Bill Clegg - Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

I get high and drink, and when the voices outside get too loud and I’m convinced I see a man in the opposite building with a video camera trained on my room, I do a huge hit and decide to go home. To face the music and rush into Noah’s arms. I gather up my drugs and stems and clean the crumbs off the table surfaces and head out the door.

A cab pulls up alongside me as I walk out onto Gansevoort Street. It slows, gently, and I hop in. Home? the man with a craggy Eastern European face and matching accent asks with a kind smile. I say yes. The music playing in the cab is Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” and it is calming and magical. The atmosphere twinkles, as if the cab is enchanted. The panic I felt in the room just minutes ago has disappeared. You’re one of them, aren’t you? I ask, as I have a few times to cabdrivers who seem to know where I am going but who only ever smile in response. I check the driver’s photo, which, like all the rest since the airport, is obscured by cardboard or paper. I look into the passenger seat up front and see, as I’ve now seen at least a dozen times, carefully laid out zip-lock bags filled with money — single dollars in one, larger bills in another, and coins in yet another. Like all the cabs with knowing drivers, it is immaculately clean. I ask him who he works for and he chuckles and says he can’t say. I press and he just laughs. But you do work for someone and you’re not a cabdriver, right? He laughs more and says, You’re the first one to see. I can’t believe he’s crossed the line and acknowledged that he is not a New York City cabdriver. I knew it! I say, relieved that these strange encounters with taxicab drivers have not been drug-induced delusions hatched from my paranoia.

The driver seems kind. When he turns around to speak, his eyes dance with light. He is grandfatherly and appears amused. I press on with more questions. Why don’t they just arrest me? He answers, because they want to watch me. That they have been observing me for a long time, before my recent craziness even, and that it’s only now that I’ve been able to notice. Is it good? I ask, and he says, Yes, it is good. Someone is taking care of you. You are going to be fine. I ask him who it is and he says he cannot say. But that I am lucky and, again, not to worry. I ask him if they are listening to me in the hotel and he says yes. I ask him to prove it and he says, Well, you know, you get very upset sometimes. Very nervous and very upset. I ask him if they hear and watch me have sex and he laughs and says they do but not to worry, they’ve seen it all before. We pull up to One Fifth, and as we do I feel calm and strangely blessed. No fare, right? I ask and he smiles and waves me away. Don’t be so upset, it will all be okay, he says as I climb out of the cab in front of the building.

I am overcome with a wave of relief, and as I stand there, two people walk by — they are wearing the shoes, the coats, the earpieces, the complete JCPenney outfit — and they smile as if I have finally been let in on some great secret. I can now see that all of them, every last Windbreakered one of them, has been looking out for me the entire time. They’ve been protecting me! I say out loud. This is why I have not been arrested. I look around the street, across Fifth Avenue and up 8th Street and see several people looking my way as they walk at that unmistakable pace, that deliberate and performatively normal gait.

In the lobby, Trevor is at the desk and does not seem alarmed to see me. This is still before Noah notifies the building management to call him if any of the doormen or porters see me and before he has the locks changed. I run past Trevor and he shouts hello. When I enter the apartment, it is empty. It hadn’t occurred to me that Noah wouldn’t be home. I pour a drink and do a hit in the bathroom and pace the living room for what seems like forever. It is strange to be home after being gone these weeks. Benny, my cat, eyes me warily and disappears into the bedroom. The apartment seems smaller than I remembered, more precious, as if each pillow and book and photograph is part of some meticulously arranged exhibit of The Life Before. I wait, and as I do, I play out the scene that will unfold after he returns. He will want me to hand over all the drugs I have on me and agree to go to rehab. I am desperate to see him. Want to hug him and be hugged by him and somehow blink away the last weeks and resume our lives. But the longer I’m there, the more impossible this seems. I don’t know how long I stay that night, but it is too long, or not long enough, and I leave.

On the street outside, a cab pulls up and whisks me back to the hotel without instruction. I look at the driver as we pull up, and he shrugs as if to say, Nice try. He puts his hand over the meter and waves me away and, again, I leave another taxi without paying.

The night passes swiftly and I’m awake for every moment, alone. Not long after midnight, Happy comes and I spend all the cash I can get, $1,000. He doesn’t say a word as he hands me the bags and the new stems. Doesn’t comment on the increasing orders or the fact that I am making them every day. That he has been coming every night for over three weeks.

I have two liters of vodka delivered at a time with buckets of ice, and I always seem to be running out. I do hit after hit and drink heavily in between. I burn my hands badly from pulling, again and again, too hard on the stems. I shower three or four times. Lather up the shampoo as thick and luxuriously as I can, wash my face with the fancy face soap from the hotel, rinse off and feel clean for a little while.

At some point I am convinced one of my contacts has folded up behind my eyeball. I pull on my lid with one hand while the other scratches and pokes into my eye, trying to feel the difference between the flimsy edge of the contact and the slippery surface of my cornea. After an hour or so of this, my eye is stinging from the assault and the entire area is red and swollen. The stinging has gotten worse, and I’m sure it’s because I neglected to wash my hands, which are covered in residue. I take a break to clean them off and instantly see the contact lens stuck to the hot-water knob. I face the mirror and it looks as if someone has poured acid into my eye. The agitation of the last few hours boils over and I yell, loudly and to no one, and storm through the room, throwing pillows, clothes, whatever happens in my way. I throw a water pitcher and it smashes on the dresser. The noise stops me. I instantly worry that I’ve made too much of a racket and that the management will come. I peek through the peephole and under the door off and on for the next few hours. There will be another shower, another hit, another drink, more shampoo, more soap, more water, more peeking under the door and through the peephole.

Around six in the morning I notice that the sun, east of here, across town, is casting light into the sky above the Hudson. It streaks the palest pink behind the low-rise buildings of the meatpacking district. I hadn’t noticed when exactly the fury of the night began to ebb, but it has now vanished. As I step out onto the small balcony off the bedroom and inhale the still, chilly air, I feel relieved, depleted, as if some great thrashing has ended. The closing lines of Sophie’s Choice sound from some far memory: This was not judgment day, only morning. Morning: excellent and fair . I speak the words out loud. I laugh at how the word morning sounds now like the most beautiful, consoling word I’ve ever heard, when it has been what I have dreaded so many times. Morning! of all things, excellent and fair.

Birds, hundreds of them, circle above the river. They dive and swoop against the barely lit sky. Are they seagulls? I wonder and immediately dismiss the possibility. But what else would they be? They multiply as the pink light expands and mingles more with the lightening blue. Hundreds become thousands, and the sky is a gorgeous riot of wings. It seems as if some panel of the world has been removed and a glimpse of heaven is being allowed. I wonder, for the first time, if I am still alive.