Twenty-Three
twelve years earlier
Not quite noon. His vision was blurry, he had the hiccups and he desperately needed to take another piss. Damn Irish cream. Charlie Makepeace laced his coffee with liqueur at Christmastime, and here it was February, and he couldn’t break the habit. He got a gateway buzz from his morning tepid cup of coffee, heavily diluted with festive creamy alcohol, leading him to c***k a first beer before ten o’clock and spelling bad news for his afternoon. Tomorrow, I’ll drink my coffee black, he promised himself, every day. But the next morning, without fail, the Irish called from his work shed. Good thing Jill still hadn’t figured out where he kept his flats of cheap beer, in a cardboard box above the automotive supplies. He threw his empties directly into the recy
