Tomorrow and Tomorrow (4 page)

“I had an episode the other day,” I tell them. “Heroin in my system from a pill called a valentine when I dropped brown sugar at a KFC and lost control. I can’t even remember—the police picked me up wandering Dupont Circle. I’d stopped up traffic—a public nuisance, my fifth disturbing the peace charge. They arrested me and checked me into an Urgent Care clinic. They cleaned my blood. Dialysis with dopamine stims and a pack upgrade to the Adware that’s reconditioned my cravings—”

“Involuntary Assistance,” they call it: two dozen beds, male nurses with heavy hands used to subduing violent patients. Nylon straps, buckled down. The patient next to me retched crystallized blood—Christ. They laced me with tubes, plugged me into the machine. I gave up, stopped struggling. Intravenous fluids coursed through me. I didn’t feel the dialysis, but heard the whir, chug, whoosh of the machine cleaning my blood and rushing it back to my heart. I wondered where I was—
The hospital. Did something happen to me?
—savoring the last wisps of Theresa and Pittsburgh as Twiggy’s heroin valentine was filtered from my body. The Adware downloads completed and my personality numbed—fucked everything up, all my account settings. The nurses flashed visuals of drugs and measured my responses, tinkered with my Adware until I fell within the normal range. My addiction was cured.

“A clean bill of health?” asks the leader.

“A clean bill of health, but I was convicted on a drug abuse felony because of the heroin and sentenced to eight years of prison, but the sentence was waived in exchange for a correctional rehabilitation program. I lost my job—”

“What happened?” asks the leader.

“My boss’s hand was forced because of the felony charge,” I tell them. “But I think he was losing patience anyway. He voiced and told me that my employment status had changed, that I would no longer be working for him. I tried to argue—”

“And now you’re here with us, a grief support group for men affected by Pittsburgh-related PTSD—”

“The Correctional Health Board mandates I change treatment providers and go through a year’s worth of correctional health counseling before my case will be reevaluated. The clinics are overcrowded so I was enrolled in outpatient therapy—”

“I hope we’ll be able to help you make progress toward your goals,” says the leader.

“I never had headaches like I do now,” I tell him. “I can’t focus anymore—”

“That’s from the wiring,” says one of the others—Jason, maybe. Jayden, or something. I can’t quite remember his name. “If you don’t have that Lux shit, you burn it out and fry your head,” the guy says, rubbing his own surgery-pocked scalp. “Your brain sprouts tumors—”

“Thank you, but no crosstalk this meeting,” says the leader, a petite man, soft, sallow, with a thinning patch of hair gelled into wispy spikes that doesn’t quite hide the wormy white lines of his own Adware scar tissue. The men here obey him. When he smiles, his eyes remain dispassionate. His voice is soft. No Adware during the sessions for privacy—the leader runs a firewall fob to disrupt network connections. We can trust one another, I’m told.

“Dominic, tell us a little about yourself,” says the leader. “Where were you when you heard?”

It’s hard to talk about this—especially here, surrounded by strangers, all men, their own problems brimming in their eyes. One man yawns, and it’s disrespectful, disrespectful to her. It happens like this—overwhelmed by memories. The linoleum tile floor of the classroom, the ceiling lights—I don’t want to think about the end, I don’t want to think about her. Not here, not with these people.

“Shit . . . Oh, shit. I’m sorry—”

“It’s all right to cry,” says the leader. “Let it out. Talk with us, share your story. Hearing each other’s stories helps us to understand we’re not alone. We were all away from friends and family when it happened. We’ve all lost everything. We haven’t been uniquely chosen to suffer—”

“I’m sorry,” I end up saying.

“Please, tell us what happened,” says the leader, older than me by a few years, maybe ten years or so, but he has a boyish face and bright, condescending eyes that seem to diagnose me even as he pities me. He purses his thin lips. I cry and feel the others losing what patience they might have had with me. I meet the leader’s eyes, wordlessly begging him to let me off the hook, but he just watches me, waiting, his head cocked like a parent prepared to believe the lies his children will tell. The others in the group watch me, too—some do, anyway.

“Columbus, when it happened,” I tell them. “I was at a conference, at Ohio State—the Midwestern Universities Conference on Literature. MUCOL, it was called. I presented a paper on John Berryman’s
Dream Songs
and the notion of Subjectivities and Dialogism and the changing nature of the Speaker—I forget the specifics. We went out for lunch following the morning panels. On High Street, at a sports bar when we heard the news. I think I may have screamed and just collapsed. I remember screaming. I remember the scent of the carpet at the restaurant—like beer and cigarettes and stale fabric. The others, these colleagues of mine I’d met just the day before—they all just looked at me. Everything was confusing, I remember. Not knowing exactly what had happened, but within fifteen or twenty minutes as the news rolled in—no one was left alive, I knew that. No one in Pittsburgh was left alive. I don’t know what I would have wanted them to do, but they just sat there, looking at me—”

“And you visit the Archive of Pittsburgh through your Adware, to relive your life there, and you use stimulants to heighten your experience of the City—”

“The drugs help,” I tell them.

“And you immerse to see her?”

“My wife—”

“What was her name?”

“Theresa Marie,” I say, her name unnatural in my mouth, like chewing on a foreign phrase. I don’t want to speak her name for others to hear—she doesn’t belong here, not in this place, not with these men.

“What happened?”

“Nothing—nothing happened,” I tell them. “I was in Columbus and couldn’t get home. There was no home. I drove as far as I could—until the checkpoints in West Virginia. I was put up in temporary housing. FEMA. Someone told me I should head back to Columbus, where I at least had a hotel room booked, but I thought I’d be able to get through to Pittsburgh. I just couldn’t comprehend that it was no longer there. I tried calling Theresa all night. I could still leave her voice messages—”

“Brown sugar is a variant of methamphetamine,” says the leader. “Dominic, it’s killing you—”

“It helps make her real—”

“I understand,” says the leader, “but it’s killing you—”

“What does it matter if I die?”

“You don’t want to die,” he says, like he’s explaining simple math. “You want to see your wife again, you want to relive all the years you were blessed to have with her, and you want to somehow compensate for all the years you aren’t able to spend with her. You’re here because you want to remember your wife through healthy immersion. You want to live so you can grow old with the memories of your wife. You want her to live on through you. You don’t want to die.”

“You don’t understand,” I tell him, knowing that he does understand, that they all understand.

A fifteen-minute break with the smokers on 13th—we’re like derelicts out here, milling around in front of Walker Memorial Baptist, bathed in the light of the church’s video board:
Do less Facebook, Do more Faithbook
. A phalanx of DC police armored trucks pulls to the red light, the cops in riot armor looking our way, their eyes hidden behind black visors. What do they think of us? We’re all tagged, so they must know not to bother with us—they must see our blinking records proclaiming we’re being rehabilitated. The light changes and the armored trucks rumble on. Shop lights in the dusk—the Rite Aid at the intersection with U Street looks like a pool party over there. Jangling my Adware, that’s all. Women in bikinis overlaying the street, splashing and frolicking and sunbathing—every time I glance over, there are different faces and different bodies, different swimsuit styles, slight variations searching to find my ideal, to force my implied consent. What are they selling?

Pineapple Fanta! Coconut Xocola! Join the party! $5.50—

No, no—I don’t want any. Not now. I don’t want to buy—

Ogling white bathing suits and golden skin until Xocola gives up on me and I’m staring at nothing but the Rite Aid, the sidewalk, cars caught at the red light, mildly aroused and my brain still tingling from the failed sales pitch.

Ten o’clock. The leader encourages us to hold hands and pray—“Our Father, who art in Heaven . . .”
We mumble through. The leader reminds us about the sign-in sheet and distributes plastic cups and asks us to fill them.

“We went through a thermos of coffee, tonight. No excuses—”

We file into the bathroom. We’re orderly, quiet. We’re all just checking boxes, putting ourselves through the paces. Share to prayer. Fill the cup. No one talks to each other—we just take our turns at the urinals, the words of the Lord’s Prayer already distant as we piss into our cups. We file back into the meeting room. The leader’s wearing latex gloves and collects the samples in a cooler. They hand him their plastic cups, they sign the sheet, they collect their coats and leave. When I hand the leader my cup, he says, “Stick around a few minutes—”

The last donut’s a sugar coated—I eat it, and pour another Styrofoam cup of coffee. Once everyone’s gone, the leader snaps his cooler closed.

“One of the more unpleasant parts of the job,” he says. “Collecting the samples. But outpatient therapy’s better than the detox ward. I’d much rather collect urine than deal with detox—”

“I’ve been through detox,” I tell him.

“A few times, I understand,” he says. “Don’t want to go back there again, I suppose?”

“Urine samples after every meeting?”

“I’m afraid so,” says the leader. “It’s part of the deal. You won’t clear your conviction until you test clean for about a year, give or take, although they’ll put you on probation after a few months if your tests remain clear. By the way, outside of group I’m not Dr. Reynolds. Call me Timothy—”

“I didn’t talk too much, did I? I hope I didn’t interrupt the group with my story. I didn’t mean to cry like that—”

“No, no,” says Timothy. “That’s not why I wanted to see you—you did fine, actually. You were very courageous tonight. Sometimes newcomers don’t like to share and it takes time to draw them out. I was actually hoping to talk with you about your work status for a few minutes, if that’s all right. You worked for the Archive, didn’t you? Your file says you worked for the Pittsburgh City-Archive—”

“Not exactly for the Archive,” I tell him. “The Archive’s run by the Library of Congress. I worked as an archival assistant for a research firm called the Kucenic Group, so I used the Archive quite a bit. Insurance claims, some genealogy—”

“Do you think you’ll be given your job back once you complete therapy?” he asks.

“I’m not sure—I guess I don’t think so. Not this time—”

“You’re not interested in the work anymore?”

“It’s not that—I’d take my job back,” I tell him. “I loved the work, but I fucked up. Mr. Kucenic has shown a lot of forbearance with me over the years, but he’d trusted me with something important and I failed him—”

Timothy packs up his papers in a leather satchel. A few moments pass before he asks, “What were you working on? If you don’t mind my asking—”

The question jolts me—the dead girl in the river mud, her bone-white feet spattered black. Her body flashes in my mind as clear as any memory.

“I research people who have died in the Archive,” I tell him.

“That sounds like difficult work,” he says. “Emotionally difficult. Who were you researching? Someone close to you?”

“I can’t—I don’t think I want to talk about it,” I tell him, but the silence deadens around us so I ask him, “Well, then—is that all you needed?”

Timothy considers me a moment. “It’s not so much what I need from you, Dominic. This is more about what you need. I think I can help you—if you want the help. No more of this ‘I want to die’ business, though. You’ll need a new attitude about your life and your recovery. I think I can accelerate this entire process for you if you’re willing to work. And recovering your physical and emotional well-being is work, don’t think otherwise. Reviewing your file, though, I just don’t think you’re an optimal candidate for group therapy—”

“I don’t understand,” I tell him. “Dr. Simka was specific in what would be required—”

“Dr. Simka and I disagree about your treatment,” says Timothy. “Please don’t get me wrong—I’m sure Simka’s a good doctor. He has an excellent reputation—”

“He’s been good to me—”

“You’re in my care now,” says Timothy. “I’ve been looking over your file—Dr. Simka’s compassionate, but lacks imagination. His knee-jerk reaction was to prescribe Zoloft and sign off on pharmaceutical app reconditioning. There’s plenty of published evidence to support the short-term effectiveness of pharmaceutical apps. I’ve seen them help. I’ve seen full-blown heroin addicts off the habit in about an hour following the right download, but I’ve also seen those same men and women using again weeks or even days later, because the underlying causes of their addictions were never treated—that’s what these RN techs don’t understand. They think a brain rewire will solve everything, like a miracle cure. Change is possible, Dominic, but it has to be a total change, body and soul—a reawakening. You, for instance. You’re clean, but nothing’s stopping you from using again. Tonight, even—”

“I want your help. I just don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me—”

“Are you hungry?” he asks. “I’ll treat. Or we can just grab some coffee if you’d rather. I’m starving, myself—”

Timothy erases the chalkboard and rearranges the chairs, pulling them from the circle and tucking them back into the desks. I help him. He’s like the teachers I had back in high school—slacks and a sweater-vest over his shirt and tie, hopelessly rumpled. He shuts off the lights and locks up, leaving the key in an envelope and sliding it under the office door. We leave together—it’s started to snow.