“Baby, I’m serious. We’re spending over a thousand dollars on dope, every week. We can’t do that. It’s unsustainable. It’s insane.”
“Okay. So file that under No Fucking Shit. What am I supposed to do about it? Can I just quit? What about you? Do you think you can quit? If you can, let me know, and we’ll quit right now. Won’t that be nice? Let’s quit right now.”
“You fucking asshole.”
She started to cry.
“Goddamnit. You’re crying.”
“Fuck you, you motherfucking asshole. This is serious and all you are is a motherfucking asshole.”
“Goddamn fucking shit….Would you please calm down….Look….Shit….Please stop crying. I love you.”
“Don’t you understand that we’re completely fucked?”
“I understand. Believe me, I understand. I really do. And you’re right. And I’m sorry. I feel it too. It’s just we’re so fucked and I don’t know how we’re gonna get out from under this thing so all I can do is try and hold things together the way they are. We have so much to do all the time and it’s like when can we get sick for a month, you know? When will we have time to do that? It’s a fucking trap, you know?”
“But we have to.”
“I know. But just not right now. We will though. We can hang in a little longer. Then we’ll get off it.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“No. I do mean it. I’d like nothing more. Truly. This can’t go on forever. That’s fucking obvious. So something’s gonna make us change. We just have to stay together. That’s what’s important. Please come here.”
I held her.
“…It’ll be alright. Don’t worry about it.”
“…You’re full of shit.”
“Goddamnit.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s true.”
“I feel fucking horrible.”
“Me too. I fucking hate this shit.”
We felt so fucking horrible that we had to shoot some more pills. We each did an 80. Then we felt better. It had only cost us $90, and we could make it through the night. Tomorrow it would only cost another $90 to get us out of bed.
We watched TV again. We went to bed late. We heard a plane flying low over the house. There was a plane that flew low over our house sometimes at night.
Emily pressed against me. “Hmm…how come you never fuck me anymore?” she said.
“I love you too much.”
“You can fuck me in the ass if you want.”
“I’d like that,” I said. “But my heart’s totally broken.”
“So’s mine.”
“I know it is.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Ari called Saturday evening and said he was sick. He said, “Do you have anything?”
I said, “Man, what the fuck?”
He said, “Please. I’m fucked up.”
I said, “Alright. I’m on my way.”
I drove to the abandoned house and Ari really was sick and it was cold as fuck in that house. Ari looked bad as shit going around wrapped in his sleeping bag like he was, guts all inside out, nose running all over him. I knew what he was going through. I went through it all the time. About every week it would happen to me. That’s why I hated seeing other people sick; it reminded me of how fucked I was.
I said, “What happened to your boy? Shouldn’t he be looking out for you?”
“I’m sorry about the other day,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
“Here’s an eighty,” I said. “It’s for you. You can have it and it’s yours and you won’t owe me shit, but you have to put me on with somebody, somebody who’s not a fuck. You give me another motherfucker like Gary and I’m gonna come back and burn this fucking house down with you in it. Please believe me. And I deal with him directly. I don’t deal with you. Make sure he understands that.”
“Okay, whatever,” he said. “Sure. Thank you.”
Ari shot up 40mg and was saved. Then he called Manny and Manny said I should come through. He was out in Painesville. I wasn’t thrilled about Painesville but I’d go see him.
I met him at a gas station off Route 2. I called him from the parking lot. He said go inside. He was standing in the chips aisle, acting paranoid as all get-out. He was on meth and he’d been picking holes in his face. He had his hat pulled down and his collar up. He was talking in a whisper and I couldn’t hear him. I got frustrated.
I said, “Look, man. I got this money.”
“Not here. Go over there and leave it by the Doritos.”
“Uh…”
“The Doritos.”
“Man, I’m not gonna leave the money by the Doritos.”
“Would you keep yer fucking voice down. Everybody can hear you.”
I rolled up my sleeve and showed him my left arm. My left arm was fucked. My right arm was fucked too, but I only showed my left arm.
I said, “Look, man. I’m not fucking around. I’m on the level.”
“Yer not hearing me.”
When I got home with the dope, Emily asked me what had taken so long. I said I’d bought a gram from a new dope boy. She asked if he was alright. I said he was alright enough. She was happy about that. We shot some of the dope and it was good. It was cheap for how good it was. Emily and I were very happy. That night we danced in the living room. We danced for something like a half hour straight. We danced like in third-class ballrooms. We just made it up.
Let’s sing another song, boys, this one has grown old and bitter.
It was a good night. It just happened.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The good thing about Manny was he was a serious dope fiend and he was up against it just as bad as you were, so he didn’t make you wait. He’d even drive you with him to get the dope if need be. There were a lot of people in Painesville who wanted Manny dead. So he had to move to the city. And that was good too because I’d hated going all the way out to fucking Painesville.
He had a room at the Euclid Lodge. He was staying there with his boyfriend, an ice monster named Chauncey. Chauncey was ten years older than Manny and he said he was from Florida. Manny said Chauncey’s dad had been a congressman or something like that. Manny said his own family bred horses. “I come from a very wealthy family,” he said. “But I’m cut off.”
I didn’t care. Yet it was important to Manny that I believe him and when he was out in Painesville he had driven me past a horse farm and said it was the horse farm his grandfather owned. It was dark and I didn’t see any horses.
Manny definitely was a police informant and a lot of people went to jail. Like Ari. Manny sold him a scale with dope all over it. He said he’d sell Ari the scale for $10. That was a good deal so Ari bought it and five minutes later he was getting arrested for paraphernalia and possession with intent to distribute. This was a shitty thing that Manny did to Ari.
Sometimes when Manny needed to get somebody fucked off, the police would raid his room at the Euclid Lodge and strip-search everybody and take one or two kids to jail. But Manny and Chauncey didn’t ever go to jail.
The police had a room directly across the hall from Manny. One time I had parked and I was walking up to go in and a policeman called down to me from the second floor.
“Hey. You left your window open,” he said.
I turned around and looked and saw that I had, and I waved to the policeman and said, “Thanks.”
He said, “You’re welcome.”
The worst thing about Manny being a police informant was he would get on with some good heroin and then it wasn’t long before he’d have to give up the source. Like there were these two guys who had this tar that smelled like rotting fish and got you higher than fuck’s sake for $100/gm. Your ears would ring like a motherfucker. But we weren’t getting it two weeks when Manny had to turn those guys in.
And I said to myself, You really ought to get away from this shit while you still can.
And I said to myself, Duly noted.
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