The stress made her want to reach out to me, even though me and TT chuckling at her pathetic ass. She punched herself in the heart and went, Stupid stupid stupid, through her teeth. The minibus still idling outside and she thinking ’bout a tiny chance that she had left the bag out there on the seat. But first she visited every restless black shape in that long-ass room, forty-six in all.
None of you are asleep! she burst out. You just smoked up Crack Mountain and now you’re pretending to be asleep? I don’t think so. Who has my bag?
Darlene! Jackie yelled, and then her voice rang outside the wall. Calm the fuck down.
One of these—has got my bag, and I am going to find out who.
Go to bed, honey, we’ll deal with this once we’ve had some sleep, okay? What you had in there that you need so bad?
Darlene silently had to admit her possessions wasn’t worth much. I was the most valuable thing in that purse—a half-empty glass vial and a rock in a plastic bag from the trip—and surely somebody gonna oblige with a hit anyhow when she start getting boogie fever. But Miss Darlene had issues with the principle—you know how violated you feel when somebody jack your belongings.
After a while, Jackie voice ringing through the room, like Darlene mind be talking, like Jackie cutting in on our braindancing. Jackie go, You still want that hit? It’s yours if you want a hit.
I smiled at Darlene inside her brain. I knew what she gon do. Not to be egotistical or nothing, but I am irresistible.
A totally unnecessary moment went by and then Darlene said, Okay, and gone in Jackie room. Jackie took a hit first, and that shit surprised Darlene for a second, but the radio static sound of them rocks fizzling got louder when Jackie sucked on the pipe and sent Darlene eyes into a rapture like she a motherfucking saint. The flame from the lighter be giving they face a red-brown glow, and the hot glass tube almost singed her lips and fingers again. Darlene knew I was not in the best mood—somebody mixed my ass with levamisole, I hate that shit—but then again, good shit wouldna let her sleep.
Then Jackie goes, It’s ten, okay, but don’t worry, I’ll just add it to your bill.
Levamisole good for deworming a dog, but it ain’t pacified Darlene one goddamn bit once she got me inside her. When she groped her way out the bedroom area, Darlene kept tryna figure out who robbed her, without the use of her eyes. When that shit ain’t work, she fumbled over to the door they’d come through, a industrial slab kinda thing, and she thought she could maybe quietly raise that latch and go out to investigate. The bar felt cool when she touched it—weird for a place that’s mostly hot, where she and the others had started using the bottom of they shirts to wipe away the sweat that be trickling down they brows and turning everything they looking at salty. The rusty iron bar went up a little bit when she lifted it, but she found a giant padlock holding that bad boy shut, a lock she couldn’t believe she ain’t noticed snapping shut behind the group. Who locked the lock? Hammer? What if a fire broke out?
Darlene stuck her hands in the little cranny where the door come to the frame, tryna cut a deal with the steel bulk and the pulley system that slid the whole motherfucker open. The crag ripped one her nails so bad she had to tear it off.
Ah, she thought, that’s good. Nobody could’ve left this place with my purse. She decide to squat right at the opening of the door till sunrise so that couldn’t nobody pass and in the morning she gonna do a inventory and find the handbag. Her eyeballs tryna drink in all the light they could, but it ain’t much. The whole time her open eyes be feeling like closed eyes, and blinking didn’t hardly change the view none. She keep worrying ’bout what she had got herself into with this place. She closed her eyes for real and say to herself that maybe everything gonna turn okay in the morning. She thinking ’bout the book and visualizing somebody giving back the bag.
She laid her head back and hit it against the concrete too hard, had to clamp down her jaw to keep from shouting, then start rubbing the sore spot where she thought a knot might pop up. After the pain got tingly and then got boring, I let go her arms and legs to make em relax and she accepted that she gonna have to take a wait-and-see attitude. She visualized that damn purse and getting the purse back until she done fell asleep.
All the same, the purse ain’t never turnt up. Not only did it not materialize, but the harder Darlene tried to reckon out who done lifted it or where it gone, the more some the crew start wondering—to her face—if a crime had took place at all.
Michelle started going, Did you even have a bag? I don’t ’member you having no bag when you was in the van.
Sirius remembered the bag and described it pretty good, but Michelle was not convinced beyond a doubt. Didn’t nobody trust TT or Hannibal, including TT and Hannibal, and Hammer wasn’t nowhere to be seen. Not one motherfucker confessed to the possible theft of the probable bag, and the whole episode made Darlene look bad and wacko ’cause she had accused everybody before hardly meeting em.
Just ’bout two hours after they got there, sleepytime got done and everybody had to get the hell up and start the damn day, even if they ain’t had no rest. For these folks, rise and shine meant get a hit off a dirty pipe, but Darlene ain’t had me or her bag no more, so she had to mooch. After breakfast—aka a hard-boiled egg, a gritty, no-name yogurt, and a half-pint of ’bout-to-go-sour nonfat milk—Jackie unlocked the door to go out and smoke, but she wouldn’t let Darlene search nobody for the pocketbook. When Darlene checked the road, the minibus gone, probably left during the hour or two when she’d drifted off. Hammer must have drove it somewheres. Had he been inside or outside? Had Jackie had the key all this time? Did Jackie snatch the bag?