Ninety Days Read Online Free PDF Page B

cringe with regret and wish that I could go back in time and do it all differently. But even if I could, would I be able to keep from drinking? Keep from sneaking into the bathroom and calling a dealer? Even within spitting distance of ninety days I’m not so sure.
    I snoop for signs of a new love. I’m queasy with jealousy, even though I ended our relationship at the strong recommendation of my counselor in rehab, my sister, and several close friends who all urged me to get sober on my own, away from what each described in one way or another as a codependent dynamic of addict and enabler that Noah and I had, it seems, perfected. My desperation and need of their support were and are so great that I didn’t question them and agreed. Noah is angry with me at first, but a counselor from the rehab calls and explains and asks him to give me the space I need to get healthy. I have not seen him for over two months, and our only contact has been crisp and spare and specific to the details of my moving out. Rarely does an hour go by when I don’t question the decision to break up, doubt that it’s the right choice. But something more than the advice of others keeps me from changing my mind, something beyond logic or want that keeps me from calling Noah and running back into his arms.
    In between packing boxes and duffel bags, I check the caller ID box for unfamiliar and frequently appearing phone numbers (too many to form any conclusions); sift through the bedside table drawers for evidence of sex—lubricant, condoms—and find nothing; frisk Noah’s gray Helmut Lang blazer and the pockets of his gray snap-front jacket and, again, nothing. Just lighters and cigarettes, which it’s clear he’s now taken up again, openly. I’d been a tyrant about smoking when we were together, which now seems just as ironic and hypocritical as it was.
    On the last day, once everything is packed and ready to go, I sit in the corner window of the living room and finger the beige and brown animal print fabric on the window seat. There is a small square pillow made with the same fabric leaning against the window and I wonder if I should take it with me. The fabric came from a store in Islington, in London, where we spent four or five weekends in an apartment I split the rent on in my twenties. Buying that fabric, having that window seat cushion and pillow made, seemed, at twenty-seven, like the most adult, most worldly thing one could do. I laugh out loud at my younger, now faraway self and am amused for a brief flash before the tight fist of grief returns. I watch the early evening lights blink on up lower Fifth Avenue and the white headlights rush toward me. How many times had I sat here? And in what states—furious, ashamed, worried, high, hopeful, hating, drunk, arrogant, panicked, exhausted, in love? I sit for a few more minutes and remember as much as I can before I go. I leave the pillow behind.
    Several nights later, Dave organizes tickets to go to the opera. I think but am not sure we see Aida that night. I remember it was long and one of the older Zeffirelli productions at the Met. We eat dinner in the overpriced, still glamorous restaurant on the Grand Tier level of the building. Starters and main course during the first intermission and dessert and coffee during the second. Dave’s seats at the opera are good ones—center Grand Tier, which is the second balcony, second row, in the middle—and the people seated around us all look like longtime operagoers, dressed nicely, not extravagantly like the tourists in the orchestra section. I can’t help but think everyone here has been sitting in these seats since they were teenagers, have seen these operas hundreds of times, and are quite alert to the polluting presence of anyone who has not. Having spent the day at the 12:30 and two o’clock Library meetings, and the afternoon sitting in Union Square with Asa, telling him about some of the grittier details of the double life I lived as