The Story of Junk (14 page)

“Next morning, after breakfast, I'm walking down the boulevard, you know how wide they are in Paris, and this guy across the road is waving a fistful of money and yelling at me. Yelling my name! I'm pretending not to see or hear—MPs are everywhere. I can't be caught doing business on the black market. He comes running over, shoving money in my face. Don't bother me, I says. Just walk behind me, willya?

“So he gets behind me and follows me back to the hotel. He pulls money out of a bag and I take it, peel off about a third, and give him the rest. No, he doesn't want it. I says, Look, how much do you make? He's a captain in the French army and the guy's getting a lousy twenty dollars a month. I says, Look, I'm a lot wealthier than you are. Take it. I had to shove it in his pocket and throw him outta my room!”

So Dad went shopping in Paris. He bought perfume for Mom, a new wallet for himself, and as many of the items on his company's list as he had money for. He went back to his outfit expecting to be flayed, if not killed, and distributed the goods, explaining what had happened to the money. “I knew they didn't believe me,” he said, “but they didn't say anything, not a word. That disturbed me.” He said he still remembers that silence.

A few weeks went by, during which he earned the rank of lieutenant. This made the situation worse. Not only did the men distrust him because of the money, now he was their superior and they had to salute him.

“Well,” he said, “they ‘sirred' me to death, but before we went on another mission, I explained that if anything went wrong, it was my ass, I'd take the blame. That's all the lieutenant's bar means. Otherwise, I'm eating and sleeping with them as before, probably dying with them, too. So, anyway, it worked out. They warmed up.

“Two weeks later, I get a letter from an MP detachment outside of Verdun: a wallet has been found on the road. Will I please reply by describing the contents and how they should dispose of it? Who would return a wallet with all its contents? I mean, I grew up on Avenue D. It must be a chaplain, I think—one of some stripe. I ran around the whole outfit showing off that letter. See, I says, I really lost it!

“I returned a letter with a description of the wallet's contents and asked that the finder be given a reward, returning the balance by money order.

“Then we're on a drive, and I'm in my jeep at the end of the column as usual—tanks first, jeeps and trucks in the rear—and a mail jeep comes rolling along and tosses me a bundle. I open it. There's my wallet, with everything in it. They never took anything out.”

“This is a true story,” I say to Kit, who doesn't believe me, and though I know I'm my father's daughter, I also know nothing like this will ever happen to me.

IT SUCKS

This sucks. I'm lying in bed, knees to my chest, staring out the window. It's night. My genitals pound, I'm swimming in jelly. Kit lies coiled beside me, rolling from side to side.

“Must you jerk around like that?” I say.

“Oh, leave me alone. Why do you think they call it kicking?”

I know why. I sit up, legs over the side, feet on the floor. My knees leap into my face. A sour odor finds its way to my nose. B.O.

I stand beside the bed, tear at my clothes. My skin feels like papier-mâché. I have hot flashes, then I'm chilled to the bone. My calves twitch inconsolably.

A venomous rage snakes through my veins and lodges in my throat. I can't contain it. “I don't know how you talked me into dealing,” I tell Kit. “If it weren't for you, I would never be like this.”

“You fucked up all by yourself,” she retorts. “If you'd let me take care of the dope once in a while, things like this never would happen.”

I'm a shit. My hand finds its way to my crotch, hungry for sex I can't bear. I shove my fist between my legs and press. That's worse. I slap my cunt to keep it quiet. It makes me shudder. I stare bleakly into the closet. Nothing left but to lie down and stink up the room.

I want to know how long this will last. Kit's the expert.

“Thirty-six hours,” she says. “If we're lucky.”

“Where are your pills?”

“I took them.”

“What a pal.” The bitterness in my voice makes me angrier still.

“I thought you didn't like pills,” she says.

“Christ!” I say. “Where's Bernie?”

Bernie is Kit's pill connection. He was one of her roommates in the Betty days, a young guitar player who holds her in high esteem. It's mutual. Bernie has a druggist for a father. On blank 'scrips Bernie steals from his father's store, he writes prescriptions for whatever she needs: Valium, Darvon, Darvocet, Percocet, codeine. Kit calls him whenever she goes on the road. What about now? Can he stop by? Yes, but not right away. His father's getting suspicious. We may have to wait a day or two. Or, at least, till later.

We can't wait. We can't. I'll call Dean. He's made enough off me by now to advance me a stash. I can turn it over, he knows that. It's the one thing I'm still good for.

I dial his number. No answer. This sucks very bad. This really sucks a big one.

“Never mind,” Kit says, pulling herself to her feet. “Somebody will think of something.”

I could cry.

I wish I was driving a fast, heavy car, speeding down a mountain road with steeply banked curves and sudden drops. I wish this road could be long and unpaved, I want to feel every shudder in the wheel. I want to see cinders fly, I want to see a crack in the earth. I wish a large animal, a bear or a deer, would cross my path so I could ram it. I want to send it up in the air and crush it under the car. I want to kill it and feel it die. Just so I won't kill Kit.

I look in her eyes. They're murderous.

The phone rings. It's Vance. How'm I doin'? Fine. Do I want to come up and see his new “photos”? Maybe later, I say. Prob'ly later.

I sink back on the bed and the phone rings. “Anything happening?” says a treacly voice—Earl's. My rage grows enormous.

“I can make something happen,” I say through my teeth and I improvise a plan. If the scumbag will front me some cash, I'll make a run for him, sure. I'll get some D on the street and I'll beat it. He'll get a short count and a sour one. I'll spike it with baking soda and sugar and salt and seal it in Kit's old glassines. She saves them.

“I'm coming with you,” she says as I pull on clothes. This is not a simple task. I can't stand upright, my hands won't get a grip. An involuntary tremor accompanies my every labored move. I don't bother with my makeup. On my way out the door, I heave.

We ring the bell at Earl's apartment and I go up. Kit wants to wait outside. Duke's up there with two other a-holes who have runny noses and dark circles under their eyes. I see no signal from anyone, I hear no attempt to explain a thing. “You look funny,” says Earl. Do I? He looks blasted. These guys, these fucking
guys
.

I run with Kit straight to Avenue B, moving with caution. This dopesick, anyone could take us, but it's Isabelle who shouts us down. She's an old girlfriend of the Toast's roadie, a methadone goddess, all smiles. Does she have any juice? No, she sold it. Where'd she cop? “Black Mark,” she says, “but they were busted just before. You look bad.” We look bad? She's like a starved albino rat. We're standing in front of the building where she lives, shivering. After we cop, she says, we can come up and get off at her place.

Someone I recognize from Sticky's says they're selling good shit on Fifth Street. We walk over to a tall, grinning black guy standing alone. “Yo!” I say. I think I'm shouting but he barely hears me. He grins wider. Not only am I sick, I'm white. Uh-oh.

“Give me six,” I say, my voice fuzz.

“Thirty bucks,” he says.

Is he playing with me? That's half-price. I look at him. No change of expression. I hand him the money, take the bags, turn on my heel. Kit buys two more and scrambles after me.

“I don't know about this,” she says. “Why is it so cheap?”

“Cops are everywhere,” I say. “Maybe Flaco is having a sale.”

We push Isabelle's buzzer and climb a flight of steps to her apartment, one room and a half, sturdy gates on every window, all two of them. I plead with Kit: “Do me first?”

“I don't know why I should,” she grumbles. I'm sicker than she is—first time that's happened. She loads the spoon, stares into the powder.

“I don't know,” she says. “It looks weird.”

“Just do it,” I say, impatient. “We can complain about it later.”

She boots it in my arm and sits back to watch my face. I wait, looking back at hers. I don't feel any different. Then I do. “Goddamn the pusher-man!” I gasp. “It's coke! We've bought fucking cocaine!”

There's only one thing worse than kicking dope, and that's kicking dope on coke. Usually, nickel bags of street coke are packed in rectangles of aluminum foil. This stuff was in the same glassine bags they use for dope but without an identifying rubber stamp.

“Is it good coke at least?” Kit says.

“For crying out loud! How am I supposed to be able to tell that?”

“I think maybe you went the wrong direction on Fifth Street,” Isabelle says calmly, taking a sip from her beer. “Try the next block going west.”

A minute later we're back outside, walking up Fifth Street. My legs are still rubbery, but at least I can move. Kit's having trouble keeping up. Near Avenue A we see a gaggle of kids standing on the sidewalk in front of a jagged hole cut into a cinder-block wall, a couple of jitterbugs pacing alongside. We stop and peer into the hole. A short line of junkies is waiting dog-faced before another hole, in a candlelit cavelike space that once must have been a basement.

“Hey, good-lookin', whatchu want?” says a kid about ten years old. He's standing too close to me, he's pressing my arm. An older guy, a seller, is in front of me.

“Aren't you up past your bedtime?” I ask the kid.

“Give me your money,” says the seller. “How many?”

Do we have any money left? Kit passes me forty dollars of her own and I watch as the kid runs to a garbage can on the corner. He lifts out a brown paper bag and counts out four glassines. “The narcs been comin' roun' here all day, man,” explains the seller. “But they don't mess with kids.”

Buying drugs from a ten-year-old—I don't care how smart—upsets me. I walk away shaking my head. “This is really the end,” I say. “I won't do this even one more time, no matter how desperate I get.”

“It's pretty disgusting,” Kit agrees.

“We have to develop more sources,” I say. We have to.

“Piss, shit, fuck.” Kit is kicking the door—Isabelle's not answering her bell. We make our way to Second Avenue. Part of our street habit, or custom, has been to eat right after we cop, usually at one of the Ukrainian diners that are on nearly every East Village block. The best is a banquet hall on Second Avenue, where the bathrooms have stalls big enough for two. No one notices us go in and shoot up, and soon we're sitting at a table. Kit's hungry but I've never felt less like eating in my life. I just want that shithead Earl to stew. That Earl.

A waitress in a peasant costume hands us menus, her smile too sugared for my taste. She says, “Don't you want to use the ladies' room first?”

I feel my cheeks flush but Kit's expression remains neutral. “I already washed my hands,” she says, just as sweet. “Can we order?”

“We have to stop coming here, too,” I say when the waitress has gone. We're having hot borscht and sharing a plate of boiled pierogies—all we can pay for. An accordion player steps up to the microphone at the other end of the room. He nods in our direction. The whole staff is giving us the eye.

“I wish we had enough money for rice pudding,” Kit says.

“Eat the bread. It's just as sweet.” I want to run out of there, quick.

Kit's fiddling with a spoon. “Why don't I do the dealing for a while?”

“You're in a band. You're too public. You're always out of town. We need another connection, that's all.”

“I'm not sure I like that white dope,” she says. “It's too expensive. It's too clean. It doesn't give you any rush.”

“Who cares about a rush?” I nearly screech. “The stuff gets you straight, doesn't it? That's what counts.”

She puts down the spoon and leans toward me. “I
want
the rush. Why do you think I do this?”

I'm exasperated. This dope has not altered my mood. The coke must have done some damage. Turning over what's left to Earl should pick me up. I'll be gone before he opens it.

Kit's eyes, so pinned. Incredible eyes. “We need a new connection,” I say, “and that's that.”

She tears a thick piece of bread and dunks it. “Why don't we try Brooklyn Moe?”

BROOKLYN MOE

Brooklyn Moe is a beer-bellied friend of Bernie's. He deals cocaine. Kit likes him. No, she appreciates him. He brings us an eighth and a half ounce of pot whenever her band has a gig. Moe idolizes Kit. Like most guys I've met from Brooklyn, he's cool enough but he's always stoned. I mean,
stoned
. Excessives make me nervous. And I wish he'd do something about that stringy brown hair. It hides his eyes. They're quiet.

Moe drives us out to deepest Brooklyn, I don't know where. He's taking us to some drug kingpin, a mob type, or a Persian, or a Turk, some immigrant from a place with an opiate-sounding name who he says can sell us quantity for cheap. That's what I've been waiting to hear: quality dope at low cost. Moe says you can get anything cheaper in Brooklyn.

Now we're lost. Brooklyn is vast. I never come here. Who can understand the layout? It's not a simple grid like Manhattan. It's shaped like a chunk of meat. We could be roaming the Amazon, for all I know, the streets are so dense and foreign. We've been in Moe's car quite a while.