Ninety Days Read Online Free Page A

sign a sheet and tells me the meeting is on the fifth floor. How does he know I’m going to the meeting? I think, worried that I look as unbuckled as I feel. I scribble my name and the time, and hurry up the stairs. On the fifth floor there is a reading room with beautifully carved bookshelves and wide panes of glass that look out onto the planted terraces and curtained windows adorning the backs of town houses and apartment buildings on 11th Street. Something about the room feels familiar, tugs at an old memory, like a room from a house I knew in childhood, but I know I’ve never been here before. Midday light streams in from the windows. Before I look around for Asa I sit down, rest my chin against my chest, close my eyes, and exhale. The shaky alienation I felt on the street just minutes ago calms with each breath. I feel small but safe, and at the edge of tears. I look up and Asa is in the seat next to me. Perfect khakis, black Izod, pink belt, freckled everywhere. Hi, he says, smiling. I wondered if you’d show. His red hair, in the gushing light, glows like a halo. It’s preposterous, I know this, but it really does. He puts his hand on my shoulder, this person I’ve known for less than twenty-four hours but who feels like my best friend in the world. He puts his hand on my shoulder, leans forward, and gives me a powerful hug. You’re a mess, he says. You’re a mess and you’re going to be just fine.

Speck in Streetscape
    I’m lost in the West Village again. I’ve been at Dave’s for almost a week and the streets west of Seventh Avenue are still hexed in some way that makes me always end up in front of the small park at the top of Horatio Street, or anywhere on Seventh Avenue south of 14th. It’s raining. I’m on Jane Street. I know there’s a coffee shop nearby, the one Jack and I went to between meetings on my first day back. I head what I think is west and recognize a little green banner at the end of the block. I’m splattered with rain but still basically dry by the time I get there. There is an advertisement for a pottery studio above the coffee shop sign but there is no pottery, not a trace of it, in the place. The owner is one of the most beautiful men in New York (Jack and I had decided this last week) and also one of the meanest.
    The small, low-ceilinged room is packed. Scruffy twenty-year-olds who look like they star in their own reality shows huddle into their laptops writing—what? screenplays? short stories? Are these the people who used to send me their manuscripts with letters that began with plot summaries? Why are they all so relentlessly attractive? No one moves from their seat and I realize I don’t have any cash on me. There’s no cash machine in the shop and the rain is pelting outside. Can I help you? the mean beauty snaps from behind jars overflowing with complicated cookies. His eyes, I notice, are green and gold and flash my way with nothing but contempt and impatience. I’m waiting for someone, I stutter, and as if he’s been expecting this exact response he says, Well, how about ordering something while you do that.
    Is this actually happening? Do I now have some scent or sign that lets people know that I’m down, I’m broke, banished, have few defenses, and can be kicked?
    Maybe is all I come up with as I turn my back to him and pretend to make a phone call. Who can I call? I can’t call Jack again. I’ve left three messages between last night and this morning already. I’m seeing Asa at a meeting in a church uptown later and, as I have with Jack, I’ve left too many voice mails to leave another. I can feel the barista’s eyes flashing anger at my back. I dial fake random numbers and say hey in the most casual, I-have-dozens-of-friends-happy-to-hear-from-me kind of way. I perform one half of an intimate conversation and worry that at any second this guy is going to escort me out the door and into the rain. I fib a quick See you later, flip the phone shut, turn