Her accent is Long Island Irish, though she doesn’t look Irish. The single turn that holds the ends of her belt together has slipped below her navel. Stanley wonders why she even bothered to put the robe on. No thanks, he says.
Alex squashes the eyedropper’s bulb, puts the needle in the cotton, and draws up the fix. Then he hits a vein in the back of his left arm. The liquid in the dropper moves up and down with his heartbeat, gradually darkening. He pumps the bulb, then loosens the belt. Stanley keeps his expression cool, bored, but he’s thinking about the overjolted biker, getting ready to make tracks if Alex hits the floor.
Alex just sighs and sits back on his crate. As if the fix was of less consequence than downing a glass of icewater. He holds the rig out to Stanley, raises his eyebrows.
No thanks, Stanley says again.
Alex looks surprised, then smug. Ah, he says. I see. You prefer the rapture of your own perceptions. For one of your relative youth, that is not surprising. You’ve not yet been made aware of the force and the dimensions of the historical currents arrayed against you. Perhaps you’ve even managed a few small victories. It’s possible. What separates the savagery of the juvenile delinquent from the transformative gestures of the Cabaret Voltaire is precisely that awareness. When at last it does find you, junk will begin to make sense.
Stanley gives Alex a cool once-over: his heavy brow, his sunken eyes, his sleep-tangled hair. Mister, he says, I don’t have a damn clue what you’re talking about.
No? Alex says with a constricted smile. My apologies. I’m afraid there’s a junkie protocol to which I am not adhering. I’m supposed to say that you’re wise not to have a habit, that you’d be foolish to start one. Well. That page of my script must have been left in the mimeograph.
Lyn brings mugs of tea. She knots the belt of her robe, sits on another crate, pushes up the sleeve, ties off her arm. Stanley lifts his mug, blows across it, sips.
Alex has opened his billfold; he counts out a wad, hands it over, and leans back in the shadows. His nose as sharp and protuberant as the dorsal of a shark. Stanley fans the bills, folds them, puts them in his pocket. It’s more than he’d expect to get in New York, but probably less than it’s worth. He doesn’t know the local market, and Alex knows he doesn’t know, so Stanley’s not going to gripe. You’re leaving town, Stanley says.
That’s correct. For Las Vegas. Within the week.
Okay. What do you need?
Alex shrugs. What’s your connection good for? he says.
Can’t say exactly. Anything shy of an ounce should be no sweat.
Alex pinches the opened bindle, lifts it from the tabletop. It’d be the same shit as this? he says.
You bet. But he’ll be shipping out soon, so we gotta move quick.
Your connection is with the motorcyclists, I suppose?
Stanley sips his tea.
Ahhh, Lyn says. The leather strap slides from her arm to the floor, and she slouches on the orange-crate with a dull bleary grin. At least her robe stays closed. Her crate is topped with a cushion, not a blanket, and Stanley sees a logo upsidedown on one end: the same company that bought the harvest that he and Claudio worked in Riverside.
A quarter-ounce should suffice, Alex says.
Two yards I’ll need for that. Up front.
Alex purses his thin lips. I can manage one-fifty now, he says.
Stanley pretends to think about that for a second, then nods.
I’ll have it for you tonight, Alex says. Some of the resident shoreline poets—Stuart and John and a few others—are fêting me. A bon-voyage of a sort. You should come. We’re to meet here at ten. Bring along a pail, and your dark handsome friend. We’ll all catch ourselves some fish.
Alex stirs his tea. The spoon makes lazy peals against the sides of the mug, like a windchime signaling a storm’s approach. Lyn wipes away a daub of blood with a paper napkin. Good clear veins in the crook of her arm: she hasn’t been using long. Alex tells me you’re from Brooklyn, she says.
That’s right.
I’m from Hicksville. You know where that is?
I know where it is, Stanley says. I never been there.
Don’t bother, she says. It’s the absolute pits.
She spreads the napkin, lifts it before her face. Red dots of various sizes appear between its folds. Alex is the greatest writer of his generation, she says. You may not care about that, but I think you should know.
Stanley does not care, Alex says. He is not sentimental. And what is writing if not sentimentality? Unless it’s the dropping of a few slick turds to mark one’s passage. I’m not certain that I care myself.
Don’t say that, Lyn says.
Stanley takes another sip, then swallows. I heard you typing, he says.