“Drive.”

PART FIVE

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45

The meeting on the third anniversary of Milton’s sobriety was a Big Book meeting. They were peaceful weekly gatherings, the format more relaxed than usual, and Milton usually enjoyed them. They placed tea lights around the room and someone had lit a joss stick (that had been the subject of a heated argument; a couple of the regulars had opined that it was a little too intoxicating for a roomful of recovering alkies and druggies). Every week, they each opened a copy of the book of advice that Bill Wilson, the founder of the program, had written, read five or six pages out loud and then discussed what it meant to them all. After a year they would have worked their way through it and then they would turn back to the start and begin again. Milton had initially thought the book was an embarrassingly twee self-help screed, and it was certainly true that it was packed full of platitudes, but, the more he grew familiar with it the easier it was to ignore the homilies and clichés and concentrate on the advice on how to live a worthwhile, sober, life. Now he often read a paragraph or two before he went to sleep at nights. It was good meditation.

The reading took fifteen minutes and then the discussion another thirty. The final fifteen minutes were dedicated to those who felt that they needed to share.

Richie Grimes raised his hand.

“Hey,” he said. “My name’s Richie and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi, Richie,” they said together.

“You know about my problem — I’ve gone about it enough. But I’m here today to give thanks.” He paused and looked behind him; he was looking for Milton. “I don’t rightly know what happened, but I the man I owed money to has sold his book and the guys who bought it off him don’t look like they’re going to come after me for what I owe. I might be setting myself up for a fall but it’s starting to look to me like someone paid that debt off for me.” He shook his head. “You know, I was talking to a friend here after I did my share last week. I won’t say who he was — anonymity, all that — but he told me to trust my Higher Power. If I didn’t know any better I’d say he was right. My Higher Power has intervened, like we say it will if we ask for help, because if it wasn’t that then I don’t know what the hell it was.”

There was a moment of silence and then loud applause.

“Thank you for sharing,” Smulders said when it had died down. “Anyone else?”

Milton raised his own hand.

Smulders cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “John?”

“My name is John and I’m an alcoholic,” Milton said.

“Hello, John.”

“There’s something I need to share, too. If I don’t get it off my chest I know I’ll be back on the booze eventually. I thought I could keep it in but… I know that I can’t.”

He paused.

Richie turned and looked at him expectantly.

The group waited for him to go on.

Eva reached across, took his hand and gave it a squeeze.

Milton thought of the other people in the room, and how they were living the Program, bravely accepting ‘honesty in all our affairs,’ and he knew, then, with absolute conviction, that he would never be able to go as far down the road as they had. If it was a choice between telling a room full of strangers about the blood that he had on his hands and taking a drink, then he was going to take a drink. Every time. He thought of what he had almost been prepared to say and he felt the heat gathering in his face at the foolish audacity of it.

“John?” Smulders prompted.

Eva squeezed his hand again.

No, he thought.

Some things had to stay unsaid.

“I just wanted to say how valuable I’ve found this meeting. Most of you know me by now, even if it’s just as the guy with the coffee and the biscuits. You probably wondered why I don’t say much. You probably think I’m pretty bad at all this, and maybe I am, but I’m doing my best. One day at a time, like we always say. I can do better, I know I can, but I just wanted to say that it’s my third year without a drink today and that’s as good a reason for celebrating as I’ve ever really had before. So,” he cleared his throat, constricted by sudden emotion, “you know, I just wanted to say thanks. I wouldn’t be able to do it on my own.”

There was warm applause and the case of birthday chips was extracted from the cupboard marked PROPERTY OF A.A. They usually started with the newest members, those celebrating a day or a week or a month, and those were always the ones that were marked with the loudest cheers, the most high-fives and the strongest hugs. There were no others celebrating tonight and when Smulders called out for those celebrating three years to come forward, Milton stood up and, smiling shyly, went up to the front. Smudlers shook his hand warmly and handed him his chip. It was red, made from cheap plastic and looked like a chocolate coin, the edge raised and stippled, the A.A. symbol embossed on one side and a single 3 on the other. Milton self-consciously raised it up in his fist and the applause started again. He felt a little dazed as he went back to his seat. Eva took his hand again and tugged him down.

“Well done,” she whispered into his ear.

46

It was time. He had already stayed longer than was safe. He had thought about skipping the meeting altogether, and he had gone so far as getting to the airport and the long-stay parking lot but he had been unable to go through with it. He needed the meeting and, more than that, he needed to see his friends there: Smulders, Grimes, the other alkies who drank his coffee and ate his biscuits and asked him how he was and how he was doing.

And Eva.

He had needed to see her.

She stayed to help him clear away.

“You hear what happened to the Governor’s aide?”

“Yeah,” Milton said vaguely. “They found him in his car up in the Headlands.”

“He’d killed himself, too.”

“Yes.”

“Put a hose on the exhaust and put it in through the window.”

“Guilt?” Milton suggested.

She bit her lip.

“You’re sure he had something to do with those men? Those girls?”

“He did.”

Milton looked at her and, for a moment, he allowed himself the thought: could he stay here? Could he stay with her? He entertained the thought for a moment, longer than was healthy or sensible, until he caught himself and dismissed it. Of course he couldn’t. How could he? It was ridiculous, dangerous thinking. He had made so much noise over the last few days. The spooks back home would be able to find him without too much bother now. Photographs, references in police reports, all manner of digital crumbs that, if followed, would lead them straight to him. The arrival of the Group would be the first that he knew of it. They would be more careful, this time. A sedative injected into his neck from behind; a hood over his head before being muscled into a waiting car; a shot in the head from a sniper a city block away. He’d be dead or out of the country before he could do anything about it.

Thinking about staying was selfish, too. He knew what Control would order. Anyone who had spent time with him would be a threat.

A loose end.

The guys at the meeting?

Maybe.

Trip?

Probably.

Eva?

Definitely.

“What are you doing now?”

It startled him. “What?”

She smiled at him. “Now — you wanna get dinner?”

He wanted it badly but he shook his head. “I can’t. I’ve got — I promised a friend I’d catch up with him.”

If she was disappointed she hid it well. “Alright, then. How about tomorrow?”

“Can I give you a call?”

“Sure,” she said.