Free Point Doom by Dan Fante Page A

would get the first deal of the day the next morning if the up was in our area. I was okay with that.
    IT WAS MONDAY night, too late to go to an AA meeting. My energy was flowing now. I’d had a short fight and I had five hundred bucks in my pocket for the first time in a year, since before I got sober.
    I decided to buy myself dinner and drove my demo Corolla to the Broken Drum parking lot two blocks away on Wilshire Boulevard. The Drum is a steak house with an attached bar. When I was in high school it had been our hangout after a day’s classes or the Saturday night coed dances and basketball games. In those days the bartender was a guy named Sonny. He’d serve almost anyone provided there was a twenty-dollar bill in front of them on the bar.
    Inside, the place was the same as it had been more than twenty years before—new paint, but that was all. It was dark with a lighted fireplace at the center of the main dining room. The bar area had pretty waitresses, fewer tables, and another newer fireplace. I decided to sit there.
    I ordered a steak with a potato and a salad. The waitress was named Betty. In her forties. Tall and attractive with big, full lips. Red red lips. Very friendly. “Anything from the bar?” she asked smiling. “Gin and tonics are three twenty-five before ten o’clock.”
    “I just started a new job down the street at the car dealer,” I said. “So I’m celebrating. I made my first sale today. I made two sales today, in fact.”
    “Hey,” Betty chirped, “good for you. Very cool.”
    “But just give me a tonic water—no gin,” I said. “Put a slice of lemon or lime in it too. Okay?”
    “You know,” Betty said, writing the order down on her pad, a bit distracted, “I bought my car there. Last year. The guy’s name was Woody. Do you know Woody?”
    “Sure, he’s a friend,” I said. “He’s the reason I’m selling cars. Woody got me the job.”
    “They come in here a lot. The heavyset guy from Argentina. Arnoldo. He comes in with that other guy from the service department. Buckie, I think.”
    “You mean Fernando,” I said.
    “Yeah, Fernando. He’s nice. He’s okay.”
    “Tell them to cook my steak medium rare, please? That’s how I like it.”
    A couple of minutes later Betty set a salad down in front of me, along with my tonic water.
    I started on the salad and was halfway through it when I took a sip of the tonic water. It tasted funny. A moment later I realized there was gin in it. It was my first sip of anything that contained booze since I’d quit drinking. My head immediately started pounding.
    Just then Betty with the red lipstick was walking by, taking another order. “Everything okay?” she said, smiling. “How’s your salad?”
    “Jesus,” I said. “There’s fucking gin in my drink!”
    “You ordered a gin and tonic, didn’t you?”
    “No! Tonic—no gin! I’m allergic to alcohol. Jesus!”
    “Oh God, I’m soo-o sorry!” Betty said. “I’ll take it back.” Then she patted me on the arm, scooped up my glass, and walked off, shaking her head.
    The taste of the stuff had made my brain crazy and it began chattering: Hey, have the fucking drink. Just one. Fix your headache! Jesus, what’s wrong with one drink? You already had a sip. Quit being a pussy. Enjoy yourself.
    I dropped a twenty on the table, then got up. I was terrified. One drink and I’d be back where I was before, where my madness had taken me—back to hell.
    Once outside in my demo car, still freaked that I’d had a sip of gin and would now be back out of control—that the obsession to get drunk would come back—I punched in Southbay Bill’s number on my cell phone.
    No answer. I dialed again. When the call went to voice mail, I hung up.
    Then I punched in Bob Anderson’s number. The mean-ass old guy had fired me as his sponsee nine months before because I failed to show up for one of our appointments about discussing the AA Third Step.
    I was desperate and I didn’t care. I