Thin Ice (9 page)

We had been talking about it, Ziggy coming home for Christmas
.  We had gone down to Satori Imports to buy him a present. 

“Look at this one,” said
Krishna, her sparkly eyes lit up.

We had been
browsing in the back room, through pot paraphernalia.  The room was hidden behind a curtain made of beads.  We had been in this room many times before, for pipes and rolling papers.  We were regulars at Satori Imports.

“That’s perfect,” I said
.  I held it up to the light.  The light reflected all sorts of colors in the crystal ball held in the dragon’s claws.  It was a dragon bong, and it was perfect because Ziggy and his dad were always playing Dungeons and Dragons.

We
wrapped it.  It wasn’t like us to wrap presents, or buy presents, but the excitement of having Ziggy home for Christmas had overtaken us.  We spent lots of time up in Krishna’s room reading his letters to each other.  Since he had left, we had lost interest in a lot of parties.  We would still go, of course, but it wasn’t the same.  Raj had left also, but he was around a lot more than Ziggy, since he went to school in Milwaukee.  He was usually home on weekends.  In fact, he was there that day.  We showed him the bong. 

“Do you think he will like it?” we asked.

Raj picked it up and turned it around in his hand a few times, with some amused curiosity.  “So you guys actually get smoke out of this thing?  How exactly does it work?”

“You have to put water in it
.  See?” Krishna showed him the water container inside the dragon.  “It’s a water pipe.”

“What do you need the water for
?” Raj asked skeptically.

“It makes the smoke more potent in your lungs,” said
Krishna.

I wasn’t sure she knew what she was talking about
.  I’d always wondered that myself.  I had my own bong at home and used it religiously.  My mom had found it one time and was completely horrified, and I’d known she knew it was for drugs.  She’d tried to get rid of it but thankfully, I was there, and snatched it out of her hands, telling her it was none of her business, that it was not mine and that she better not mess with it.

“You could get me in big trouble with people who would kill me
!” I’d shouted at her.  “It’s not mine, and if anything happened to it, something would happen to me.”

I
’d only half-wondered if she would believe such an absurdity.  I had been able to believe it myself as I’d stood there contemplating it.  Sure.  There were drug dealers who killed people, who killed customers who didn’t pay.

Probably not in
Oshkosh, but the idea was believable.  I’d had no idea if she actually bought it, because she’d scoffed, walked out of my room, and said, “The only person you’re fooling is yourself.”

That was another thing, about drug dealers
.  Since Ziggy had left, we’d had to scrounge to find them.  We’d had to make new friends, none of them as interesting as he was.  We met this one guy who had a garage apartment and a wife and baby.  Somehow Krishna had found him and we went there about once a week.  He was friendly and all.  His wife became angry every time we went over there to buy pot, but that certainly didn’t stop us.

I had money to buy
pot, and that was a nice feeling.  I didn’t constantly have to con my dad out of it.  He had always bought my stories too.  I couldn’t believe some of the ridiculous things he’d bought.  For example, one time I had needed $500.  I can’t remember what it was for, because we never bought that much dope at a time, but for some reason I’d really needed it.  It could have been these leather pants I’d wanted.  Anyway, when he’d asked me what it was for, I’d told him it was for school clothes.  I’d then asked Krishna if I could borrow some clothes to show him when he checked out if my story was true, but he never did.  I’d shrugged and given the clothes back to her after a few days.

Around this time
, Gay started needing money too.  She didn’t have a job like I did, but was pretty resourceful.  You see, I had these records.  I must have had 300 record albums, almost as many as Raj, but not quite.  But they were always scattered.

“How about you pay me
twenty dollars to sort and categorize your records for you?” Gay asked.  I was sitting cross-legged on the floor of my living room, completely frazzled, unable to find my copy of
Teenage Kicks
by the Undertones.

I
was a bit confused.  She had never said anything like that before.

“Ok
ay,” I said, and sat on my gold, scratchy couch with my back to the TV, watching her work.

We passed the bong back and forth
, taking hits.  When she came across
Teenage Kicks
, she showed it to me with a big, happy smile and we played it right away.  A week later, my records were disorganized again and I thought she might be angry, but she wasn’t.  She quickly offered to sort them again for another $20, and we were both happy.  I could find my records and she had a steady, if small, income.

There was a woman there at the Sunnyside Retirement Home whom I liked.  No, it’s misleading to say it that way.  I liked a lot of the people, but I liked this woman in particular.  Her name was Dorothy. 

What I liked about her was
her regality.  She was young in comparison to the others.  She didn’t like to share the way many of them did.  Her life was a private affair, and she rarely spoke about who she had been before she’d been admitted to the Sunnyside Retirement home. 

That was unusual
.  Most of them loved to talk about who they had been.  I didn’t ask prying questions; I liked to let them tell me about themselves naturally.  Or, I should say, I didn’t think about it that way.  It was just that while I was in the process of cleaning them or fluffing their pillows, they would begin talking and I would listen.  Then something they would tell me would spark a question.  But it wasn’t that way with Dorothy.

Dorothy loved to read
.  She read all the time.  I liked that about her.  When I thought about whom I wanted to be when I was old and decrepit like she was, I knew I wanted to be someone who read all the time. 

I didn’t think of her as old and decrepit
.  I thought of her as a queen sitting on her throne, although she was in her dressing gown in a bed with hospital-bed lights.  Those rooms were somewhere between a hospital and a frilly, old-person’s room. 

The
residents always tried to make the rooms homes.  They had their crocheted blankets and their personal pictures.  Their families would visit and bring them things from home to make them feel comfort and love even though they were here and essentially had been abandoned by their loved ones. 

The
ir families couldn’t take care of them anymore.  It had become too difficult.

I fluffed Dorothy’s pillow
.  She thanked me and asked me to turn on her reading light. 

I had a few more beds to check before the end of my shift
.  I went next door to one of the less-responsive patients.  She was asleep, so I went in to turn off her main light and pull up her guardrails.  Then Krishna walked in the room.

I
didn’t have a clue how she came into the nursing home.  She was drunk off her ass.  She stood giggling in the doorway, wearing some kind of black leather getup and gold-and-orange glitter over her eyelids and catlike up her temples.  She opened the patient’s unopened gift of Christmas cookies and started eating one.

“
Krishna! What are you doing?  Put that back!”

“But I took a bite out already
; I can’t put it back!”

“
Krishna!”

“Oh man, these are delicious!”
She reached for another one.  They were little Christmas trees with green and red sprinkles.

“Oh my
gosh.” I checked the lady in bed.  She looked like she might be asleep.  I took Krishna out into the hall.  She was giggling and unsteady on her feet.

“Gay’s out in the car,” she said.

“Do you have any idea how loud you’re talking?”

“You need to come to this party!”

“I’m working.”

“No, it’s great
!  It’s Ames’s friend’s party,” she said, as if that would make a difference.

“I’m working.”

My supervisor, Francine, leaned her head in the room.  “Are you finished with your rounds?”

This was her way of expressing disapproval.

“Almost,” I said.

“Who are you here to visit?” Francine asked
Krishna.

“How do you make your hair do that?”
Krishna asked Francine, really loudly.

“This isn’t visitor hours,” said Francine

“Your hair stays like that when you shake your head.  It’s great,” said Krishna.

“Jane, you need to come see me in my office.”

              “Oh no,” Krishna said, hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’ll be waiting in the car.”

“You want to tell me what your friend was doing here?”
Francine asked, the moment I sat down.

“I didn’t tell her to come,” I said.

Francine eyed me like I was lying.  She scrutinized me until I was nervous enough to say something, but all I did was sputter my outrage till I found my voice, and said, “You can stare at me all you like, but I didn’t ask her to come here.”

“I don’t like
your attitude.”

“What attitude?”

“Your tone is defensive.”

“Because I’m being accused of something I didn’t do.”

“Who is accusing you?”

“You are.”

“I didn’t say anything.  I asked you a question.”

“Yea
h, and then you stared me down.”

“Jane
, your tone is insubordinate.”

“Insubordinate
?  Fine.  I’ll have to chat with you later.  I have a party to go to,” I said, and stood up to leave the office.

“You will need to return that uniform.”

“Are you firing me?” I turned around and stood in the office door.

“Yes.”

“Good.  I was sick of this stupid job anyway,” I said, and left the building.  I was so mad I didn’t even grab my coat.  I went out into the freezing cold still wearing my pink, polyester uniform and climbed into the car. Gay and Krishna were blowing out air that was so cold it looked like cigarette smoke, even with the car running.

“God I’m cold,” I said, slamming the door and
crawling in the back.

“Are you going to leave your car here?”
Krishna asked.

“No,” I said
. “My dad dropped me off here.  My mom needed her car tonight.  Quick, give me a toke off of that pipe.  I quit my job.  Where’s the party?”

“It’s some jocks
.  Jeff Johnson and those guys.  Football players.”

I woke up.  I wouldn’t have woken up.  I would have frozen to death, but someone was kissing me. 

“Open your eyes,
” he said.

I opened my eyes
.  It took me a minute to register that it was Paul.  I was too cold and numb and sick to feel anything other than confusion.  He was holding me around the shoulders.

“Let’s get you into the car
.  You’re going to freeze to death.”

“How did I end up here
?  Where is everybody?”

“Most people went home.”

“How long have I been out here?”

“Long enough that you’re lucky you didn’t freeze to death
.  It took me a while to find you.”

“You were looking for me?”

“I saw how drunk you were.  I saw you attack that boy.  Then you left the rooming house and I didn’t know what happened to you,” he said.  “Put your arms around my neck.”

I tried
, but felt too sick and cold.  Paul scooped me up and carried me to his car.  He still had that great big boat car.

“I didn’t
know you were here,” I mumbled.  “How do you know Johnny?”

“I don’t
.  I ended up here because I was with some people.”  He opened the door and laid me in his car.

“
Wait, I attacked a boy?  What do you mean, like sexually?”

“No
,” he said. “You were beating the crap out of him.” 

Vaguely
, I started remembering flashes of the night. 

“Over what?”

“I don’t know.”

I had lost
Krishna.  I had kept opening doors and calling her name.  There had been couples fully engaged in their copular activities, some of whom had tried to say, “I think she’s with Ames.”

I should have been happy about Paul, but
wasn’t.  And he didn’t seem that happy either.  He just seemed concerned.

“Ziggy comes home in a few days
,” I said.

Paul didn’t say anything.

“Are you going to go see him?” I asked.

“
Maybe,” he said.

“
Why wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” he said
.  “I guess I’m sick of all the drugs.”

“Sick of all the drugs
?  Then what were you doing here?”

“I told you, I just ended up here.”
  He drove in silence. 

I
lay back down on the seat, too sick and drunk to sit up and talk anymore.  He brought me home, and came with me into the back room.

We smoked a bowl together
. I said, “I thought you were sick of the drugs.”

“I am,” he said, and
gazed at my picture window into the dark.

We sat in sil
ence, then I passed out on my green chair.

He must have moved me to my cot
.  I woke up the next morning wondering if it had been a dream. 

Then I remembered I didn’t have my car
. 

I
poured some coffee.  I brought it back with me to my room and sat down at my table, put on some music, and contemplated the snow.