Bill Clegg - Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

I hold the rail and see two black sedans circle slowly in front of the hotel, one behind the other. The one in front is just below me, and I can see the driver’s hands on the steering wheel. Beyond them I notice there are people walking on the sidewalks. Mostly in pairs, several on their own. They are, of course, dressed in the same slacks and shoes and Windbreakers I have seen since Newark. Their footfalls and movements all seem timed to some very particular choreography of urban surveillance. Like the Penneys last night, they do not seem threatening. The birds above them wheel through the sky, and I step back to watch what seems like a meticulously staged theatrical performance. I remember Newark Airport and all the cabs that have miraculously appeared just when I’ve needed them. I remember the driver the night before and his words as I got out of his magical cab— it will all be okay . As I did standing in front of One Fifth, I think perhaps I’ve been running from something that has been, all the while, on my side. That maybe, if there is an organized system of observation, it might possibly be designed to protect instead of trap. I flush with the idea that something so elaborate and so stealthy could have at its heart concern, maybe love. For several minutes I lean against the railing and face the gentle morning wind.

Eventually I notice the driver in the car below fiddling with a large white card. He is scribbling something with a black marker. His movements are unbearably slow and with a small white cloth he keeps erasing what he’s written only to begin writing again. I go back inside the room and smoke a large hit and pour another vodka. When I return to the balcony he is still scribbling. I can see only his arms and torso and hands. His head and face are obscured by the visor. Finally, he places the card on the dashboard in the front window. It says BARBER. Now that he is through with the card, his hands begin to move over a small, shiny black box. His fingers blur from the rapid movements and they maneuver there mysteriously for several long minutes. I am sure he is packing a stem of crack. He then removes a lighter from his blazer pocket and begins sparking it. Again and again but not to light or burn anything, just to spark it. He holds the flame a moment and then begins sparking it again. I’m now leaning as far over the railing of the balcony as I can, certain he is signaling me in some cryptic language that I’m just on the verge of understanding. Suddenly everything depends on my understanding what he is communicating to me. I yell out, What are you trying to tell me? but he does not make any indication that he’s heard.

After a while, he stops sparking the lighter and carefully removes the white card from the dash. Again, he starts wiping and scribbling. Again, slowly. After a time, he begins, even more slowly than before, to write out another word. Once he’s finished, he places the card again on the dash. TORCHER, it reads, and my mind reels with the connection between this word and the sparking lighter. What do you mean? I yell from the balcony. The driver puts the marker away and carefully folds his hands in his lap. I watch him for a long time and he does not move. One by one and pair by pair, the people strolling outside begin to disappear. Slowly, they round their street corners, or fade away behind buildings and trucks.

The driver is as still as a statue, and it is now almost seven o’clock. I am awake and calm, free of worry or loneliness. My body feels light and relaxed and for once doesn’t shake or jitter. I have been up all night but feel well rested. There is still pink in the sky, and I have this great urge to go out into the morning and walk. Unlike following the usual routine of wiping down the counters and getting high and then dressed and undressed, I just throw on my jeans and sweater and shoes and head out.

Both cars are gone from the front of the hotel by the time I leave the building. The streets are empty and I walk down Little West 12th Street toward Washington. I only make it a few blocks before I start getting anxious and the magic air that glowed between the buildings just minutes before vanishes and is replaced with the stench of meat and the low grind of delivery trucks.

I make it up to 14th Street, and as I turn back down toward the hotel, a guy my age in a jogging suit and a trucker hat says hello. He is scruffy and cute and fit and looks like just the right thing to lift the descending gloom. He asks if I’ve been partying and I say yes, and before you know it he’s back in my room, getting high. We take off our shirts and kiss awhile. He isn’t there very long when my phone rings. I step away from the bed and after wrestling with several rounds of Memory Filled, New Text Rejected, I listen to the message. It’s from Malcolm, whom I have completely forgotten about and now hear as I would a long-ago friend from summer camp. He sounds serious and his message begins Hey, Bill, I really need to tell you something…

I hang up the phone and never hear the rest of that message because it is at that instant that someone knocks on the door. It is loud and urgent, and when I go to the door and look through the peephole, it’s Noah.

Grammar school:Nurse’s bathroom. Bathroom is at the end of a hall, away from the nurse’s desk, has a locked door. Downside: it’s the bathroom the principal uses. Upside: no one is ever in the nurse’s office. Not even the nurse.

High school:Nurse’s bathroom. Dodgy at lunch. Second choice: boys’ room next to French class, on the second floor, in the old building. Almost always empty except in the morning before homeroom.

Home:Best is bathroom next to Dad’s den at the end of the house, on the other side of the front living and dining rooms (only when Dad is away). In spring, summer, and fall, during good weather, and when Dad is home: the woods. In winter or bad weather when Dad is home: kids’ bathroom upstairs, but hurry.

F

RIENDS’

H

OUSES

Derek’s:Basement bathroom.

Jenny’s:Behind the horse barn or basement bathroom.

Michael’s:Upstairs bathroom between Michael’s and Lisa’s rooms, above garage. If parents are gone or out in the barns, their bathroom at the far end of the house. If house is full, behind barn.

Adam’s:His father’s church across the street, downstairs bathroom.

Patrick’s:Abandoned bathroom downstairs, in the part of the house that’s been under construction for years.

Kenny’s:THE TOUGHEST HOUSE. Only two bathrooms, both near where people always are. Choose one and pray it’s over quickly.

B

EAR IN

M

IND

1. Try to use first-floor bathrooms (people below can hear you jumping).

2. Place rugs, bath mats, and towels in front of toilet to cushion footfalls.

3. If you have no choice but to use an upstairs bathroom: avoid bathrooms above rooms where people are, use extra towels, bath mats, and rugs.

4. Don’t overuse toilet paper when cleaning up. It clogs the toilet.

5. If there is a wall near the toilet, pee with your back to it.

His family moves when he is seven. It is the summer between second and third grade and it is to a house at the end of a long driveway, near the end of a long road, and fifteen long minutes from a town in the hills of Connecticut that doesn’t have a stoplight. The house takes years to renovate, and his parents add bedrooms and porches and a living room and dining room with the most beautiful wood floors that never get used. Money runs out and the upstairs floors, where the bedrooms are, will never be carpeted or finished with proper flooring. They scatter carpet samples and throw rugs over the plywood to keep from getting splinters. From a low, rambling one-story farmhouse, it becomes a large gray Dutch Colonial, and sits at the top of a hill, one of Connecticut’s tallest, his father says, and there are forty acres of woods and field.