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No es I went upstairs, walked down the hall to my roo, had so And maybe I did,it I caught soh the keyhole

Andwhat see whether or not it ever happened Maybe I sensed so and maybe I didn’t, but either way I stuck my key in the lock and opened my door

XXXVIII

AT FIRST I didn’t recognize the s, it hit me in the face the minute I had the door open, and I’m sure it was as unmistakable in its oay as the stench that had perht, That’s an awful smell, that’s unhealthy to breathe, I’d better open aand clear the place So I recognized the nature of it, but I couldn’t say what it was

And then in an instant I could It was booze, it was ethyl alcohol, it was more specifically bourbon

The whole roo this, conjuring up a smell in response to the stress of my work and the anxiety that precedes an AA anniversary? It was as if the cleaning woman had broken a bottle in my room, but I didn’t keep whiskey in my room, so there was no bottle for her or anyone else to break And it was Monday, and Saturday was the day she cleaned my room, and she’d have no reason to be there, and neither would anyone else, and I’d left the room locked, and it had been locked just now because I’d needed to turn oing on?

Then I looked over at h toward the door so that it see lass tulass, not because there was anything old-fashioned about it, but because it had been designed to hold that cocktail called an old-fashioned

Did anybody order old-fashioneds anymore? Had I ever had one myself? It seemed to me that I had, that I must have It seemed to me that, with just a little effort, I could relass like this I owned a couple of water tumblers One had a sort of bell shape to it, of the type in which drugstores sold Coca-Cola when drugstores still had soda fountains The other wasn’t strictly speaking a glass at all, in that it was made out of plastic, so that it wouldn’t shatter when I dropped it on the bathroolass I’d had glasses of that size and shape when I lived with Anita and the boys in Syosset Like every proper suburbanite, I’d had a fully equipped bar in the den, with all the glasses one uests And, while nobody had ever asked lass of choice for serving a drink on the rocks This wasn’t one of the glasses from that set, which I could only presume were still in the finished basement of the Syosset house, but it was that type

Yet I could swear I recognized the glass It was just the sort in which Ji served drinks on the rocks

Or a double bourbon, straight up, no ice, if that was your pleasure

This glass, this glass on my desk, was filled to within perhaps a half inch of its brim with a clear amber liquid I was able to identify it as a bourbon called Maker’s Mark There s who could have made that identification on the basis of the color and aronize the brand so much as I deduced it, and I based my deduction on the presence of the bottle of Maker’s Mark bourbon that stood on lass

I couldn’t --at the desk, at the glass and the bottle

Thoughts rushing at me, one after the other:

It was a hallucination There was no bottle, no glass, no smell of whiskey

It was a dream I’d co an impossibly vivid drunk dream

It was my sobriety that was the illusion, the hallucination I’d been chipping around formyself and everyone I knew that I didn’t drink anymore But it was all a lie, a 364-day lie, and the proof lay before me, because I’d poured a drink before I leftfor me on my return

I blinked, and it was still there I forced myself to look away, and then looked back, and it was still there I felt myself draard it I wanted to approach it, not to pick it up, God no, not to touch it, but to soo away I couldn’t let it stay there

I don’t kno long I stood there, neither approaching the desk nor walking away from it Then finally I wrenched myself away, yanked the door open, slammed it shut, locked the whiskey away behind it I rushed down the hall, didn’t even ring for the elevator I dashed down the stairs and out into the street

XXXIX

DURING MY DRINKING DAYS, there orse things than hangovers Blackouts orse--co there were vast holes in one’sthings, steering the car and grinding the gears Seizures orse, and waking up in a hospital bed in restraints And, more subtly, the day-by-day erosion of one’s whole life, that surely orse than a hangover

Hangovers were bad enough, however, and some of them orse than others But what I reard is not so over as the way one of them ended

I was in my hotel roo that would easein ht before

So I got myself dressed and downstairs and around the corner, and it ’s was open but the lunch croasn’t there yet In fact the place was ean was behind the stick, and he took one look at lass on the top of the bar, and filled it about halfway full, so that I wouldn’t spill it if my hands happened to shake a little

I stood there while he poured, and I took a breath, and I felt better I hadn’t had a chance to get the alcohol to my lips yet, let alone into my bloodstream, but its simple physical proxi to be able to drink it, and it would help ain--and because I knew this I felt better already

I thought of this when, finally, I heard Jim Faber’s voice

First I had to find a phone that worked Then I had to dial his nu, and when his wife answered I had to ask to speak to Ji him at the shop Do you need the nuot plenty of quarters too"

I don’t knohat she ht have made of that, because I broke the connection before I could find out I spent one of those abundant quarters, and waited while it rang, and then he answered And right away I felt better

"I don’t think you had a hallucination," he said "I know that sort of thing can happen, but that’s not what this sounds like to lass of bourbon on your desk, and a real bottle keeping it coht"

"Well, if you’re deterht to the top shelf I only had it a couple of times myself, but it seems to me that Maker’s Mark was pretty decent sippin’ whiskey"

"I used to knooman who liked it"