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“I did it and it’s been working. As for my belief that there’s no God… the longer I stay sober, the more that wavers.”

“If you’re going to ask me to pray with you, forget it.”

Jack smiled down at his hands. “Nope. I still feel self-conscious about the on-my-knees thing even when I’m by myself. Last month—April—Randy told me to do the Fourth Step. That’s when you make a moral inventory—supposedly searching and fearless—of your character.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. Randy said I was supposed to put down the bad stuff, then turn the page and list the good stuff. It took me ten minutes for the bad stuff. Over an hour for the good stuff. At first I couldn’t think of anything good, but finally I wrote ‘At least I’ve got a sense of humor.’ Which I do. Once I got that, I was able to think of a few other things. When I told Randy I had trouble thinking of character strengths, he said that was normal. ‘You drank for almost thirty years,’ he said. ‘That puts a lot of scars and bruises on a man’s self-image. But if you stay sober, the bruises will heal.’ Then he told me to burn the lists. He said it would make me feel better.”

“Did it?”

“Strangely enough, it did. Anyway, that brings us to this month’s request from Randy.”

“More of a demand, I’m guessing,” Jamieson said, smiling a little. He folded his newspaper and laid it aside.

Jack also smiled. “I think you’re catching the sponsor-sponsee dynamic. Randy told me it was time to do my Fifth Step.”

“Which is?”

“?‘Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs,’?” Jack said, making quote marks with his fingers. “I told him okay, I’d make a list and read it to him. God could listen in. Two birds with one stone deal.”

“I’m thinking he said no.”

“He said no. He told me to approach a complete stranger. His first suggestion was a priest or a minister, but I haven’t set foot in a church since I was twelve, and I have no urge to go back. Whatever I’m coming to believe—and I don’t know yet what that is—I don’t need to sit in a church pew to help it along.”

Jamieson, no churchgoer himself, nodded.

“Randy said, ‘Just walk up to somebody in Grant Park or Washington Square Park or Central Park and ask him to hear you list your wrongs. Offer a few bucks to sweeten the deal if that’s what it takes. Keep asking until someone agrees to listen.’ He said the hard part would be the asking part, and he was right.”

“Am I…” Your first victim was the phrase that came to mind, but Jamieson decided it wasn’t exactly fair. “Am I the first person you’ve approached?”

“The second. I tried an off-duty cab driver yesterday and he told me to get lost.”

Jamieson 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 Yankee 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?”

“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, because 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 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 parents. Or just my mom in my case, because 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 remember what it was. Only that 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 allowance and chore money and got some old wino to buy me nips. He’d buy 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.”