I Was There the Night He Died by Ray Robertson Page A

compose myself. “That perhaps some of your struggles are attributable to your not being published? It wouldn’t, after all, be the first time that an aspiring author—”
    â€œI am published.”
    â€œSelf-published, do you mean?”
    â€œNo, published— published —as in published by a publisher.”
    Fingers in the air again, “These ‘publishers’ that you speak of—“
    â€œOh, for Christ sake, Google me.”
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    â€œI’m serious, turn on your computer and just punch in my name.”
    â€œMr. Samson, please lower your voice.”
    â€œDo it, just punch in my name.”
    â€œMr. Samson, I’ll ask you again to please lower your voice.”
    â€œWill you listen to me? I’m telling you, Google me.”
    â€œMr. Samson, I won’t ask you again.”
    â€œFor Godsake, I’ve got my own fucking website!”
    By the time the security guard arrived, I’d managed to find the ON switch at the back of the computer and was waiting for Windows to load, www.SamSamson.ca just one click away.
    Luckily, instead of being banned from the premises, I was “referred” (scare quotes mine) to another counsellor—a big Swedish woman this time—who listened when I spoke and helped me to admit that perhaps I’d reached the point in my life when the going up so high wasn’t quite worth the coming down so low. She also gave me expert guidance and continued general support to assist me in edging off the dexys little by little, day by day, until within two months, the strongest chemical I was putting inside my body was Mountain Dew, the most caffeine-charged soda pop known to humankind, the edgy energy it delivers with every bubbly sip just the jumpy jump-start my revving-up system needs. Thank God for the Dew and my big Swedish counsellor.
    My beer is gone and the wind has picked up and my joint keeps going out; and besides, no matter how faithfully I follow the girl’s instructions, even when I can manage to keep it lit, I can’t smuggle enough smoke into my lungs to make me feel any more stoned than as if I’d just woken up from a very long, too long, nap. I empty the sudsy remains of the beer bottle onto the snow and realize that I’m just killing time, am hoping that the girl is going to join me.
    I storm into the house, angry at myself, disappointed with myself, something.
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    * * *
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    I spend most of the morning addressing e-mails that can’t go unanswered any longer; then, because Uncle Donny won’t be here to pick me up until noon, waste nearly an hour Googling myself, in the process discovering absolutely nothing about me that I didn’t already know. Anyway, that’s what best friends are for, lovers are for, Sara is for. Was for. The final grammar lesson that no one wants to learn: the difference between is and was isn’t just a different vowel with an extra consonant thrown in.
    My big Swedish counsellor was only wrong about one thing. When she advised me to compile a list of all those friends who might, by virtue of their own nasty habits, impede my desire to remain dexy-free, I told her it wouldn’t be necessary, I didn’t have any friends. When she replied, more kindly than accusingly, that that seemed unlikely, I realized it would be easier to concede she was right. But I was telling the truth. For the longest time, I didn’t need any friends. For the longest time, I had Sara.
    Dearest Emily Dickinson opined “The Soul selects her own Society/Then shuts the Door,” and the old girl never wrote righter. I had people I knew when we met and Sara had plenty of the same, but over the course of twenty years together our society naturally selected down to just us. Sara and me. Me and Sara. Sara and Sam. Sam and Sara. Us.
    People we hadn’t seen for months—nice people, good people, other writers or people in publishing I