It was the night before the day she crash landed her life on my
doorstep. And it was worse because I knew it. Her irate boss on the phone,
"She was s'pose had her ass in here at four o'clock. She said at three
fifteen she was coming, and she never showed up, cause she's been drinking
all day."
But that was the night before, and life meandered
along exactly as it would have even if, 40 miles away, she had not quit
her job and split the place she was staying, as if she were not even now
wondering just what she would say, how she would phrase it... no. No sense
trying to do the words. No, it's the feeling that counts, and the feeling
she sought was the one that would make me ask her to stay... and that would
make me really hope for a yes.
Next day, I hear nothing through the morning. Eventually, I call her.
What's it going to be? I wonder. How will she do it? How will she get me
to beg her to come stay with me?
She says quietly, "I think I'm going to check myself into a hospital,
because if I keep fucking up like this, I'm gonna kill myself."
She was good. I had to give her that. Real good. She did exactly as
I thought she would, and it still gave me that lightness in the chest.
I would have offered her the Keys to the City if I'd had them. I was putty
in her strong rough fingers. Of course I wanted to see her and "see what
I could do to help" before she checked herself into detox... and out of
my life. Of course I did.