almost okay

The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.
-John Calvin

He who eats alone chokes alone.
-Proverb

* * * * * * * * * * *

Oakland County Jail, Pontiac, Michigan, July 2006

The concrete floor felt like ice. How can it be so cold in here when it's ninety degrees outside? I thought. Then aloud: “Are they trying to keep us from spoiling?”

“Sherman? Is that you?” A familiar voice, but I couldn't place it. “It's me... Andy.”

“Andy? How long has it been? Five years?”

“Closer to ten. How's tricks?”

* * * * * * * * * * *

I had blacked out from drinking before, but never like this.

I woke up in a cold sweat, fully clothed and lying in bed. The room was pitch black except for the red LED on my clock radio which told me flatly that it was 3:19. Since it was still dark, that meant a.m. I tried to remember how I came to be in bed still dressed, but I couldn’t. There was no memory of coming to bed, and the time before that was a fuzzy black emptiness inside my besotted brain.

The room was eerily silent, even though my window was open wide to the night air. No barking dogs, no traffic. Not a single sound.

I sat up with some difficulty and realized that my rib cage on the left side was very tender. I fumbled for the switch to the reading lamp on my night stand and winced at the brightness of the bulb when it came on. Once my eyes had adjusted to the light I could see my reflection in the mirrored closet doors to one side of the bed, and what I saw wasn’t pretty.

I had expected to be hung over, but this was ridiculous. I’d never looked worse in my life...pale, bloated, with a three-day growth of beard, and there were heavy bags under my eyes, the whites of them shot through with swollen and ruptured blood vessels. My road map of woe leftover from several days of binging.

What day was it? I couldn’t recall. In order to get to my feet I needed to steady myself with one hand on the wall. I limped out of my tiny bedroom avoiding piles of dirty clothes, books, stacks of porno magazines and the occasional shoe lying in the middle of the floor. When I got to the bathroom I could see light coming from the living room.

Strange, I thought. It wasn’t like me to leave a lamp on, no matter how drunk I got, but I needed to check out my ribs before I did anything else. I was just then beginning to realize how difficult it was to breathe, sharp pain knifing through me with each inhale. It suddenly dawned on me that the pain was what had awakened me in the first place.

I splashed some cold water on my face in an effort to make myself feel better or normal or something, but it didn’t help. I spent some time staring straight into my own eyes and trying to recall what had happened, but I just couldn’t. Then I lifted my soiled and sweat-soaked shirt to reveal a nasty bruise that had already turned three shades of blue about half-way down my left side. There was also a wide bruise on my upper left arm near the shoulder and both of my hands were sore along the knuckles.

After checking my face more carefully and probing for loose or broken teeth with my tongue, I came to the conclusion that I was basically okay. I must have been in some sort of fight, I reasoned, but didn’t remember leaving the house. Assuming that a fight had caused my injuries, I wondered vaguely if I had won the bout. If this is the face of victory, I thought, no telling what the other guy looks like.

My balance seemed to be returning so I decided to head to the living room and see if there were any clues as to what might have happened in there. I walked gingerly down the hallway, my stockinged feet sliding along the hardwood and my hands touching the walls to guard against falling as I moved.

The realization that my ribs might be cracked and not just bruised was weighing heavily on my mind until I saw what was in the living room. Suddenly, the pain all but melted away, only to be replaced by a sense of overwhelming horror when I spotted the lifeless form sprawled awkwardly across my sofa. I closed my eyes and opened them again, hoping that in my drunken state of mind I had been seeing things, but I hadn't. The body was still there, and there was no mistaking who it was.

It was Jackie, my ex-wife.