STORY 69Jamieson thought of an old New
York joke: Out- of- towner approaches
a guy on Lexington Avenue and says,
“Can you tell me how to get to City
Hall or should I just go fuck myself?”
He decided he wasn’t going to tell the
guy in the Yankees gear to go fuck
himself. He would listen, and the next
time he met his friend Alex (another
retiree) for lunch, he’d have something
interesting to talk about.
“Okay, go for it.”
Jack reached into the pouch of his
hoodie, took out a piece of paper,
and unfolded it. “When I was in
fourth grade—”
“If this is going to be your life story,
maybe you better give me that twenty
after all.”
Jack reached into his hoodie with
the hand not holding his list of
wrongdoings, but Jamieson waved
him off. “Joking.”
“Sure?”
Jamieson didn’t know whether he
was or not. “Yes. But let’s not take too
long. I’ve got an appointment at
eight- thirty.” This wasn’t true, and
Jamieson reflected that it was good he
didn’t have the alcohol problem, be-
cause according to the TV meetings
he’d attended, honesty was a big deal
if you did.
“Keep it speedy, got it. Here goes.
In fourth grade I got into a fight with
another kid. Gave him a bloody lip
and nose. When we got to the princi-
pal’s office, I said it was because he’d
called my mother a dirty name. He
denied it, of course, but we both got
sent home with a note for our par-
ents. Or just my mom in my case, be-
cause my dad left us when I was two.”
“And the dirty name thing?”
“A lie. I was having a bad day and
thought I’d feel better if I got into a
fight with this kid I didn’t like. I don’t
know why I didn’t like him—I guess
there was a reason, but I don’t re-
member what it was. Only that it set
a pattern of lying.
“I started drinking in junior high.
My mother had a bottle of vodka she
kept in the freezer. I’d swig from it, then
add water. She finally caught me, and
the vodka disappeared from the freezer.
I knew where she put it—on a high
shelf over the stove—but I left it alone
after that. By then it was probably
mostly water, anyway. I saved my allow-
ance and chore money and got some
old wino to buy me nips. He’d get four
and keep one. I enabled his drinking.
That’s what my sponsor would say.”
Jack shook his head.
“I don’t know what happened to
that guy. Ralph, his name was, only I
thought of him as Wretched Ralph.
Kids can be cruel. For all I know, he’s
dead and I helped kill him.”
“Don’t get carried away,” Jamieson
said. “I’m sure you have stuff to feel
guilty about without having to in-
vent a bunch of might- have- beens.”
Jack looked up and grinned. When
he did, Jamieson saw that the man had
tears in his eyes. Not falling, but brim-
ming. “Now you sound like Randy.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“I think so. I think I’m lucky I
found you.”
Jamieson discovered he actually felt
lucky to have been found. “What else
have you got on that list? Because
time’s passing.”
“I went to Brown and graduated cum
laude, but mostly I lied and cheated my
way through. I was good at it. And—
here’s a big one—the student adviser I
had my senior year was a coke addict.
I won’t go into how I found that out,
like you said, time’s passing, but I did,
and I made a deal with him. Good
recommendations in exchange for a
key of coke.”
“As in kilo?” Jamieson asked. His
eyebrows went up most of the way to
his hairline.
“That’s right. He paid for it and I
brought it in through the Canadian
border, tucked into the spare tire of my
old Ford. Trying to look like any other
college kid who’d spent his semester
break having fun and getting laid in
Toronto, but my heart was beating like
crazy and I bet my blood pressure was
red- lining. The car in front of me at the
checkpoint got tossed completely, but I
got waved right through after showing
my driver’s license. Of course things
were much looser back then.” He paused,
then said, “I overcharged him for the
key, too. Pocketed the difference.”
“But you didn’t use any of the
cocaine yourself?”
“No, that was never my scene. I did
a line or two once in a while, but what
I really wanted—still want—is grain
alcohol. When I got a job, I lied to my
bosses, but eventually that gave out. It