by Shani Krebs
I had just done all this when the phone rang again. Fuck. I got the fright of my life. My heart beating rapidly, I turned down the tone on the telephone, switched on the answering machine and, on tiptoe, made my way to the lounge window. Moving the curtain ever so slightly, I peeped out through the narrow gap. This was an all too familiar scenario for me. Sometimes I would stand there for hours on end, my .38 Special always at hand, my vigil broken only by regular hits on the pipe.
The phone kept ringing. I was so fucked, wired and paranoid I thought that the phone was signalling the cops, so I unplugged it. Needless to say, I didn’t make it to the movie set (I never liked Eric Roberts anyway), but, worst of all, I neglected to visit Sarah-Lee at the hospital that night. I continued smoking coke, going through the same rituals, right through a second day and into a third. I felt like a zombie, still chasing that very first rush. I couldn’t stop and I didn’t want to.
By late afternoon on the third day I had spent a good hour or two crawling around the apartment looking for rocks that might have fallen onto the carpet, in between peering out the window. While I was contemplating cooking more coke I thought I should check my pager for messages. There were hundreds of them, mostly from my customers, but also a few from my sister. Joan warned me in no uncertain terms that if I failed to visit Sarah-Lee at the hospital that evening, she and Malcolm wouldn’t, for love nor money, ever speak to me again, and nor would I ever see Sarah-Lee again either. She was ashamed of me, she added.
I had been wearing the same clothes for the past 72 hours. I was so fucking wired, so out of my head, that I didn’t even know what time of the day it was. I checked my watch. It was almost 5pm. I had less than two hours to sober up before visiting hours at the hospital. I poured myself a glass of neat whisky, which I drank in gulps, and hurriedly cleaned up. I opened the windows and curtains, allowing light and a fresh breeze to circulate throughout the apartment again. Then I jumped into a bath, which kind of shocked me back to reality. Shaving proved quite tricky, and I cut myself in several spots.
When I was dressed, I took a quick glance at myself in the full-length mirror in our bedroom. Besides the dilated eyes and tiny pupils, I thought I looked reasonably presentable. I grabbed a six-pack of cold beers from the fridge and got into Sarah-Lee’s newly sprayed midnight-blue Volkswagen Beetle, my .38 clipped on the inside of my jeans. My gun was my closest friend. It had saved me from many a precarious situation and I never left it behind.
Driving to the hospital was a daunting task. By now it was dark and the headlights of approaching cars looked like meteorites about to collide with me. I had drunk two beers by the time I reached the hospital, and I downed another one in the parking lot for good measure. Between the coke and the alcohol, I felt pretty good, but I was nervous as fucking hell at the prospect of what I was about to deal with.
I wondered who else might be visiting Sarah-Lee. I didn’t even know the extent of her injuries. After about 20 minutes I plucked up the courage and made my way through the hospital. I was fucked up. I hated hospitals anyway; that pervasive sterilised, medicinal smell, compounded by an atmosphere of sick and dying patients, nauseated me. The distance from the elevator to Sarah-Lee’s ward, although just a couple of metres, felt like miles. With every step, my feet grew heavier and my heart pounded more loudly in my chest. By now there were only about 20 minutes remaining of visiting hours.
I entered the ward. Sarah-Lee’s bed was in the far right-hand corner next to the windows. There were four beds on each side of the spacious room, but not all of them were occupied and only two of the other patients had visitors. The lights were unusually bright, I thought. I felt as if I was on a stage in front of an audience of hundreds of people. It felt like there was a huge spotlight shining directly down on me, with a crowd jeering and shouting and pointing. The words they were shouting weren’t clear, but I knew exactly what they meant. Sarah-Lee’s family and mine were at her bedside, seated and standing on both sides. Each one of them seemed to turn their heads at exactly the same time and look towards me. The look of disgust, anger and disappointment on their faces made me shrivel inside. I wanted to curl up and die.
My entire life, I was constantly on the run. I was a runaway train. I had always had difficulty with change, and running made me feel safe. This was another of those moments. Right then, I was ready to turn my back and run away, faster than I had ever run in my life, but it was too late.
I couldn’t bring myself to look Sarah-Lee directly in the eyes. That poignant, troubled look of disappointment was too much for me. I can still see it to this day. She was on the verge of tears, not because of her injuries, nor because I hadn’t visited, but because I was fucked out of my head and she could see it.
None of my girlfriends ever really knew me, really knew me. From a young age I had learnt to put up barriers that were impossible to penetrate. Even so, Sarah-Lee had a fairly good idea whenever I was stoned. She had seen how I had been becoming progressively more disconnected. I knew I was breaking her heart.
Some months before the accident, when we were still living in Sandton, I left our apartment at about 10am to pick up a stash of coke. On the way back, while driving on the highway, I rolled up a note, opened the plastic bag that contained the coke and took a snort in each nostril. Small rocks lodged themselves in my nasal passages, while some fell into my lap. Within I was buzzing. As I approached the Sandton turn-off I could have sworn I was being followed, so I stayed on the freeway and for the next eight hours drove around Johannesburg city, snorting and driving at ridiculous speeds, trying to lose the cars I imagined were following me. Sarah-Lee had seen that wired look on my face when I finally returned home that evening. I don’t know whether she noticed that I had also clocked about 800km on the speedometer.
Another time, we had a huge argument. In my state of anger, I blurted out that I no longer loved her and that I wanted to break up with her. She went ballistic. She ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife. In her frenzy she tried to stab me. I thought it was quite funny. Then I pulled out my gun and threatened to shoot her. Naturally, I was bluffing and I thought she would put the knife down. Instead she just kept coming. I ran into our bedroom but Sarah-Lee was right behind me, still wielding the knife. I managed to lock myself in, and she repeatedly stabbed the door, screaming that she was going to kill me.
Even in self-defence it was below me to hit a woman, but what do you do in such an instance? I felt terrible for hitting her, but I did. There is no excuse for manhandling a woman, but I wasn’t about to apologise for what I had done. In her state of hysteria, with a knife in her hand, she had been a danger to herself and to me. Eventually she calmed down and we had a heart-to-heart talk. A slight bruise had begun to form under one of her eyes. Sarah-Lee emphasised that I had some choices to make, otherwise we had no future together. Then she went quiet and I could feel the tears building up in my eyes. I let her know that I had to go, I didn’t know where. All I knew was that I had to take off. I was struggling to breathe.
Leaving Sarah-Lee, I realised, was going to be a lot more difficult than I had anticipated. Furthermore I was beyond the point of being rational. I found myself driving around aimlessly in the early hours of the morning and then I was parked outside Sarah-Lee’s mother’s apartment. It was almost 3am when I rang her doorbell. I tried to explain to her mother what had happened, how I couldn’t understand what had come over me. She advised me to go home, not before strongly suggesting that Sarah-Lee and I should break up as it was obvious we were having serious problems.
There is something magical about being on the quiet roads at that time in the morning, from when darkness turns to light and the sun’s rays begin to engulf the earth. Driving home, I watched in awe as nature reminded me just how insignificant we humans are. When I got there, Sarah-Lee was still awake, but thankfully more composed.
A few weeks, maybe a month before the accident, Sarah-Lee was making dinner in the kitchen and I was pretending to be relaxing in the
bedroom. Instead, using a candle, I was busy cooking up some cocaine. She kept coming to the door to ask what I was doing, but she never actually saw. I managed to have one or two hits but she kept interrupting me, so I loaded the whole rock onto my pipe, took a deep breath, lit up, and sucked in the smoke from the melting rock.
From there things went blank. I woke up to find myself lying on my bed. Hovering over me was this strange man. I could feel something cold and metallic on my chest, something disc-shaped that the man appeared to be moving around like he was testing something. I felt peaceful, like I had died and come back to life.
Joan and Malcolm were also there, for some reason, standing at the foot of my bed. I couldn’t fathom why they looked so sad and concerned. My nephew Darren, who was about ten years old, was sitting next to me holding my hand. Was I in heaven? Then I noticed Sarah-Lee. She was standing with her arms folded and she seemed to be in a state of shock. Her eyes were bloodshot, as if she had been crying. I on the other hand felt totally serene and calm – what was all the fuss about? Then the doctor informed me that I had had a seizure and was lucky to be alive.
If dying felt so blissful, death would be the last thing I would fear. What I should have been more concerned about was the impact my actions were having on my family. It’s not that I never cared or gave it a thought. I really did care, and it pained me, but it was easier to believe that things were beyond my control or, in plain English, that I was an addict with an uncontrollable craving for drugs.
Sarah-Lee and I had been through a lot together. Now it was her turn to look to me for love and support, having survived her own brush with death.
As I approached her hospital bed, nobody greeted me. Despite my feeling of having a harsh spotlight shone on me, I might as well have been invisible. Her family excused themselves and left. Joan muttered something angrily under her breath and poked me sharply in the chest with her finger. ‘You’re such a fuck-up,’ she hissed. ‘We need to have a serious talk.’ She and Malcolm left the ward, too. It was a relief for me. Facing Sarah-Lee was going to be difficult enough anyway.
And then I was alone with my girlfriend.
The alcohol I had consumed had to a large extent helped counteract the effects of smoking the cocaine. Although my conscience was troubling me, I felt alienated from reality and I hadn’t slept in days. I knew I was responsible for Sarah-Lee’s injuries, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything. Subconsciously, I think I was already running.
To this day, I have no recollection of the conversation that transpired between Sarah-Lee and me in the hospital that night. All I know is that we agreed that I wouldn’t visit her again. Sarah-Lee was stubborn and determined, and two days later she was discharged. Joan and Malcolm accompanied her in the ambulance that brought her home. I hadn’t used cocaine since my three-day binge and had spent the days since visiting Sarah-Lee sleeping. Our domestic worker cleaned up the house, making it ready for Sarah-Lee’s arrival. Two vertebrae in Sarah-Lee’s lower back had been broken in the accident, which meant she would be bedridden for a few weeks. I was warned by my sister that I had better take good care of her.
Actually, it was ridiculous. There was no way the hospital should have discharged her, but Sarah-Lee was adamant. She had insisted that she be allowed to go home because she needed to be around to keep an eye on me and prevent me from slipping further into the abyss.
A few months earlier, we had put down a R50 000 deposit on a townhouse in the fast-developing suburb of Dowerglen, which was still being built. I had responsibilities, and Sarah-Lee didn’t want to see me throw everything away for drugs. Ironically, of course, it was the drugs that paid for all the material things we’d acquired, the posh townhouse included.
While she was recovering, I cooked twice a day, served Sarah-Lee her meals, and nursed her. We got into a routine. At times I had to leave her on her own and go shopping at the supermarket, but our domestic worker would be there if she needed any help.
Often in the mornings, while Sarah-Lee slept and I made breakfast, I would cook up some cocaine and smoke the rocks. We had not had sex for some months, which I couldn’t attribute to the affects of cocaine alone. Sarah-Lee had lost her sex appeal for me. I wanted sex; I missed the euphoria of it. Masturbating had its moments of pleasure, but I was tired of fucking Kim Basinger in my head. I was on the lookout for somebody else to fulfil my sexual needs. In almost two and a half years of living with her, I had not been unfaithful, let alone contemplated being with another woman.
A part of me loved Sarah-Lee, but the other felt trapped in an existence that represented everything that I was not. I was a free spirit, I trusted nobody, and I found comfort and freedom in my solitude. The concept of marriage was for the emotionally insecure. I couldn’t imagine myself fulfilling the role of a husband. I did think about having children, but I was afraid of subjecting them to the life I had endured as a child. I dismissed the idea more quickly than it ever entered my head. Right there and then, I made a decision that I had to leave Sarah-Lee, but now was not the time. If anything, I owed it to her to wait until she was fully recovered. Her recovery took priority. Then, I decided, I would dump her and continue doing what I was best at.
After a few more weeks in bed, Sarah-Lee was able to move around. She was required to wear a full-body brace made out of Perspex. It was constructed in such a way that I would have to pull it open and hold it like that while she negotiated her body into it. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. Jesus, fuck! I felt really bad, even more so because she was so brave.
I can still distinctly remember the first time she got out of bed, after a long struggle to slip into the brace, and moved around our apartment. It was like seeing a baby taking its first steps. I was deeply moved and so blown away by her tenacity and determination that I went straight. I knew that I loved her, that she was the one living soul that stood between life and death for me. I stopped smoking cocaine and we started spending evenings at my sister’s place playing Scrabble. I was still selling cocaine, the profits of which I kept dumping into the three-bedroomed townhouse we were building.
During the day, in between drug deliveries, Sarah-Lee and I would visit the building site to see how construction was coming along. We were having the room behind the lounge/dining room converted into a Jacuzzi room, which was costing us another R25 000. It was a five-person Jacuzzi, with electronically activated controls; to get the unit into the room, the window frames had to be removed and some of the wall broken away. This should have been an exciting time for any couple, the beginning of a lifetime together, but it was a daunting prospect for me. All this domestic planning was beginning to stifle me. I didn’t know yet how I was going to escape, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go through with it.
Despite all my promises, to myself and to Sarah-Lee, I knew that I was still going to leave her, but it was becoming more and more difficult. I felt trapped in a life that didn’t fit me. As a drug dealer, one acquires all sorts of things that addicts pawn or sell for a fix. I had accumulated quite a lot of gold. One of my good friends was a jeweller, and we had her design and make some jewellery for Sarah-Lee – a bracelet that had precious stones and a diamond setting with a matching ring and neck chain. The set was beautiful, impressive in its elegance. But by now red lights were flashing around in my head. Fuck! Before I knew it I would be writing my marriage vows!
I could feel myself being suffocated. My fate was as good as sealed.
Why couldn’t I just lead a normal life? When I wrestled with this question in my head, the answers came as easily as they always did. I persuaded myself that there was more to life than conforming to the expectations of society. Besides, I still hadn’t discovered my purpose yet, nor the deeper meaning of life.
Eventually, the townhouse complex was completed and we moved into our new home. By now, Sarah-Lee had made almost a complete recovery and was no longer dependent on her brace. We must have given the impression of being the perfect couple, and yet Sarah-Lee
and I hadn’t been intimate for months – understandably because of her injuries, but that wasn’t the only reason. Our new neighbours knew nothing of our dark secrets, and our respective families popped round at different times to see our new place. Sarah-Lee would give them the grand tour. I guess the thing that was on everybody’s mind was when we would be tying the knot. Little did they know that I was contemplating my escape, not planning the day when we would walk down the aisle.
The wiring on our Jacuzzi was not finished, which meant that the building electrician had to have access to the townhouse during the day to work on it, so one or both of us had to stay at home. Seeing that I had drug deliveries to make, Sarah-Lee entertained the electrician. When the job was done, the electrician left, but, during the following days, our electricity box kept tripping whenever the washing machine was running at the same time as the Jacuzzi. We called him back to check what the problem was. As it turned out, he needed to rewire the entire circuit board, which would take another whole day. Sarah-Lee volunteered to stay home and supervise. In fact, she was more than obliging.
I went about my business and left the two of them at home. Later that afternoon, I walked in on them relaxing over a cup of tea. I noticed that Sarah-Lee was unusually chirpy, whereas he seemed to feel a bit uncomfortable about my sudden appearance. Fuck, I thought to myself, here’s an opportunity being handed to me on a platter! The electrician hurriedly jumped to his feet, said his job was done and excused himself. If the board should trip again, he said, all we needed to do was call. I walked him out to his van. I put my arm on his shoulder, thanked him for his work, and enquired how much I owed him. He told me that he was contracted by the owners of the complex and that there was no charge. In my mind, however, I had already devised his fate.
