When the Messenger Is Hot Read Free Page B

and two,” isn’t that the law?) and can only change radio stations at a red light and cannot do anything like change a tape or drink something ( Even with a cup holder and a straw? she asks) and of course would never even consider trying to use a cell phone. She also makes note of my Tourette’s-like swearing at any car that comes within three feet of the perimeter of our car, which is of course pretty much constantly, and I tell her that that trait was genetically passed on to me by my mother, who makes creative use of the word cock in any number of unpleasant driving scenarios. Apple then makes the same loop and has to correct herself a few times when she’s inclined to zap a Ricky Martin song while in motion, but quickly gets the cursing down and by the time we get back has also incorporated other small gestures, like the way I shake my watch down toward my wrist when it gets too tight and the way I wear my sunglasses on top of my head to keep the hair out of my face but then squint the whole time, and I begin to feel a little uncomfortable, wishing I were some perfectly generic, gestureless individual.
    Which is apparently not true according to my friend Sue, who calls later that day when I’m out picking up a quart of milk and is still on the phone with Apple when I walk in. Apple looks a little guilty and apologizes to me for picking up the phone by force of habit and tells Sue to hold on and passes the phone to me, but when I say hello, she says, I think we have a bad connection. I have to go anyway, I’ll call you tomorrow , even though I can hear her perfectly fine. Apple seems pleased with how easily she was able to convince Sue that she was me, but I’ve been mistaken for other people on the phone plenty of times and I try not to make too much of it this time.
    Day three she asks me a lot of questions about when it was that I started drinking and why, since the book starts right after I got out of rehab, and some of this is covered in the book, but when I started drinking, it was just this complete sense of rightness with the world. Maybe some people feel that way naturally, maybe some other people talk with Jesus, I don’t know. How I’ve stayed sober is as much a mystery to me as to anyone. I had just celebrated ninety days of sobriety when my boyfriend broke up with me and at that point I still wanted to drink pretty much every day. But I had already enrolled in grad school for a doctorate in philosophy (also in a blackout, although it turned out to be a better idea than most of the ones I came up with while unconscious), which, although a debatable program, given future job prospects, gave me something more constructive to do than sit around and contemplate the leak in my ceiling. (Which, trust me, is not a metaphor, neither the leak nor its subsequent contemplation.) I didn’t have a job at the time, and the thought of getting one was kind of horrifying. Apple asks a lot of questions I’m not sure I really have answers for. It’s not as though I’m some Olympic triumph-over-tragedy story with violin music playing in the background as I discuss the nature of my faith in god and explain that I believe that there was some mystical reason I survived being hit by a car going forty-five miles an hour on Wilshire Boulevard (I was walking; I was in a very bad drunk-walking accident and I’m sure I crossed against the light, not to mention that there aren’t even a lot of sober pedestrians in L.A., and I’m sure the driver who hit me was not at fault in any way) without anything more than a scraped knee, this after landing in front of a Star bucks that was a good half block from the site of impact. It wasn’t until after I ordered a double espresso that I happened to notice the totaled Lexus still in the middle of the street; some people in the Starbucks were asking me if I was okay, which I thought was odd since there was a totaled Lexus in the street