The Ninth Step Read online

  “Cotton, are you there?” Anita prodded gently.

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to say you’re sorry, I get that, but they may not.”

  Cotton shot a glance down the road. He said he knew. He said if that was all it was he’d be inside Judy’s right now drinking with the rest of the f iends. And when Anita asked what else there was, he said, “That little girl--” and stopped.

  “What about her?”

  Cotton looked away from the glare of passing headlight. He had her mother’s final message. He had that to give, if the little girl, whom he guessed was not so little now, would let him near enough to tell her.

  He looked up as three rough-looking women came out of the store laughing, knocking hips. “Girl, you crack me up!” one cried. Cotton recognized them from the bus. They’d sat in the back, passing a pint in a paper sack, playing endless hands of five-card stud.

  He knuckled his scalp near his temple. “I have to see if she’s okay; if all of them are okay,” he said. “After that, I don’t know.”

  “You realize Livie may be married now.”

  Cotton said he hoped she was because he’d forfeited his right to hope for anything else.

  “You won’t drink?”

  “I can’t make any promises, ‘Nita.”

  “I’m still your sponsor.”

  “Yeah, and sometimes I even love you for it.”

  #

  It was after two in the morning and raining steadily when the Houston city lights appeared and seemed to float above the horizon, watery smears of color. Around him, the other bus riders slept. Even the women who had been playing cards had shut down their party.

  Cotton sat with his hands on his knees and his gut in a fist beside a window that gave nothing but a view of his own rain-riddled profile. He wondered if he even knew who that was, that sober man. Some guy with forty bucks to his name and a duffel that held a couple changes of socks and underwear and no clue where he’d stay, what he’d do to earn a living. He thought of who he’d been when he’d lived here before: that guy had owned his own company. He’d built houses, whole neighborhoods full of fine, big homes. Planned communities. That guy had had friends who’d have helped him out of a regular jam.

  But the jam Cotton had gotten into here wasn’t regular.

  He couldn’t call on any of those guys for advice with the exception of maybe Nix, who’d been his best friend, his best man at the wedding that wasn’t. Could be Nix would still talk to him. Cotton didn’t know.

  Anything.

  Except the last time he’d been this scared, he’d been leaving this town.

  #

  It was still raining when he left the terminal. The water soaked through his clothes, doused what was left of the fire he’d had in his belly to get here. He kept expecting to see a cop, to be stopped, questioned, identified. He walked on, keeping a constant watch over his shoulder. The city blocks that fell from under his feet were jammed with bars and strip joints and nightclubs, all closed now. Otherwise he’d have been inside one of them in a flash. That was the one clear thought in his mind.

  A half hour had passed when on an unraveling edge of downtown, he found a room in a dive called the Goodnight Hotel. In the next few days, going through the motions, he found a job as a fry cook in another dive nearby called Gooney’s Café and Grill. If he could have spared the change, Cotton would have called Anita and she’d have laughed at the name.

  Laughed that big brassy laugh.

  If he’d called her he’d have told her how sorry his life was now, that every day was an argument, a war, a line between sober and who gives a shit and sober kept winning. He didn’t know how. Gooney’s was within blocks of where he lived, which was good since he didn’t have wheels, but going back and forth, he had to count sidewalk cracks or passing cars or high-flying goddamn stars to keep from seeing the places and ways a man could get drunk. He could have said to Anita that he didn’t know what kept him from it. It wasn’t as if pride was an issue. His failure to man-up and take the hit hadn’t stopped him from running, from boozing, before.

  #

  The day he caught the metro bus downtown to the library, he hadn’t known he would do it, hadn’t believed he could actually go through with hunting up the news stories about the accident. Then there he was, in front of a computer searching the Houston Chronicle archives until he found the name of the dead woman, Joan Latimer, and the names of her family, husband, Weston, children, Trevor and Nicole. According to the article, Trevor had been eleven and Nicole six at the time of the accident. She’d be twelve now, Cotton thought. And motherless. He thought how he had wished his whole growing up life to be motherless; he thought how he hadn’t spoken directly to his mother in six years. He wondered if called her whether she’d be sober enough to carry on a decent conversation.

  Cotton jerked to his feet and left the library now as abruptly as he’d come and, like a homing pigeon, went into the first bar he saw. It seemed like a no-brainer. What else? What the fuck else?

  But when the bartender set his order in front of him, bourbon, two fingers, neat, what Cotton saw floating near the thick bottom of the glass was the little girl’s face, pale and terrified. The smattering of freckles that bridged the span of her tiny nose were the same color as the booze. The image widened and he saw the soccer ball in the back seat of the car; he saw her mother through the jagged hole in the windshield lying in the road, leg twisted at an impossible angle as if she’d been thrown down by some giant careless hand, a King Kong hand.

  Cotton bolted from the bar.

  Without paying, he told Anita when he called her hours later. Hours that he couldn’t remember what he’d been doing. Walking, he guessed. He hooked his fingers over the top of the box that housed the pay phone and said, “I don’t know what to do.”

  “You need to find a meeting, Cotton.”

  “No! I don’t need a damn meeting. I need these pictures out of my head. I need to see if Nicole Latimer is okay.”

  “So go.”

  “How? They live forty miles north of here and I’ve got no car.” But he was bullshitting; the truth was he didn’t think he had the guts to face the Latimer family. He was sorry he’d found out their name.

  “What about renting a car?”

  “Latimer’ll call the cops sure as hell. It’s what I’d do if it was me.”

  “That’s why you should turn yourself in.”

  “How’s it going to help that family if I go to jail, Nita? AA says you make it up whenever you can without causing more pain, but how can I know that? They could have moved on, made some kind of peace, then I show up and--”

  “Suppose this guy Latimer is some kind of outlaw, Cotton? I’ve heard that about folks in Texas. Suppose Wes Latimer wants revenge and he’s willing to take it vigilante style?”

  “So, if I go there, I’m dead, right?”

  “Not if you turn yourself in and let the police handle it.”

  “Then it’s prison for sure.”

  “But you’d be alive. You’d be doing what you could to rectify the situation.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Look, maybe the best thing is to take a few days, find a meeting, talk to some people . . . Cotton?”

  He held the phone to his ear hating how Anita cared about him like he was good. He told her he had to go. He said he was sorry.

  #

  In addition to fry cook, Cotton worked a second job for Gooney doing maintenance on some rental property Gooney owned and within a matter of weeks he had enough cash to check out a few beaters in the neighborhood used car lots. The problem was he had no ID, not since he’d gone off the grid, and now he wasn’t sure what it would take to get back on or what the consequences would be if he did resume an ordinary life, his old life. He wasn’t sure anymore that he even wanted to be that guy again. That guy had worked his ass off and even after he’d had it made, he hadn’t been that happy. Not until he met Livie. Then he’d felt hope open inside
him as wide as the sky. He had felt redeemed; he had thought in poetic rhyme, in melodies of song; he’d been every kind of a romantic fool.

  He’d believed he was worthy of her love.

  He’d believed he’d known who he was, too, and how he’d act under pressure, even extreme pressure. He’d figured he was tough, tough enough anyway. If asked, he would have said he was the kind of guy who’d do the right thing. Maybe not every time, but when it counted and it was bullshit, everything he’d believed. Cotton knew that now.

  He knew that guy he’d been hadn’t known jack about himself.

  #

  He was in the Laundromat around the corner from the hotel doing a load and reading the Sunday sports pages somebody had left behind when this kid came in to post an ad. He was maybe twenty-five, collegiate looking, Polo shorts, Aggie t-shirt, flip flops. Clean-cut. Unlike the guy dozing in the corner who looked more like a pile of rags than a person, who was probably homeless, who smelled like he was sleeping one off.

  But it was that kind of neighborhood. You could see anything here, a flophouse could be squatting on a square of scalped earth between a swank townhome and an immaculate restored Craftsman bungalow, or there could be a guy in a three piece suit at a bus stop with a wino right next to him puking his guts onto the guy’s Bruno Magli’s. Cotton had built a lot of the townhomes in the area. He’d been living in one of them when he’d met Livie. Living the high life, a swinging bachelor, the ace, the cool jerk.

  Not long ago, he’d walked over there and sat on a bench across the street watching a man mow the postage-stamped square of grass. A woman had come out onto the deep wrought-iron encased porch and watered a pair of urns that had contained tall spires of something purple under planted with a tiny silver-leafed trailer. Ivy of some sort. Livie would have known its name. She would have admired the style of the urns.

  “. . . selling my dad’s car,” Cotton heard the kid say now. He was talking to a woman who’d come to look over the bulletin board full of announcements.

  “What kind is it?” Cotton stood up, leaving the newspaper in the molded plastic chair.

  “Mercedes,” the kid said raising his voice over the rattle and slosh of machine noise.

  “Well, I can’t afford one of those,” the woman exclaimed with a laugh and she carried her laundry basket over to an empty washer and began the sorting process.

  Cotton saw something pass across the kid’s face, a painful sort of shudder that made him think there was a story behind the car, made him ask straight out in a low voice if it was hot.

  The kid shook his head. “Not so you’d go to jail if you were to get stopped driving it. I’ve got the title,” he added hopefully.

  Cotton took down the card and read the description: 1978 Mercedes, 420 SEL. Dark blue. Body and interior in fair condition. He looked at the kid. “Sure is low mileage for a car this old.”

  “My dad bought it used from a guy whose mother owned it. He said she never drove it much. I know how that sounds, but hey, a Mercedes is supposed to be good for more than 300,000 miles, right?”

  “Yeah,” Cotton said, “I’ve heard that. You want twelve hundred. I’ll give you six. Cash. Right now.”

  The kid squeezed his eyes shut, groaning. “Oooh, god, cash makes me weak.” His eyes flew open. “Done,” he said.

  They shook on it and keeping the kid’s grip, Cotton said, “Maybe we should see if it starts first.”

  “It’ll start, I swear.”

  Cotton let go of the kid’s hand.

  “So, we’re good? You’ve got the cash? You can take her now?”

  “If you want, yeah.”

  The kid’s sigh made it sound as if it was more relief than he could stand. Too much relief.

  Cotton looked at him from under his brows. “You swear it’s not hot.”

  “I swear. It’s just it’s been taking up space in my driveway for weeks and my neighborhood association is threatening to sue if I don’t get it out of there.” The kid shifted a weighted glance to the Laundromat window. “I don’t figure my old man’s coming back to pick it up anytime soon. I’ve gotta get rid of it, the quicker the better.”

  Must be kismet, Cotton thought. We’re both desperate.

  #

  It was a big car, a boat of a car, a long, low-slung, white-wall-tired pimpmobile. But it ran.

  Driving felt awkward. It had been long enough that Cotton was tentative. Nervous. For over a week, all he did was cover his route to and from work. On the plus side, as long as he was behind the wheel dealing with the traffic and the plethora of road signs and the endless construction, he didn’t see the bars so much, all the neon-sparked temptation.

  But there were still the sleepless nights when he lay awake staring at the ceiling, at the crack that was working its way from the corner of the kitchenette to just short of the foot of his bed, the interminable dark hours when he wondered what he was doing.

  What’s your plan? Anita had asked.

  Shit if I know, he answered her in his head.

  He went back to the library and used the computer again. Google search engine this time. It wasn’t hard to locate information about the Latimers and find their home address. Weston Latimer owned his own business, the way Cotton once had, an ad agency. The family lived on Cherryhill Drive in Dove Lake, Texas. No surprise there, Cotton thought. The upscale suburb was northwest of Houston, on the rural outskirts, near where he and Livie were to have been married. Lakeside if the weather cooperated, but it hadn’t. The air that morning had been foggy and slick with mist and he remembered being worried that it wouldn’t clear in time for the ceremony, that Livie would be disappointed. Initially Cotton blamed the weather for what happened. Stumbling around the accident site then, trying to get a grip, get a signal on his cell, call for help, do any damn thing, his mind had worked out what he’d tell the cops. “Weather was a factor,” he’d say. “Roads are slick as ice.”

  “Yeah, buddy, right, the weather made you do it. . . .”

  Now Cotton half stood, ready to take off, but then he sat back down. Typed in the name of Livie’s website, Gardens by the Yard, and looked at her photograph. Her smile dove into his heart, opened a pain so harsh it took his breath. He wanted to see her, to hear the sound of her voice. He wanted to tell her. . . .

  He closed the window, googled Houston AA chapters and found a church nearby that held meetings every day and he made himself go, then, and for the next three days. Because he knew Anita would ask and he couldn’t bother her, continue to involve her, unless he could say he was making an effort. He bought a cheap cell phone so he could call from the privacy of his room and he was so grateful when Anita answered that his eyes teared. She was relieved to hear from him, too, thrilled when he told her he was going to meetings. She didn’t really care about his lack of enthusiasm.

  She said, “Fake it ‘til you make it.”

  He told her about buying the car and that when he was driving, he felt free. He said, “Sometimes after work, I drive out of the city, go around on the county roads, get myself lost.” He faked a laugh. It was a lie; he was never lost. He’d found Livie’s house and gone there a half dozen times. He always waited until after dark and parked on the side of the road where the shadows were deepest. He rolled down his window, breathed air that carried remnants of the sun’s heat, fainter scents of manure and fresh-mown hay, a cooler glimmer of moonlight. He listened to the drone of cicadas and watched her lights wink out one-by-one and he was comforted to think of her safe and sleeping in that pretty little house. She had always wanted a place in the country. Back when they’d planned a life together, they’d hunted for property; they’d designed their home, a four-bedroom bungalow with a huge kitchen-living area and a deep porch on all four sides. The house Livie had now was older, early nineteenth century, and smaller, and the porch hugged the front, but there was a swing. She’d always wanted a front porch swing. At least she had that part of her dream.

  But there was no husband, or even
the sign of a boyfriend. So far. Which both elated him and saddened him. If she was alone now, it had to be because of him, what he’d done to her. She probably hated men. Certainly she couldn’t trust them. And how could he fix that? With amends? He’d go up to her and say what? That he was sorry? Then presto, her faith in humanity would be restored?

  “What about a sponsor,” Anita asked. “Have you found anyone?”

  Cotton sat on the end of the bed and said, “What if drinking’s not my problem?”

  “Ah geezus, Cotton, don’t start--”

  “No, listen, I know I’m a drunk now, but I wasn’t before. And the reasons I drink now aren’t physical. It’s not like I have a physical craving. I drink to cover up, to hide, to forget; it’s mental, psychological not--”

  “Physical, psychological, what difference does it make? Besides, you did drink before, often to excess--your words--you were drunk the night of your rehearsal dinner.”

  “So, I partied--” Cotton broke off, paced to the window that overlooked the alley. He could hear the drag of disapproval in Anita’s silence. He said, “I wrote to her again.”

  “Livie?”

  “Yeah. I emailed her.”

  “Since when did you get a computer?”

  “I didn’t. There’s an Internet café close to work.”

  “What did you say this time?”

  Cotton took a breath; he rubbed a line between his brows. “I told her I want to see her, that I have to.”

  Chapter 3

  They were a hairdresser’s daughters, raised dirt poor, or the next thing to it. They’d grown up on McKowa Court in a low income neighborhood south of the loop in Houston in a tiny two-bedroom house with a narrow back stoop and a screen door that caught your heel every time it snapped shut. When Livie and Kat had played hopscotch out front, they’d incorporated the sidewalk cracks as part of the grid.

  Sometimes they’d gone with their mom to get food stamps. Their mom, Augustinia Saunders, Gus for short, who’d worked at Helen’s House of Hair, who’d logged long wearisome hours standing on her feet for a hairdresser’s wages: a miniscule salary plus tips. Kat had been made to wear Livie’s hand-me-downs that their mom had bought for Livie from the Second Hand Rose. They’d ridden the bus to get there.