We enjoy recounting for others how we met, how our friendship began; it’s such a great story, everyone agrees. Sometimes I start, sometimes you do, and we switch halfway. “I locked myself out of my apartment the first week I moved to San Francisco,” I say. “I stood outside my door without a phone, not knowing what to do.” You take over: “She came upstairs and rang the bell. My roommate answered the door.” We laugh in a conspiratorial way—he was so anal, we say, nodding, a real nut. He wanted you to pick the crumbs off the floor. He refused to go to bed unless everything in the kitchen was put away. Later I will find out he complained constantly about you getting “inebriated.” “The roommate just stood at the door, staring,” I say. But you jumped into action. You ran down the stairs and knocked on the neighbor’s door. It was a purple-and-blue Victorian with lace curtains on the windows. Someone was playing the piano in the house. An unused lot with overgrown, thorny weeds separated our buildings, and a tall fence. “You know what he did?” I say next, looking around to make sure I have everyone’s attention. “He walked through the house to the neighbor’s yard. I’d left my back door open for my dog. So you know what Ray did?” I want to draw the story out as long as possible, to relish each word. Around this time I start to sense a growing impatience in our audience. (Did someone stifle a yawn?) I bump your shoulder. “This guy here: he runs to the fence. Next thing I know? He’s jumping over it. A six-foot fence, like a gymnast!” You laugh. You love the story as much as I do, and at this point it’s your turn to deliver the punch line. “I was her knight in shining armor.”

*

          Disillusioned by a relationship that fell apart, wanting to put as much distance between B. and me, I had packed my belongings and moved to San Francisco. B. had started drinking again, only a few months after detox, and our lives were in turmoil. In a last attempt to salvage our relationship, we had turned to a therapist. He was the only one in town who agreed to see us. “Therapists won’t see addicts unless they stop using first,” he’d told me on the phone. “But I’m building my practice.” B. came to the first two sessions. During the third he sat in his car, parked outside the therapist’s office, and drank. In a somber voice, the therapist delivered this pronouncement: B. was saving me a lot of heartache down the road. “An alcoholic will always put the addiction ahead of any relationship. Think about your future under these circumstances, the chaos.”

*

          Seeing you outside the building when I drive home from work makes the neighborhood and this new city feel like home. You sit on the steps with a glass of Chardonnay, smoking or talking on the phone—you can’t smoke in your apartment, the roommate won’t have it. We share a common dislike for him and in my apartment we eat dinner, drink wine, and mimic him, laughing.
          In 2006 you move to an ornate building on Oak Street. In your dark-paneled living room, a window seat faces the Panhandle. When I visit, you open the door holding a glass and offer me one. From your apartment we can walk to Kan Zaman on Haight Street. We are seated on embroidered pillows on the floor while belly dancer waitresses slide around the room holding shish kebabs steaming on the plate, and cucumber yogurt salads. A hookah with apricot-flavored tobacco gets passed around. Once the plates are cleared I want to linger in the warmth. You are eager to walk next door to Cha Cha Cha. You order a pitcher of sangria. Afterward I’m tired but you want to keep bar-hopping. I begin to wonder if maybe you drink too much, if it’s really a problem. On Sundays we bike through Golden Gate Park. We meet for crepes in Cole Valley. You talk about your last boyfriend and I talk about mine. My loving, dear friend.

*

          Your friend Sylvia is proud of her sobriety. Two years. For the first time I hear about the detox center on Turk Street, where you and Sylvia met. I try to appear unaffected, nonchalant. Everyone there was great, says Sylvia. She is worldly and funny and I admire her strength. She’s working the Twelve Steps. You hated the detox center, you tell me privately, you started drinking again within a week. Sylvia goes to AA meetings every Friday night. Sometimes Mondays and Wednesdays too. There are meetings every day in half hour increments all across the city, starting at 5:30 am in the Marina.

*

          B. and I are back together. He visits on the weekends and for a while he seems to no longer need alcohol. I am optimistic and hopeful—he’s promised this time us different: he’s changed, he’s doing it for us. Then I find the beer bottles and I feel something collapsing again, something I’d already struggled to prop up. It’s almost a year since he left the treatment center. “I can stop anytime,” he says. I feel addicted to B. the same way he’s addicted to alcohol. I’m cut in two. I wish he’d stay with me forever as much as I wish I could shake him.
          Someone tells me about Al-Anon and I start attending meetings, restless and hungry for answers, greedy for solutions. “Al-Anon members are people, just like you, who are worried about someone with a drinking problem,” says the literature. We read the Twelve Steps, the same twelve practiced by AA. My inability to understand the steps frustrates me. Questions swirl in my mind. Why are we “powerless?” Where will the “power” to quit come from, if not from us? How will this “power greater than ourselves” manage to “restore us to sanity”? I will keep practicing the Steps, I tell myself, because they are the keys to beating the disease. Each meeting ends the same way. We hold hands and chant “Keep coming back, it works.”

*

          You are coming down the stairs after midnight. You trip and smash in the building’s glass door, you say; you weren’t being careful; or maybe the steps…You need knee surgery. I wonder how much you’re not telling me. Physical therapy takes weeks. You miss riding your bike most, you tell me.
          You have your eye on a retro chrome table and matching red vinyl seats. You give me the name of the antique store over the phone. I carry the chairs and table to your kitchen. You’re still on crutches. You haven’t left the apartment except for physical therapy—you don’t want people staring. You ask for the table against the wall. When it’s situated the way you like it, a smile blooms on your unshaved face. You look happy. But you refuse a hug: you haven’t showered in days.

*

          It’s been exhausting for B. and me, constantly re-arranging and re-negotiating, like two headstrong carpenters who can’t agree on rafter placement. We keep circling the same room. He tells me he only drinks on weekends and for a while I believe him, and I believe it’s possible; I’ve heard of weekend alcoholics, binging alcoholics: they hold jobs and manage careers and relationships. In February I spend a night in the hospital after surgery. B. is due to pick me up the next day. I have been advised checkout is at one. I call at noon but he doesn’t answer. A few minutes later my phone rings. His voice is groggy, and I realize he’s just now waking up. I ask if he’s been drinking but he mumbles something about not being able to sleep. The nurse keeps peeking in. B. arrives at 2.30. I am resentful, ashamed.
          I spend the next two days at home. The third day I start walking slowly around the neighborhood. In less than a week, my pain medication has disappeared.

*

          Your knee is healed and you have regained mobility. You are back at the gym. But your hands have been shaking lately. Al-Anon has taught me about “rock bottom,” and Sylvia and I worry you are nearing yours. I’m convinced you can give it up, the way she did, with strength and proper support. I suggest an intervention. He should go back to treatment, Sylvia and I tell each other. And to AA meetings. In this, she and I share a sense of sisterhood, a common cause. You agree to meet us on Friday night. You want to go to a restaurant, but we insist on meeting at my apartment. You stand at the doorstep, your leather jacket tossed over the shoulder. “Let’s go,” you say. “Let’s order pizza,” we say, “and stay home. “I don’t want pizza and I don’t want to stay here,” you argue, still refusing to step inside—did something tip you off? You’re about to turn around. I look at your shaking hands. We plead with you. I—or was it Sylvia?—say something about drinking. Maybe one of us grabs your sleeve. You run down the stairs. I watch from the landing, incredulous. In my naivete, I have already seen the three of us celebrating your sobriety a month later, raising our smoothies. Sylvia, and this is another puzzle, seems to be taking it all with equanimity.

*

          B. and I have broken up again and this is the last time, I tell myself, I have to stay resolute, despite the sadness that grips me for months. At the end of the year, Sylvia and I spend a week in Costa Rica together; it’s meant to be a renewal. The house we’re staying in has tall windows on every wall. In the living room, a seashell chandelier chimes in the breeze. Sylvia leaves early each morning to surf. Sometimes I don’t see her till dark. I wonder what she’s doing and why she never tells me her plans but we don’t discuss this, unwilling to step on sensitive ground, and a silence settles and grows between us. The days roll on quietly and if there’s unease underneath, I do my best to hide it. Although we’re in the same house, we see each other only occasionally, usually for dinner.

*

          The year is 2009. The party takes place in Pacific Heights, in a large two-story home. Randy is a guy you met at a bar—perhaps the two of you were having a fling. Lots of drinking and dancing and bodies packed tightly—that would have been the scene at Randy’s. I remember standing outside the gate two months later, looking at the construction—or perhaps I have created this memory. By mid-May you have come out of the coma the doctors induced to keep you still and prevent more damage to your spine.
          The night you fell from the second-floor patio, I later learn, Randy stood above you. You lay on the ground curled in a fetal position. Around you, debris. Your arms pointed one way, your feet another. You were awake but you couldn’t breathe. During the 911 call, Randy told the operator you tried to kill yourself. “Stay with me,” you whispered to him. He got in his car to leave just as the police arrived.
          The surgeons tried to repair your broken spine with titanium. Five surgeries later, there was no question of giving you back your mobility. The question was whether you would wake up a quadriplegic, or have use of your hands.
          Randy visited the hospital every day while you were in a coma. He wanted to make sure you were alive. Your sister, Cathy, peppered him with questions. You were drunk and tried to kill yourself, he repeated.
          Both your lungs have collapsed and are filled with fluid. Eventually the doctors have to drain it out.

*

          Cathy is there when you first wake up. You look at her and a tear rolls down your face. You aren’t talking yet. “Did you jump?” she asks. Your heart rate shoots up, and the monitor alerts the nurse. She runs in.

*

           “I will give up drinking for good,” says B. on the phone. “And we’ll get back together.” I tell him to go to AA meetings. “I can’t do that shit,” he says. “They want you to say you are powerless, that you give up your life to God—” “Whatever God means to you,” I cut in, although my own uncertainties about the Steps haven’t dissipated one bit. “They make you hold hands. It’s humiliating,” he says. Still, I believe it’s a weakness he can overcome. If he can leave the addiction behind he can live a fuller life. He can avoid disaster, prevent chaos.

*

          You point to the breathing tube that’s inserted in your throat and shake your head. You try to remove it. The nurse forces it back every time. The doctors have no choice but wait: will you move your arms?
          Your first words to Cathy once you start talking: “Pop pop pop.” She can’t make sense of it. The doctors tell her your brain has been damaged.
          Every day the nurses ask you to move a finger. And one day you do. Cathy is overjoyed. The paralysis, it is now determined, starts at the chest. You have use of both hands. At the California Pacific Medical Center they lift you out of bed in a black sling connected to a ceiling-mounted lift. Once the nurse changes the sheets, she lowers you down.

*

          The second time you talk: “Wood all around.”
          The day after: “Koi pond to the right.”

*

          An older friend sits with you at the hospital. He props an arm against his cane and fires orders to the nurses from his chair. He’s taken on the role of your protector—perhaps Cathy is worn. He’s been talking to lawyers on your behalf, something to do with the patio in Pacific Heights. He has banned Randy from visiting. I know this man isn’t your boyfriend, but I wonder about your relationship. He acts as both your lover and older brother in a way that makes me suspect his motives. I wonder about the life you’ve lived and kept to yourself, about the vastness of memory and desire that no two can share. I am suddenly a stranger in this cold hospital room—what right do I have to be here?
          Cathy guides you to the hospital yard. In the elevator, I am seized by the conviction that you will get up and walk again; the alternative is still unimaginable. Outside, the sun is assaulting the white stone. Slumped in your wheelchair, you cringe at the downtown skyline. Opposite such lapidary radiance, you are but a smudge. At least now you won’t be drinking, I think, and immediately I feel the pricking of guilt. So many questions about the party still linger, but a big part of me believes that what happened that night is, to an extent, due to alcohol. Sadness and pity mix with shame. If you hadn’t been so drunk, I think. If you had had the good sense to go home early. If you hadn’t gone to the party. If you hadn’t gone to the bar, if you’d never met Randy. Cathy rolls you back to your room and I follow silently behind.

*

          The first place you move to once you are dismissed from the hospital is an assisted living facility. The evening lobby attendant is a skinny South American man with dyed hair who greets everyone in a high-pitched, cheery voice. The residents are old, many on wheelchairs. They stare around vacantly. Everyone gathers in the dining room three times a day. On Christmas Eve, the staff puts candles on the tables. You hate going to the dining room. You don’t want anyone’s pity.
          A year later you have secured a 400-square foot studio. The building has a 24-hr lobby guard, someone you can turn to in case of emergency. With the help of another friend, we pack your belongings. Boxes of medical bills are lined on the floor. In the new apartment, you’ll need a caretaker to assist you with bathing, cleaning, and cooking. Insurance will only cover a fraction of the expenses and you’re worried about money. The studio is modified for handicap living. Even so, there is barely room for your wheelchair to roll from the bed—a hospital bed with two side handles so you can slide in. This is what strikes me most about the place: it has a miniature refrigerator—something you can open from the wheelchair—but it makes me think that your needs are no longer those of a whole person.

*

          Sylvia has cut off contact with you. “I have a lot of guilt about it,” she tells me. It’s one of the things she’s learned at AA: to stay clean, she has to stay away from practicing addicts. I trust the AA wisdom, but I don’t understand why she won’t even talk to you on the phone. I am, perversely, jealous of all Sylvia knows about addiction, of the resoluteness with which she handles herself.

*

          You want to see the Christmas tree at the Fairmont. In the picture, flanked by Cathy and me, you mark a dip in our outlines. You are smiling. You have made dinner reservations at the Tonga Room. You order a Mai Tai for yourself and insist on appetizers for everyone, which you select. Your drink comes with one yellow and one red mini-umbrella. Cathy doesn’t like what you ordered for her and says she wants to do it herself. You scold her. Her husband stares at his plate. You are in charge, able. You haven’t changed much, I think, you are brash, overbearing. You order a martini next and I can see in your eyes how hard you want this to be like old times—my heart sinks—how you wish for the wheelchair to disappear, for all of us to forget you’re in it, to weave, by some sort of communal magic, a tale in which you will, at any moment, get up to visit the bathroom. I don’t want you to get the check, which you have claimed from the waiter. I want you to stop flinging orders, to drink less, to drink not at all. I want you to find the strength, to stop feeding the monster inside. I want you to change. On the artificial lagoon next to us, the band floats aboard a boat, stringing ukeleles and shaking bamboo rattles.

*

          The house in Berkeley has a tall fence and a wraparound yard. You could no longer handle San Francisco. We talked about it for months. Getting around had become treacherous. People bumped into you. Crossing an intersection, you had to pray for your life. You are slow on the wheelchair, your arms are weak.
          Your lawyer has secured a win in the lawsuit against Randy. She presented pictures of the collapsed patio; she played the 911 tape; she showed proof of the construction crew hired in a hurry to repair the patio after the accident; she’s presented evidence of dry rot. In your testimony, you recounted the event: the popping sounds of the wood, the koi pond to the right. The defense stuck to their claim: you were too drunk—you jumped. Your lawyer has told the judge you will never be able to work again—though you don’t believe this; that your brain has sustained permanent damage—you refuse to accept this too.
          In Berkeley, a ramp leads to the kitchen door. The counters are low enough to accommodate you. The previous owner had also been in a wheelchair—it is the reason you chose this house. In the bathroom, steel handlebars are fitted on both walls next to the toilet, and the sink is low. A hospital-like accordion curtain divides the shower stall, which is double deep and has more handlebars on the walls. You have room for an office in this house, and you want a nice desk, you tell me. You’ll need help to pick furniture. “We’ll go together,” I say.
          The move to Berkeley has been easy—besides your clothes, you had only a dresser, an HD TV, and the hospital bed. But there has been a glitch: the movers have left your catheter bags behind. “The workers can’t touch bio-hazard material,” the owner informs us in the middle of your empty new dining room. Cathy looks at me, lost. “Can you go back and get them?” she asks. I am annoyed at the owner, who now looks at the three of us with a mixture of pity and guilt. I am filled with guilt too because I don’t want to fight the bridge traffic to San Francisco, from where I’ve just come, and once again to Berkeley. You don’t say anything—perhaps you don’t have the strength. Slumped in the wheelchair, you smoke, waiting for a resolution. I feel suddenly exhausted: I want to sit, or lie down, and not get up. “I will drive back and get them personally,” the owner says in the end.

*

          In 2014 I start volunteer work for the Harm Reduction Therapy Center, which has been described as a haven for alternative treatment to addiction. The HRTC website gives a vague and somewhat confusing explanation of the nonprofit’s raison-d-être; something to do with accepting people’s use rather than trying to force them to abstention. “Come as you are,” says the tagline.
          I meet with Patt Denning, the HRTC’s lead psychologist, and Jeannie Little, the executive director, in their office near the Civic Center. Together with an ex journalist and a brand manager, I am to help the HRTC build a new “brand” and website. I sit across from Patt, taking notes, while she explains harm reduction therapy. “Unfortunately, AA is the pre-eminent model in the US,” she says. “But no one knows how many people in AA end up quitting. AA doesn’t publish statistics. One study estimates that only about 20% of users quit. Another study puts it at 10%. Not everyone can quit. Abstinence, the prerequisite for acceptance in AA, isn’t the answer. And sometimes it’s downright lethal.”
          I nod and keep writing. I am shocked by the numbers. I’m sure people quit all the time. Sylvia has quit. During B.’s inpatient treatment he was given naltrexone every morning, an injectable that reduces the pleasure of alcohol, and benzodiazepines for the first few days. We have drugs for this sort of thing: drugs fighting drugs.
          Jeannie hands me Over the Influence: the Harm Reduction Guide to Controlling your Drug and Alcohol Abuse, the book she co-wrote with Patt. At home I flip through a few pages. “Until now, both the moral model (manifested in the War on Drugs) and the disease model of addiction have been based on prohibition. They have taken an all-or-nothing stance toward substance use. Characterized by terms such as ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ and ‘in the program’ or ‘out there,’ one is either an ‘addict/alcoholic’ who will face ‘jails, institutions, or death’ if he or she keeps using or a ‘normie’ (someone who uses normally, without problems).”
          I read on. “In harm reduction you don’t have to choose—harm reduction is a both/and approach to managing drug use and misuse. You can be a daily pot smoker and a good parent; a weekend partier and a good teacher…; dependent on heroin and a loving partner….From our perspective, you don’t have a disease and you certainly are not immoral or weak!”
          How can one be dependent on heroin and a loving partner? I ask myself. Patt Denning is the pre-eminent figure in harm reduction in the country, a friend tells me.

*

          Because you have no abdominal muscle use, you feel unsafe in a wheelchair unless you’re strapped to it. You call your body “dead weight.” Twice I’ve caused your feet to hit the wall while navigating the living room corner pushing the wheelchair. I avoid looking at your feet. They are swollen and red, the toenails ashen. “Don’t worry,” you tell me with a dry laugh, “I don’t feel a thing.”
          Your refrigerator is packed with cases of Sauvignon Blanc. More cases are stacked in your office, which you have furnished with an industrial-looking desk you bought online. You order food delivery every day. Every month you order more cases of wine.
          You refuse to go further than your own block. You protest your arms are weak, but I can also sense your embarrassment. The only person who sees you regularly is your caretaker, who comes once a week. When your electric-powered chair arrives, I implore you to go out again. “I don’t want to fall off and die,” you tell me.

*

          “How many people quit with harm reduction therapy?” I ask Patt Denning. “Most people don’t quit,” she says. “The goal isn’t to quit. The goal is to manage drug use so it’s not harmful.”

*

          “It’ll be an infection that kills me,” you tell me on the phone. Your UTI infections, caused by the catheter, are a frequent occurrence. You delay going to the doctor, no matter how sick you feel. You’re afraid they’ll send you to the hospital and you refuse to go back “to that place.” The infections spread to your blood. You take antibiotics for weeks at a time. Because you are sick so often, you rarely make plans. Just as often, you call to cancel. This is my excuse to see you less, because looking at you has become too difficult, pretending to be enjoying time together has become impossible, and I know, I know you see pity in my eyes, and I wonder if at times you see disdain too.

*

          In 2015 Sylvia invites me to a weekend in Cambria. She wants to take photographs, and I to work on my novel. We haven’t talked about you in over a year. I want to call you while Sylvia is out shooting, but I’m afraid she’ll walk in any minute. She doesn’t come back till evening but I’ve had a good day’s writing and something tells me that’s all I can hope for this day, and I turn myself grateful.

*

          I have read Over the Influence cover to cover. I want to believe Patt Denning. More and more I see evidence against the AA model. I have heard David Sheff talk to NPR about his son’s addiction, lambasting our country’s approach to drug treatment. Emotionally, I still resent addiction, or rather, the weakness, as I see it, to overcome. “Druggies,” I catch myself thinking. “Users,” “an addict’s brain.”

*

          You ask about B.—he and I are still in touch. I tell you he’s trying to give up drinking. I tell you about the work I’m doing for the Harm Reduction Therapy Center. I talk about a different approach to addiction. I half-hope you’ll want to learn more, that you will ask me questions. I imagine us riding to San Francisco so you can meet Patt. You listen without comment. “AA never worked for me,” you say, and leave it at that. It hangs in the air: it never worked for B.

*

          In 2016 Sylvia and I drive to Santa Barbara. We plan to have dinner together—it’s my birthday. In the afternoon, while walking down State Street, Sylvia says she has to go and abruptly takes off. She calls after nine. “I’m going through something,” she says. I feel what I can only describe as slackness. I know something has shifted, something is lost.
          Later, you and I discuss this. “That’s typical user behavior,” you say, and open a bottle.

*

          Your doctor wants to attach a catheter permanently to your lower intestine as a way to prevent infections. You finally give your consent. Within two months you are fighting a new infection.

*

          From The Truth About Addiction and Recovery by Stanton Peele and Archie Brodsky: “The growth of addiction treatment in the United States, predicated on the idea that alcoholism and addictions of all kinds are diseases, is a public-relations triumph, and not a triumph of reason or science. The idea that modern addiction treatment—like that provided at private alcoholism hospitals—is eminently successful is a myth. More people quit alcoholism and addiction on their own that do so through treatment, and evidence is that in many cases people trying to quit an addiction (such as smoking) are better off attempting it without the help of typical treatment programs. There are therapies that work better than disease-oriented alcoholism clinics or nicotine-gum therapies for smokers, but you would be hard-pressed to find such treatment if you tried.”
          B. has made two more attempts to stop drinking. I try not to see them as failures—this much I’ve learned: drugs and alcohol are a means to temper physical and emotional pain. But I still can’t witness B.’s alcohol use dispassionately. I’m angry at him, at life. I admit I don’t know what addiction is—I don’t know if anyone does, despite, or rather due to a large number of theories. Years ago I drank every night for four months; a friend told me I was self-medicating. Would I, had I been drinking nonstop for a year, have become an addict?

*

          You can’t seem to kick the latest infection. Your urologist has yelled at you, though it’s unclear to me why. “He sent me to a very dark place for weeks,” you tell me, without further explanation. A week later we’re laughing on the phone. You’re in high spirits. You’re in a reminiscing mood. I’m almost certain you’re holding a glass, and for the first time I feel both sadness and gratitude for the wine, for how it’s helping you hold on. “Remember the party at the Bubble Lounge?” you say. “Remember how we met?” I ask, “The way you jumped that fence!” The last thing you say, “Your knight in shining armor.”

*

          12:30 am, Friday July 13, 2018. The phone wakes me up. Cathy has driven to Berkeley and is standing outside your house. She’s too terrified to go in. The caretaker has found your body decomposing in the wheelchair and has run away in shock. Cathy is waiting for someone to accompany her in. The police have already removed your remains. She is crying. He’s been dead for days, she tells me. The police have found your letters. We stay on the phone, crying.

*

          “I lasted nine years in the wheelchair,” says your letter to Cathy. “I really have tried….Spread my ashes in the San Francisco Bay J No one could have changed my mind, please understand this.”
          The coroner has placed your date of death around July 5. Your letters are dated the same day. Your last email to Cathy went out at 9:36 pm. Shortly after you must have made the smoothie of fruit juice and pills.

*

          From a May 2018 KRON4 article: “2 injured after patio collapses in Oakland. The victims fell from 20 feet high. Investigators believe the cause of the accident may be years of dry rot issues.” The Chicago Tribune ran an article in June 2015 with the headline “Estimated 6,500 injured in deck and porch collapses since 2003.” Twenty-nine people, the article reads, “including six college students in Berkeley, have been killed since 2003.”
          Alcohol didn’t cause your accident, I tell myself. But did it cause your death?
          After years of heavy drinking, you had developed cirrhosis of the liver. Your last kidney infection, the one you couldn’t kick, Cathy tells me, lasted over four months. Because the antibiotics had stopped working, and because you refused to be hospitalized, the doctor had opened a port to your heart. Through it you had to shoot antibiotics every four hours. It was the only way for the medicine to have a chance of success.
          You complained to the doctor for taking you off Oxycontin, to no avail. You would wake up with abdominal pain, which, you were certain, was caused by the replacement drug, and covered in sweat. I don’t have the heart to ask Cathy how it is you felt abdominal pain. It terrifies me to think you were trapped in a wheelchair, with only use of your hands, yet with the same bodily sensations as the rest of us. I am ashamed of thinking “the rest of us.”
          Cathy talks about the time she spent with you during the summer. She was there to help you shoot antibiotics through the port. “There was nothing to do but drink and smoke joints together,” she says. “And then we’d laugh and laugh.”

*

          Cathy has moved into your house. She’s in a grief support group. Other than getting rid of the hospital bed and adding a sofa, she has kept the place intact—this is what you wanted. Your ashes are propped on the mantelpiece inside an urn. One of these days we will board a boat and spread you over the Bay.
          Sylvia has moved to Colorado, and B. no longer talks about quitting.
          A part of me still wants to believe that the chaos the therapist warned me about so many years ago, before I ever met you, can be kept at bay. A part of me is convinced that if Sylvia has relapsed, she can fight it off; that if B. really wants to quit, he still can; that if he does, he’ll live longer. The same part still hangs on, absurdly, to the idea that if I eat healthy, I will stave off disease; if I drive safely, I won’t burn in a car crash; if don’t get drunk at a stranger’s party, I will stay alive.
          Is this self-deception any different than presuming abstinence was the path for you? That I had known or understood you? That this is your story? That because we spent years together I have known and understood B.? That I know, really know what Sylvia’s days are like? I can’t comprehend this force, this substance obsession—and yet is committing myself to a room day in and day out to write things down less of a compulsion? How could I not have seen that you would have been miserable without your obsession even if all else be damned?
          But I need to secure for myself some assurance and fabricate hope, I realize, and this need is no different from the agency that drives people back to AA, and on which the very essence of livelihood is hitched: the need to affirm human capacity; the promise of victory over enslavement; Twelve Steps over chaos.
          “I don’t know,” says Cathy. “Pills and alcohol: for nine years they kept Ray alive.”

***