Gatac

  Sean hit the water hands first, head between his arms. Core tension, good angle, soft blow from his nostrils to keep the water out. He had done it so often he hardly remembered how to screw it up. He kicked out his feet in a smooth rhythm and gently parted his arms for one singur pull. When he emerged at the surface twenty feet ter, he transitioned into a textbook front crawl. They were all watching him — not that Sean had time to pause and look and make sure — but he knew they were watching, because he was giving them a hell of a show. Honestly? This was the first time many of them had ever seen someone swim who really knew his shit. A cold third of them couldn’t even swim. First and st day at the pool for them — flotation vests, human chain rescue, the works. Sean had imagined more swimming in the academy curriculum but whatever, at least he got to use his skills for once. Just for fun, he threw in an underwater reverse at the end of the ne, kicking off the soft blue tiles of the pool’s wall for a few dolphin kicks — yeah, look at that, didn’t even need to move his arms — before resurfacing and finishing the return journey with more front crawl.

  Then he spped his left hand on the starter block and it was all over.

  “Three one and two hundredths,” he heard the instructor say while he wiped the chlorinated water from his face. “You done showboating now, Collins?”“Yes, Ma’am,” Sean said.

  He left it at that, turning to duck under the floating ne divider instead. Six more of those and he made it all the way to the other side of the pool, where he grabbed onto the metal dder set into the wall and climbed out of the water. Considerately, a cssmate of his tossed a dry towel his way.

  “What’s it like?” he asked Sean.“Being me?” Sean said. He stared at his cssmate for a second until he remembered a name. Hector. “Awesome, thanks for asking, Hector,” Sean said. “Autographs at the bus, please.”Hector ughed. It didn’t convince Sean. “I meant looking out over Coney Isnd.”Sean didn’t get it and said as much.“Because fish live in the aquarium!” Hector said. “Jeez, man. Take a compliment.”“Yeah, thanks, I’m a fish in a gss tank, compliment taken,” Sean said, starting his walk back around the pool toward the rest of the academy css. Truth be told, he wasn’t going to use this towel just yet, other than wiping his face. Shower first. “What do you want?”“Jeez,” Hector said. “We’re just talking.”“Yeah,” Sean said. “What do you want?” He paused to gauge Hector’s reaction. “I don’t give lessons. Sorry. Try the YMCA.”“No!” Hector said. Sean looked at him, while Hector looked around, as if to see if anyone was listening.“You’re gonna have to speed this up for me,” Sean said, following Hector as he led them behind the pool’s diving tower. “What’s the problem?”“You know, Craig, your roomie —” Hector said.“I know my roommate’s name, thank you,” Sean cut in.“— and you know he’s drinking, right?” Hector finished.

  Sean had, in fact, gone to some lengths to not know this. Craig, the subject of Hector’s continuing tale, had made a diffuse ‘bad’ impression on Sean from the beginning, at a time when Sean had put that on the life change of sharing his first rental apartment with a stranger rather than anything particur to Craig. But despite the two not warming up to each other from there, Craig had not done anything to him during their academy time, so far. Sure, he was younger and louder and hadn’t bothered to learn how to do his own damn undry, but on the whole they held to an unspoken accord and left each other alone, particurly in the evenings. Had Craig been out drinking some nights? Maybe. But so far he’d managed to show up sober enough to css morning after.

  “So I don’t see how that’s my problem,” Sean said, finishing his side of the story to Hector. He was getting cold from the evaporating water on his skin. “You guys go out for beers, too.”“Yeah, but…” Hector said, fighting for words.“Look,” Sean said, yielding to the temptation to towel off some of the cold water. “If you have something to say, something we need to talk about, then you find me and we sit down and talk about it. But I’m not going to stand here freezing my ass off while you’re making me pry a story out of you, okay, Hector?”Hector nodded.“Thanks for the towel,” Sean said.

  Craig soon became Sean’s problem. Not by doing anything different or by Sean putting two and two together on Craig’s heavily fvored mouthwash and stockpile of aspirin. No, he became Sean’s problem because people were talking about Craig and that meant they were talking about Sean. It was one thing to be kicking so much academic ass people considered him ‘aloof’ or 'haughty’ or whatever slobs called people who put in an effort. That was a type of quote-unquote peer disapproval Sean felt just fine about. It was another thing to be beled an enabler for an alcoholic, because if that spread, the instructors would hear, and then he’d end up in some office standing in some uniform being asked if he did or did not have prior knowledge, please don’t pretend you had no prior knowledge because you do live in the same apartment, what does it say about you if you don’t have the courage to come forward with this? Once you got asked these kinds of questions, you were on the shortlist for the buddyfucker merit pin, and goodbye career even if they let you onto the force at all.

  So Sean dealt with the problem. His way of dealing with the problem was to sit on the apartment couch at 11 PM one night, waiting for Craig to saunter in. Sean hadn’t gone to the trouble of finding out when Craig usually came back to the apartment after drinking, hadn’t put in the detective work, so to speak. He just figured if he stayed up past his normal bedtime, he would catch his roomie by surprise at some point.

  A key was inserted into the lock of the apartment door. Perhaps that was inefficient, a half-step too slow and uncertainly aimed. Then the key was turned, the door opened and Craig walked in, reaching for the light switch by reflex before realizing the light was actually still on.

  “Oh, uh, hey,” Craig said, his head turning here and there away from Sean’s eyes at one time and the sink full of dishes the other. “You’re, uh, you’re —”“Up te?” Sean suggested.“Uh, yeah, you’re up te, you’re…you’re never up te,” Craig said. Was he grateful for the prompt or unable to see how Sean was railroading him already? A good cop should have seen it, Sean thought. Shouldn’t he?“Close the door, please,” Sean said.Craig nodded. “Yo, what’s up with that?” he asked and chuckled, as if chuckling could turn anything he said into a mutually funny joke. He pushed the door closed. “You go out?” he asked, looking roughly in Sean’s direction. “Had a, uh, had a good time, for once?” He chuckled again.“Did you?” Sean asked.Craig looked to the side at their shared TV set. “Ah, man,” he said, “was I too loud?” He looked at the sink. “My bad,” he said. “Look, my bad, right? And I’m gonna…I’m gonna do the dishes. Hey, lemme do the dishes this week, okay? You don’t even stress about the dishes, man. I got it. It’s cool.” He looked at Sean — really looked at Sean — for the first time since coming in. “We’re cool, right?”“Craig,” Sean said, “I think we need to talk.”

  Sean had never told someone they needed to talk and it showed. Sean had been told by others they needed to talk, so he had called to mind a memory of such a moment, but then just said it. He felt no moral authority from saying it like he had imagined he would and Craig just stared at him. Sean wondered if he himself had just stared at people who told him they needed to talk.

  “What?” Craig said, chuckling again. “What, uh, we’re…we’re talking. We’re talking, yeah?”“No, Craig, I mean…” Sean sighed. Was he really going to say it like this? Was there nothing he could say instead, something uniquely Sean-Craig, something not so fucking cliché? Nothing else at all? Maybe he would have found it, if he had dug deeper. “I mean we need to talk talk.”Craig looked down. Wounded gazelle gambit, Sean thought, here comes the blowback. “Hector talked to you,” Craig said.Don’t put this on fucking Hector, Sean wanted to say. God, the transparent deflection…how could he see through the tricks so easily and still not know what to say? “He’s not here right now,” Sean said. “Just us.”“Yeah,” Craig said.“…would you please have a seat?” Sean said, softening his approach. “I mean, this is…this is important to me, Craig. That we talk.”

  Liar. But Craig fell for it. He ran a hand over his stubble and nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, this is important to you, you wanna talk, I get it.” Mirroring, soft py for sympathy. Maniputor, active listening skills from therapy, just an addled mind focusing on the st thing said? He walked over to the couch and Sean scooted over to give him a pce to sit. Craig colpsed onto the couch. He sank into it and turned to Sean.“Craig,” Sean said, “even before Hector told me, I noticed —”“I’m an alcoholic,” Craig said.“…yes?” Sean said.“I’m an alcoholic,” Craig repeated. “That’s what you wanted to talk about, yeah?”“Yeah,” Sean said. “I mean, I didn’t…I didn’t know, but I…suspected.”

  Craig said nothing. He seemed very sober in the moment, and Sean wondered whether he had even been drunk coming in. Maybe Sean had wanted to think that. Catch him red-handed. Sean sniffed the air. And, well, Craig’s breath smelled of alcohol.

  “I mean —” Sean said, then turned away. Don’t expin what you mean! Say it right the first time! “I saw some signs. Signs I…look, Craig, I didn’t wanna see it, okay?”“Okay,” Craig mumbled.“I didn’t wanna see it because I thought it was not my pce,” Sean said. “I didn’t want to…put pressure on you, or sell you out, or…” Sean sighed. “I didn’t think I had the right. You know?”“You thought I would rip your head off,” Craig said.“No,” Sean lied. “No, Craig, I…you’re a good guy. I know you’re a good guy. And…and even if you had, I would have…I would have known it wasn’t really about that.” Because people can’t really be mad at you, Sean, right? There always has to be a part that's not about you, not your responsibility, not your fault.

  Craig shook his head.

  “Fuck,” he said. “I came here to…to fix this. To fix this. To fix me.”“How long have you been an alcoholic, Craig?” Sean asked. What the fuck was prying supposed to do here, Sean? Think before you open your mouth!“Four years now,” Craig said, clearly not his first time telling someone. Sean did the math: with Craig not having gone to college, that would put it at high school, sophomore year.“Have you…considered getting help?” Sean asked.Craig started crying. Fuck! Now what, Sean?“Hey, hey,” Sean said. “I’m here for you, you know,” he lied. “Just…whatever you’re ready to tell me, I want to hear it.”Between sobs, Craig fished in his pockets with his right hand, retrieving a metal disc. He just spped it into Sean’s waiting hand. It was a little AA token. One day sober.“Hey, it’s — “ Sean said. Fucking nothing? A talent show participation prize?1Just to be clear, the narration in this chapter is explicitly from Sean’s viewpoint, and well, he’s kind of a jerk. My own opinion is that any attempt to deal with one’s problems is to be encouraged. I’m not here to critique any particur approach. Find what works for you and keep at it. We’re all a work in progress. “It’s a start.”Between sobs, Craig shook his head. “No, man, no,” he choked out. “No. No, it’s…it’s…I don’t know…I don’t even know, man!”“Know what?” Sean asked.

  Craig started up from the couch, his back turned to Sean.

  “How many!” he cried out. After a few breaths, he wasn’t calm, but no longer a total mess, either. “I lost fucking count, okay? You think…you think I drink like this for…for four years and I don’t…I don’t try?”This was going so well, Sean. Come on, say something smart and make this better. “Craig,” Sean said, “please, you don’t….you don’t have to beat yourself up over it. Come on. Sit down, let’s…let’s keep talking. Okay?”“Okay,” Craig said. Sean saw that Craig had had these kinds of conversations before. Had shed out at someone before, but he had no anger left to project, nothing to throw at Sean. Craig was past that. Past thinking this wasn’t his own personal fault. He had stopped bming others and instead bmed himself that much more.“You’ve been to meetings before?” Sean asked sheepishly.Craig nodded. “The best was…two months,” he admitted. “I felt like shit the whole time. You’re supposed to feel better when you quit, past the detox, but…I never got past the detox.” He looked at the chip in Sean’s hand. “You have any idea what it’s like, man?”“No,” Sean said.“What it’s like,” Craig said, “feeling like shit and going to a meeting and saying, I’m Craig, I’m an alcoholic but tonight I’m sober, just like you did the st time? Like it’s not even you saying it? Just standing there pying a better version of yourself? Fucking starting from zero again?” He shook his head. “Five sponsors,” he said. “I kept count of those. They all start the same way. You know how they start?”“No,” Sean said.“They’ve been where you are, that’s how they all start,” Craig said. “It’s gonna suck, they all say. They wanna tell you they’re real, and that it’s gonna be tough. You have to want it. You can’t get zy. They’re gonna kick your ass to get it done. But trust them.” Craig gave his first chuckle in a few minutes and it sounded way too normal. “Trust them, they say. We’re in this together, they say.”“They let you down?” Sean asked.“They’re people,” Craig said. “I don’t…I don’t wanna hurt people, right?” He looked at Sean.“Right,” Sean said.“I wanna help people,” Craig said. “I don’t want to waste anyone’s time, or…or let them down. I know I let you down, Sean.”“No!” Sean said. He was telling the truth, too. To be let down by Craig would have required Sean to give a damn about him beyond getting his problems out of Sean’s way.

  But Craig shook his head.

  “Come on, Sean,” he said. “You don’t have to spare my feelings. But, hey, sponsors telling me the truth didn’t help, either. I let them down, you know, you let people down often enough and they’re not angry anymore, they just, they…they gave up. I get it. I’d give up on me, too. Thought that maybe if I do the academy, I get…something to fight for. But it doesn’t work. I put in work at the csses, I forget the dishes, but I do the dishes, I show up te for css, and I’m…I’m just…I’m sick, Sean.”“Yes,” Sean said.“And there’s…there’s nothing,” Craig said. “I don’t know, man. I just don’t know what to do…anymore. I can’t keep it together.”

  Therapy, Sean thought. Real inpatient treatment. It seemed obvious to him that Craig wasn’t just an alcoholic. He had other problems going on, problems that weren’t diagnosed and medicated properly, so instead he had tried to numb them. But for Craig to go this route meant kissing the academy goodbye. All the usual empty talk of ‘working toward solutions’ aside, it seemed obvious they couldn’t just let him leave for God knows how long to get sober and then slot him back in like nothing had happened, if therapy ever even managed to help Craig truly overcome his problems. Hell, preexisting condition that Craig had almost certainly hidden during his application, that was the death knell to any serious chance…wasn’t it?

  Sean sighed. “Craig,” he said, “you have to come clean about this.”Craig said nothing.“Look, I know you really wanna be a cop, I know you want to help people,” Sean said, mirroring what Craig had told him just a minute before. Same tricks on both sides. He searched Craig’s face for any hint he might have given away the game there, but Craig’s expression hardly moved at all. “But all this…all this stress. Do you…do you ever drink because of what we do there?”A question way too open-ended for Craig not to nod.“This is not the right environment to get and stay sober in,” Sean said. “I mean — I’m proud of you.”Craig turned to look at him.“For trying!” Sean said. “For trying, and trying again, and…you know,” he added, making a circle with his wrist to indicate repetition. “But it’s not working. It’s not the fault of your sponsors, and it’s not your fault, either!”Craig stared at him.“It’s not your fault,” Sean repeated. “Look, Craig, I…I got an older brother, right?” Sean lied.“I didn’t know,” Craig said.“Yeah, I don’t — we’re not very close, but I have an older brother, Steve’s his name,” Sean continued lying. “And I used to think, he was such an asshole, you know? Just mean and always leaning on me, like only an older brother can. You got any brothers?” Craig shook his head. “Trying to get me to smoke, or sneak into a junkyard with him, or just…teenager shit. And the screaming matches with our dad, it was just…it was terrible. Until one day he came home, and he was so calm and sad, and he told us he’d been diagnosed as bipor. You heard of bipor disorder?”“That’s…that’s when you got mood swings,” Craig said.“Right, the worst,”2Hardly a complete description of the issue, but close enough for our purposes, i.e. Sean bald-facedly lying to Craig to gain some sort of credibility. Also, not to be confused with borderline syndrome. My severely limited understanding is this: bipor disorder stems from physiological issues in the nervous system. A sufferer of bipor disorder is stable and capable of normal emotional experience when not in a depressive or manic episode, so if mood is stabilized with appropriate medication, they’re mostly fine. Someone with borderline syndrome has permanently unstable self-image, emotions and retionships with others, so the issue is compounded by psychological problems. Or, put another way: bipor might blow up on you because they’re currently in a manic episode and not necessarily because you even did anything. Borderline might blow up on you because they see you gncing away from them in conversation, perceive this as a personal betrayal and have a madaptive response to that — hence the “You’re my best friend! You’re my worst enemy!” kind of retionship one might find themselves in with someone suffering from borderline syndrome. In either case, it’s a matter best left to a specialist for diagnosis and treatment. Sean said. “So Steve knew he was sick, too. And tried to put it right, but he just hadn’t gotten the right help before. The third doctor he got to finally diagnosed him correctly and put him on meds. And those didn’t work, but he also did therapy and the therapy helped and a second medication did work, and it was like…” Sean trailed off, trying to spin a realistic but uplifting cap to his lie. “It was rough, obviously. It took time, all the therapy, all the adjustments and hours where we had to talk things through, figure out how we wanted to go forward. We all had a lot to let go and forgive. That was hard work. Shouting and crying and a lot more hugging than I’m comfortable admitting. But we took the time. And now Steve’s in treatment, he’s working at a…concrete pnt, you know, shift supervisor? And he’s pnning to marry. He’s doing so much better now.”

  Craig said nothing, but Sean could see the gears turning in his head.

  “Just saying,” Sean said. Brilliant, Sean, cap off your maniputive lie with the implication that it coming across badly is on the other person, not on you.“Fuck,” Craig said. “All this time I thought…I thought you wouldn’t get it…”“I get it,” Sean lied again.“Do you think I should try?” Craig said. “I don’t wanna repce a bottle with pills —”“Nobody said you had to,” Sean hastened. “Look, that’s…you go to a doctor, get a diagnosis, and they help you decide, okay? I’m sure there are alternatives. Talk therapy, for example. Mindfulness exercises. A low-impact hobby, something to keep focused on, maybe a pet to take care of and have some company? It wasn’t just one thing for Steve. But you’d need to see a professional.”“And quit the academy,” Craig said.“First rule of rescue,” Sean said. “Don’t become another casualty.3This, on the other hand, is good advice. You can’t save someone if you’re in trouble yourself. Take care of yourself, don’t head into danger without an exit strategy, put on your own oxygen mask before you help other passengers. Save yourself before you save others. And whatever you have to do —”“No, you’re…” Craig said, then sighed. “You’re making a lot of good points, Sean.”Was he? “I’m just gd we had a chance to talk about this,” Sean said.“Yeah, I’m…” Craig began. “It’s fucking te, man. Right?”“Right,” Sean echoed.“Let’s just get some sleep, okay?” Craig said.“Okay,” Sean said. Then, he dared to touch Craig, cpping him softly on the shoulder. “You just get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow. Okay?”

  Craig nodded. Sean nodded back. He got off the couch to walk to his bedroom. It was way too fucking te and he was too spent from the conversation to even try to overthink it, so he just climbed into bed. Within minutes, he was fast asleep. He slept well. Problem solved. That’s how much he cared.

  As it turned out, Craig was a liar, too. Sean never saw him again. By the time he woke up six hours ter to get ready for css, Craig was gone, along with his stuff. Left behind was just a small letter, which Sean didn’t dare read, another open envelope with a check for half of that month’s rent, and a sink full of washed dishes.