“Definitely don’t give him any rides. Frankly, it worries me seeing you two together so much.”
“Why?!” Jules set her cup, which was scalding her fingers, onto the table.
“What do you know about him?” Dan asked.
“I know he went to prison for selling drugs. That’s where he got sober. He was sober in prison for six years, and he’s been sober since he got out around two years ago.”
“Selling drugs isn’t the only reason he was there,” Dan said.
“Why else was he there?”
“Voluntary manslaughter.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he killed someone in the heat of passion.”
“Like his girlfriend?”
“Like that.”
“Did he kill a girlfriend?”
“I can’t tell you that, but I can tell you that you should beware of getting too close to him.”
“Does it seem like we’re close?”
“Don’t underestimate the power of the program to bring people from completely different walks of life together in the back of a van.”
“What? You mean, like, in the back of a van—having sex?”
“If it’s rocking,” Dan shrugged. He handed her a business card. “Feel free to give me a call if he starts to freak you out.”
Jules looked at the card. It was heavy white card stock with the name Dan P. printed on it. The only other information was his phone number centered underneath.
“Is this your AA card?”
“That’s right. Put my number in your phone now,” he instructed her, “and call me right here. That way, I’ll have your number and I’ll know it’s you when you call, and I’ll pick up. You can call for other reasons too, but I want you to have it in case of emergencies. Neither I nor my wife mind me getting calls at all hours of the day, and believe me, I’ve been called at ALL hours of the day.”
Jules finished plugging his digits into her phone. She paused before pressing the red button. “Your wife?” she said.
“Thirty years. That woman has been with me through it all, as they say. She’s a champ. We have six kids.”
“Six kids?” She pressed the button, sending her number. “How is that even possible?”
“Surely you know,” Dan said.
* * *
Before work that evening, she plugged Kelly’s first name—that’s all she knew—into the Google search bar on her desktop, along with the years 2007 to 2014, which she figured allowed for a margin of error in the amount of time he served, and the words voluntary manslaughter.
Nada. No surprise. Maybe his name wasn’t Kelly.
* * *
The next day, in the corner of the Half-Measures room of the Triangle Club, Jules sat at a table with a black rotary phone and a fake plant. Because of her young sobriety, her sponsor constantly texted her with opportunities for service work, and today she was answering Intergroup phones for three hours. Being present to answer the central AA number on a phone that may or may not ring, that may or may not have a desperate person on the other end—a person hoping at that moment to get sober, or just someone without a computer looking for the closest meeting—seemed like low-hanging-enough service work for her to manage. It was a step above emptying ashtrays and making coffee. “Service is the third estate of recovery,” her sponsor kept telling her. “You do it or you’ll drink.” Jules didn’t want to drink or drug anymore. Her bottom had been when she almost said yes to heroin—heroween—after her brother’s overdose, knowing full well it wouldn’t make anything any better. Now she sat next to the rotary phone, holding her own cell phone in her hand, scrolling through Instagram and Facebook and Twitter to pass the time. A noon meeting of around fifty people—a more professional crowd—was taking place in one of the club’s larger rooms. The folks at the noon meeting intimidated her.
The phone rang. She picked it up. “Intergroup Houston,” she said. “Can I help you?”
“Jules!” It was Kelly.
“How did you know it was me?”
“I know your voice,” he said. “Nah! I’m just shitting you. I saw you were gonna be answering phones ’cause your name was on the board, so I thought I’d give you a call.”
Before Dan warned her about Kelly, she might have found this phone call funny, but now it seemed sort of strange. “Wait, did you call because you need to talk to someone at Intergroup?” she asked him.
“Nah, girl. I just wanted to talk to you over an actual phone instead of over text.”
“I gotta go,” she said. “What if someone who really needs to talk is trying to call?” She hung up.
Her volunteer shift ended at two. Even though she attended the 2:30 every day, today she wanted to leave as soon as possible because she didn’t want to see Kelly. She needed to find a new meeting to attend. He must not be outside at the picnic table yet, she thought. Otherwise he’d have come in and found me by now. But then, in he walked with his Astros cap, camo shorts, Ride or Die T-shirt, Tevas.
“There she is!” he sang, and it suddenly seemed to Jules from the warmth in his voice that he had been living for these afternoons. “Wanna go into the meeting, or wanna go out and have a smoke first?”
She smiled at him wanly. “You go smoke. I’ll meet you in the room.”
“K, save me a seat,” Kelly said.
The leader of the Thursday 2:30 meeting was a guy named TJ. He called on her to share. The topic was about the fellowship, about unity, about how being in the program allowed things buried inside to start to come out. She liked that line, things buried inside coming out, and she shared how that was truer and truer for her in sobriety. Before, she had tried to reach that buried mystery with drugs and alcohol. And at first, these had worked: she’d had a mystical experience. But then, they stopped working, the drugs and the alcohol. She felt every head in the room nodding at this. Now, when she practiced the principles—even when no one was looking—she felt . . . How did she feel? She felt like that church song “Nearer My God to Thee.” TJ nodded and smiled. “I’m grateful,” she said. “It’s like every day I’m closer to understanding that heaven is on earth.”
After the meeting, she told Kelly she needed to feed a friend’s dog—a lie that came to her when he scootched over to make room for her at the picnic table. She stayed standing.
“Well, be careful,” Kelly said. “They found another body last night—this time in the ditch. You hear about it?”
“They did?” She hadn’t heard.
“Young girl. Butterfly jeans, rhinestones.” He looked at her, waiting.
“That girl who was at the meeting yesterday?”
“The same. Hey, Johnny,” he said, turning to the big black dude sitting across from him at the table, “you see Jake here yesterday?”
“Nah,” Johnny said. “I ain’t seen Jake in a couple weeks.”
* * *
“I want to ask you about some other good meetings,” she said, leaving a message on Dan’s voice mail. “Call me back when you get a chance, please.” She sat in her Malibu, the afternoon sun beating through her windshield, the heat rising vigorously from the concrete parking lot where the group members parked. Large summer thunderheads rose into fantastical castles in the sky. Staring at the bumper sticker on the truck parked in front of her car (Legalize Freedom, with a marijuana motif), she felt her iPhone vibrate in her hand. The text on the screen said Dan P. She hit Accept.
“Hey,” she said.
“Is this an emergency?” Dan asked, sounding genuinely worried.
“No. Well, it sorta is. I just found out that girl who was at the meeting yesterday, the one you held the door open for, was pulled out of the ditch last night. Did you know that?”
“I did not.”
“I’m sorta freaking out. I think that you telling me about Kelly has me freaked out.”
“Good,” Dan said. “I meant it to freak you out. Hey, you know what? I’m waiting on a delivery and need my phone free. Why d
on’t you meet me at my office, and you can look on the computer at Intergroup, and I’ll direct you to some good alternatives.”
“Um, okay? Where’s your office?”
“The Falls of Westpark.”
“The Falls of Westpark?”
“I own the building.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Surprise.”
* * *
When she entered the grimy three-story complex, she pulled out her phone to text Dan that she was downstairs. Tejano music wavered from behind a closed door somewhere to her left. The sharp smell of something—lardy tortillas being cooked on a hot comal, maybe—caught her nose.
Just as she was typing her message, she heard her name called and looked up to see Dan in his dress shirt and suit pants, leaning over the railing of the third-story walkway. “There’s a staircase to your right. Come on up.”
Inside Dan’s “office,” there was a desktop computer sitting on a white folding table cluttered with papers and receipts and a couple of Styrofoam cups. Several legal-looking books stacked upright on a few shelves occupied the lone bookcase against the wall. A framed law certificate hung next to the bookcase, cockeyed. There was a nubby couch under the window near the door, and there were two leather desk chairs on either side of the folding table. The kitchen looked bare. Through a doorway into a back room, she could see a bed, neatly made, and through the bedroom window, the large red-and-white sign for Pare de Sufrir, a mini–mega church on the 59 freeway feeder.
“Did you know that girl?” Jules asked him. She sat in the leather chair in front of the desk. He sat in the other desk chair, across from her.
“Did you?” He flipped through a couple receipts, avoided meeting her eyes.
“I’d never seen her before yesterday,” Jules answered. She could feel her body getting nervous. What in the world made her think it was okay to be here? With Dan P., who before this afternoon she would not have imagined in this place, not in a million years. “So you own this building?”
“Actually, my wife does. Her family.”
“Ah.” He’d lied to her. Must have been easy to do. Here she was, and who would ever find her here? She hadn’t told anyone where she was going. She thought about texting Kelly now, but what would he do? Because, suddenly, she felt doomed, and not the kind of doom she’d felt yesterday in the parking lot of Starbucks. This was darker, heavier . . . fatal.
“I think I’m gonna go,” she said, standing up.
Dan leaped up and cut her off from the door to the apartment. “You haven’t found another meeting. I’m gonna help you. Let me get you some water.”
“It’s okay, I really need to go. I forgot that I have to feed a friend’s cat. I actually haven’t been there in days. Could you text me about the meeting?”
She knew she wouldn’t be getting out. The front window’s blinds were drawn. She thought of screaming, but her voice was suddenly gone. It really was like in her nightmares, when she tried to scream and nothing came out.
“Sit down,” Dan said.
“Please let me out,” she croaked.
“Sit down.”
“I’ll scream.”
“Lots of screaming here all the time. It’s a perfect place for screamers to scream all they want. Nobody’s going to do anything. They’re all afraid of the law here.”
He approached her slowly, and she felt like she would faint. Just then, she heard a raucous banging against the apartment door.
“Open up!” a voice yelled. “Police! We’ve got you surrounded!”
Dan bolted toward the back of the apartment, and the door busted open. It seemed like twenty cops stormed into room, but it was probably only five. They had Dan down on the bed, a knee grinding into his back, before Jules could find her legs and turn toward the door.
One of the cops had her in cuffs within moments. “Don’t think you’re going anywhere,” he barked. “Some help!” she heard him call before the room turned to static, and she passed out.
* * *
“I never liked that guy,” Kelly said. “What’d I tell you? A total faker.”
Jules had stayed away from the club for two weeks, but now she was back. She hadn’t drank or used, but she hadn’t been able to stomach a meeting, nor could she go back to work. Her sponsor stayed with her for the first week, until her seventy-three-year-old mom could fly in from California to help her for an undetermined amount of time—until Jules could manage being alone again, whenever that may be. Her mom had driven her to the meeting in the Malibu, and she would be back twenty minutes after it was over to pick her up and drive her home, then cook enchiladas for her and sit next to her on the couch watching Netflix for hours. Knowing that the rooms of AA were filled with sociopaths and criminals made it hard for Jules to return, but she was aware that staying away for too long meant she would probably drink, and to drink again meant she would probably die. The meetings had helped her stop suffering—pare de sufrir, indeed. She knew she needed to continue to make them. Meeting makers make it, one of the sayings went.
Plus, Kelly was here.
“Now you know what feet of clay are,” he said. “You really know, and like the Promises promise, No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others! You’re facing your fears, girl. Not fucking everything and running.”
She and Kelly were sitting on one of the picnic benches after the noon meeting. A whole gang of fellows surrounded them, some leaning against the wall of the courtyard, some spilling out into the parking lot under the blinding, relentless sunshine. Most of them chatting, laughing. They knew what had happened to her. She’d shared it in the meeting. She’d had to do it. “We’re only as sick as our secrets,” her sponsor had said. She was seeing a counselor now, too, who agreed that going back to the meetings was a good idea—just not to the 2:30.
“You gotta stay in the middle, girl,” Kelly was saying. “Don’t let the fuckers out on the edges get you. You survived. Your experience is gonna help some other person. Now you got one fucking hell of a story! Believe me.” He smiled at her through his yellow-brown teeth.
By some act of grace, he’d been at the Shell station, waiting for his sister to pick him up, and had looked up to see Jules on the third-floor walkway at the Falls of Westpark. He’d seen Dan lead her through the apartment door, the blinds drawn.
“You’re sorta hard to miss,” he said. “Even though that place is full of Mexicans, just like you, you stood out like a sore thumb.” He smiled broader. “I just knew that some seriously bad shit was going down. I called that 1-800-TIPS number—you know, that Crime Stoppers number? Told them I had information on the perp who dumped those gals in the bin and ditch, and that I was pretty sure another dumping was about to take place pronto. I’m amazed how fast they showed up.”
“You gonna get the $5,000?” Johnny asked.
“I’m not telling you if I do!” Kelly laughed.
Jules looked at her watch: 1:20 p.m. A few seconds later, she heard her mom honk the horn of the Malibu. She stubbed out her cigarette and stood. “I gotta go.”
“You gonna be here tomorrow?” Kelly asked.
“Probably.” She was taking it one day at a time, for reals.
“Keep coming back,” Johnny said.
Jules smiled at him.
“You gonna be all right?” Kelly asked.
When she turned to look at him, he was staring at her boobs. She slung her purse over her shoulder, reached her hands behind her waist, and thrust out her chest, as if to crack her back. “I think so,” she said. She waited for Kelly to look her in her eyes again before she dropped her arms. Then she turned and headed into the merciless glare of the parking lot.
RAILWAY TRACK
by Sehba Sarwar
Lawndale
Holding my ping-pong paddle—or table tennis, as I referred to the game—I served the ball and tossed a question to Sanjay: “Want to help me track the Raincoat Hombre?”
Sanja
y missed the serve. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s follow the hombre!”
I slammed another serve that Sanjay missed. Our fingertips touched as we stooped to pick up the orange ball. Electricity rippled through my body. Leaning forward, I placed my lips on his. Sanjay responded by thrusting his tongue into my mouth. Two men playing a few tables away stopped their game to watch us. We broke apart.
Collecting our belongings, we drove away from the university rec center. Sanjay followed me to my house, where I uncorked a bottle of wine. After a few moments of watching the news, which showed protests against the upcoming presidential inauguration, I turned off the TV and used my phone to play Bollywood music from a wireless speaker. Sitting close to each other, we hummed tunes until the freight train’s whistle cut through the music. I turned off the sound.
On cue, the man I had dubbed Raincoat Hombre appeared in my window, walking down Jefferson Street. Once he dropped out of sight, Sanjay and I slipped out of the back door and into my car.
I drove half a block to the stop sign, where we glimpsed the man below another streetlight. He disappeared into the dark, and I rolled my car forward.
The road curved, and the Raincoat Hombre turned and looked directly toward us, his face a flash of white. Sanjay gasped.
I swung my car onto Hackney Street. Three minutes later, we were back in my living room. I poured more wine.
“It’s hard to hide in a neighborhood where no one walks,” I commented.
We clinked our glasses and found ourselves six inches apart. Sex on my handwoven carpet from Karachi was more satisfying than on my luxury king mattress.
Sanjay and I had met through mutual friends at the University of Houston and bonded over weekly table tennis games, which were followed by drinks, and often more. With my braids and jeans, I could pass as a college undergrad. Sanjay looked older, even though he wore track pants and a baseball cap. His narrow frame stretched a few inches taller than mine, but arm muscles bulged beneath his shirt. He was as zealous about working out as I was about reposing on my sofa.
Though Sanjay’s background was different from mine—he had been five when his family moved from New Delhi to Houston, and he considered the Bayou City his home—we spoke the same language. I was not yet familiar with the city and its enclaves. My family was in Karachi, and I had landed in Houston to pursue a doctorate in social work. Sanjay helped me find my two-bedroom rental down the street from campus, in a quiet East End neighborhood called Houston Country Club Place. Sanjay deemed the house safe for a single woman, but drawled, “You’ll be the only Pakistani around here!”
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