in only two places: in our heads, and in my backpack in the form of loose sketches.

“Rick,” I said, “how do you know about the New Germany campaign?”

He sat a little straighter and blinked. “You just presented it.”

“No we didn’t,” Greer said quickly.

Rick looked at Elenor who was looking at Rick, waiting for his answer. “What do you mean?” he said.

“How did you know we did a New Germany campaign?” I said. I folded my arms across my chest. My heart was pounding, I was furious.

“Well, I just, you know, I just mean
in general
,” he said clumsily.

“You fucking asshole,” I said. “You went through my goddamn backpack. You went into my office and you looked at our work.”

“Hold on there a minute, Augusten,” Elenor said.

I turned to her sharply. “He’s been rooting around in my office. He’s been leaving nasty notes and moving my stuff around. He stuck a bottle of booze on the bookcase.”

“Oh, that’s absurd,” Rick said. “Augusten, you’re tense. You’re really being paranoid. I know you’ve gone through a difficult time, but no one is out to get you. Really.”

Greer glared at him and he seemed to shrink into the sofa.

“You’re pathetic,” I spat. “I see through you, you know. You don’t fool me at all.”

Elenor said, “Okay, let’s just move on.” She rose from her chair. “I can’t sit here all day and listen to who took whose crayons. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Greer and I moved to the door. “When do you want to see another round?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Tomorrow morning?”

I checked my watch: it was almost six.

In the elevator, Greer stabbed the lobby button. “I hate those two,” she spat. “I can’t believe we have to work all night again. They are so full of shit. Nike! They don’t want anything cool. They want some awful jingle.”

“I wish Rick would get gang-raped by a bunch of Muslim garbage collectors,” I said, fuming. Now I knew for sure. The magazine ads, the bottle and now this.

The doors opened and Greer stormed through the lobby. We walked to the coffee shop next door and ordered two large coffees. In the elevator on the way back up to our office, Greer turned to me. “God, her ugly little daughter must be horribly spoiled and obnoxious.”

“I can just imagine,” I said. “And ad people are so full of shit. ‘Push the envelope.’ It’s like, they think something is cool and edgy if they’ve only seen it a couple of times before.”

“Exactly. I’d like to push the envelope right up her cunt,” Greer hissed.

After work one night, I call Foster. I either have to see him every day or talk to him on the phone. It’s come to that.

“C’mon over,” he says.

When I get to his apartment, I’m shocked by how awful he looks; ragged and red-eyed. He hasn’t shaved for days. “What’s the matter with you?” I ask him.

He walks over the sofa, sits. “I just haven’t felt good this week.”

He’s smoking crack, I think. “Are you using?” I ask.

“No,” he says.

Foster has two clocks in his living room. One on the fireplace mantel and another on the table next to the sofa. Both clocks are set incorrectly. And he knows exactly
how
incorrectly. The clock on the mantle is one hour and four minutes slow. The one on the table is five minutes fast. So when you ask him the time, his eyes dart back and forth between the two clocks while he does the math in his head. Although he could have not one but
two
clocks that are each set to exactly the correct time, this does not happen. It would be too easy. Better to struggle. Better to
work
for the time and sometimes get the math wrong and arrive an hour late.

I ask him if I missed anything interesting in Group this week. “Nah, nothing much,” he says. Something is off with him. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe he doesn’t like me anymore. I test the theory by leaning back against him.

He folds me into his arms. “Ahhh, that’s exactly what I needed,” he drawls. “I missed you so much, more than you can know. I hate your work, Auggie.”

I figure, as long as there aren’t any scented candles burning, this can’t be considered
romantic
, and thus in violation of the “no romantic involvement” clause I signed.

He reaches over for a book on the coffee table. “Here, let me read you a little Dorothy Parker. That’ll cheer us up.” He gives one of his utterly comforting Southern laughs. His laugh is made of porch swings and lemonade. He begins reading, and I close my eyes. I realize I have not been read to since I was little kid. My mother used to read to me all the time. As he reads, he kind of wraps those thick legs of his around mine. I picture my therapist Wendy asking me, “So what do you and Foster do?” And me replying, “Oh, we talk on the phone, hang out.”

What are the odds of me finding another movie-star handsome, literate, sweet, loyal, masculine, independently wealthy and single guy who seems to be crazy about me? Crack is only five letters, I remind myself.

Last week after my road trip with Foster, Hayden asked if we’d slept together yet.

“No, we haven’t,” I said, the truth.

“Just be careful,” he said. “Just know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, if you’re going to sleep with the mobster then fine, sleep with the mobster. But don’t pretend that’s a Stradivarius he’s carrying around inside that violin case.”

We haven’t slept together. But we’ve napped
.

The weekend goes like this: Hayden paces around the apartment, frantic and edgy, because of an opera he’s editing freelance, which he calls “incomprehensible, impossible.”

I pace around the apartment wondering why Foster hasn’t called me. Why, when I call him, which I have been doing constantly, he doesn’t answer. I’ve left messages, I’ve spent large chunks of time psychically directing him to make my phone ring. Nothing. Why is it not difficult to imagine him smoking crack in a hotel room somewhere?

Hayden goes to four meetings on Sunday. I go to none.

Our of sheer anxiety and general mental dysfunction, I shave off my chest hair and see a Gus Van Sant movie at the Angelika. I go to the gym twice. I almost have a washboard stomach now. It’s a five-pack, not quite a six-pack. I take care of it like I’m taking care of Foster’s pet. I consider it his.

By Sunday night Hayden’s calmer, having made progress on the score.

And I’m worse. At group on Tuesday, there’s no Foster. And the reason there’s no Foster is, as Wayne the group leader explains, because “Foster has quit therapy. He called one of our staff on Monday and explained that he’s been using for a month and that he’s not ready to stop.”

My first thought:
Evisceration—swift and complete
. My second thought:
So that
wasn’t
salt I tasted on his lips at the beach. It was crack
.

After Group, I go to the nearest pay phone and call him. I let it ring a couple dozen times. No answer.

“Guess what?” I tell Hayden when I come home, furious. “Foster quit therapy. He’s been smoking crack for a month, in secret.”

“Je-sus,” Hayden says slowly. But I detect something in his voice. Awe. Envy?

I call Foster again; still nothing. I am insane, that’s all there is to it. What was I thinking? Falling for a crack addict from my group therapy? A guy who can’t even set a clock? A man who, while stroking my hair and telling me everything is perfectly fine, was going out at night and scoring crack?

All of a sudden Hayden says, “I need to go for a walk. I need some air.” And before I can ask him what the problem is, he’s out the door.

I rummage around for a snack. I choose the wrong thing. There is no worse taste in the mouth than chocolate and cigarettes. Second would be tuna and peppermint. I’ve combined everything, so I know.

“I’m sorry, Auggie. I’m sorry I let you down.”

I’m sitting on Foster’s sofa, because I took a cab up to his building and tipped the doorman fifty dollars to let me in. Then I took the elevator up to his apartment and pounded on the door until he answered it, groggily.

“Why?” is all I can think to say.