I Was There the Night He Died by Ray Robertson

you.
    â€œAnd how long have you been self-administering”—the counsellor pressed a forefinger to the three-page questionnaire I’d filled out while waiting for my two pm appointment—“dextroamphetamine sulfate?” I could tell by the way he’d studied the word that he had no idea what it was.
    â€œIt’s basically a pharmaceutical-quality stimulant,” I said.
    Without lifting his eyes from the questionnaire, “I’m familiar with”—finger on the page again—“dextroamphetamine sulfate.” Flipping back to the first page, “And you’ve just turned forty-four?”
    â€œYes,” I said, although, No, I wanted to say—I’ve just admitted to a complete stranger that I’m addicted to speed, but I lied about my age, I’m secretly really forty-five.
    â€œAnd you’re a teacher, I see.”
    â€œRight.”
    This fact seemed to interest him; enough so, anyway, that he looked up at me from the piece of paper. He was tennis club thin and probably no more than fifty, but, I noticed for the first time, sporting not only a surgically implanted weave and a tanning-booth baked glow, but braces. A fifty-year-old man with braces. This was the person who was going to help me get my life back? I was the one who needed professional help?
    â€œAnd where do you teach?”
    â€œU of T. Continuing Studies. It’s just a couple of hours a week.”
    The counsellor slowly, almost imperceptibly, shook his head—although not, I thought, without dimly smiling—and wrote something in the margins of the questionnaire, pleased, it seemed, to have discovered the source of my problem in the first five minutes of our meeting. “And do you think that two hours a week of fulfilling work is enough to satisfactorily occupy yourself as an educator?”
    â€œI’m not a teacher,” I said. “I mean, I am, but I’m busy with other things as well. Believe me, work isn’t my problem. It’s probably the only thing in my life that isn’t a problem.”
    He scanned the questionnaire, undoubtedly looking to determine what precisely these other things were. “Do you mind me asking you how you’re able to support yourself on two hours of part-time teaching?”
    I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. Neither the present status of my bank account nor the insurance settlement I’d received upon Sara’s death that I used to pay off our mortgage was his or anybody else’s business. Sara wasn’t his or anyone else’s business. Under MARITAL STATUS on the questionnaire, I’d checked the box marked SINGLE.
    â€œI write books,” I said. “A large portion of my income comes from the books I write.”
    The counsellor leaned back in his chair, chin in hand, and nodded—leisurely, indulgently—not unlike an insane asylum overseer humouring an inmate claiming to be Jesus Christ.
    â€œI mean,” I continued, “the money’s not all from the books themselves. There are grants, readings fees, public lending rights money, things like that.”
    Another exaggeratedly benevolent nod. “These books that you speak of: are these books that you would like to write someday?”
    Now I was getting angry, and not just because I was more than a little cranky from not having slept more than three consecutive hours in who knew how long. “No, these are actual books that I’ve actually written.” I hated to be an artsy shit about it, but, “There are six novels and two collections of essays.”
    â€œI see,” he said. “And these ‘books’”—he made scare quotes with his fingers, he literally, physically made scare quotes—“would you say that, perhaps, some of your struggles with dextro—”
    â€œSpeed. I’ve got a problem with speed.”
    The counsellor paused, allowing me time, it was clear, to