The Caller by Dan Krzyzkowski

Author:Dan Krzyzkowski [Krzyzkowski, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781491763230
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2015-05-05T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

MOST OF THE EVENTS that highlighted Richard’s descent are nebulous to me now. Although I’m able to recall an accurate sequence of his downfalls, I can no longer depict exactly when those individual turnabouts took place with any degree of confidence. I am twenty-eight now. Four years have passed since his death, and even though I’ve done my best to try to cope with his loss, I’ve worked equally hard to put the entire mess behind me. I feel I’ve neared the point where the past no longer interferes with what’s ahead, whatever that may be.

Somewhere along the line, Richard began using alcohol. It was near the time he was moved into finance, give or take several promotional rungs. In reflection, I don’t believe the booze really worsened his disease. It merely accelerated the process. The problem was within Richard himself. Alcohol or none, he’d have hit bottom at one time or another. Though I failed to accept the predicament at the time, Richard was little more than a time bomb waiting to detonate. His drinking simply brought ground zero a little closer.

He established a small liquor cabinet for himself in his study, several feet from his desk. It was convenient, he said, because whenever he needed a drink, he could slide over to the bar on his wheel-mounted work chair and fix himself a number. That’s what he began calling his drinks—numbers.

He’d throw a number together to relax; he’d have a couple of numbers and call it a night; one more number for good luck. I imagine he absorbed the lingo from some downtown bar, an assertion I’d have shamed myself for conceiving back then. But I’m a little older and a little wiser now, and I’ve come to realize that my failure to recognize the truth probably added as much fuel to the spreading fire as did his drunken ambition.

Which also leaves room for speculation concerning some of Richard’s late arrivals from work. It’s only logical to assume that he spent a lot of that “overtime” on a stool before a polished oak counter that I never knew about, downing some numbers with the guys. Shootin’ the breeze.

Richard was learning the ropes of marriage and fatherhood from the score of omniscient patrons who took pride in the knowledge that they were tavern regulars. In truth, half of Richard’s bar buddies probably weren’t married, and the other half probably weren’t fathers. And they most certainly didn’t give a rat’s ass about Richard himself or the crumbling life behind him or what he did with the bullshit advice they fed to him. All I know is that before long, my husband had a bar in his study and a sudden knowledge of how to mix drinks, and that he’d been one of the rare nondrinkers in college. But let’s be honest. It’s not the bar’s fault or the daily clientele that infests it. Richard was the man who walked in there on his own two feet.

His use of the word number was likely a ploy to conceal what he was drinking.

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