Let me forget about today until tomorrow. (Bob Dylan)

“One more line and I’ll do it.”

He half-smiled. I held out my hand to shake on it.

“I’ll shake when you’re clean.”

I rolled my eyes as I went to prepare my last line.

“How will you know if I fall off the wagon?”

“I’ll know.”

I laughed.

“Are you going to give me drug tests?”

“If I have to.”

“You’re kidding me? You would give your own niece a drug test?” Ironically I was laying out a line as I asked this.

“Not my niece, my employee.”

“We won’t be related anymore?”

“You’ll learn that family and business can be hard to balance. You have to compartmentalize.”

“Will you revoke my nieceship the entire time I’m working for you or just when I screw up?”

“Mostly just the latter.”

“Good to know.”

“I’m not going to watch this,” he said as he reached for a sweater. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

I rolled my eyes as he shut the door behind him, leaving me alone with my first love, heroin.