Chapter Six
Zoe
I toss and turn most of the night, and when I finally wake up, I feel slightly hungover even though I had nothing to drink last night. I drag my ass to get coffee and decide to hit a boxing class to get some energy in me. I’m locking my door when the phone rings, and I have to dig deep in my purse to find it. “Hello,” I say finally on the sixth ring.
“Zoe.” I hear my name in his light Russian accent. “It’s Viktor.”
“Hi,” I say, walking down the steps and making my way over to the gym four blocks away.
“Sorry, I didn’t know if it was a good time to call,” he says, and he sounds weird like rushed and disconnected.
“I’m just walking to the gym,” I tell him, “so it’s a good time.”
“I was wondering if we could go to that open house?” he asks me. “We got sidetracked last night when we talked.”
“We really did.” I laugh. “I guess other issues were more important like my dad and why I don’t date hockey players.”
“Don’t forget to add in my rehab. That is always a great topic to derail any conversation,” he says, and I hear him drink something.
“I guess we had lots of things to discuss that were more important than you finding a house,” I joke with him, looking at my watch. “My boxing class ends at eleven thirty, but I can meet you at the apartment at twelve thirty.”
“That sounds good.” His voice is so husky. “Send me the address.”
“I will, and I’ll see you there,” I tell him and disconnect. Opening my messages, I forward him the address.
The workout was just what I needed to rejuvenate. When I take out my phone to check my messages I see a couple of emails need my attention and also my father just called me. Without fail every single Saturday, he calls wondering if I will be coming home for Sunday family lunch.
I start walking toward the open house, and when I finally turn the corner, I spot him right away. I take the time to look at him while his eyes are on his phone. He’s casual in a blue sweater, sports shorts, and black and white Nikes on his feet. His dark brown hair curls out of the back of his Stingers baseball cap, he has scruff on his face, and I can’t see the blue of his eyes yet. But I can see his crooked nose, something that you can only see if you look at his face. It’s something I noticed while we were walking. I also noticed his plump lips that look perfect, too perfect. He’s actually very much a pretty boy except his attitude is all hockey. I don’t know if I can describe it really; it’s just the cockiness, the attitude.
He must sense someone is looking at him because he turns his head in my direction. I don’t know what I’m expecting to see, but what I’m not expecting are the circles under his eyes or the way he just looks exhausted. The blue of his eyes is so dark they look black. I smile and raise my hand to say hi, and he just nods and then turns back to his phone. “This is going to be fun,” I say to myself.
When I’m finally close enough, I speak up. “Hi, have you been here long?”
“No,” he says gruffly, keeping his eyes on his phone.
“Okay, we should get started,” I tell him, waiting for him to finish whatever he’s doing on the phone. He finally closes it, but he doesn’t put it away; he holds it in his hand, tapping his index finger on it.
“Lead the way.” I just nod at him. He’s still paying me to do this job.
“I was doing a little research last night,” I tell him when we walk up the stairs to the front door. “It’s actually three floors, and it’s at the top of the building. There are ten floors, and five are used for office spaces,” I say, opening the door and walking over to the elevator. “There is a night security guard, but during the day, it’s an easy access in.”
“Okay,” he says. The elevator pings, and we get in. I press the button for the seventh floor.
“You can only access your floor with a key, but since it’s an open house, it’s accessible.” I turn to find him nodding his head. He hasn’t said more than five words to me, and all his answers have been curt. Maybe I was too nosy last night, and he didn’t want to open up to me, but I just kept pushing. I don’t have much more time to think about it before the elevator doors open and we are faced with the apartment right away. He holds out his hand for me to walk ahead of him, again not saying anything.
“Hi, welcome to our open house,” Nicole, a fellow real estate broker, says to me, and then she must recognize me. “Hey, Zoe, I didn’t know you were in the market?”
“We aren’t really,” I tell her. “He is new to the city, so I’m showing him the area and saw it was an open house.” I smile at her and look around. “High ceilings are really nice.” I look over at Viktor who has walked to one of the three windows and is looking outside.
“A little bit to know about the penthouse,” Nicole states and hands Viktor a paper with everything on it. “It’s a four-bedroom, four-bath built in nineteen eighty-two. But renovated last year. It’s one thousand eight hundred square feet.”
“My closet in LA was that size,” Viktor says and then comes back to stand next to me.
“Yes. New York is nothing like Los Angeles,” Nicole says with a nervous laugh. “There is an HOA.”
“Great,” Viktor says sarcastically.
“It’s almost nine thousand a month,” Nicole says. “Please feel free to look around, and if you have any questions, I’m here. Be sure to check out the rooftop terrace,” she says before she walks away.
“Why don’t we start downstairs and work our way up?” I suggest to him. Again, he waits for me to lead the way, so I walk down the modern stairs that look like they’re hanging from strings to another little sitting area. “There are three bedrooms on this level,” I tell him and wait for him to walk around. He walks into the master bedroom and then in the other one while continuing to check his phone every second. His eyes rove around the room, but you can see he really isn’t looking.
“How much is this?” he asks while he walks to the third one. His fingers either tap his phone or he’s looking at it.
“Eight point seven million,” I remind him.
“Insane.” He shakes his head, glances at me, then looks back at his phone again. “Plus, the kitchen is upstairs.”
“Yes.” I nod and see his hands start to move nervously. What is going on with him? I want to ask, but I’m afraid to.
“I don’t even want to see anything more,” he says, then his phone pings in his hand. “I have to go. I’ll text you later,” he says and then jogs up the steps, leaving me alone in the middle of the house. I walk up the stairs and hear the elevator door close.
“Well, that was quick,” Nicole says, and I put on my game face.
“He had a meeting he had to run to,” I tell her, “but I’ll let you know if he wants a second round.” I walk to the elevator.
Putting my head down, I make my way out of the building, and I’m a bit pissed off and a lot irritated. I hold my hand up and flag down a cab the same time I get my phone out and send a group message to my sisters, sister-in-law, and her best friend, Vivienne.
Me: Coming home tonight and I need a drink. Who is with me?
Everyone answers yes, so I put my phone away. I get home and when I finally take it out again, I see that I have missed over a hundred notifications from the group chat that was not tabled, and I also see one from Viktor. I contemplate opening it, but I choose against it; instead I grab my laptop and my overnight bag, and when Vivienne rings the bell, I’m ready to go.
“I have a car waiting, and I already have the wine,” she says, running back down to the car, and I get in with her.
“Where is the wine?” I ask her.
“In the water bottles,” she says, reaching into her bag and grabbing the “water bottles.”
“It’s yellow,” I point out.
“We can say it’s Crystal Light,” Vivienne says, uncapping the bottle. “Yup, tastes just like it.” I open my own bottle and take a sip.
“Yup
, this should be perfect.” I cheer her with my bottle and take a gulp.
“Good news. I brought six just in case.” She winks at me. “It’s going to be a fun night.”
I smile and look out the window as the driver takes us to Long Island. The whole time, my phone gets heavier and heavier in my pocket.
Chapter Seven
Viktor
I hightail it so fast out of that open house, I’m sure I look like the cartoon coyote. This morning was shaky after getting off the phone with Zoe. There was this sudden burden and then an even bigger urge to use, so I texted every person on the sponsor list to talk to, and when one finally answered me, I bailed on the open house. I walk down the street, looking down at my Google maps and following the blue fucking arrow. I look around, checking to see the numbers on the doors.
“You must be Viktor,” someone says from the side, and I look over at a man sitting at a cast iron table right in front of the coffee shop I’m looking for.
“Jeffrey?” I ask him, and he just nods as he sits up, pushing his rounded glasses up on his nose. His salt and pepper hair is short on the sides and long on the top, his white goatee a little long. He is dressed in jeans and a white linen button-down shirt.
“That would be me.” He smiles and then motions for me to sit in the empty seat in front of him. “Please sit down.”
I pull out the chair, the metal scraping across the concrete walkway, and I sit down. “Sorry about the urgency,” I finally tell him.
“Not a problem. It’s what I signed up to do,” Jeffrey says and then stops when the waitress comes over and asks for our order.
“I’ll have an ice coffee please,” Jeffrey says.
“I’ll have an ice water.” I force a smile, and she turns and walks away with our order. I look around and find the street crowded with a lot of people walking. A man with fifteen dogs walks down the other side.
“How long?” Jeffrey asks, and I look over at him. An older man, he has brown hair with white in it, his beard matching the hair on his head. His sunglasses cover his eyes, but with me looking at him, he takes them off, and I see he has brown eyes.
“Ninety-two days,” I say softly. My stomach hurts, and my thumb strums on the table. Unlike Jeffrey, I’m sitting up in my chair, but my shoulders are slumped over.
“Not even at the tip of the iceberg,” Jeffrey says. “You are two days out of rehab, right?”
“Yes,” I say tightly. “Last night was the worst night I’ve ever had since I’ve been clean.”
“How so?” he asks me, and I look up at him. “What did you feel?”
“I tossed and turned the whole night,” I tell him honestly. “Every time I shut my eyes, the only thing I could hear was the voice in the back of my head telling me I just needed a hit.”
“Did you do anything about it?” he asks me, and I shake my head. “Because you didn’t know where to get it, or because you fought it off?”
“Both.” I sigh. “At first, I fought it off. Then I got out of bed and walked around the loft,” I tell him, recounting last night to him. But I can’t even put into words the despair I felt, the helplessness, the heart palpitations, and the images in my head of me sitting on the couch with my head back feeling nothing because I did just one line of the drug. “I walked in circles for an hour,” I spit out. “Maybe even two.”
“Did you have your phone?” he asks me the odd question.
“I did,” I answer him. “I mean, it was somewhere in the house.” I try to remember where it was. I don’t say anything because the waitress comes over and places our order on the table.
“Thank you,” Jeffrey says, sitting up. “What stopped you from using your phone?”
I look at him oddly, and I swear I’m starting to sweat. I feel drips of sweat forming on my back. “You could have gotten drugs in a snap,” he says, and I know this. “You could have picked up your phone and messaged just one person, and they would have had that number you needed.” I never thought of that, never thought that all I had to do was text someone. “But you didn’t do that.”
“I didn’t think of it.” I shake my head. “I sat on the couch after walking around in circles.” I close my eyes, and I’m right back in the middle of the loft on the couch, wearing just my boxers. The only light streaming in the pitch-black loft was from the full moon through the window. “In front of the couch was my chip,” I tell him. Taking it out of my pocket and rubbing my fingers over it calms my heart just a touch. The red coin with the words “Clean and Serene for Ninety Days” in gold.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he asks. “That is what a sponsor is for.” Yesterday, he was the only one to respond to the texts I sent looking for a sponsor from the list I got.
“I didn’t think it would be a good idea to call you at four o’clock in the morning because my head was fucking with me. Alain also gave me a list of therapists, so I’m going to reach out to a few this week.”
“You know why your head was fucking with you,” he finally says, and I just look at him. “It was fucking with you because for the first time in ninety days, you didn’t have anyone else stopping you from scoring that drug. You were sent into the wild, and your body knew you didn’t have to look anyone in the eyes today.” I take in his words. “Your subconscious is the devil on your shoulder when it wants to be.” He smiles and almost laughs. “You didn’t think this would be easy, did you?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t think it would be easy.” I take a sip of the water, and the cold water feels fresh in my dry mouth. “But I didn’t think it would be this hard.” He reaches in his pocket and takes out a white chip and hands it to me. I look down at it seeing the words “Just for Today” in gold.
“That is for today,” he says. “All you can see is today.”
“I thought that if I wasn’t around the people who I partied with, it would be easy.” I laugh bitterly. “But I’m my worst enemy.”
“That, my friend,” Jeffrey says, “is almost like step one.”
“I thought step one was admitting I have a problem,” I counter him with the stuff I heard at rehab.
“Repeat the sentence,” Jeffrey asks me.
“Step one was admitting I have a problem.” I stop speaking as the words finally sink in. “I have a problem.”
“If I had a sticker, I would give you one,” he says. Leaning back in his chair, he smiles while he crosses his arms over his chest.
“Fuck off,” I finally say, and I finally feel the pressure on my chest start to get a bit lighter. The crushing part doesn’t feel so heavy. “I really should have called you. It would have saved seven hours.”
“What did you do to fight it off?” he asks me. “Besides sitting in the dark.”
“I went to work out,” I tell him. “Left the house at six and then met my realtor.”
“Have you eaten?” he asks me, and I shake my head. “I had a muffin.”
He gets up now, tossing a five-dollar bill on the table and putting his cup on it so it doesn’t fly away. “Let’s get some food in you. I know a great burger place not too far from here.” I get up with him, putting the phone in my pocket along with the two chips. “Then we can hit up a meeting.”
We walk to the restaurant and take turns talking to get to know one another. You always think you have it worse than the other person, but then you hear their stories, and you realize you don’t. He tells me that he’s been sober for thirty years and that he just celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday. His wake-up call was when his six-month-old crawled onto his needle. “I will always remember that day. I was in that space where the high was just starting to hit me and I was feeling euphoria. That feeling of nothing can touch you, but then I heard the wailing of my daughter. I saw what was happening, yet I couldn’t do anything because my hands were just too heavy to raise. She cried for twenty minutes until my wife came in and saw.” My heart breaks for him. “For twenty minutes, I had no control over my body. I had no control over anything. The drug had
the control. It was my rock bottom. I pleaded with her to forgive me, which she did. Eventually. I went away to rehab, and we tried to make it work, but I needed to heal myself before I could love anyone.”
“Where is she now?” I ask. “If it’s not too much to ask.”
“She’s living in Atlanta with her second husband who is the opposite of me. A soft-spoken minister,” he says, almost laughing. “It was for the best,” he says softly and puts his hands in his pockets as we walk up to the restaurant. “I have a brand-new life. I have a wife who loves me and who I cherish with every single fiber of my being. I am a father to four children, including the six-month-old who is now a mother of three kids herself.”
“So, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel?” I ask him. “After the dark, there is light.”
He nods his head. “There is light, Viktor. You just have to work to get there. Then you have to work harder than everyone else to keep it. Some recover easier than others, but every day that you fight is an extra day with the light.”
I don’t say anything else and neither does Jeffrey while we order our burgers. We discuss baseball as we eat, and then when we finally make it to the meeting, I know that I’m going to make it to ninety-three days. But I know that getting to ninety-four will be another hurdle.
When I finally leave him at the end of the night, I hand him back his white chip. “This is for you,” I tell him. “Save it for next time.”
“I will,” he says and then looks at me. “Go home, Viktor, and get some sleep.” I nod at him. “Use my number if and when you need it.”
“I will,” I say, then turn and walk away. My hand goes to my pocket, and I grab my phone. I sent Matthew a text right before I went into a meeting asking to sit down with him. I also sent one to Zoe apologizing for my mood today. I scroll and see that Matthew is the only one who answered me.
Matthew: How about you come out and spend the day tomorrow? It’s Sunday; you can meet the family.
This Is Wild Page 5