She shrugged. Picked up the bottle again, turning it slowly, looking at the little sails and everything inside there. Oh, I was going places, she’d said. She did warn me though, about gravity and shit. Not to ask for miracles. She looked up. “You taking this?”
“Yes. I’m taking all the presents you gave me. I’m moving six miles away. I’ll probably be over here for dinner twice a week because Dori lives on air and Reddi-wip and our stove doesn’t work.” I said that with pride: our stove. Regardless the rest of the sentence. I told Angus the adult in my life was me. A man, living with my lady. And something to the effect of childhood being a four-star shit show as far as I’d ever seen, so I was glad to be done with it. Angus took one of my shirts out of a box, rolled up the bottle-ship in the shirt, and set it into the box, gently. Like a baby in a cradle.
I asked her straight. “You don’t like Dori, do you?”
She pulled out the desk chair and sat in it backward. Stoner used to do that, his arms draped over the back of the chair and his vile brain set on Demon-control. No two humans could be more different. Angus was sticking out her chin, tapping it with the flat of her hand, like there were words she was trying to get into her mouth, but they’d have to be just right. Not hurtful.
“I do like her,” she said finally. “Remember how you were laid up in bed and she came over with presents all the time? That was great. The happy little Christmas elf. I loved that.”
“You were not a fan of the chicken.” Sad history of Lovechild: he got out of the tool shed and tangled with the neighbor’s German shepherd.
“Okay, fair enough. Hate the gift, love the giver.”
“Why, though,” I asked. “Why do you like her?”
I’m not sure what I was fishing for. Angus folded her hands together. “I’ve known you how long, four years, going on five? And I never saw you happy, in all that time. Here and there maybe, but not for a whole day. And now you are. With Dori. I can see that.”
If anybody else had ever wanted me happy, they could have fooled me. Possibly Mom, as long as it didn’t cross tracks with her own maneuvers. That’s all people really want, for you to fit into their maneuvers. Angus though, Jesus. Angus was a freaking wonder.
48
Emmy ran off with Fast Forward. All graduated and scholarshipped to UT Knoxville, then drops the bomb that she’s not going. June was floored: so smart, so beautiful, Emmy could be anything. Except the girlfriend of that grass snake. June laid down the law, Emmy stopped coming home. Age-old story.
But in this version, new to me, the mom doesn’t rest until she’s turned over every rock on the planet. We heard it all from Maggot, after he took up residence on our couch. Emmy got three days’ head start on her getaway, supposedly hanging out with Martha Coldiron. June finally called over there and learned Martha had been kicked out of her parents’ house some weeks prior. Now June was fit to be tied. She called the cops. She called our house at all hours, in case Emmy showed up there. June distrusted Maggot and would only speak to me. If I lied, she’d have my balls on the barbecue. I said yes ma’am. I gave her Fast Forward’s cell phone number, which he wasn’t answering lately. He’d left the Cedar Hill place. Rose was right, he was just a shit shoveler there.
I said all the things you say: Emmy will turn up, she’s no fool. But had a bad feeling. Whatever Fast Forward had been to me, I could see he was bad medicine for Emmy.
“Don’t be so sure,” was Maggot’s opinion. “I bet she’s got him eating out of her hand.”
This was around three in the morning, which seemed a safe hour to go on about our lives. We were sitting on the floor of Dori’s bedroom. “Eating what?” Dori wanted to know.
“It’s just a saying,” I told her. Sometimes she would trip up on the smallest things.
“Eating vajayjay,” Maggot clarified.
“Out of her hand?” Dori often got a little giddy at these times. Maggot put the 80 on the aluminum foil and Dori flicked the lighter underneath. The brown blob bubbled and melted and gave off its happy little smell of metal and burnt tires, sliding around on the shiny foil. I went first, then handed the metal straw to Dori and took over handling the foil. I might have been crap from the knee down, but still had my reflexes. You have to tip it this way and that, to keep it swimming around. Chasing the dragon, breathing its fire. We sucked smoke until nothing was left but a snail trail of melted rubber. And all I could think was: Eighty dollars.
Not a productive mindset, I know. But that pill was two days’ work at the farm store, a week at Mr. Golly’s. And I was doing neither. I had some money saved back, but it was going fast. I relied on Turp and my other guys for tips on who I could buy from that wouldn’t take the car and leave me in some ditch bleeding from the ears. Dori argued in favor of the heroin that was all over the place now, just bam, overnight, it’s smackland. Pretty cheap. We were buying our own now, not filling Vester’s prescriptions on Vester’s Medicare, so Dori was like, Why not get the best, baby? And I’m trying to keep us on the straight and narrow, pointing out what a beautiful thing it is to have no fear of the cops. They’d not bother you over oxy. You could have a hundred pills on you, no problem. If you had a prescription, they couldn’t touch you.
Also, there was the problem of me and needles. Dori was so sweet and tolerant with me. Chasing the dragon was our happy medium.
Mostly it fell to me to call around, make a plan and execute. Dori tried to help, she’d stayed friends with one of the home-care nurses named Thelma that had morphine patches to tide us over. Those were common as litter. Dori would shoot the gel, but it’s mixed in there, with the drug not totally dissolved in the jello part. Thelma warned her about that. It’s easy to OD. She and Dori cut and dyed each other’s hair. Thelma being this older lady, divorced, big talker, with nobody to go home to so she would outstay her welcome, but what can you do. We owed her. Procurement is wearying, you’re running circles to get where you started. I did think of going back to school in the fall, getting my head and body back in the game. Some part of me believed that would happen. September would come around, my knee would feel better. I would quit the dope. But for now we needed our own prescriptions. We had to go deal with the pain clinic.
Due to it being Dr. Watts, we agreed on me not going in. I waited in the car. Dori went nowhere without Jip, so he was sitting on the spot she’d just left, giving me a nasty eye. Gray whiskers around his mouth all yellowed, like an old man that chews tobacco. This was going to be a day. Heat waves over the pavement. It was the end of the month, so not a long line, but some. With the windows down I was getting that whiff of three days, no showers, too many cigarettes. Mostly men. I hated Dori going in there alone, in her little shorts.
She flew back out the glass doors looking slapped. Got in the car and fell to pieces. “Baby, baby,” I said, trying to hold her and not panic while Jip growled. She had her hands pressed up to her face hard, like she’s trying to hide lost teeth. “I miss Daddy,” she said, which killed me. I wanted to be man enough. I pulled her hands away and kissed her wet cheeks and wide, scared eyes. She looked like she’d seen the dead. Told me that man in there was a piece of shit.
“I know he is, baby. We’re just here to get a job done. Did he write you?”
She shook her head, holding Jip, not looking at me. “That motherfucker is gaming this whole county.” Said Dori, that until last year probably put out the cookies for Santa.