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over, Craig, and I can’t afford to redecorate every time you visit. You can stay in Celine’s room if you want.”
    “Thanks,” I said, even though she was clearly exaggerating my record of interior design.
    “Yeah, whatever.”
    So that was that. Mother permitted me to stay in her home, but the unsaid expiration date attached to that bit of hospitality was palpable.
    By the very next day my head was finally approaching clear, and though I hadn’t had any dope in about a week I did swallow that final bottle of meth only a few days prior and was terrified I was finally about to experience the hideous methadone withdrawals I’d heard so many awful stories about. But fortunately, that never quite happened, at least to the degree I would’ve expected it to. So, as a result, aside from being very depressed and suffering some pretty severe insomnia and anxiety while staying at my mother’s apartment—which itself could have been the cause for the discomfort—for the first time in six years I was straight
and
clean. But to suggest I was suddenly imbued with a passion for healthy living and a future devoid of opiates would be false, as I was simply unable and unprepared to address the dependency issues. At that point my mind was being occupied by a destructive space and constantly consumed by evanescent, painful and immobilizing memories of personal failures, tragedies and ghosts from the past that I found impossible to address in the present. Due to several,short, sudden and unsavory epiphanies it had become abundantly clear that I’d wasted the last six years of my life obsessing over a musical journey to nowhere while destroying my body in the process. But what was even worse and the most painful thing to accept was that the death of Eric and Virginia Holst, along with my failure to respond accordingly, was a dagger in the heart of my own stunted and pathetic sense of family. It was this surrogate relationship that I’d not only invested a good part of my life and emotional energy in, but in many ways had defined myself by and now, at least in certain corners of it, I knew I’d
never
be forgiven or welcomed again. So if anything I was feeling detached and isolated as well as physically, mentally and emotionally ravaged, and in many ways I suppose perfectly positioned to become a brand new fuck-up in another city under an entirely different set of circumstances. But regardless of what type of lifestyle I would ultimately embrace, I needed to make some money and was determined to find a job. My situation on Glenbrook Road was tenuous at best, and I wasn’t sure how much goodwill was left in my mother’s tank.
    Before returning to the mall and the Rock and Roll Café, I sized-up my wardrobe which consisted only of things I’d left behind in Queens six years prior when I initially moved into Manhattan with Helmer. As a result I was limited to some tee-shirts and underwear, a few pairs of faded jeans, a ripped denim jacket and the snakeskin boots I’d been wearing for
years
. Certainly, it wasn’t what I would’ve typically chosen to wear while applying for a job—especially one in Connecticut—but that’s all I had.
    Stamford’s Rock and Roll Café was the redheaded stepchild of the smaller Manhattan location which was in the West Village on Bleecker Street, and always seemed a bit too commercial, superficial and out of place even for
that
area—almost like a ghetto version of the Hard Rock Café geared more toward tourists and recent transplants than natives or musicians. The newer version was really just a big bar with a restaurant attached to it, but it was still sort of an odd thing to see in the Stamford mall, andeven odder to be managed by what was apparently a recruit from the West Village with earrings in both ears, spiked hair and a pair of very tight-fitting purple pants.
    “
Oooohhh baby, looky here! We’ve got ourselves a genu INE rock star right here at the Rock and Roll Café of Stamford,