THE PROBLEM with Emily and me was we were killing one another. Apart we probably could have managed, but the two of us together was a form of suicide. It took teamwork to get your life fucked up so bad. But we couldn’t let go.
Emily had been giving me a hard time for a few days then. She was real pissed at me because I’d got ripped off for $600. It was something Manny had put me onto and I should have known better; I should have known there was no such thing as a $600 ounce of cocaine. But I was a greedy fucker and I thought my ship had come in: I could have flipped those ounces for $900 all day, and people would have loved me for it. Then I figured out what it really was and the money was gone and there was nothing to be done. It was touching how Manny kept on like he hadn’t known; he had even cried real tears. But I was still out the $600.
Emily said, “You’re killing us, baby.”
I said, “Goddamn would you shut the fuck up?”
It was a terrible mistake to say this. She got to screaming at me then. She’d scream like a great bird sometimes. She’d grow wings and fly around the house screaming like that. She’d be up around the ceiling, screaming. It was really awful. It was like arguing with a pterodactyl. You could do nothing.
I said, “Jesus. Please.”
But it wasn’t ever over quick once she got going. She kept on. She blamed me for everything. She had a point. But it wasn’t like I ever saw her quitting dope.
Say we tried to quit. Say we’d had enough of spending all our money and having a lot of shitty motherfuckers try and get over on us. Say we’d said fuck it and the weekend came and we had time to get sick. We might go a little while, maybe make it to Sunday night, make it with all the fever and the puke and the wishes we were dead. Then one of us was sure to say to the other, “You know, we’re doing pretty good. I think we deserve a little break from this.”
And the other was sure to say, “Yeah, that’s what I was just thinking. Plus we have to take care of the plants.”
“That’s right. The plants. I’m gonna call Big.”
“Yeah, do that. But only get two.”
“Okay. I’ll ask him for four though. We have to go to school tomorrow.”
“You’re right. Better get four.”
We’d be throwing up when we said all this. But already we would be feeling better. There was a hopeful urgency in those moments and life was beautiful.
* * *
—
BIG SAID come on. We drove across town in our pajamas. It was raining. We had enough for five—$225—and we parked somewhere off of Fulton. Big was on time. He pulled up in the white Blazer. Big always came through in the clutch and he didn’t treat us like fiends. Most of the time they do.
I got in his truck: “How do you do, Big?”
He said, “What’s good?”
I gave him the cellophane from my cigarettes. “You got five of those?” I said.
He counted five. “Haven’t been seeing you as much as I usually do,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess not.”
He handed me the cellophane back. I folded it and put it in my pocket.
He said, “You’ve been fuckin with that heroin.”
“Yeah, that’s sort of what it looks like.”
“Uh-huh. You know I don’t mess with that shit. I just fuck with the pills because I know what I’m getting, I know what I’m selling. No problems. No riding dirty. No scales or any of that bullshit. Nobody running a game on me.”
“I see what you mean.”
“Alright. I’ll catch you later.”
“Alright.”
Big drove off and I walked back to the car. Emily had the kit laid out on the center console—the spoons, the needles, everything—and we shot up and we were right as the rain. We went home.
* * *
—
IT WAS the middle of the night. Emily and I were in the basement and she’d filled the garbage can with water. I said, “How long have the plants been flowering?”
She said, “Five weeks.”
I looked at the instructions that had come with the nutrients kit. I’d always thought the nutrients kit was a scam.
I said, “We should just use fucking Miracle-Gro.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” she said.
We were in the room we called the laundry room. That was where the sink was, next to the washer and dryer. The dryer had been broken for a while. We couldn’t get the dryer fixed because of the grow room. We used a clothesline instead to dry our clothes, and our laundry doing had suffered.
There was a 600W high-pressure sodium light hooked up in the corner. That was for the cuttings and for the mother. The mother had been cut all to pieces. We’d taken a hundred cuttings off her. We kept a mound of leftover potting soil in the opposite corner. We mixed our own potting soil. We had such millipedes in the house you wouldn’t believe.
Emily checked the pH. We needed acidity. I turned to get it.
She said, “Not that one.”
I said I know. I took the other one. “How much do you think we need?”
She said, “Here. I’ll do it.”
She did and she checked the parts per million too. She told me what they were. And they were alright. But I didn’t know what they meant. We picked up the garbage can and carried it into the next room. It was a finished room, carpeted and drywalled and all that shit. It had a big stupid fucking tent in it. Inside the tent was Mylar or something else that was like Mylar. I didn’t care if it was Mylar or if it wasn’t, just I didn’t know and it bothered me sometimes that I didn’t know things I should probably know. I knew that I’d glued the Mylar to the walls in the corner of the laundry room and I thought it was probably different stuff but I wasn’t sure. It was a fancy tent. The only thing that made the tent not completely fucking stupid was it was easy to hang the lights off the frame. It wasn’t my idea to buy the tent. All I did was set the thing up. It was Roy who’d said we needed the tent. He’d been our partner in the grow room when we started. Then he stole from us and he wasn’t our partner anymore and we thought he was a real piece of shit. Still I had this fucking tent and I didn’t know how I was ever going to be rid of it.
We only had two 1000W lights—there had been three but we’d had to give one to Roy when we wanted him gone. We were getting a pound per light and we averaged $4500/lb selling it off in QPs and ounces. It took about three months to grow the shit—one month to get the plants up to the right size, two months for the flowering cycle. The lights were on 24/7 in the first month and 12-on/12-off the last two months. This used a lot of electricity and we had to run the lights off ballasts that ran off a subpanel. We had made the subpanel and wired it to the breaker box. We’d had to disconnect the doorbell to make space for it. We had bought all the wire and the conduit and the panel and everything at the Severance Home Depot. I’d been trying to figure out what kind of wire we were supposed to buy, and we were all three of us fucked up on heroin and Roy was being a prick. I’d try and say something and he’d have his fancy little smirk like he always had on his face and he kept looking at Emily and rolling his eyes and she was rolling her eyes. She had taken his side. I couldn’t believe her. She had taken the side of this bitch. And it was one of those situations where you wanted to kill a guy but you couldn’t because you were at Home Depot and there was a law against it and you needed money for heroin and your money was in this thing and it didn’t matter because she’d done what she’d done already and everything was fucked forever and there’d be no changing that. I thought, She’s a horrible cunt whom I love.
And later, when Roy had stolen from us, Emily was real bent out of shape about it.
She’d said, “Why’s he doing this? He’s such a fucking asshole.”
And I heard something in her voice then.
And I didn’t wonder at that.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT