she remained largely a mystery to the regulars . Recently divorced. Major crimes. Drug of choice: cocaine. “Hello, I’m Susan and I’m an addict.” She mumbled her apologies to no one and everyone and slid quietly into a chair in the back.
When it was his turn to share, Moth stammered and declined.
The meeting ended without a sign of his uncle.
Moth walked out with the others. In the church parking lot he shared a few perfunctory hugs and exchanged some phone numbers, as was customary following a meeting. The engineer asked him where his uncle was, and Moth told him that Ed had planned to come, but must have gotten hung up with a patient emergency. The engineer, plus a heart surgeon and a philosophy professor who’d been listening in, had all nodded in the special way that recovering addicts have, as if acknowledging that the scenario Moth described was most likely true, but just maybe it wasn’t. Each told him to call if he needed to talk.
None of the people at the meeting were so rude as to point out that his earlier exercise on the track had resulted in a stale, ripe odor about him. Since he was the youngest regular at Redeemer One, they all cut Moth some slack, probably because he reminded them of themselves—just twenty years or more earlier. And everyone at the meeting was familiar with the foul scents of nausea, waste, and despair that accompanied their addictions, so they had developed tolerances for rank odors that went far beyond the norm.
Moth stood around, shuffling his feet. He watched the others disappear. It was still warm: a humid, thick blanket that made it seem like the evening had wrapped itself around him, cloaking him in tightening shadow. He could feel himself sweating again.
He was unsure when he made the decision to go to his uncle’s office.He just looked up and found himself on his bicycle, pedaling fiercely in that direction.
Cars sliced through the night around him. He had a single flashing red safety light attached to the rear wheel frame, though he doubted that it would do much good. Miami drivers have loose relationships with the rules of the roadway, and sometimes yielding to a person on a bicycle seemed either like a terrible loss of face or a task so difficult it was beyond anyone’s innate ability. He was accustomed to being cut off and nearly sideswiped every hundred yards and secretly enjoyed the ever-present, car-crushing danger.
His uncle’s office was in a small building ten blocks away from the high-end shops on Miracle Mile in Coral Gables, which was only a mile or two from the university campus. After the shopping district, the road became a four-lane too-fast boulevard, with frequent stoplights, east and west to frustrate the Mercedes-Benz and BMW drivers hurrying home after work. The road was divided by a wide center swath of stately palms and twisted banyan trees. The palms seemed puritan in their upright rigor, while the ancient mangroves were Gordian knots and devilishly misshapen, gnarled with age. Each direction seemed almost encased, tunnels formed by haphazard sweeping branches. Auto headlights carved out arcs of light through the spaces between the trunks.
Moth pedaled quickly, dodging cars, sometimes ignoring red lights if he thought he could zip safely through the intersection. More than one driver honked at him, sometimes for no reason other than the fact that he was there and using up space that they believed they both needed and deserved for their oversized SUV.
He was breathing hard, his pulse throbbing, when he arrived at the office building. Moth chained his bike to a tree in front. It was a dull, redbrick building, four squat stories with an old, slightly decrepit feel to it, especially in a city devoted to modern, young, and hip. There were wide windows in the back of the office that overlooked a few side streets and the rear parking lot and a single tall palm tree and not much else. It was,Moth had always thought, a very unprepossessing place
When it was his turn to share, Moth stammered and declined.
The meeting ended without a sign of his uncle.
Moth walked out with the others. In the church parking lot he shared a few perfunctory hugs and exchanged some phone numbers, as was customary following a meeting. The engineer asked him where his uncle was, and Moth told him that Ed had planned to come, but must have gotten hung up with a patient emergency. The engineer, plus a heart surgeon and a philosophy professor who’d been listening in, had all nodded in the special way that recovering addicts have, as if acknowledging that the scenario Moth described was most likely true, but just maybe it wasn’t. Each told him to call if he needed to talk.
None of the people at the meeting were so rude as to point out that his earlier exercise on the track had resulted in a stale, ripe odor about him. Since he was the youngest regular at Redeemer One, they all cut Moth some slack, probably because he reminded them of themselves—just twenty years or more earlier. And everyone at the meeting was familiar with the foul scents of nausea, waste, and despair that accompanied their addictions, so they had developed tolerances for rank odors that went far beyond the norm.
Moth stood around, shuffling his feet. He watched the others disappear. It was still warm: a humid, thick blanket that made it seem like the evening had wrapped itself around him, cloaking him in tightening shadow. He could feel himself sweating again.
He was unsure when he made the decision to go to his uncle’s office.He just looked up and found himself on his bicycle, pedaling fiercely in that direction.
Cars sliced through the night around him. He had a single flashing red safety light attached to the rear wheel frame, though he doubted that it would do much good. Miami drivers have loose relationships with the rules of the roadway, and sometimes yielding to a person on a bicycle seemed either like a terrible loss of face or a task so difficult it was beyond anyone’s innate ability. He was accustomed to being cut off and nearly sideswiped every hundred yards and secretly enjoyed the ever-present, car-crushing danger.
His uncle’s office was in a small building ten blocks away from the high-end shops on Miracle Mile in Coral Gables, which was only a mile or two from the university campus. After the shopping district, the road became a four-lane too-fast boulevard, with frequent stoplights, east and west to frustrate the Mercedes-Benz and BMW drivers hurrying home after work. The road was divided by a wide center swath of stately palms and twisted banyan trees. The palms seemed puritan in their upright rigor, while the ancient mangroves were Gordian knots and devilishly misshapen, gnarled with age. Each direction seemed almost encased, tunnels formed by haphazard sweeping branches. Auto headlights carved out arcs of light through the spaces between the trunks.
Moth pedaled quickly, dodging cars, sometimes ignoring red lights if he thought he could zip safely through the intersection. More than one driver honked at him, sometimes for no reason other than the fact that he was there and using up space that they believed they both needed and deserved for their oversized SUV.
He was breathing hard, his pulse throbbing, when he arrived at the office building. Moth chained his bike to a tree in front. It was a dull, redbrick building, four squat stories with an old, slightly decrepit feel to it, especially in a city devoted to modern, young, and hip. There were wide windows in the back of the office that overlooked a few side streets and the rear parking lot and a single tall palm tree and not much else. It was,Moth had always thought, a very unprepossessing place
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