THE SUBJECT OF THE MEETING was “honesty,” a standard FA meeting topic. Astrid was glad for the meeting’s start because she actually wanted to tell people about how much pain she was in as the crisis of second withdrawal deepened. Here was one last chance to describe her sense of hollow loneliness, her shameful feeling of not fitting at Indigent-dominated FA meetings, her new cravings. If I let it out, she thought, the monsters would be out and free and down to size. A problem shared is half a problem, promised the old twelve-step adage.
She found her mind wandering, to the water. How she loved to plunge into the lapping lanes at Highbury, with something nearing desperation. The marks of stress would wash off her back like wet bandages. She swam with power, a salubrious self-centeredness, and a kind of aggression that was very different in tone from anything anyone ever saw at Highbury. She was thirty-two years old, and her arms and legs looked more robust than those of many of the men in the constabulary.
About a dozen Flōters and addicts were at the meeting now, and most were people Astrid actually felt deep affection for: there was Gerard, the ex–economics professor with a thick accent who had been banned, literally and, somehow, legally, from his hometown in the obscure farmlands of Alsace. The lovely pensioner, Tom P.—the one second-withdrawal survivor she’d met—was on hand, too. He seemed educated, but he wore the torn clothes typical of Indigents. He also claimed to be a former Dominican brother from County Kerry who, having slept in cemeteries during his homelessness, said he pined for graveyards even yet: “They’re the only quiet in London,” he would say, “like gifts from God, and larger by the day.” Astrid liked Tom—loved him even. As with many of the people at the meetings in East London, Tom had little money. But he was no skiver. When he first got sober, years before, he had worked his way up the ladder at a Catholic social services agency. He was handy with wood. He built intricate dollhouses for his granddaughters, and he had one expression he had become locally famous for in FA: “The best is yet to come.” Because he was the only addict at the Seamen’s Rest past second Flōt withdrawal, the adage was freighted with irony.
An irate Irish single mother named Louisa, whom Astrid felt unaccountably intimidated by, was taking her turn to rave about how she wanted to stab a man at another FA meeting who had told her to “work the steps.” With her thick, curly blond hair and freckled skin, she was dreadfully gorgeous. Like Astrid, Flōt-recovery anger was strangling her, too, but unlike Astrid, Louisa was nowhere near second withdrawal, and sometimes Astrid wished she knew what she was in for—an anger that would crush rubies like grapes and stab more than a few errant Flōtheads.
Louisa said, in a mock ladylike tone, “Oh, I just need to examine myself. That’s right, how could I be so thick?” Then she said, “I’m being honest: I wanted to top this prat.” Louisa was always right up front about people who bothered her, whom she placed in the ignominious categories of “gits” and “prats.” She scared the bejesus out of Astrid, but she often felt she shared her rage, and was comforted that so many others accepted her. Louisa gave her a sense of hope. She wished she would be so open.
When Louisa finished, Astrid tried to speak up. She wanted to start in with the orange-freqs driving her crazy that week—yes, fucking bloody lights on at the fucking bloody zoo, for fuck’s sake—and the stupid useless constabulary wouldn’t know a terrorist from a hippofuckingpotamus, and the filthy teapots, and Sykes watching her, and his spiteful little skin-screen, and how none of you cunts know a fucking thing about withdrawal because you stupid twats always use before you get within a decade of it, you fucking cunts!
But it suddenly seemed awkward to talk at all, and Louisa had just sounded so confident, and then Astrid, at that moment, couldn’t see how her thoughts even vaguely related to “Honesty.”
“I feel a bit off at my job,” she began, “and I’ve these wicked new cravings for the stuff. And I’ve got this naff alarm tonight, again, another naff, time-wasting alarm, and this time it’s at the zoo, right?” She hesitated. “I’m just trying to be honest, right?” It was a moronic beginning, she felt.
She continued: “See, it’s a bit of a bore, really. I actually feel like I understand why so many people are killing themselves in those cults and all. I’m not doing that, but I understand, right? Again, I’m trying to be honest, right?” She paused and noticed that all the friendly chatter in the room had stopped; when others spoke, people still felt free to carry on a bit in whispers. But Astrid, in second withdrawal, after all, was so serious. It was oppressive.
“Let me offer a bit of . . . context, first?” she said.