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"Well, he satdoor, and I’d just keep going out and keep coain, only each time I came back I’d have a little less of onna break the pattern was if I read the Big Book every ot really serious with the steps So I looked at hiot less in co I never asked anybody before I asked him to be uess he said yes"

" ‘I’ to sponsor you,’ he said, ‘but I don’t know if you’ll be able to stand it’ Well, fuck, ht down to it, what choice did I have?"

So he went to aday wasn’t unheard of And he called his sponsor every ot out of bed was hit his knees and ask God for one et on his knees again and thank God for keeping hi Book and the Twelve & Twelve, and he worked his way through the steps with his sponsor, and he made ninety days, not for the first time, but he’d never made six months before, and nine months, and, incredibly, a year

For his Fourth Step, his sponsorhe’d ever done in his life, and if he didn’t want to include so, that meant it had da," he said, "to every godda I ever did"

Then the two of theether and he read aloud what he’d written, with his sponsor interrupting now and then to comment, or ask for amplification "And ere done he asked ant way to put it, but what I told hiest shit in the history of the world"

And now he had sixteenon the ahth Step list of the people he’d harht, but noas Ninth Step ti the amends, and that wasn’t so easy

"But what choice do I have?" he said And he shook his head and said, "Jesus, look at the tih three speakers and now you had to listen to ether But I guess it did sohborhood It’s gone, you know The old neighborhood They went and ran a fucking expressway through there"

"I know"

"It probably hborhood, Ilike that"

"For me it was ood drunk out of it ‘Poor one, the streets where I played stickball are gone, di dah di dah di dah’ But my childhood wasn’t about the house and the streets And it’s not gone I’ot to deal with it" He picked up the check "And that’s enough out offor this, and you can call it aot horeed that Jack’s sponsor sounded like a real Step Nazi, but that seemed to be just what Jack needed

Before we parted, Jack had given ive hi up the phone, and Jiular basis There was a woenerally spent Saturday night and Sunday , and one of us would call the other two or three times a week Aside froot rong numbers

I copied Jack Ellery’s nuured I’d run into him somewhere down the line Or not

III

THE NEXT TIME I saw Jack Ellery was severalBy then we’d spoken a couple of times on the phone The first time was a few days after I roup in the basement at St Paul the Apostle The church was at Coluone there in ht votive candles for the dead and, while I was there, enjoy a few moments of quiet Back then I hadn’t even known there were AA s downstairs

So I sat at the table in front and told my story, or twenty ratulated me, and afterward a bunch of us went for coffee at the Flaratulated me herself and then reminded me what comes after ninety days Day Ninety-one

It must have been Day Ninety-three or -four when Jack Ellery called to offer his own congratulations "I was a little anxious about calling," he said, "because I figured you’d make it, but you never know, do you? And hoould you feel if you had a slip and here’s this asshole calling to congratulate you on ninety days that you haven’t got? And I said this to my sponsor, and he reminded me I’m not the center of the universe, which never fails to be news to me And that, if God forbid you did pick up a drink, you’d have uy on the other end of the telephone line"

He called again a week or so later, but it was Saturday and I was don at Jan’s loft on Lispenard Street The followingin SoHo, a favorite of hers Afterent out for brunch, then walked through so Sunday dinner date with Jih not always at the sa So it was late by the tie, and I didn’t return Jack’s call until the following day, and when I called he was out and there was no way to leave afor a few more days, and then one of us reached the other, and it was one of those aard calls where neither party has a great deal to say

I re amends "For instance," he said, "there was this buddy I ran with We knocked off a couple of stores together, then hunkered doith a fifth of Johnnie Black and told each other what heroes ere Then one tie, pots and pans and household shit I onna have, you know?"