“Long time.”

“It seems like a long time to me.” She picked up her cup, saw it was empty, put it down again. “Isn’t there someone you could ask to be your sponsor?”

“Is that how it works? You have to ask somebody?”

“That’s right.”

“Suppose I asked you?”

She shook her head. “In the first place, you should get a male sponsor. In the second place, I haven’t been sober long enough. In the third place we’re friends.”

“A sponsor shouldn’t be a friend?”

“Not that kind of friend. An AA friend. In the fourth place, it ought to be somebody in your home group so you have frequent contact.”

I thought unwillingly of Jim. “There’s a guy I talk to sometimes.”

“It’s important to pick someone you can talk to.”

“I don’t know if I can talk to him. I suppose I could.”

“Do you respect his sobriety?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Well, do you—”

“This evening I told him I got upset by the stories in the newspapers. All the crime in the streets, the things people keep doing to each other. It gets to me, Jan.”

“I know it does.”

“He told me to quit reading the papers. Why are you laughing?”

“It’s just such a program thing to say.”

“People talk the damnedest crap. ‘I lost my job and my mother’s dying of cancer and I’m going to have to have my nose amputated but I didn’t drink today so that makes me a winner.’ “

“They really sound like that, don’t they?”

“Sometimes. What’s so funny?”

“ ‘I’m going to have my nose amputated.’ A nose amputated?”

“Don’t laugh,” I said. “It’s a serious problem.”

A little later she was telling me about a member of her home group whose son had been killed by a hit-and-run driver. The man had gone to a meeting and talked about it, drawing strength from the group, and evidently it had been an inspirational experience all around. He’d stayed sober, and his sobriety had enabled him to deal with the situation and bolster the other members of his family while fully experiencing his own grief.

I wondered what was so wonderful about being able to experience your grief. Then I found myself speculating what would have happened some years ago if I’d stayed sober after an errant bullet of mine ricocheted and fatally wounded a six-year-old girl named Estrellita Rivera. I’d dealt with the resultant feelings by pouring bourbon on them. It had certainly seemed like a good idea at the time.

Maybe it hadn’t been. Maybe there were no shortcuts, no detours. Maybe you had to go through things.

I said, “You don’t worry about getting hit by a car in New York. But it happens here, the same as anywhere else. Did they ever catch the driver?”

“No.”