An excerpt from my novel Crash Shadow: A Tale of Two Addicts, available on Amazon.com.
Yuri, a junky who is new to Twelve Step, gets a visit from his new Narcotics Anonymous friend Zata at his place of work, a dark and dank warehouse in Oakland’s industrial section.
He wasn’t sure why he had done it. It was a spontaneous act. He would not be able to tell anyone why if they had asked.
He had invited Zata to visit him at work.
It occurred to him that he had no idea what his boss would think if she came by when he had a friend visiting. The guarded thought only occurred to him shortly before Zata was supposed to arrive. It was an instinctive kind of caution. There was no reason why he should be worried about his boss catching him with a visiting friend. There was never anything in his outlined work duties that forbid him from having a friend stop by. Even so, he was still concerned.
He had asked her to come by the warehouse just after his shift was ending, just after five in the afternoon. He was sitting by the shipping desk near the warehouse doors. He did not want to miss her because he was lost somewhere deep in the dark maze of the warehouse.
The knock came, just a few minutes after five. The sound had surprised Yuri. He was not used to people being so punctual.
Opening one of the large wooden doors, the sound of heavy rain was pouring through the opening. He was surprised. He had not heard anything at all with the doors shut.
Zata was standing tall and straight, underneath a large black umbrella, holding onto a brown grocery bag.
“I wasn’t sure if this was your work or not,” said Zata. “This place really is out of the way.”
“Come on in.” He closed the door behind her. “Sorry it’s raining so bad.”
“It’s not your fault it’s raining.”
He locked the door shut as Zata set aside the umbrella. She looked around the dark warehouse.
“Wow, you work here all day?”
“Yup.”
“How far back does it go?” She craned her neck, trying to see down a shadowy corridor.
“All the way to the end of the building.”
“You mean it goes all the way to the other side of the block?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool!”
He was surprised again. It was the first time he had ever heard Zata use an exclamation. “I can give you a tour if you like. I don’t know how interesting it will be.”
“What’s back there?” she asked as she continued stretching her neck around and standing on her toes.
“All kinds a’ junk. It’s supposed to be just books and records, but they dump all kindsa’ stuff in here. I always gotta’ figure out where to put it.”
Turning around, she went over to the shipping desk. She took a couple of fancy brown bottles out of the bag. They appeared to be beer bottles.
“I brought us ginger beer and some sushi.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t worry, this stuff ain’t alcoholic.”
“I didn’t think you would bring…”
“What’s back there?” she interrupted as she peered down another aisle.
“Did you want to have some sushi?”
She started walking down one of the aisles, bobbing her head and widening her eyes.
“Wait,” cautioned Yuri. “I better go down there first. There’s a lotta’ junk down there.”
Dashing ahead of her, he had never seen her so animated before. As he walked in front of her he kept looking around, checking out the various knick-knacks and details. There were still some boxes on the floor that he had not yet been organized, and he was concerned that she might trip over one of them.
That is when he noticed a box full of doll clothing, sitting next to a shelf full of cassette tapes. He had forgotten about the box amidst the rest of his work.
Stopping and turning around, he had lost her. She was a half aisle length behind him, looking over a box of records.
“What is this stuff?” she asked.
“Inventory. Backlogged stuff and stuff they can’t sell. Some of it’s just here temporarily until they can make room for it at the stores, but most of it’s here to stay.”
She took a record down from the shelf. “Would they miss any of this stuff?”
“Probably not.”
She put the record back. “Sorry. That’s my old addict talking. I’m not really going to take anything.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You should be more suspicious,” she replied with rolling eyes.
“Fuck it. I know you ain’t no fuckin’ burnout.”
She walked up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “I am a burnout, an old burnout who’s not burning out anymore, but that doesn’t mean you should still trust me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Never trust drug addicts. Not even the sober ones.”
“Not even you?”
“Especially not me,” she replied with a wink.
She continued looking around the records and cassettes. She kept asking him all kinds of questions about the obscure and eclectic collection of LPs. Yuri could not answer most of her questions, but she kept asking anyway.
Moving further into the warehouse, she found a break in the shelves, a small section filled with boxes of random items that was right under an old and bright metal lamp.
“Let’s have our sushi here.”
“Sure.”
She dashed back to the shipping desk and quickly came back with her grocery bag. She opened her ginger beer and set the sushi down on a wooden crate. “What is all of this junk for?” she asked as she was picking through a group of old kitchen appliances.
“Beats me. I don’t think it has anything to do with the stores though. She jus’ puts all of her junk in here.”
“She does?”
“My boss. The lady that owns the book stores.”
“Damn, there’s a milkshake machine in here!”
“What?”
“An industrial milkshake machine. It’s the kind a restaurant would use.”
“Yeah?”
“Didn’t you notice it before?”
“Not really. I just dump this stuff in here.”
“Look at this.” Reaching into a box, she pulled out an old and rusted handgun. “Damn dude! You’ve got firearms in here.”
“I don’t think it’s real. I think it’s just a toy.”
She took the clip out of the gun.
“It’s real.” She examined the clip. “It still has bullets in it.”
“Holly shit!” he gasped as she handed him the clip.
“Yep.”
“I thought it was just some rusted out old toy.”
He could see a the rust-covered bullet on the top of the clip. He carefully handed it back to Zata.
“Don’t put it back in,” he said.
“I won’t, though I doubt this thing still works.” She checked the gun chamber and carefully put the gun down on the crate. “Man, I can’t believe you have all this cool stuff in here and never told me about it!”
“I never really thought about this stuff before.”
She handed him a ginger beer. “You like sushi?”
“Oh yeah. I hardly ever have any though. I can’t really afford it.”
“Well, you have to spoil yourself once in a while.”
She was eyeing the milkshake machine.
“Hey Zata, when you said not to trust addicts, not even the sober ones…”
She turned and fixed her eyes on him. “Yes?”
“I don’t get it.”
“What?”
“Aren’t you one a’ them?”
“One of what?”
“One of those twelve steppers.”
She took a sip of her ginger beer. “That depends on who you ask.”
“Oh yeah?”
“If you asked Sue she would tell you I’m in the program, only she would say it in a way like she wasn’t sure, like, she was almost apologizing for having said it.”
“Hm.”
“You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I can imagine her doing that, even though it’s kinda weird to think about it.”
“Is it?” she asked as she leaned forward.
“It’s just that, when I knew her back at Hell Nose House, she was totally, and I mean totally different.”
“No kidding?”
“She was always skulking and scowling. She always tried to avoid people, except for her friend Skye.”
“Isn’t that your old girlfriend?”
“Yeah.”
“The one you never told me about?”
He shrugged. “There’s not much to talk about.”
“Oh. Bad subject?”
“No! No of course not. She was pretty cool, it’s jus’ that we never really ever got that serious.” He started looking through the wooden crates and boxes, wondering if there were any more weapons in them.
“And now Sue is totally different,” said Zata. “Now she’s quite positive and happy.” Her voice almost sounded sarcastic.
“Well, I don’t know if I would go that far. Maybe she’s happier compared to what she used to be like.”
“Sure. I know the type.”
“The type?”
“Yeah. The cynical drug abuser turned chirpy NA member. They’re all over the place. What do you think Holt used to be like before he came here?”
“You knew Holt when he was using?”
“Yeah, I did know him back then. And he knew me too.”
“Uh huh.”
“Not like that. We we’re just friends.”
He clasped his hands. “I kinda noticed something the other day, when you came by the Wall of Berlin.”
“Yeah?”
“It seemed, like Holt was kinda…”
“Me and Holt don’t get along.”
“I kinda figured.”
“Let’s just say we don’t agree on a few things.”
“Hm.”
“I don’t get along with the program fascists.”
Yuri straightened his back. “What do you mean by fascists?”
“You know, those regulars who are always asking you the same questions over and over again? You know who I’m talking about.”
“Well, I know a lot of people were talkin’ to me when I first got there.”
“But they were always saying the same things, right?”
“Sure.”
“And what do they always talk about? What are they always asking you?”
“Well, the program.”
“And do you know why?”
Yuri had been looking at the floor. Now he was looking at a the bright light overhead.
“They want me to stay clean, right?”
“Not exactly.”
Dropping his eyes, Yuri was looking Zata right in the face.
“I don’t understand,” said Yuri.
“They want you in the program.”
“Right.”
“And that’s it.”
“So I can stay clean.”
“No.”
Yuri’s eyes were wandering again.
“I still don’t get it,” he confessed.
“All they care about is getting you into the program. It’s not about sobriety. It’s about the steps, the traditions, doing a ninety in ninety and having a sponsor. They don’t care if you stay clean or not.”
“But that’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
Zata was looking right at Yuri. “Do you know what you have to do to stay clean?”
“Follow the program?”
“Well, the program may or may not keep you clean. You have to find that out for yourself, but ultimately you need to do what you have to do to keep yourself clean and sober. That might be the program and it might not. They want you to have a sponsor, and follow the steps, and do a ninety in ninety, but the thing is you can be relapsing over and over again, still taking drugs, and they’ll still accept you, as long as you stay in the program.”
“Okay.”
“And let’s say you stay clean and sober, that you work on your own stuff, but you aren’t in the program. You aren’t following the steps, and you don’t have a sponsor, you know, all of that stuff. They simply wouldn’t care that you were clean. They would shun you, because you weren’t in the program. The whole point of being clean and sober is lost for them. All they care about is the program.”
“But that’s what the program’s about. It’s about staying clean and sober.”
“That’s why it was started, but no one seems to remember that. They keep talking about being clean, but it’s the program that their worried about. That’s it.”
Yuri leaned forward. “Why are you saying all this? What makes you think they would shun you if you dropped out of the program?”
“Not just if you drop out of the program. They’ll also shun you if you don’t follow the program the way they want you to.”
“Well, I mean…”
Zata leaned closer to Yuri. “Tell me, what happened when you quit drinking, when you went full on clean and sober.”
“Like, you mean going to the meetings?”
“Didn’t you suddenly lose a bunch of friends? Do you remember you told me how you used to hang out with some guy Dex, and some girl named Sweepy or Swishy or something weird like that?”
“Yeah.”
“And what happened when you went totally clean?”
“I didn’t really see any of them after that.”
“Yeah. That’s what all these twelve steppers will do to you if you didn’t stick with their program, and that’s regardless of whether you stay clean or not. You have to find your own program, what works for you, not what these guys tell you to do.”
Zata became quiet. Yuri tried to digest what Zata had just told him.
