Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames

Author:Jonathan Ames
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2004-10-19T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

A talk with Jeeves about detaching with love, as opposed to detached retinasI give a speech on the possible interpersonal application of the lifeguard motto

“Oh, Jeeves,” I said. I was in bed. It was morning. My brain was a blister and my mouth was an old leather wallet without any money.

“Yes, sir?”

“Oh, Jeeves …”

“Yes, sir?”

“Stop it, Jeeves. Please. I'm sick. I'm not fit for a duet.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please, Jeeves. No more yes, sirs.”

“Very good, sir.”

I closed my eyes. I thought I might vomit. I steadied myself with a yoga breath.

“Some water, Jeeves.”

Jeeves vanished. Went to the bathroom and returned with a glass of water. I propped myself on an elbow and got down all of that nourishing cocktail of two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. Sunshine lit the edges of my thin, white curtains and gave the room a yellow, early-morning glow. I looked at my travel clock: only seven-thirty. I unpropped myself and lay down flat.

“Well, Jeeves, disaster has struck again.”

“I can imagine, sir.”

“I fell off the wagon.”

“I know, sir.”

“Do you hate me, Jeeves?”

“Of course not, sir.”

“But you should. I went back on the booze. It wasn't even forty-eight hours.”

“Your behavior, sir, is undeniably alcoholic.”

“Then you should hate me, Jeeves.”

“No, sir, I am detached.”

“Like a retina? You won't look at me?”

“Not exactly, sir. I once overheard your aunt Florence speaking to your uncle Irwin about the philosophy behind the Al-Anon meetings she attended. She told him that she was detaching from you with love.”

“What do you think that means, Jeeves?”

“That she loved you, sir, but there was little she could do for you. She was acknowledging that she felt helpless to aid you, but that your self-destructive behavior did not preclude her from loving you—at a safe remove.”

“So she didn't hate me for being alcoholic?”

“Correct, sir.”

“And you don't hate me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, you do hate me, or, yes, you don't hate me?”

“I don't hate you, sir.”

“Sorry to make you spell things out, Jeeves. I've sawed my IQ in half with all the liquor I consumed.”

“I understand, sir.”

I felt dismal. Nauseous. Brain pinched by dehydration. Morally defeated. Nose throbbing.

Jeeves stood patiently by my side. Sunlight continued to illuminate the borders of the curtains, like a flame curling the edges of a piece of paper. I did some more yoga breaths, trying to heal myself.

But then suddenly a terrible ice pick of fear shot through my consciousness. I couldn't recall how I had got back to the room or what had happened after that insane Tinkle had driven me to the point of collapse. Might I have gotten into some kind of mischief? It had happened before during my blackouts. In college, I had, according to my friends, smashed my head into the glass of a beautiful antique wall clock in one of the more elegant Princeton eating clubs and said, “Time has no effect on me!” Sober I would never have damaged an old clock or made such a vainglorious pronouncement.

And one time in New York, I had been in a bar in the East Sixties, watching a boxing match around 10 P.

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