Sarah Cortez - Houston Noir

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 don’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.