She said, “I’ve missed you too.”
She’d been fucking with some guy down in Florida. She shot dope with him. She was working at her dad’s dental practice. She was the receptionist. She said she’d been bored as shit. But she met this guy and he was alright and he got her shooting dope. And there was a time she’d shot too much heroin. Not all at once, but over the course of an hour or two. Lover was there. This was at his place. She couldn’t breathe too good. She’d been worried she was going to die. She rode it out though. Lover had kept an eye on her.
“He said I’d turned blue,” she said.
“Goddamn that’s terrible. That scares the shit out of me.”
And I’d get tore up thinking about it before long, after I’d dropped her off at the station. I’d be thinking about this guy and him watching her turn all blue and what else, watching her gasp for air. I pictured her lying on the floor in some piece-of-shit tract house down in Florida. Wall-to-wall carpet and all that godlessness.
I still loved her.
She wouldn’t fuck me though.
She said I had to get an HIV test before she came back.
And I said alright. And she said she’d be back.
* * *
—
THE FREE clinic did the HIV test with fake names. The name I got was Deon Valentine.
“Deon Valentine…”
“Deon Valentine…”
“Deon Valentine…”
The lady asked how many partners I’d had since the last time I was tested.
“Does it count if I tried but I couldn’t…?”
“Was there genital-to-genital contact?…Then yes.”
“Is that a lot?”
“No. Not really. Have you used intravenous drugs?…Have you had sex with any intravenous drug users?…Have you shared needles with anyone?”
PART FIVE
THE GREAT DOPE FIEND ROMANCE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
There was nothing better than to be young and on heroin. Emily and I were living together. The days were bright. You didn’t worry about jobs because there weren’t any. But you could go to school so you could get FAFSA, you could get student loans and Pell Grants. And if you were getting G.I. Bill, that’d cover your tuition; then you didn’t need your FAFSA for school and you could go and buy dope with it instead. Which was all you really wanted. You could kill yourself real slow and feel like a million dollars. You could grow high-class weed in your basement and pay the rent like that. Of course the future looked bad—you went into debt, you got sick all the time, you couldn’t shit, everyone you met was a fucker, your new friends would eat the eyes out of your head for a spoon or twenty dollars, your old friends stayed away—but you could do more heroin and that would usually serve to settle you down, when you were going on 25, back when you could still fake it, and there was nothing better than to be young and on heroin.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Around ten at night Ari had called back. This was where Ari had said to go. I got off the freeway at Fleet Avenue and made a few turns and parked in the street. The house smelled like cat piss. Ari looked like Justin Bieber. He said Gary was on his way. This wasn’t Ari’s house; this was Gary’s house. I didn’t know Gary; I knew Ari. Ari was from Shaker. Really I didn’t know Ari either. He used to go to ’80s night. I was just hoping he could get me some heroin. I was in need of a dope boy. I was getting Oxys pretty cheap—about 50?/mg—and those were fine, but what I wanted was the real thing. And this was where I was.
Ari and I were waiting in the living room. A retarded woman was watching TV. The living room carpet was red. The retarded woman had a blond mullet that went halfway down her back. Ari called her Shelley. Shelley was watching CSI. She didn’t want to change the channel. She had a husky voice and her consonants were kind of fucked but you could understand what she said and you could hear the desperation in it. Shelley was desperately retarded.
Gary showed up with the heroin. I was surprised because Gary had achondroplasia. Ari hadn’t told me Gary had achondroplasia. Ari hated me. Gary took the heroin out of a little metal box with a magnet on it. He said, “Check this out.”
There wasn’t a lot of heroin. Just two grams. Gary said, “This shit’s supposed to be fire. That’s what my dude told me.”
I gave Gary $140 for a gram. The price was real shitty. I only wanted to pay $100. But Gary had said what he said and I’d allow for quality. We shot up around the kitchen sink: Gary, Ari, and I. The kitchen was trashed. Shelley watched us shoot up.
“You ted I can have tum, Gary.”
“I’ll get you in a second,” he said.
“You ted I can have tum.”
“Would you shut up, you retarded fucking bitch?”
The heroin was alright. Not worth the money. But we all felt it. I had 0.7 grams left. I’d take that home. Gary said, “You like Dilaudid?’
I said I’d take all the Dilaudid I could get.
He said cool.
“You ted I can have tum, Gary.”
“Go watch TV.”
Gary sold me ten 4mg Dilaudids at $7 each and I was glad and I got the fuck out of there. The night was very cold and the cold was good. The cold was familiar. I called Emily and I drove home.
Emily was in the kitchen. She said, “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
I wouldn’t ever get tired of coming home to her. We shot dope and watched late-night TV. Maybe we should have fucked on account of it was Valentine’s Day and all, but we didn’t give a fuck about Valentine’s Day. We only gave a fuck about one thing. So that’s how we were together.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
When Ari’s folks kicked him out he came to live down Gary’s way and Gary put him up in an abandoned house. And it was fucking freezing. But Gary had cracked the gas line so the stove would run. A sofa was next to the stove. All four burners on the stove were going. From the waist up the kitchen was an inferno, but if you sat down too long you could have frozen to death. We were waiting on Gary. I gave Ari cigarettes. Ari was getting sick. He was feeling bad. This was Ari in poverty. Ari’s poverty was based on his belief that he shouldn’t ever have to pay for anything or do anything to make himself useful to anyone. Now he was getting sick and he was wearing his sleeping bag like a cape and things weren’t going especially well for him.
I wasn’t doing much better. Emily and I had each shot a 20mg of Oxy earlier in the morning, but that’d only keep us well for a few hours. A 20 could take you there if you had no real habit but it counted for next to nothing when you were as accustomed to things as Emily and I were. That was how dope had worked on us. It had got so we were wasting our time if we weren’t putting at least $45 in our veins, and even then it was just a little moment till we were sick all over again.
So yeah. Emily was over at school and soon she’d be fucked and she was counting on me to come through for her. I wasn’t having any luck yet, but I had a couple irons in the fire: this shit with Gary, plus I was waiting to hear back from Big about some Oxys. I’d skipped class. I always skipped class to go look for dope. It was more important that Emily go to class since she was the smart one. She was a grad assistant, and it would have looked worse if she missed. People would have said, Where’s the grad assistant?
* * *
—
GARY SHOWED up. He didn’t have any dope. He’d said he did but he didn’t. He had lied. Gary was a real full-of-shit motherfucker and I’d already known that.
Gary had a $20 crack rock.
Ari said, “What about the dope?”
Gary said, “I’m still waiting on Old Boy to call me back.”
Ari’s nose was runny. He was making sad faces.
I lit a cigarette.
Gary said, “You got any glass?”
I had a bowl in the car but that wasn’t what he meant.