The Shining Girls A Novel

Mal

16 JULY 1991

Getting clean is easy. You f*ck off for a few months to somewhere you haven’t burned anyone yet, where they might take you in and look after you, feed you up some, maybe even put you to work. Mal has a second cousin or step-aunt in Greensboro, North Carolina, he forgets which. Families are messy to deal with anyways, even before you start getting into that twice-removed shit. But blood calls to blood.

Aunt Patty, however she fits in, cuts the boy some slack. ‘Only on account of your mama,’ she is at pains to remind him regularly. Same mama who introduced him to dope and checked out at the ripe old age of thirty-four with a bad hit in her arm, but he knows better than to bring that up. And maybe that’s why she’s helping him in the first place. Guilt is a great human motivator.

The first few weeks are recurring death. He gets the sweats and the shakes and begs Aunt Patty to get him to the hospital for methadone. She takes him to church instead, and he sits and shivers in the pews and she drags him to his feet every time there’s a hymn. But it feels better than he could have imagined to have a whole bunch of people praying for you. Really invested in your future and calling out to God on your behalf for you to be healed of the sickness, praise Jesus.

Maybe it’s divine intervention or maybe he’s still young enough to be able to shrug off the bad shit or maybe the dope was cut so much it wasn’t that bad in the first place, but he gets through the withdrawal and pulls himself together.

He gets a job packing groceries at the Piggly Wiggly. He’s sharp and friendly and people like him. This comes as a surprise. He upgrades to working the cash register. He even starts dating a nice girl, a coworker, Diyana, who already has a baby by another man, and is working hard and studying part-time so she can move up to manager or maybe even head office, and make a better life for her child.

It doesn’t bother Mal. ‘Long as we don’t make one of our own,’ he tells her, making sure they always have protection. Because he’s done with stupid mistakes.

‘Not yet,’ she says, all smug, like she knows she has him hooked. And he don’t mind that either, because maybe she does. And that wouldn’t be a bad life at all. Him and her and a family, working their way up. They could open up their own franchise.

Staying clean? That’s another thing. You don’t even have to go looking.

Trouble calls out its own. The corner finds you, even in Greensboro.

One bump for old times’ sake.

Shortchanging old Mr Hansen, who is half blind and can’t make out the numbers anyway. ‘I was sure it was a fifty, Malcolm,’ he says in that quavering voice.

‘No, sir.’ Mal is full of good-natured concern. ‘Definitely a twenty. Want me to pop the register and show you?’

It’s too easy. Old habits mix up with new ones, and next thing you know you’re on the next Greyhound back to Chitown with nothing but bad feelings behind and a $5,000 banknote burning in your pocket.

He took the bill to a pawn shop two years ago, just to find out. The man behind the counter told him it was worthless, Monopoly money, but offered to buy it off him for $20 (for ‘novelty value’), which tells Mal it’s worth a lot more than that.

Walking back through Englewood without a cent to his name and boys calling out Red Spiders, Yellow Caps, twenty bucks is looking mighty fine right now. Mighty fine. But the only thing worse than not getting a hit is getting taken for a ride, and Mal ain’t getting swindled by no pawn dealer.

It takes him a couple of weeks to settle back in and get something going. He hits up his boy Raddisson, who still owes him, and puts out feelers for his Mr Prospect.

He gets reports now and again from the tweakers who know he has an interest, and demand a dollar, or a bump, for the intel. Which Mal will happily pony up if they can prove that they ain’t just inventing it. He wants the details. How the guy limps, which side his crutch is on, what it looks like. Soon as they describe metal, he knows they lying. But he’s sneaky enough not to tell them when they getting it wrong. You can’t hustle a hustler.

Mainly, he watches the house. He thinks he’s got it figured out which one. He knows there’s something inside. Even though he’s prowled past those houses up and down, looking in the windows at the wreckage inside, already plundered to shit. But he figures his guy is clever. He’ll have hidden his stash. Drugs or money. Maybe under a floorboard or inside the walls. Somethin’ like that.

But what’s that other great human motivator? Oh yeah. Greed. He sets up in one of the houses across the way. Drags in an old mattress and tries to make sure he’s high enough by the time he goes to sleep so’s that the rat bites won’t bother him none.

And one rainy day he sees him come out. Yes, he does. Mr Prospect limps out, no crutch today, although he still dresses funny. He checks out the scene, left and right and left again, like crossing the street. He thinks no one’s looking, but Mal is. He’s been waiting for him for months. Keep the house in your head, he thinks. Keep it locked in.

The moment his mark is round the corner, Mal is out of his rat-infested bolthole with an empty backpack, darting across the street and up the porch stairs of that rotten old wooden tenement. He tries the door, but it’s locked, the boards nailed across the front just for show. He skips round the back and picks his way over the barbed wire across the stairs that’s supposed to keep people like him out, and through the broken window into the house.

There is some Vegas-level David Copperfield shit going on in here. Must be mirrors and shit. Because what looks like a picked-over ruin from the outside is a decked-out crib when you get in. Old-fashioned, though, like something out of a museum. But who cares, long as it’s worth something. Mal pushes away the thought that maybe it’s hoodoo for real. And maybe the $5,000 bill in his pocket is a one-way ticket. Junkie Paranoia.

He starts stuffing his backpack with everything he can find. Candlesticks, silverware, a bundle of banknotes lying on the kitchen counter. He does a quick mental calculation as he shoves it into his backpack: $50 bills, thick as a pack of cards. Gotta be an easy 2k.

He’ll have to make a plan with the bigger items. It’s decrepit shit, but some of it has to be worth real dough, like that gramophone or the couch with the claw feet. He’ll have to make a few enquiries with genuine antiques dealers. And then figure a way to get it out. It’s ripe for the picking.

He’s about to venture upstairs, when he hears footsteps on the front porch and reconsiders. He’s had about all the fun he can take for one day. And truth is, the place gives him the dreads.

Someone is at the front door. Mal goes for the window. But his heart is skipping like he’s had a bad hit because what if he can’t get out? The devil comes for his own. Sweet Jesus take me home, he thinks even though he doesn’t believe in that church crap.

But he scrambles out into summer 1991, just the way he left it. Rain pourin’ down, so he has to dash across the road for shelter. He looks back at the house, which is a dead wreck. He’d think he was trippin’ if he didn’t have the bag of goodies as evidence. F*ck me, he breathes, looking back. It’s trickery and special effects. Hollywood shit. Stupid to get so worked up about it.

But he ain’t going back. Not for nothing, he tells himself. Knowing already that of course he will.

Soon as he’s spare again. Soon as he’s jonesing again. Dope don’t have no sympathy, not for love or family, definitely not for fear. Put dope and the devil up against each other in the ring, and dope will win out. Every single time.