Love is the Drug

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  “You’re not poor,” she said.

  He flashed his teeth, though she wasn’t sure she would call it a smile. “Two out of three,” he said. “No wonder you like me so much.”

  She didn’t tell him that she knew Nicky had dealt on and off for years. Never got caught at it, thank God. Coffee was a diplomat’s son at a prep school with the vice president’s kids — the worst that could happen to him was probably getting deported back to Brazil. But a Black dude in Northeast selling dime bags of coke on the street corner? She wouldn’t see him for years.

  Maybe Coffee had first intrigued her because of how he seemed like Nicky’s photographic negative. But that wasn’t why she knelt on the shag rug and grit her teeth against a shiver more violent than a chill. That wasn’t why she could tell him things she would never breathe to anyone else.

  That wasn’t why she wanted to scream when Paul’s voice hit her broadside from the stairs.

  “Emily,” he said, “why don’t you come up? There’s someone I want you to meet. Oh. Hi, Alonso.”

  Paul insisted on calling Coffee by his real name. It was one of Paul’s things — he didn’t believe in nicknames. He found it faintly offensive that Coffee called her Bird. She savored her secret like hard candy: She liked it better.

  “Olá, Paulo,” Coffee said, raising his right eyebrow so gently only Bird would notice it. She laughed once, like a yelp.

  Paul had generous lips, which now drew back in clear disapproval. “Seriously, Emily, everyone is upstairs. The Robinsons were nice enough to invite us, the least you could do is show your face.”

  Between the two, Paul easily won the ribbon for best-looking. Not that Coffee didn’t have a certain appeal — she had admired the compact strength of his wired frame more often than she would admit to anyone, even him. But Paul had the broad chest, the kissable lips, the chiseled jaw, and the killer smile. He was light-skinned, which her mother approved of, though she would never say so. When he laughed, she wanted to laugh with him. When Coffee laughed, she wanted to hit him. Paul would never think of neurotic, schizo, drug-dealing Coffee as competition.

  He wasn’t, of course. Coffee didn’t compete. Though lately she had begun to feel a tension in his presence, along with the relief. She thought of him when he wasn’t around; she noticed the way he looked at her; she refused, categorically, to consider what that might mean.

  Paul helped her up. “Remember that security firm I was telling you about?” he said, lowering his voice. “One of the guys up there practically promised me a paid internship this summer. I know I said I wanted the CIA, but I’ve been thinking the private sector is really where the action is.”

  Bird’s stomach lurched for no good reason, except that the hand Paul kept on the small of her back felt so proprietary and demanding. Like she had no choice but to follow him to the stairs and make nice with the people the Robinsons had invited to get their son’s friends internships and job offers.

  Coffee stood abruptly and fished a tin of rolling tobacco from his vest pocket.

  “Hey, Alonso,” Paul said, pausing on the steps. “Friendly advice, there’s someone who works for the DEA upstairs. I’d be careful.”

  Coffee’s honey eyebrows drew together in a scowl that looked almost dangerous. “Nicotine is a fully legalized narcotic, Paulo,” he said — the last, mocking syllable almost swallowed.

  Bird knew when Paul was pissed, but unlike Coffee he considered it a sign of weakness to express it. He smiled. “Shit will kill you too, Alonso. Have fun.”

  She had one last glance at him before Paul propelled her the rest of the way up the stairs. Coffee stared at the space where she had knelt a minute before, the tremor of his hands spilling tobacco onto the rug like pollen.

  * * *

  “Roosevelt’s on the porch,” Paul said. “Here, do you want a drink?”

  “Trevor’s parents are letting us?” she asked, surprised.

  Paul laughed and grinned at her, revealing the perfect teeth his parents had purchased at great expense during middle school. “Like, a Coke. Don’t get too excited.”

  “I’m cool,” she said. “Who’s Roosevelt?”

  “Roosevelt David, recruiter with Lukas Group. They’re private contractors with the CIA and Army Special Forces. Serious national security shit. They don’t even have a website.”

  She forced down a smile. “So how do you know he isn’t just a freak with a business card?”

  “Senator Robinson invited him, remember? And anyway, this isn’t the first time we’ve met. These guys are legit, believe me.”

  Bird didn’t know what to make of this information. It implied that Paul had been less than truthful about his strategizing for the all-important post-graduation internship, and this disturbed her. For the past year, his approved ambitions for the future had protected her own half-formed hopes from her mother’s scrutiny. They were the reason why she let him steer her around the party like she was more dirigible than girl. The reason why she hadn’t broken up with him six months ago.

  Some days she didn’t understand how she put up with Paul — physical attraction can only count for so much. And then she contemplated the breakup conversation with her mother, who Bird swore loved Paul more than her own goddamn husband, and she panicked and recalibrated. Bird was an excellent recalibrator. Adjust a screw here, prop an unraveling lie there: Paul is a great guy, goal-oriented just like she is, and does she really want the hassle of a breakup now, when it will all happen so naturally once they go to college? She thumbed this rosary of self-justification until she felt calm and steady again. Until she felt safe in the conditional penumbra of her mother’s approval. Forget dating Coffee. Forget it. He wouldn’t want her anyway, as she damn well knew.

  Paul, of course, hadn’t noticed her abstraction. He stared through the glass doors that led to the back porch and frowned.

  “Crap. That dealer of yours is out there. Smoking with Roosevelt. I hope he doesn’t think he’s getting anything out of him. That job is mine.”

  “I doubt he wants it, Paul,” Bird said, rubbing his arm in a habitual, placating gesture. A boy who said things like the principle agent of terror around the world is the US government wouldn’t exactly be eager to sign up as the CIA’s newest waterboarding trainee.

  Paul shook out his shoulders and smiled. “Of course not. You’re right. That druggie asshole couldn’t get within fifty yards of Langley.” He caressed the back of her neck without looking at her. She shivered. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Emily. Thanks.”

  Her wobbly smile felt genuine. Paul was a great guy. She didn’t have to want him for the rest of her life to be happy with him now.

  “I’m going out there,” he said suddenly. “Coming?”

  “You hate cigarette smoke,” she said, but he was already propelling her forward, and her words seemed to get lost somewhere between the tilted edge of the Warhol and Cindy de la Vega’s peroxide-blond split ends.

  Coffee leaned against the marble banister, smoking down one of his hand-rolled cigarettes. He must have walked outside from the basement while Paul led her through the house. It didn’t look like he was actually speaking to the man Paul had called Roosevelt, though they shared that quiet smokers’ camaraderie. Roosevelt was younger than she’d have expected for a high-level government contractor. No more than thirty-five, though he could just be thirty and a smoker. He had brown hair and eyes of the exact same shade, and a muscular build that indicated some, but not too much, time in a gym. He looked unassuming, but something about the set of his mouth made her instantly wary.

  “Oh, Paul. I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “I don’t,” Paul said, smiling with a bit too much gum and spreading his hands in a you-got-me shrug that made him look like Alfred E. Neuman. “It was just a little stuffy in there. Emily wanted some fresh air.”

  Oh, did I? Bird thought, and caught Coffee’s raised eyebrows. She tried to glare at him — she didn’t want to screw this up for Paul
— but it came out with a trailing edge of an embarrassed smile.

  “So this is Emily,” Roosevelt said, and flicked the stub of his cigarette over the railing. Bird thought of the Black or Hispanic gardener who would probably be picking this asshole’s cigarette butts out of the azalea beds tomorrow morning and sighed.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said. “I worked with your parents a few years back. Your mother’s a brilliant woman.”

  Bird struggled to keep her mouth curved in a polite smile, her eyes bright and interested, her hip jutted in a casual contrapposto. She did not so much as flick a glance at Coffee, and yet she felt him burning in her peripheral vision like the glowing ember of his half-smoked cigarette.

  “She’s a difficult act to follow sometimes,” she said, and though she felt reasonably proud of her effort, she knew Coffee, at least, would be able to read her confusion. Maybe even see the deep pit of anger and hurt that gazed up at her when she contemplated her parents and their all-important jobs. She had no real idea what they did. When asked, she told teachers and friends that they worked in public health with various government agencies. But all she really knew was that her parents were scientists: her father’s PhD in chemistry, her mother’s in molecular biology. They did not encourage her curiosity, and abandoned her for weeks at a time on business they would never discuss. Still, over the years she had gathered her clues and hoarded them as carefully as a KGB spy. A careless letterhead, crumpled in the trash instead of destroyed in a shredder. A late-night phone call her father took in the backyard, when she was supposed to be visiting a friend. The remembered Wi-Fi signature of a private airport in Virginia, frequently used by Pentagon contractors.

  That they would work with a man like Roosevelt confirmed all of her worst suspicions. She felt queasy and smiled to cover it.

  “Emily! You never told me your parents were in …” Paul trailed off, suddenly unable to describe what precise field Roosevelt might represent.

  “You work for Synergy Labs?” Bird said, each syllable hanging heavy from her lips.

  Coffee’s cigarette tumbled to the ground. He stubbed it with his heel and then retrieved the remains with shaky fingers, white with cold. Did he know something about that place, or was he just jumpy from whatever he had snorted? Roosevelt’s lips tipped upward. He reached inside his coat pocket. For a hard second she was sure he was going to pull out a gun. But like a magician’s trick, the danger she sensed in his posture transformed into something utterly pedestrian: a business card in sharp blue and red, printed on heavy stock.

  Roosevelt David

  Director, Analysis and Recruitment

  Lukas Group

  “Not Synergy Labs, no,” he said. “I’m not sure where you would have heard that name, Emily.”

  She took the card with a hand she forced to be steady, and shrugged. She had found the name on ripped stationery one afternoon years ago while rummaging through the trash. She’d Googled it exhaustively, but hadn’t found anything more than a couple of rumors on anarchist message boards — the kind frequented by people who thought rockets had hit the Pentagon on 9/11.

  “My parents don’t talk about work much,” she said. “But I overheard stuff a bit when I was younger.” She didn’t know why she added that last qualifier — except that Roosevelt’s blandly interested smile intimidated her with logarithmically increasing intensity. She began to wonder if there was more to this meeting than just Paul wanting a killer internship. Had Roosevelt used Paul to get to her?

  But that was nuts. No way anyone like Lukas Group or Synergy Labs, whoever they were, would care about Emily Bird. No matter where her parents worked.

  Her self-deprecation seemed to have dispelled some of his interest. He shifted his attention from Bird to Paul. “It’s understandable,” he said. “You can never be too careful in matters of national security. I think you can appreciate that, right, Paul?”

  As Paul rushed to reassure anyone listening how highly he valued discretion and the value of knowledge to protect our country, especially given the new threats of bioterror, blah blah, Coffee flicked his wrist in the direction of the house. Without another word, he walked down the porch steps and went through the sliding glass doors to the basement, where she could see a dozen or so fellow students had retreated, driven back at last by the drunken, power-hungry socializing of the adults above.

  Bird waited through a full minute of Paul’s monologue — she would have to warn him later not to confuse desperation with enthusiasm — and then excused herself.

  “I’m a little chilly, but it was great to meet you, Roosevelt. I’ll let my mother know I ran into you when she gets back from her trip.”

  For some reason, Roosevelt laughed. “You do that, Emily Bird,” he said.

  * * *

  Cindy de la Vega and her Gonzaga boyfriend had trapped Coffee between a Chinese vase and the eighty-inch flat-screen television tuned to South Park. Cindy was telling him how much she needed Adderall to help her study for four fucking APs in the spring. The Gonzaga boyfriend grimaced and rubbed sweet circles on her back, but Bird had heard that whatever-his-name was getting recruited by Cornell to play football. Officially, of course, Cornell was interested in his well-rounded academic profile, but everyone knew what it meant when certain admissions officials dropped by a game. Only people like Gina distinguished between Harvard-Princeton-Yale and the other Ivies, so he was unlikely to be too concerned about AP cramming.

  “I understand that, Cindy, I do, but I don’t have much on me.”

  Gonzaga boyfriend had never seemed very bright. He had a nice body, but his looks weren’t much: His teeth could have used braces and a spray of acne scars marked his high cheekbones. Nothing compared to Paul, Bird knew that, and yet that unself-conscious, adoring smile he gave Cindy made jealousy burn with the endless heat of napalm fire in her gut. Everyone told Bird she was lucky to have Paul, but she knew she was just a coward. Cindy was lucky.

  Gonzaga boyfriend pulled his wallet from his back pocket and handed Coffee a hundred-dollar bill.

  “She’ll take what you have. And when you get more, let me know?”

  Coffee eyed the bill a second longer than felt comfortable, shrugged, and took it. He pulled out two sandwich bags, one with pills.

  “Eight Adderall,” he said. “And this is Hindu Kush.”

  “Hindu what?” Cindy said, grabbing the pills like they were the last of the Halloween candy.

  “Weed, babe,” Gonzaga boyfriend said, and put the second bag in his pocket. Bird hoped that Cornell didn’t drug-test their football players.

  “Now,” Coffee said, with diction just precise enough to take a mocking edge, “if you’ll excuse me —”

  He caught Bird’s eye, and they stared at each other for a moment that made her feel tumbled and stoned.

  “Wait,” Cindy said. “Are you sure you don’t have something else?”

  “Not unless you want some coke,” said Coffee baldly.

  But Cindy just shook her head and leaned closer. “No, I mean your own stuff. I hear you make shit way better than Adderall in your basement.”

  Bird had heard this too, not as though she’d ever seen any evidence for it at these parties. But a month ago she’d overheard Mrs. Cunningham, their AP Chemistry teacher, saying that she thought “the Oliveira boy” was an actual genius and knew more about organic chemistry than your average first-year grad student.

  “Not for sale,” said this purported genius. And then, “Cindy, keep those safe, all right? People are already talking like every Latino in the US is a druggie terrorist-in-waiting.”

  “I don’t see what those Colombian assholes have to do with us.”

  “Neither do I. The Republican party has other ideas, though.”

  Cindy laughed like he’d made a joke. She let her boyfriend pull her away for a solid make-out session on the couch. They weren’t alone — two students Bird vaguely recognized were getting into it against the wall behind them.

&
nbsp; “If it’s going to turn into that kind of party,” Bird said, knowing without looking that Coffee had approached her, “I hope Trevor keeps his parents from the basement.”

  “Trevor has plenty of experience keeping his parents from the basement,” Coffee said somewhat cryptically. She turned to him. He smelled like shag tobacco and ironing starch and vulcanized rubber and a little sweat. She hated his cigarettes, but she loved the way he smelled with the mindless passion of an insect hunting its mate. This was one of the things she would never tell him.

  “Listen,” Coffee said, “I think you need to stay away from that guy.”

  She knew who he meant. “Why?” Though maybe she already knew, maybe she already agreed, thinking of Roosevelt and his strange laugh and disturbing insinuations.

  “He’s an asshole.” With his accent, it sounded more like “arsehole.”

  “You think everyone’s an asshole.”

  “Okay, a dangerous asshole. Synergy Labs is nothing you want to mess around with.”

  He spoke very quietly. No one was paying them any attention. And still, Bird felt for a moment like she had stood up too quickly and the room glowed white and hazy around her. “You know what they are?”

  Coffee was very tall. He hunched over and pinned her with his eyes. “Everything your parents do is classified, Bird. Top secret. Did you see Roosevelt when you mentioned the name? He nearly shat himself.”

  Bird hadn’t noticed much at all, but she was willing to concede that a dealer might be better at gauging reactions to illicit information. “But what is it? If it’s so classified, how do you know anything?”

  “I don’t. But sometimes things leak. There’s other sites like WikiLeaks now, though they never last long. Cyber attacks, probably by the government. But if you’re paying attention … so I was paying attention. I saw the name crop up in a few places. They’re involved in national security, mostly bioterrorism. They’re private, but work with the CIA. They …”

  She didn’t know that she’d ever seen Coffee swallow his words before. He was more the type to deploy them like depth charges. His right hand drummed the wall, out of rhythm with his tapping foot. He looked jumpy enough to clear his skin.