Candy

by Luke Davies

  But there was one more obstacle to conquer. Mason’s flatmates were home, relaxing in front of the TV in a Sunday night bong fog. On Monday morning they would all get up and go to work as solicitors and graphic artists, whatever it was they did. My slice of lemon was gone, so I had to somehow get some vinegar from their cupboard. But the kitchen opened onto the lounge room and I was in full view of everyone.

  I had to pretend to be hungry, fuck around with biscuits and cheese and shit. It was awkward sliding the vinegar along the counter an inch at a time, toward the bathroom door.

  Finally I did it. Got in there and locked the door and had the big reward. My veins were like rivers bringing warm bliss on the king tide through the glacial landscapes of my taut muscles. The melting. It was good again, everything.

  Not that Mason and his flatmates didn’t know, I’m sure, seeing the way I drooled and scratched and nodded off when I went back into the lounge room and tried to be social.

  A month later, anyway, I was talking to Mason and he said, “By the way, mate. You know the night we came back from planting the crop? You left your spoon on the bathroom shelf.”

  I looked him in the eye to see if he was joking. He wasn’t. I could feel my ears burn red.

  “It’s the little details that count, you know,” he went on. He had a strange way of being kind even at his most sarcastic.

  Mason also told me how he’d been out to check on the seedlings, and guess what, the unthinkable had happened: attack by insects. The little crop had never stood a chance. It was ruined, gobbled up before it had time to grow even six inches. I guess it was just Mason’s polite way of saying no thanks. I don’t know, maybe there really was a plague of fucking locusts. I wasn’t interested by then. Candy and I were talking more seriously about moving to Melbourne.

  God, it was good to get back to Candy. I knew that with her I could overcome anything. She’d come back from her drying out, a newly clean Candy, keen for a one-off reward blast, and then things kind of just kept going, the way they do. Pretty soon she was back into the swing of it. It’s hard, I suppose, to stop at a year or less, when you still look good, when it still feels good. We decided to put off drying out until some other time. We had each other to get into first.

  PROBLEMS WITH

  DETACHABLE HEADS: 1

  Sydney was a harborside paradise of cheap heroin and corrupt police, but nonetheless there was a time back then, before we finally succumbed to the Beast, when we would regularly try to stop. We worried about careers or things that looked like careers or the beginnings of careers: acting for Candy, God knows what for me. And did that awful cold turkey thing that seems so possible when you are merely young and stupid and life has gone a bit hairy and haywire.

  It was tough going too. This one time, we were coming off the back of a neat little scam on a doctor’s cashcard. Candy was still just getting into smack and it was the gravy train, lots of hitting up—I used to do it for her, slipping the steel into those marble-white arms—and lots of meandering sex that never really went anywhere. But the coming down was hard. When is it ever not?

  Every day for four weeks we’d popped five hundred from an automatic teller, until one day the doctor’s card got chewed. PLEASE CONTACT BANK, the screen flashed, a rather comical instruction. It was the sudden reduction in funds after a period of plenty that made us decide once again to try drying out. We spent a week taking lots of Doloxene and sleepers and smoking some pissy blond hash. We were legless and uncomfortable. Crawling out of our skin. We lay all day in front of the daytime soaps, which were always funny when stoned but hideous without smack. We sweated it out because we thought we had each other and the future.

  We seemed to get through it. On about the sixth day we were beginning to perk up.

  “We should do something tonight, Candy,” I said. “Spruce up a little and get out of here. I don’t think I could stand another night at home.”

  “Okay,” Candy said. “How about a movie?”

  That night we caught the train into town and saw something dumb at the Hoyts. It was the beginning of our new life, and this was what normal people did. It felt a little bit awkward with Candy, since our relationship was fairly new and had only ever been based on lots of sex and increasing amounts of drugs. This domestic shit was new territory, but we were sure we were willing to give it a go.

  After the movie we bought an ice cream and walked along George Street. It was one of those swooning summer nights in Sydney when the air is awash with the smell of jasmine and take-away satay and salt from the harbor. In Sydney it’s so easy to fall in love but so hard to go deep.

  “It’s nine-thirty,” Candy said. “I feel really light. I feel wide-awake.”

  I watched her licking her ice cream and tried to imagine that it was my dick. But this was dangerous territory, since heroin and sex could so easily become confused.

  “Me too,” I said. “I don’t really want to go home yet.”

  “What should we do?”

  I looked in her eyes for that flicker. We were circling each other, baiting, fishing. My gut started to roll and I knew without doubt what was going to happen.

  I acted casual, like I was plucking random suggestions from the warm air. This was part of the game, so no one could ever say that fucking up was a deliberate act.

  “There’s not much to do around here,” I said. “We could go up to the Cross and check the nightlife.”

  “Are you sure?” She gave me a token admonishing look, but the edges of her lips were quivering.

  “Hey, we’re just going for a walk, we don’t have to use!”

  “That’s the problem.” She frowned. “I wouldn’t mind some.”

  The sweet dam had burst, the Dam of Relief that would bear us tumbling up William Street and into our own veins and home.

  What was it about love? Coming down off heroin, it was so hard to think of anything but pain. When we were stoned, we loved each other, we touched each other, we laughed a lot, it was us against the world. We spent every moment together, ambling through the musky days, aware only of the way our boundaries seemingly had dissolved, reveling in the sensation of submersion and inundation. But the future made me edgy. It would be good not to use drugs, I thought. I wanted us to live our lives, to laugh and touch and share things, but without hammer. I thought that surely must be a place you could get to. And yet here we were, six days down the track of another expedition into sobriety, jumping out of our fucking skin.

  I could have said no. It was a moment in my life when I could have said no. But I grinned weakly and then looked away and then looked back at her, chewing my lip.

  “I wouldn’t mind some either.”

  “Do you want to?” she asked. “It’s been a week. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  And we were off.

  At this time of night there was nowhere to get syringes. We racked our brains about the situation at home. With good intentions, of course you throw all that shit out. But had we put out the garbage in the last week? It was unlikely but possible. Anyway, we couldn’t take that risk. And having made the decision to score, it was like instant craving. That acidic anticipation in the gut.

  We certainly couldn’t buy some heroin now and wait until morning to use it. That was more than inconceivable. It was silly and absurd. Snorting it or chasing the dragon was on the very outer rims of the possible. Pussy stuff.

  There was only one thing to do: we had to buy the dope, and somehow get hold of a pick or two. Hopefully unused.

  We were okay for cash, we were six days healthy, we were feeling pretty cruisy. A nervous edge about the syringe situation, but we would work that out. Even when I lived in rat holes I was generally meticulous about the vein and hygiene factor. AIDS was everywhere; I wanted it no more than the next person. Occasionally, however, fate dictated that you had to take a chance. As a junkie you had to spend a lot of time crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.


  We took a table at the Cockatoo Club, which was empty at this early hour, and ordered drinks. Yusef the manager came and chatted to us for a few minutes. Just then Ronny Radar walked past the window. I was out of my seat and moving.

  “Just saw Ronny. Back in a minute.”

  I caught up with him and we talked the talk. I gave him the money and told him where we were sitting.

  “One thing, Ronny,” I added. “I need a pick. Where can I get a clean one?”

  Ronny looked at his watch. “Buckley’s chance, mate. Buckley’s. There’s nothing open now.”

  “Haven’t you got any?”

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll give you one that only I’ve used. All you have to do is give it a good clean. I’ll go without until I get home later.”

  A regular saint was Ronny. It would have to do.

  “Thanks, Ronny. You’re a champion. Oh, and a spoon. Can you get me a spoon? The fucking teaspoons in the Cockatoo have got holes drilled in them.”

  Ronny moved in too close to my face. “Mate,” he hissed. “I’m not a fucking supermarket. I’m a heroin dealer. Got it?”

  “Sorry, Ronny. It’s just that … I’ve been away. I’ll give you five bucks if it helps.”

  He sighed deeply and held out his hand. I gave him five more dollars.

  “Sometimes …” he said, shaking his head and letting the sentence trail away as he walked around the corner.

  I went back into the Cockatoo and smiled at Candy. Yusef was over at the bar touching up the topless waitress. We finished our drinks and Ronny came in and sat down with us. I introduced him to Candy and all of a sudden he was a friendly kiss-arse. He handed everything to me under the table and left.

  We ordered another drink and I looked down and checked the syringe. Shit! It was a detachable head, two mils, a big awkward monstrous motherfucker. God I hated those things!

  The thing about those detachable-head syringes was they always seemed to collect a little blood, down in the neck area, where the replacement head and needle slipped tight over the plastic nozzle of the barrel. You could never fully empty them out into your vein, because the black rubber stopper on the end of the plunger couldn’t get down into that bridging neck. This was dead space.

  Sure enough, Ronny’s syringe was this sleek clear plastic rocket with a band of dried crimson down near the point where the needle began. Not what I wanted to see. A very used syringe. I pointed this out to Candy. We discussed the pros and cons of going home or having a shot here in the Cockatoo toilets.

  “I’ll see how I go cleaning it,” I said.

  I went into the men’s room. There was a washbasin and a piss trough and four cubicles. My plan was to clean the pick thoroughly, then mix up and have a hit, then clean it again and fill it with a hit for Candy to take to the ladies’ room.

  I turned the tap on slightly and filled the spoon with water. I carried it into the end cubicle and placed it on the cistern. There was a window above the cistern, looking out over the back alley that ran behind the Cockatoo. The glass was broken but a security grille of iron bars covered the space. I hoped that if I flushed out the pick several times I could get rid of that blood.

  Normally I’d suck up the water and squirt as hard as possible, to jiggle things around in there and dislodge the caked blood. It was a pretty automatic habit. But I forgot to account for the fact that I wasn’t familiar with this type of syringe. It you were going to squirt hard, you had to hold the end on with your fingers.

  I dipped the needle into the spoon and drew up water until the barrel was full. The window invited. I don’t know, I just wasn’t thinking. Maybe I was being neat, not spraying water on the walls of that filthy bog. I aimed toward the window and pushed the plunger hard.

  The pressure was too great. The needle, like the pod of Saturn Five, came off from the main body at supersonic speed. By the time I heard the pffft! of its flight through the cubicle, it had sailed through the security bars, straight out the window and on into the night.

  I looked down at the useless piece of plastic in my hand. A syringe without a needle was like a car without an accelerator. You could admire it or polish it but not get that glorious wind in your hair. I couldn’t believe this had happened. I couldn’t believe my stupidity.

  I had to find that missing piece. I couldn’t risk getting home to a flat devoid of syringes. I stood on the toilet bowl and hoisted myself up to the window.

  The alley was dark. I tried to imagine trajectories, angles of entry, angles of descent. I figured it could only have come down in the Dumpster full of construction rubble that was opposite the window. Then again, it might have been in that huge pile of green garbage bags wedged hard up against the refuse bin.

  No question. I had to get out there.

  I went back out into the club and explained the dire situation to Candy. I walked around the block and found the alley. I located the Dumpster and the pile of garbage bags, most of which had split open. The place stank of rotting vegetation.

  I looked back to the window and figured the bags were the go, not the Dumpster. I trod on them gingerly, using the edge of the Dumpster to keep my balance. Everything was spongy under my feet. Suddenly my right leg disappeared beneath me. I fell knee-deep into rotten tomatoes. A wet squelch filled my jeans. I heard the scurrying of rats.

  I pulled my leg out. My jeans and shoe were soaked. Now I stank. I stepped back cursing and shook my leg. From the corner of my eye I noticed movement.

  Two figures were walking down the alley toward me. They were in silhouette, but I had no trouble making out the police hats and holsters. My heartbeat picked up a little. It was not cool to run. I could stay and pretend to be looking for something in the garbage. There was nothing wrong with that. For some reason I thought of a tennis ball. I would tell them I was looking for a tennis ball.

  Then I remembered the dope. I had half a gram of heroin and half a syringe and a soup spoon in my pocket. It was time to go. Just not my night.

  I did the fast-casual walk. I didn’t look back and I didn’t hear their footsteps pick up. I rounded the corner and ran the half block to the Cockatoo Club. A kind of high-speed limp, a whoomp-slurp, whoomp-slurp sound.

  Candy was being sweet-talked by some young turks. Wide-lapel types. Good luck to them.

  “Big fuckup, baby doll,” I said to her, nodding polite hellos to them. “Let’s get a taxi out of here.”

  “Aw, where youse goin’?” they shouted, but we were out the door already.

  “Maybe Ronny’s got AIDS,” Candy mused in the taxi on the way home. “Maybe it was meant to happen.”

  “That’ll be a small fucking consolation if there are no syringes at home.” My stomach was doing somersaults by now. When you made the decision, you wanted to act fast.

  We got home and my brother Lex was there. The three of us at this time were sharing a flat. Lex had his own little problems, sometimes with heroin, sometimes with freebasing, off there on the sides of our lives. Sometimes our problems intersected, sometimes not. Usually only in cases of emergency. It must have been some Catholic guilt hangover bullshit thing. We generally liked to try to keep our problems separate and hidden.

  It blew me out that he could fuck up so spectacularly, one year on heroin, the next on cocaine. I’m talking about solid blocks of dedication. How anyone could use cocaine for even an hour without wanting some hammer pretty quick was beyond me. But there you go. He was always an odd one, Lex. Off on his own obscure path.

  Lex had recently done the get-healthy thing too. (I think this was a heroin period for him.) It might have been a week, maybe two, since he’d had a whack. So I’m sure he must have picked up the vibe when we walked in. The anticipation. You don’t go to the movies, six days off the gear for God’s sake, and come home abuzz with excitement about the late news coming up.

  He was suspicious but it was a standoff. If everyone was pretending to be clean, then everyone had to keep up the facade. We sat in front of the
TV chatting idly. My pulse was racing and I couldn’t concentrate. On anything but the fact that I had heroin. In my pocket and not in my body. On the outside I was trying to be calm.

  Lex asked about the bad smell coming from my pants. I told him I trod in a puddle and it must have had something awful in it. He told me it hadn’t rained for three weeks. I told him it was a puddle next to a construction site.

  The lounge room led into the kitchen. We couldn’t search through the garbage bag while he was there, and we couldn’t really carry it past him into our bedroom either. Finally he went to bed. Sulking a bit, I think.

  We sprang into action. I carried the garbage bag into the bedroom. It was putrid. That’s what happens when you detox at home. You don’t do normal things like take the garbage out. Everything is a touch difficult coming down off heroin.

  I laid out some newspaper on the floor and tried to pick the least rank things out of the garbage bag, one at a time. If there were any syringes, they would be down at the bottom. Finally I created enough room to tilt the bag sideways and shake it a bit, like searching for the surprise at the bottom of the Froot Loops. I spotted the orange lid of a Terumo 1 mil—my kind of pick, Mother Jesus we are home!—in an ashy sludge of wet cigarette butts. Then three more. Must have thrown out a handful.

  I threw the garbage back in and took the bag to the kitchen. I rinsed the ash off the syringes and washed my hands and arms. I went to the bedroom and Candy already had a belt tied around her arm. There were times when I loved her enthusiasm.

  I took the lids off and felt each needle for the two that were least barbed. These syringes had had a good run in the weeks before we stopped. I took the best two and scraped them back and forth hard on the flint of a matchbox, to try and reduce the barbs. They would do.