I went upstairs and got ready for bed. I was tired and felt out of breath. For a moment, just before sleep came, I experienced again that odd sensation of having lost something. But what could I have lost?

I thought, Seven days. You had seven sober days and most of an eighth, and you lost them. They’re gone.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

I bought the News the next morning. A new atrocity had already driven Kim Dakkinen off the front page. Up in Washington Heights a young surgeon, a resident at Columbia Presbyterian, had been shot dead in a robbery attempt on Riverside Drive. He hadn’t resisted his assailant, who had shot him for no apparent reason. The victim’s widow was expecting their first child in early February.

The call-girl slashing was on an inside page. I didn’t learn anything I hadn’t heard the previous night from Durkin.

I walked around a lot. At noon I dropped over to the Y but got restless and left during the qualification. I had a pastrami sandwich at a Broadway deli and drank a bottle of Prior Dark with it. I had another beer around dinnertime. At eight-thirty I went over to St. Paul’s, walked once around the block and returned to my hotel without entering the basement meeting room. I made myself stay in my room. I felt like a drink, but I’d had two beers and I decided that two drinks a day would be my ration. As long as I didn’t exceed that quota I didn’t see how I could get in trouble. It didn’t matter whether I had them first thing in the morning or last thing at night, in my room or at a bar, alone or in company.

The following day, Wednesday, I slept late and ate a late breakfast at Armstrong’s. I walked to the main library and spent a couple hours there, then sat in Bryant Park until the drug dealers got on my nerves. They’ve so completely taken over the parks that they assume only a potential customer would bother coming there, so you can’t read a paper without being constantly offered uppers and downers and pot and acid and God knows what else.

I went to the eight-thirty meeting that night. Mildred, one of the regulars, got a round of applause when she announced that it was her anniversary, eleven years since her last drink. She said she didn’t have any secret, she just did it a day at a time.