Oh alcohol, would you please forgive me? For while I cannot love myself, I'll use something else.
Vodka. Is there anything quite so nice? Smooth all the way down my throat. Mix in a little vermouth and you've got yourself a drink. But not just any drink; it's a drink that is guaranteed to make you feel good, make you forget about the crap that's flying about you in a cyclone of self-hatred. Martinis were good enough for James Bond and they're good enough for Tony DiNozzo. Actually, at this point I'll take any form of alcohol that I can get. Gin, tequila, rum, brandy, bourbon…hell, I'd take some sherry if it made any difference.
I mix the concoction—two parts vodka, one part dry vermouth—and add a bit of olive brine on a whim. I was never one for Dirty Martinis, figuring it was a sin to mess with the original. But under the circumstances I decide it's just the kick in the ass that I need.
My kitchen counter is covered in bottles filled with various amounts of alcohol. I've numerous empty beer and wine bottles, half-empty rum, tequila, and bourbon bottles, and newly bought vodka and gin bottles. They should last me a week or two.
Booze has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. You don't grow up in the place I grew up with my father and my life and my problems without hitting the bottle early on. By the time I was sixteen I could mix a Long Island Ice Tea faster than most bartenders. It was my escape from things. Cliché, no? Poor little rich kid turns to alcohol—yeah, that's original. The difference between then and now is that back then I could blame ignorance and immaturity for my misstep. Teenagers are supposed to go overboard on the booze and get drunk; it's like a rite of passage or something. But men nearing middle-age are supposed to "know better" and are supposed to "set a good example," especially when they'd spent the better part of their adulthood in law enforcement.
Suffice it to say I wasn't going to be giving any speeches at local high schools anytime soon.
I hold my drink at eye level, swirling the glass slowly in my hand. The clear liquid, polluted with olive juice, sloshes about, drops splashing out and landing on the carpet. I silently curse, not because I've stained my carpet but because I've let precious drops of the perfectly mixed drink go to waste. Mere drops they may be, but every drop counts when it comes to binges.
As I guzzle the salty drink the way a baby does its bottle, I wonder how it was that I ever stopped my teenage binge drinking. Vomiting all over the bathroom floor a few times may have had something to do with it. But the glorious state of enlightenment you feel before the barfing ensues is so worth it! Surely I can stand a few upchucks now and then in exchange for the happiness that the alcohol brings me.
Magnum P.I. is on, but I can't really follow the episode. My mind feels like cotton: light and fluffy. I am at ease with the world…
…until I hear the knocking at the door.
I sink into my couch with a groan. It's nearly ten at night and there are few people who could be knocking on my door at this hour; I don't want to see any of them.
The knocking comes again, this time accompanied by a voice. "Open the door, Tony. I know you're in there. I can hear the TV on."
It's too late to mute the TV; that would only show that I heard my visitor. I could pretend to be asleep, but I know that wouldn't stop the knocking. So I push myself up and shuffle to the door with my half-drunk drink in hand.
"McGoo," I greet with a slur. "Not exactly the person I want calling on me at this time of night."
He doesn't wait to be invited in but, rather, pushes past me into my apartment. "Let me guess: that's your fifth drink of the night."
"Fourth…I think."
Wordlessly he grabs a garbage bag from under my sink and begins dropping the empty bottles into it. I stand there finishing off my drink, not caring that he's appointed himself my housecleaner. Then he begins grabbing the half-full bottles. "Hey! That stuffs expensive!" I try to grab his arm, but I end up collapsing on the floor.
McGee doesn't acknowledge my fall as he rids my kitchen of every drop of alcohol he can find. The bottles crash and break within the garbage bag, spilling the spirits inside. I'm not to proud to admit that I wondered what the garbage bag mixture of alcohol would taste like, nor am I too proud to admit that I contemplated grabbing the bag from McGee's grasp and taking a sip.
"Disgusting," he grumbles as he drops beer bottle after beer bottle. "How can you live in this filth?"
"I drink the booze so I don't notice the filth," I explain from my place on the floor.
"Tony, you can't go on like this." He drops the bag of booze and grabs me by the shoulders. He pulls me to my feet and directs me toward the couch. I plop onto it and rest my throbbing head on one of the throw pillows. I hate those pillows, but I can't get rid of them. They had been a gift from…
"Ziva," I mumble.
McGee sits in a chair beside the couch and closes his eyes. "You can't blame yourself."
"She hates me."
"Ziva's going through things right now that we don't know about."
"Everyone leaves. Must be me."
"What are you talking about, DiNozzo?"
After much struggling on my part I manage to push myself to a sitting position. It caused my head to spin and I swallow a bit of bile which has started its ascent. "Kate," I say. "Kate left. Then Gibbs left. Then Jeanne and then Jenny. Now Ziva."
"Kate was killed," McGee says in a strained tone, "and so was Jenny. You had nothing to do with those. Gibbs came back, and Ziva and…and Jeanne…" He pauses. "They made their own choices."
"But you don't deny that it had something to do with me. Admit it, at the very least Ziva and Jeanne left because of me."
"Tony, I can't answer that!"
"You don't want to answer it."
"The situations aren't so black and white!" he snaps. "I don't know what you want me to say!"
"The truth."
He turns on me and I can't recall ever seeing him so enraged. "You want the truth?" I resist the urge to pull out my Jack Nicholson impression. "The truth is that you're killing yourself with this crap! You think you're getting rid of your problems by drinking yourself into a stupor each night, but you're just adding more problems for yourself."
"I like drinking myself into stupors," I mutter.
"You're so afraid of facing the situation at hand you avoid it by abusing your liver!"
"DiNozzos are not afraid."
"So man up!" he yells. It hurts my woozy head. "So Ziva left! I get that it hurts you! You're not the only one hurting from it! Maybe you haven't noticed, but Abby's almost at a breaking point! But you know what? We push through and we go on because we can't change the choice she made and neither can you, especially not like this."
I start to reply but then think better of it. Instead, I fall back onto the couch and bury my head beneath the throw pillow. Her throw pillow.
"I take it you're going to hide your head under there until I leave."
"Yes," is my muffled reply, "so go already."
"I'm not going." I'd forgotten how determined McGee could be sometimes. Where was the shy little pushover McGee when I needed him? "I am not going to sit by and watch you destroy yourself from the inside out."
"Go home and you won't have to watch."
"Dammit, Tony! Can you cut the crap for once and be serious?"
"Hey, McGeek, I had this puke last night that would have put your seasick upchucks to shame."
He folds his arms defiantly. "If you're trying to get me to leave by annoying the crap out of me, it's not going to work. I've dealt with you long enough to be immune to your antics."
I had to hand it to the kid, he had spunk.
A sound from beside me alerted me to the fact that he had taken a seat on the floor beside the couch. He was silent, as though waiting for me to say something first. Fat chance.
"You can't do this to yourself."
"Says who?"
"Says me."
"You're not the authority of self-abuse, Probie."
"And says Abby."
"…Okay, she's kind of an authority…"
"And Ducky."
"Well, he is a doctor…"
"And Gibbs."
I pause. My heart is pounding from the alcohol rush and I wonder if it'll burst. My mouth is drying up and I'm beginning to lull into a state of unconsciousness that is somewhere between sleep and comatose. It's a wonderful place…until I wake up. I don't say that because waking up means a sprint to the bathroom so I don't stain the carpet with my vomit; I say it because McGee is right; I don't want to face the situation at hand.
"Life sucks," I groan.
"Yeah," he says, giving me a brotherly pat on the back, "I know it does."
"So what're we gonna do next?"
"Well, I am going to dispose of that garbage bag. Then I'm going to come back up here and search every inch of this apartment to make sure you're not hiding booze anywhere. You…" He trails off and I lie there in anticipation of what he'll say, of what miracle cure he gives me. "You," he continues, "will have to make a choice for yourself of what you're going to do. Is this how you want to spend every day of your life?"
It isn't and I know it, but I don't acknowledge this fact.
"I can get rid of this stuff and I can drive you to a local AA meeting, but I can't force-feed the rehabilitation to you. I can't help you if you don't want the help."
Help isn't something I usually like to ask for; we DiNozzos are a proud clan. Maybe it was the alcohol talking, making me feel vulnerable. Or maybe, amidst the alcoholic haze, I recognized the dangerous pit into which I was falling. Or maybe I was just sick and wanted it all to end. I don't know; I just know that I then said something I hadn't expected.
"Help."