I don’t believe in God, I told him the first time he asked me this question. No, he replied, well then who rescued you from your apartment when you banged your head on the coffee table and were lying on the floor drunk and bleeding out? That was my sister, I said. The sister you hadn’t seen in three years who just happened to turn up that day? The apartment manager called her, she was my emergency contact. And why, Larry persisted, did the apartment manager choose that day to call her? It was a coincidence, I said, but he seized upon the trace of doubt in my voice. You’re not sure of that. You think it may not have been a coincidence and that doubt, Henry, that tiny shred of doubt, that fragile belief that maybe something in the universe gives a fuck about your life and well-being? Let’s call that God and you can pray to it. What am I supposed to say, I replied, as sullen as a teenager. How about, help me and thank you. Fine, I said. And that had become my daily prayer. Help me and thank you.
“Yes,” I replied that morning as I did every morning. “I said the thing.”
I could sense the smirk on the other end of the line. “Good boy. What are you grateful for today?”
This was the other part of our ritual. Every morning, I was required to list three things I was grateful for.
“It’s a beautiful day. I have enough money coming in this month to pay my rent and feed myself. I woke up without a hangover.”
“It’s a beautiful day down here too,” he said from Los Angeles where he lived and practiced law. “What are your plans for the next twenty-four hours?”
“I’m going out for a long run. After that I’ll head to the office to work on a suppression motion I have to file by Friday. Then I’ll go to a six p.m. Big Book study and then dinner with some of the guys from the meeting.”
“That’s a good plan. Nice and simple.”
“Yeah, well, life is simple when there’s not a lot of work coming in.”
“Have you given any more thought to the job with Western States?”
“I don’t know. Working for an insurance company? It doesn’t sit right.”