86'd by Dan Fante

Author:Dan Fante [Fante, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-05-29T12:00:00+00:00

seventeen

Later that afternoon I got the number of AA and called the main office in L.A. and was given the address of a night meeting in Culver City.

The guy’s name was Harvey. He was all business and got right to the point and let me choose one from the long list of cities he’d read out. I didn’t want to go to any more in Hollywood. Hollywood is a snotpile. But I was willing to try. I would do whatever I could not to lose the limo job.

I’d driven by the Marina Club a hundred times when I lived in Venice and I’d seen people standing outside on the sidewalk smoking and holding Styrofoam cups but I had never been curious enough to stop and find out what was going on inside.

I parked my Pontiac up the block on Washington Boulevard just in case I needed a quick getaway, then walked back.

The meeting time posted outside on the door on a stick-on blackboard was eight o’clock. A guy with long sideburns in a Harley jacket, smoking a cigarette—blocking my way—stopped me going in and shook my hand. “Hi. I’m Vince,” he said grinning. “Welcome to the Marina Club.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“First time here?”

“Yeah. Does it show?”

“Like neon,” he said smiling. “So what’s your name, brother?”

“Bruno.”

“Well, welcome, Bruno. How many days you got clean and sober?”

“I’ve stopped counting,” I said. “A week or so.”

Vince sneered, then pointed. “Coffee’s all the way in the back. The meeting starts in five minutes. P.S.: You came on the right night. It’s Phil S.’s twentieth birthday. He sponsors me and five or six of the regular guys here. Big doings. He’ll be the main speaker.”

“Lucky me,” I said.

“No joke, Phil’s a miracle. Twenty-five years in the slam—pronounced dead twice—he gives a great message.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Hey Bruno…keep coming back.”

“Ten-four. You too…brother.”

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