Those Robot Lamentations 

My first ever date sober consisted of awkward silences and sidelong glances with Aimee H. We reclined in the leftfield grass in foul territory, watching little leaguers ping baseballs with aluminum bats and run in trapezoids; I kept bringing up how I was a sponsor now but she just looked at her phone.  

On the way back to her community living place on Swinton Ave in Delray, we passed scores of sober homes: former motels with flashing signs (Recovery Oasis, Heated Pool, Free Wi-Fi!), flophouse garages, bungalows with dented hoopties in the front yards’ square. They were brainless things that bloomed those years. 

“You’ll find your place, Diego,” she said and bestowed a one-armed hug, bolting her door twice. 

I was thirty-seven, and it was a time of firsts: the first time I’d used an oven, the first time I’d had an STD test, the first time my advice was sought. 

I returned to the park to meet Raul. His Pacman beanie askew, we’d been in rehabs together, but it didn’t stick for him. We reclined on the same portion of outfield grass I’d been on earlier with Aimee. There was something about the park that attracted people in recovery–maybe the kids, the sense of a future, baseball as American myth. 

A grounder dribbled our way, and I underhanded it to the ump, Andrew Armitage, whom I’d had homeroom with in 8th grade. The park was bounded on one side by woods and the other by the Intracoastal Waterway that separated Rehab Alley from the condos on the Atlantic. Raul crumpled through a sixer of Ice while I monitored my pulse rate and reflected for the 500th time that sobriety was like a superpower, a time machine or invisibility cloak. 

“This drink’s talking to me, man,” he slurred. 

“I feel you.” 

“I mean, literally.” He showed me the can’s bottom, where usually we’d see the stamped expiration date and manufacturing number. But in this case a message was typed out: “i miss u mariel.” 

We studied his other empties, finding similar encoded sentiments: 

“i never forgave myself.” 

“this job is underwhelming.” 

After the game, men with Dad Bods and CEO voices told us we needed to leave (and take the beer!), so we trudged to the Waterway. We found the tarp and Amazon cardboard Raul hid under the rusted boat launches and set up a tent. While Raul continued to drink and read the cans’ epiphanies, those robot lamentations, I played Tetris on my inherited iPhone 4 and Shared My Story about my stepsister Kim. As a teenager, I spent most of my weekends with her when me and Mom were fighting, when I’d had my first drink. She’d been ten years older. 

“She sounds cooler than my sister,” Raul said. 

“She had her moments,” I said. “She didn’t let anyone drink around me after that, but there were still pills around, all that junk. She couldn’t hide all of it.” 

“Nobody can.” 

“I used to sleep in her bed and we’d play Tetris together until she could sleep. She said it was the only thing that turned off her mind.” 

“Sounds like there are issues there,” Raul said. It was dawn, the water starting to light up. He elbowed me, snickering, and joked, “My kinda girl.” Then he coiled up like a dog, covering his head with two hoodies and passed out. 

Returning to my community living unit, five blocks up Swinton from the Waterway and eight from Aimee’s, I passed runners in rainbow spandex, jogging with monitors on their ears, wrists, and biceps, avoiding me in skeptical arcs, optimizing their lives. I’d gotten into trouble by running from my problems, but wasn’t that what they were doing? Maybe, I mused, all the world was in recovery: we were just children, alone and out of place and feeling like we didn’t fit, like Tetris blocks imploding on the screen, with no option but to Play Again in endless cycles of disappointment and I guess what you’d call hope.

“Those Robot Lamentations” is a chapter from James McAdams‘s novella-in-flash WIP The Florida Shuffle or My Summer in Rat Park II. His short story collection, Ambushing the Void, was published in May 2020 by Frayed Edge Press. He teaches literature at the University of South Florida, Ringling College of Art+Design, and Keep St. Pete Lit. He is Flash Fiction editor of Barren Magazine. 

A Song for James