The Thirteenth Step

The smoking section is a democracy of damage. Everyone out here has counted days, lost count, and started over.

You're on day 847. She's on day one, and she's holding the cigarette the way people hold a cigarette when their hands need somewhere to be.

"First meeting." It comes out flat, daring you to say the thing.

You say it anyway. "It gets easier."

"Does it?"

It does, mostly. What you don't say is that it gets easier the way a limp gets easier. You stop noticing you're doing it.

Meeting someone out here skips a lot of ground. She doesn't have to explain the gap in the résumé, or why she doesn't drive, or the brother who won't pick up. You've read that page. Different book, same page.

She takes a pull off yours. "I quit drinking, not living."

Inside they're on step four, the fearless moral inventory. Out here you're taking your own: the chipped polish, the coat that's too thin for October, the way she checks the door every ninety seconds without turning her head.

"I taught philosophy," she says. "Turns out I was stronger on the applied side."

The meeting lets out. People come past and nod at the two of you, that nod. She stays. You stay. The light over the parking lot comes on with a click and neither of you moves.

"Same time next week?"

She isn't talking about the meeting, and you are both aware that she isn't talking about the meeting.

She flicks the filter into the gutter and goes up Rachel toward Saint-Denis, and you stand there doing arithmetic. Eight hundred and forty-seven. And one. And how many days it takes before this stops being a bad idea.