Breakfasts with E

I miss my breakfasts with E.

She would always order a chocolate chip pancake and I would get my bacon, egg, and cheese. We’d talk about Hollywood over coffee in the cafeteria while André the Giant wandered by with Motown playing on his belt buckle Bluetooth speaker. It was almost always The Manhattans.

E would note my Star Wars football shirt I wore as pajamas and we’d talk at length about Carrie Fisher. I’d mention to her my spiritual experience of reading Postcards from the Edge and how the book was delivered to my door right before I left Chicago to fly down to West Palm Beach for treatment.

I remember E’s intake at the clinic. She was blitzed out and wearing a Burberry scarf despite it being 90 degrees and kept talking about how good the food was going to be here.

She sang Harry Belafonte and did the splits at karaoke the same night I began my beat of singing Patsy Cline.

I text her I miss her and she sends me pictures of her and her cat. She made a joke once at group therapy when she came in with her big sunglasses that it was the first time in her life she was wearing shades inside when she wasn’t hungover, that it was just god awful TMJ because she’d lost her million dollar mouthpiece that set her jaw right.

It’s odd making friendships in a rehab clinic.