Call If You Need Me by Raymond Carver

and walked back to her car and drove that a few blocks, et cetera, et cetera.”
    They all laughed. Nick laughed too. It
was
funny. Nick had heard plenty of drinking stories in his time, but he’d never heard one that had this particular spin on it.
    “Anyway,” Robert said, “to make a long story short, as they say, he drove both cars home that way. It took him two or three hours to drive five miles. And when he got to the house, there was Marilyn, at the table with a drink in her hand. Somebody had driven her home. ‘Merry Christmas,’ she said when Harry came in the door, and I guess he decked her.”
    Carol whistled.
    Joanne said, “Anybody could see those two weren’t going to make it. They were in the fast lane. A year later they were both at the same Christmas party, only they had different partners by then.”
    “All the drinking and driving I did,” Nick said. He shook his head. “I was only picked up once.”
    “You were lucky,” Joanne said.
    “Somebody was lucky,” Robert said. “The other drivers on the road were lucky.”
    “I spent one night in jail,” Nick said, “and that was enough. That’s when I stopped. Actually, I was in what they call detox. The doctor came around the next morning—his name was Dr. Forester—and called each person into this little examining room and gave you the once-over. He looked in your eyes with his penlight, he made you hold out your hands, palms up, he took your pulse and listened to your heartbeat. He’d give you a little talking-to about your drinking, and then he’d tell you what time of the morning you could be released. He said I could leave at eleven o’clock. ‘Doctor,’ I said, ‘could I leave earlier, please?’ ‘What’s the big hurry?’ he said. ‘I have to be at church at eleven o’clock,’ I said. ‘I’m getting married.’ ”
    “What’d he say to that?” Carol said.
    “He said, ‘Get the hell out of here, mister. But don’t ever forget this, do you hear?’ And I didn’t. I stopped drinking. I didn’t even drink anything at the wedding reception that afternoon. Not a drop. That was it for me. I was too scared. Sometimes it takes something like that, a real shock to your nervous system, to turn things around.”
    “I had a kid brother who was nearly killed by a drunk driver,” Robert said. “He’s still wired up and has to use a metal brace to get around.”
    “Last call for coffee,” Joanne said.
    “Just a little, I guess,” Carol said. “We really have to collect those kids and get on the road.”
    Nick looked toward the window and saw several cars pass byon the street outside. People hurried by on the sidewalk. He remembered what Jenny and the other child had said about a fire, but for God’s sake, if there were a fire there’d be sirens and engines, right? He started to get up from the table, and then he didn’t.
    “It’s crazy,” he said. “I remember when I was still drinking and I’d just had what they call an alcoholic seizure—I’d fallen and hit my head on a coffee table. Lucky for me I was in the doctor’s office when it happened. I woke up in a bed in his office, and Peggy, the woman I was married to at the time, she was leaning over me, along with the doctor and the doctor’s nurse. Peggy was calling my name. I had this big bandage round my head—it was like a turban. The doctor said I’d just had my first seizure, but it wouldn’t be my last if I kept on drinking. I told him I’d got the message. But I just said that. I had no intention of quitting then. I told myself and my wife that it was my nerves—stress—that had caused me to faint.
    “But that night we had a party, Peggy and me. It was something we’d planned for a couple of weeks, and we didn’t see how we could call it off at the last minute and disappoint everybody. Can you imagine? So we went ahead and had the party, and everybody came, and I was still wearing the bandage. All that night I had a glass of vodka in my