Starlights

If I don’t get called up to the counter by 7:00, I won’t get a ticket today. That’s just how it is. Then I’ll have to walk the mile to Scooter’s Liquor because they open the earliest. Jorge will be unlocking the accordion gate that protects the glass door at night. I’ll start counting out change and hope he’ll spot me enough for a pint. Lately, he tries to lure me to the back of the store to get him off in exchange for vodka. I’ve been letting him think I’m game until he slides the bottle across the counter on its back. Then I lie: “I’ll come back a little later,” and walk down the alley behind the turn-of-the-century apartment building where I last lived. Aware that sooner or later I won’t be allowed to just walk away, I down half the bottle.

A man of about 70 is called up, given a ticket, and ambles out to a waiting van. A ticket means eight hours of labor. In vast concrete spaces, for minimum wage, you bend and twist your body over and over until everything hurts. Real employees—if they acknowledge you at all—holler commands over the grind of machinery. If I do get a ticket, it’ll be nine hours before I can swallow alcohol. They cash our checks right across the street at John’s Liquor. I’ll be in line there with some of the people sitting next to me now. We’ll all be close to giddy.

Six months ago, I’d have side-eyed the toothless pregnant woman in the chair next to me and wondered what she had to be so happy about—loud and laughing with the woman whose left thumb is missing. I used to drive past this place on morning commutes. The READY LABOR sign flickered orange, and I’d wonder about the people inside—their silhouettes like voids against the fluorescent light. Now I laugh with them.

The woman with no teeth and the other with no thumb are called up to the counter. Bob, the round-shouldered manager, says “construction clean-up” and hands them tickets and work gloves. I watch them, still laughing, climb into another van. I envy them for being chosen.

I was escorted, staggering, from my last real job. I’d begun drinking at lunch after having a withdrawal seizure in the break room. A co-worker had to Heimlich me while I convulsed because I had a mouthful of Chipotle when the seizure started. A week or two later, the HR lady steered me out of my cubicle with her hand on the back of my neck. I don’t remember what she said when we got to the exit doors, but she looked me straight in the eyes. She wore wire-rimmed glasses. Her eyes were watery and hazel.

The third day without booze was the riskiest. The shaking would subside, and I’d think I was getting some traction. Then I’d be standing in my sister’s kitchen with a tray of rolls on Thanksgiving, or walking for cigarettes, and the next clear thing would be the back of an ambulance or the mud of an alley with my boots and backpack gone. They came with no warning except occasionally my eyes would start to flit back and forth like they do when we’re dreaming, except they’d be wide open. I might have a second or two to get on the ground, and have no recollection of the seizure itself. I’m glad for that.

Each time someone else is called to the counter my hangover deepens. I try to focus on the People magazine someone left on the bus. The sun begins to rise through the floor-to-ceiling window. My stomach growls and flip-rolls oddly. I think of the 23-week fetus I aborted when I was 15. It had begun to move like that. I push the thought down into the hungry space.

If I get sent out, I’ll ask Bob for a lunch. He’ll hand me a paper sack with a bologna sandwich, an orange, and a Little Debbie. Three dollars for the food will be deducted from the day’s pay, bringing it down to $45 after taxes. That’ll get me a handle of Smirnoff, a pack of cigarettes, and a motel room if I can find someone to split it.

It’s 6:45, and a guy in coveralls is folding and stacking the chairs that have emptied. Vaguely, then, a voice reaches me from the raised counter. Nasally and clipped. British. Maybe every other word rides over on my waiting. “Windows… old Victorian… Vine Street…” The accent flutters around my consciousness while I stare out the window, trying not to think of anything I’m thinking of.

“Pay cash every spring… yes sir, yes indeed.” The word cash snaps my head in the direction of the voice. It’s coming from a man not tall enough to see comfortably over the raised counter. From here, I can see three-quarters of his back and the gold arm of his glasses hooked over his right ear. His hair, I can tell, was once brown and has gone beige with gray. He’s wearing a cardigan and khakis, which disorients me for some reason. I shift slightly, about to jump up. Then the man says to Bob, “I have all the necessary tools.”

At that, something opens inside me. My body leans toward the voice, and I recognize the man at the counter—Dr. Eugene Saxe, my former English literature professor. I forget where I am and almost blurt out, Dr. Saxe, it’s me, but stop myself just in time. I feel my chest flush. A million tiny needles prick my face. I sink back behind the magazine. I can’t approach him like this. Not this me. My hair isn’t long and shiny anymore, my face is ruddy and swollen, I’m sure I stink. My feet stay planted on the scuffed linoleum. Self-loathing rises and settles heavy in my limbs.

Two years ago, I was working on a B.A. in creative writing. He led me to literature I never would have known otherwise, and he championed my writing. At the end of our final class, I lingered as the other students shook his hand and moved on. I wanted to thank Dr. Saxe in earnest. We hugged, and I thanked him for the doors he’d opened for me. “Miss Duran,” he said, making my name sound stately, “you are a shining star. You have all the necessary tools to become unstoppable.”

He’d been a stage actor in his youth—Shakespeare mostly—and he taught with overly articulate speech and exaggerated movements. He wore three-piece suits when other professors wore jeans and T-shirts. Over the semester, we developed a sort of game in which Dr. Saxe would pose questions with feigned innocence about stories like “Hills Like White Elephants” or “Cathedral”. Though he expected them, my blunt, off-color responses made him blush and my classmates laugh. When he took us all to see “The Glass Menagerie”, he beamed at intermission standing there in front of the two-story galleria windows. A bright orange squash blossom was tucked into his lapel, and the million lights of Denver’s skyline shone behind him.

Before I became homeless, I found an operable Underwood at a thrift store and carried the ungodly heavy machine six blocks to that turn-of-the-century apartment building. I thought the magic of it might bring me back, but I hadn’t written anything at all. Hadn’t even gotten paper.

While I try to disappear, Bob glances in my direction and hesitates. He’s weighing whether to send someone like me into this man’s home—likely full of small, valuable things. I stand and walk out before he decides, my face turned down and away.

The tenor of that day’s shame, the taste of it, remains unique—20 years later and 15 years sober. I recently tried to find him. I wanted to tell him this story. I found only that he died several years ago. In the obituary photo he’s about 30, handsome in costume and on stage.

Had I approached him that morning, I think he would have helped me. Maybe just by hiring me to wash his windows. He would have acknowledged the seriousness of my situation—he was a serious man—but he would not have made me feel lesser.

For the longest time, I believed I hid to avoid disappointing him. I know now that facing him would have meant grieving the ecstatic, wide-eyed version of myself he had known. I’d loved her, she was gone, and I wasn’t ready to know it for sure.

So, I walked past the back of Dr. Saxe out into the sunny hustle of Capitol Hill. The taste in my mouth was of vodka backing up from my throat, then of burnt paper, then of the green and white peppermint candies he always kept in a bowl on his desk—Starlights, they’re called.