The Vice of Self by Robert J Brunet (essential books to read txt) 📕

months, and I never felt the need to tell him because he was the kind of person who already knew what went wrong.
“Lee, my boy, I was wondering if you were going to be home Saturday night, but seeing as how you’ve gotten yourself a new career I doubt you’ll be available to join me and Marie for a little bowling and beer.”
I opened the refrigerator door, leaned in and searched for the small plastic bottle I kept hidden behind my orange juice, wondering why he was asking me to go out with him. It was something he had never done before and he avoided odd numbers at all costs. As I quietly counted out my pills he must have taken my silence to be the unstated question.
“Marie’s daughter is visiting her from out of town and she’ll be there with us. It might be a nice change for you to get out and enjoy yourself a little bit.”
I stood up from the cold box and looked him in the eye. Was he trying to set me up or was I just the evening out factor for his fear of the number three?
“Well, I don’t think I’ll be getting the Saturday night shifts right away, so I guess if there aren’t some kinds of strings attached to this…”
“No! None at all. I assure you it’s just that, well, you know…”
His uncomfortable shifting around as he gazed at the worn linoleum floor told me I was simply the magic number four for his trio, and with that relief in my mind I agreed to do all I could to join him and his lady friend for some bowling.

Despite everything I tried, sleep was as elusive as forgiveness in a brothel filled with well-paid whores. I lay in the bed, my heart beating as I listened to the thunder march into town like a circus under a cloud of white fireworks, and wondered what the morning would bring.
I was lucky enough to find some wrinkled black pants that had been packed away for the last few months. Most of the time I spent in the hospital I wore a dressing gown and it was only stupid luck that the suitcase I left with a friend as collateral was still sitting in his living room, waiting for the fifty dollars promised before I got sick.
The rain washed down the alleyway between my bedroom and the house next door. It was close enough to touch should you decide to stick your hand out of the window and you could hear the tenants arguing and the television playing well into the night. I reviewed in my head all the important steps of service I learned and taught about waiting tables through the years so the impression I would make tomorrow would be a good one. Somewhere in between replacing used silverware, and bringing a fresh glass of water before dessert, I drifted off to an uneasy darkness filled with cooks leering at me while I stared at plate after plate of overcooked food.
The deluge was a soft drizzle when I stepped out of the shower the next morning. On my way out of the door I grabbed an umbrella from the hall tree and tore off the tape with Frank’s name stuck to the handle, walking out of the house, my head held high, into my new day.
As I headed to the street car stop, I passed the little lounge and heard music coming from behind the painted glass door. I decided a quick drink was the thing I needed to keep my nerves in line for this first day back at work. I opened the door and thought while every bar in the world has its own aroma, you could always tell you were in one by the way it smelled.
Sixty minutes, three Bloody Mary’s and two root beer schnapps later, I barged out of the bar onto the sidewalk only to see not just one, but three streetcars in a row heading downtown and I knew there was a better way I could have spent the last hour of my life than repeating the mistakes of the last four years. I looked at my watch and began the fifteen block trek to Canal Street through the smoldering, damp morning.
When I reached the front door of work I was soaked in a way that only happens to drunks in a swamp. I stopped and searched my pocket for the bow tie Jack had given to me to wear with my uniform, and realized I left it sitting on the barstool with the umbrella in the bar by the house. I stole a sideways glance at myself in the tinted window of a shiny new car parked outside of the restaurant. Running my fingers across my scalp, I pulled my sunglasses off and thought that I was lucky there was not much hair to mess up, but my shirt looked like a wrinkled hell. I turned away thinking how short and round I appeared in what was surely a distorted reflection.
Before walking in I cupped my hand in front of my face to smell my breath and could not tell what was worse, the odor coming out of my mouth or whatever it was on the tips of my fingers. I took one last look at the car parked in front of the restaurant and wondered what happened to the one just like it that I owned once upon a time.

That night after work I sat on the front porch thinking how my first day was almost my last and all the effort I put into starting over could have ended easier than it had begun. I showed up drunk, late and looking like I had slept in the back of a pickup truck in my work clothes. But Jack was not there, and the assistant manager loaned me a spare tie he kept in a locker upstairs for days when he had to fill in and pick up shifts. When he handed it to me he gave me that knowing smile which always bothers me and I thought I could smell a little gin on the wind as he walked quickly away from me.
I stirred my soda with a straw, wishing for a vodka, but the music floating from the back patio of the bar next door warned me of earlier wrongdoings and my promise not to blunder away another day of my life. Frank sat in his favorite wicker chair next to me, took a long sip of his coffee, and told me the story of how he met Marie.
“After I got out of the hospital I couldn’t recall where I had been. Not like…what do you call a person who can’t remember things?”
“Amnesiac?” I turned to face him, wondering if he was joking with me, but with this old man you could never really tell when your leg was being pulled until it had been yanked out of its socket.
“Right, not like that. I just couldn’t get back to where I had come from. Directions going forward were good; I just had problems returning to where I had started.”
After I left New Orleans, Frank was shot in the head when he tried to stop a thirteen year old boy from robbing his own grandmother’s sandwich shop. To everyone’s surprise he survived the wound, but when he woke up six weeks later, he had developed an aversion to odd numbers, a need to write his name on all of the furniture and lost the ability to retain where he had traveled from whenever he went somewhere.
He remained in his home for months fearing being permanently lost, until one day he grabbed a stack of sticky notes and a marker leaving a trail of black arrows, like bread crumbs through the forest, to find his way back.
“Once I figured that out, I started taking therapy at the hospital on Prytania, but after a couple of weeks I noticed my arrows were being taken down around the halls. I’d wander around too embarrassed to ask my way out until one of the nurses walked me to the door. She talked to everyone and made them promise to leave the arrows up but they kept disappearing after my sessions.”
“What did you do?”
“A little undercover work. I skipped my meeting one night so I could hang out near the nurse’s station with a clipboard and a lab coat I borrowed from the laundry bin to see who was pulling the notes down. It wasn’t long before a beautiful woman, with caramel colored skin and long, thick black hair – all the way to her waist – passed me by, pulling down the notes and wiping the spots where they hung with a little rag she pulled from her brassiere.
“Was that Marie? Did you ask her to stop?”
“I asked her to have coffee with me in the cafeteria and luckily she knew where it was since all of the little arrows had been taken down. She was there for her own therapy sessions, but she told me all they did was sit around and cry and she was tired of crying, so instead she would walk the halls and help clean up until it was time for her to go home.”
The metal wheels of the streetcar groaned to a halt and we turned our heads to see the large crowd at the stop board an already filled car heading downtown to join the debauchery of weekend partiers in the Quarter.
Frank smelled his coffee and took a sip before throwing the remainder into the small patch of grass by the steps.
“So tell me what your first day at work was like.”
I thought for a moment before deciding to be vague in my answer. Still, the sound of disgust in my voice, mostly at myself, was clear to a man who had spent his entire life taking statements from people.
“You know son, it’s not going to be the Ritz on the first day, but we all have to start somewhere.”
“I know that, it’s just…what’s the point, really, of trying? Of wanting to get myself together again to spend the rest of my life getting kicked around for the things in my past?”
“The point, my boy? Maybe there is no point to all of this and it’s just our silly little actions that give some kind of meaning to our lives. Maybe the point is there is no point, or maybe it’s to try and make one. I don’t know. But I do believe the past is just a bunch of details that only you remember and shouldn’t reflect on unless there’s been enough time to polish it up and make it shine.”
I expected him to give me one of his knowing winks and sly grins, but he was in a place only he could see and understand.
“What the hell are you talking about Frank?”
“My very point, my boy, my very point.”
We laughed together and watched the clouds above us turn orange and pink then purple as the ceiling of night closed over our heads.

The sun sparkled off of the polished wine glasses and the perfectly placed silverware set on the tables for the morning buffet. The rain from the day before had leeched away the humidity and the drops of dew on the large green ferns and statuesque elephant ears that surrounded the courtyard dining area cleared my mind and I laughed