The Key Confirms a Prison

By Ryan Latini

I don’t always lose my car keys, but every time I do, it feels like I always lose them. I have to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I need my keys. I could get a ride from my AA sponsor, Steve. I could get a ride from the Vietnam veteran, Ron, who told me once, “Give us ninety days, and we will gladly refund your misery.”

Tonight is my first AA speaking commitment. I’ve wanted to get high and drunk all day, but I’ve gotten through the cravings, the obsessions, with the thought that tonight I might actually help someone by telling my story.

I know I should call Steve and ask him for a ride to the meeting, but I am not sure where I left my cell phone. I always lose my cell phone.

I could sit and consider locations where my keys might be. I could actually sit and consider, in earnestness, the locations where my keys might be. I might sit on the sofa and weep over the knowledge that I have ninety-four days sober and still cannot keep track of car keys. I could drive the 2 miles to the dope man in Camden and buy a bundle of heroin, but I don’t have my keys. I could walk to the dope man in less than an hour, but I have no syringes and snorting is a waste. I don’t like facing Camden sober. I would have to get drunk first and that seems like a chore. I don’t remember what I lost at this point. I lost a lot.

I need to go to an AA meeting. The meeting is three miles away, and I have an hour and a half. That is plenty of time, but my ankle hurts a bit and there would be no way to get back into the house without my keys. I could leave the door unlocked, but my stuff might get stolen. I sold my TV and computer when I was on my last rip before I left for rehab. I sold all the jewelry, but the jewelry was never really mine. My ankle does hurt—a bit.

I sit and spin my ninety-day sobriety chip on my coffee table. I lost Kathleen, but she was never really mine. I should make a phone call to Steve—to anyone—but my phone must be somewhere with my keys. I spin my thirty and sixty-day sobriety coins. I try to spin all three at the same time on the coffee table and make a game of it. All three coins wobble with a metallic trill that seems to increase in frequency as they settle on the table. I notice the sobriety coins are all the same size. I have a tape measure, but it is in my car. The chips must be the same size. I stack them, but cannot tell—there could be a slight difference in diameter between the sixty-day coin and the ninety-day coin. Maybe my car doors are unlocked.

Outside, I try my car door and it opens. My ankle feels better. I pop the trunk and retrieve my toolbox. I smell smoke from someone’s fireplace and squint at the sun hanging just above the tree line at the end of the block. I like the way the sun hugs the horizon in late autumn—riding out the day with a sleepy glow. I never noticed it. There is anticipation in the quiet—that dense, muffled chill that yields nothing to the ears and lingers just before snow arrives. The silence itself is a nocturne. The weight of the toolbox in my hand reminds me I should return to my living room and the coffee table and the coins.

I measure the ninety-day coin. Its diameter is one and five-sixteenths inches. It is one-sixteenth inch thick. The thirty and sixty day coins have the same measurements. They might weigh different—denser perhaps—but I got rid of my digital scale when I returned home from detox. Ninety days means more to me, so the coin should be larger. A one-hundred dollar bill and a one-dollar bill have the same dimensions but different values; but, a quarter is bigger than a dime and has more value. I should call Steve and ask him about the sobriety coins. Oh, that doesn’t work either, because a dime has more value than a nickel, but the nickel is larger, and I can’t find my cell phone.

I wish I had a photo of Kathleen to pine over. Black hair. She had black hair. I don’t know what happened to all my stuff. She and I were just poltergeists haunting each other through Post-It notes, unwashed dishes, and steam-soaked bathrooms—empty, but still warm and wet enough to suggest one of our specter selves had just showered and disappeared. Her shift at the hospital would end just as I would leave the house at 6:30am.

I had no job to go to. Kathleen didn’t know. I wanted her to know.

I know the sobriety coin is just a representation of time like the cuckoo or a birthday card or silver on a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I once took all the quarters out of Kathleen’s niece’s piggybank. I weigh the thirty, sixty and ninety day coins in my palm. I need to find my car keys.

Ron, at my first Monday night AA meeting, asked me how old I was. I told him I was 28. “That’s the perfect age to get sober,” he had said.

“Oh, really?” I had said.

“Yeah kid. Dead on. The perfect age to get this.”

I remember another pickled dope fiend had walked in not long after I sat down next to Ron. I had been there ten minutes longer than the pickled dope fiend and it made me feel proud or happy or like I had something to offer him that he didn’t possess. He went and sat in the back row, so Ron went and sat next to him, and I could hear him introduce himself and tell the new guy he was in the right place. “How old are you man?” Ron asked the new guy.

“I’m 37,” the new guy said.

“Holy shit,” Ron said, slapping his thigh. “You know how lucky you are? That is the perfect age to get sober. Dead on, kid.”

I have an hour and twenty-six minutes until the meeting starts—until I have to be there to fulfill my speaking commitment. It’s going to be amazing. Cory will open the meeting, make his announcements, we’ll do our readings, and then he will introduce the evening’s speakers—I wonder who will be sharing their story with me tonight? It doesn’t matter. I’ll tell them how it was. I’ll tell them how my dad was a bartender at the Spread Eagle Inn in the 70s and 80s, and how he would baby sit me there—letting me sit on the pool table and roll the balls around—all the drunks tips helping put diapers on my ass.

Ron and the other guys will probably laugh. I hope they laugh. I’ll tell them how I saw dad jaundiced and go through treatment for Hepatitis C. I’ll explain how he survived a brain aneurysm from using and that is what it took for him to finally get sober. I will wrap all this up nicely and tell the men how, even though I saw the struggles my father endured, it did not deter me from the path that I chose. Ron and the other guys will probably nod their heads. I will get chills from the love and approval in the room.

I will tell them the basics—my progression from booze and painkillers; to pills and cocaine; to cocaine and heroin. Here’s where it will get tricky, because I am not sure if I should introduce Kathleen at this point and talk about our relationship—how we were phantoms. How we were just obstacles to be navigated when passing through the threshold. I suppose it is relevant. I stole her money, her love, and her time—I thought it was just her money that I was taking, but Steve told me I held her hostage and unjustly took her peace of mind. When I get to that part in my story, I’ll be honest and tell the men that I don’t truly know what that means, but I trust Steve’s judgment—he has 7 years sober and I have ninety-four days. The men in the room will nod their heads. Maybe Ron will whisper to another old-timer, “Man , this kid gets it. He’ll probably be around for a long time.”

I don’t want to paint myself as the hero or a victim in my tale, so I will tell them about selling Grand Pop’s cufflinks; lying to Kathleen and telling her I had a job; stealing money from our account in dribs and drabs and going to buy and shoot heroin in the Densfield Housing Project down in Morgan Village. The men will grit their teeth, because they’ve been there too.

I know what I need to do. I need to find my keys and drive to the meeting. It would be nice if it snowed. The sun is down and it is dark, but somehow the sky is glowing pink. It could snow. I could walk to Camden and grab a bundle of dope. I could walk home in the snow, get high, and look out my window at the snow. I know what I need to do. I know I didn’t leave the keys in the lock on the front door. I would have seen my keys when I went out for my toolbox.

What if it doesn’t snow? I have to get to the meeting and tell the men my story.

I’ll tell them about the smell of dead leaves and fallen, rotting trees that lingers in crack houses—how the smell is not odd in the woods, but inside the walls of a row home, it seems misplaced—lost. I will tell them how dark the rooms are—tinfoil lining the windows—and that you didn’t know there were others in the room until someone lit a torch lighter beneath their straight shooter. The light would disappear, but I had already seen the face in the blue light, stippled with rot, so it was hard to convince myself that I was alone. Then another lighter would crack with light in a farther corner of the room. The men at AA will clench their jaws and swallow, because they’ve been their too.

I know my keys are not in the kitchen, so there is no sense looking in there. Why would I have brought my keys into the kitchen? I will tell the men how Kathleen’s Post-It notes disappeared—how it was just my writing on the notes for the last two months. I’ll tell them how I stopped seeing steam from her showers and how one evening I came home, flicked the lights on to check for her notes, but the light never came. The power to the house was shut off. I couldn’t turn the lights on to see that her closet and her drawers in the dresser were empty. The light never came. I couldn’t see that for nearly two months her things had been gone. I couldn’t see that the mattress I passed out on that night back in August had no sheets or blankets. I’ll tell them that it was the light of the morning that brought the silhouette of my father slapping me awake then driving me out to a detox somewhere near Reading, PA.

After this part of my story, Mark, a Bible thumper who usually sits in the back left corner of the meeting, will probably throw his hands in the air. “Oh, thank the Lord,” Mark will say. “Jesus of all people knows about the saving grace of a father.” Some of the more agnostic guys will roll their eyes. Bible thumpers, like Mark, will nod in agreement. I hope Mark is there tonight.

I could call Kathleen, but I can’t find my cell phone. It is probably with my keys. I shouldn’t look in my bedroom. I have an hour and twenty-four minutes until the meeting starts. I know myself, and I am not the type of guy who leaves his car keys in his bedroom.

I can’t wait to get to the meeting and share with the men the sleepy, pink twilight of the late autumn sun that I saw from my driveway this evening—I never saw it before—I never heard it before, the deadened patience of the chilled ground waiting for the snow. I could tell them how I had grand plans of driving snow silently assaulting my windows while I looked out from the warmth gripped by the intense gravity of the opiates swirling through my body. I will tell them that this meeting saved my life. When I am done speaking, Ron and the other guys will clap and nod their heads in approval. They will tell me, live and let live. Take it easy, kid. They will tell me, keep coming back, kid. You sounded great up their—one day at a time.

There could be snow tonight, and my car keys couldn’t possibly be in the couch cushions. I spin my ninety day coin on the coffee table. The table by the front door is empty—that would be a great place to leave my keys. The sobriety coins have a diameter of one and five-sixteenth inches and are one-sixteenth inch thick. My ankle feels fine, but I bet if I rotated my foot to the right it would hurt. I shouldn’t. My ninety-day coin wobbles to a stop. I know what I need to do. I give the coin another spin. I lay down on the couch. My keys are not in the couch cushions. I do not look in the couch cushions, but I just know.