Love is the Drug

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  Coffee might know for sure; at least, he knows more than she does. But to sneak out in defiance of curfew, of common sense, of her mother’s explicit prohibition — that’s nothing Emily would do. But it’s not Emily who’s desperate to see him.

  Sometimes it kills me, what you could be.

  The brush falls from her fingers, smearing cream on her thigh and down the side of the tub. She stares at it longer than she should, even after she feels that slow tingle that will lead, inevitably, to burning. The smooth, glistening finish, the lumps like globs of rice pudding, the hair salon smell that has so anchored her most intimate interactions with her mother, it leaves her light-headed and gasping. She’s lost everything already. On her laptop upstairs an email from Ms. Vern, the college guidance counselor, informs all graduating seniors that college application deadlines have been deferred for three months. The news from California looks worse every day. Who is she doing this for? For the Devonshire girls, wondering what’s happened to Emily since she left the hospital? For her mother, who couldn’t be bothered to leave her undisclosed location even when Bird was in a coma? For Stanford, who can’t have her even if they did want her?

  The tingle crosses the line into pain slowly enough that she only notices when her body jerks, as if of its own accord, and she reaches for a towel to wipe it off. Her arm knocks the bracelet into the sink, and the burn from the relaxer bleeds into the sight of those needle-sharp gold leaves and their drops of ruby fruit. Without thinking, she drops it into the Hawaiian Silky tub, watches it sink and disappear into the glistening white, and screws the lid tight.

  She finds Aaron outside, looking through the record collection.

  “You done, Em?”

  A pair of scissors glows like a cartoon pirate treasure on the table behind him. “Aaron,” she says hazily, “what about some LaBelle? ‘Something in the Air’?”

  Aaron nods, though he’s only lately discovered his father’s seventies R and B collection. To the anthemic determination of “The Revolution Won’t Be Televised,” Bird takes the scissors to her hair. With each snip she discards not the roots but the floss, not the Bird but the Emily. She cuts and cuts until the hair surrounds her, until her head floats from her shoulders, until she laughs with the Bird in the mirror, the badass diva with a tight fro who can do anything at all.

  “Em?”

  She gasps and turns around. Aaron takes a step forward and then hesitates. He looks afraid.

  “Are you okay? You …”

  Seeing his reaction sends a lump of fear into her gut; familiar, but not, this time, insurmountable.

  “I’m cool, Aaron. I think it’s better this way, don’t you?”

  Aaron smiles. “You’re always cool, Em.”

  * * *

  The C&O Canal runs from the heart of DC to deep rural Maryland, and Coffee’s meeting place is a deserted lock a few miles over the DC–Maryland border. Bird sneaks onto the towpath in Georgetown before the ten o’clock curfew, dressed in a hoodie, baggy jeans, and a pair of Nicky’s old Nikes laced tight. This disguise takes her over her neighbors’ fences, until she reaches Rosedale Street and saunters onto the sidewalk like she owns the thing. No cars follow her. She only passes a few hardy runners on the towpath, but they vanish a half hour before curfew. She jumps at every squirrel scampering through rotting leaves, at every duck paddling through the water, but Coffee knew what he was about: They’ve probably secured the canal at the border to the quarantine, but here she can’t see a soul.

  Lock 7 is one of the smaller outposts, which she only knows from the times she cycled past it in the summer on her way to the more famous (and scenic) Great Falls. She sees no one by the abandoned lockhouse, so she walks a little farther, to where the water pools high behind the gates that once upon a time would open to allow barges through. He’s not at the lock either.

  “Coffee?” She dares a whisper, her breath a wisp of white. The coldest night of the year so far, but until now she hasn’t felt it.

  Did something happen to him? Is he even now in some anonymous cavity in the bowels of the Pentagon, specially interrogated by Roosevelt David? She tosses her hood back and buries her fingers in her shorn hair, forcing herself to concentrate on the texture of kinky curls coated with coconut oil, forcing the panic out with each lacy breath of air. Maybe he just ditched her. Maybe he’s halfway to Brazil right now, a daring escape before they lock him away, and could she blame him? She’s more terrified of Roosevelt than the v-flu, and no one is trying to arrest her.

  And then, “I didn’t recognize you.”

  She spins around to see him in the lee of the trees by the path, his long limbs folded against the cold or some deep ache. His fat worm curls are covered with a dark gray ski cap and his fair skin is smudged with dirt. Only his eyes shine in the cloud-obscured glow of a gibbous moon, green and gray and gold and full of wonder.

  “Are you okay?” she asks softly.

  “Is anyone? Are you? Nice do, Bird.”

  She takes a breathless step closer. She didn’t really believe that she would see him again. She didn’t dare. “Don’t mock me.”

  Wide lips stretch into a smile. A Coffee smile, full of broken glass and finely ground pepper, but genuine for all that. “I’m not,” he says, and on his long legs a step out from the trees brings him a handbreadth away. “You look beautiful, Emily Bird.”

  “I look like a boy.”

  He laughs. “No. You don’t.”

  One raised arm would touch him, pull him close, obliterate everything but the two of them and the desire she has felt since the moment they met. Surely he’s felt it? Surely he cares, even a little?

  “So do you know something? Can you tell me what happened that night?”

  He tilts his head to the side, regarding her silently while a few late crickets sing and the Potomac River gurgles distantly. He lifts his left arm, and she notices the sleeve of his sweatshirt is torn and stained a dark color she hopes, insists, is just mud. His long fingers hover an inch from the side of her face.

  “You’re alone.”

  “Who else would come with me? Nicky?”

  “Roosevelt?”

  She flinches, nearly chokes on the memory of just how close she came to proving him right. Coffee’s hand drops.

  “You nearly did. Oh, of course you did.”

  His weary certainty galls her. Especially because, in the fullness of his presence, she can’t think of anyone she trusts more. “If you didn’t trust me, why go through the trouble of asking me here? Why the hell aren’t you halfway to Brazil by now?”

  She leans forward, greedy enough to inhale his familiar scent, now tinged with the earthy musk of mud and sweat. Why does Coffee have to be Coffee? Prickly and sharp and unfathomable. There’s nothing easy about him.

  “I needed a reason to stay.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “Don’t let me stop you.”

  “Oh God, Bird.” He rips the cap off of his head and grips it tight in his fist. She swears he shines in the dim light, anger leaking incandescent from his pores. “Do you hate me so much?”

  “It’s not about that.”

  “Then why? Paul — no, he did something else, didn’t he? You flinched. Bird has finally figured him out.”

  “Bird is …” She shakes her head. She’s ashamed of how Roosevelt and Paul have threatened her with that relationship. She doesn’t want Coffee to see her like that — a soft girl who can be bent and pressed into service. “Anyway, it’s not Paul, it’s Roosevelt. You don’t want to get within a thousand miles of him. Go home, Coffee.”

  He rubs his wrist where the sleeve has torn and smiles sadly. “This isn’t my home?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’ve lived in Brazil, what, four years total? I’ve spent more time in DC than Brasília.”

  It’s true that his accent is strange, some polyglot mix of American and British and Brazilian Portuguese, a linguistic palimpsest of places lived and abandoned. It warms her, s
omehow, that he wants to claim the only place she’s ever called home. But still — “Only one of them is going to kill you.”

  A dismissive flick of his fingers. “Anything can kill me.”

  “Like you’re some badass? Please. You weren’t even smooth enough to deal Adderall.”

  “It wasn’t my fault!”

  “Then get away! Leave! Whatever happens there can’t be worse than Roosevelt.”

  A wind whips the trees, dislodging the few remaining brown and withered leaves from their branches. It feels like the end of the world out here, like the two of them are unlikely survivors of the apocalypse.

  Coffee takes a step back. “Bird. What the hell did he do?”

  “You gonna defend my honor?”

  She regrets her words immediately, so punchy and vulnerable. She’s had too little sleep and too much trouble, and now she’s hurt him. She can see him take a breath and hold it, see his wide eyes, his open palms hanging in the air like they only want something to grab.

  “Bird?” His voice is tight as a piano wire, his eyes are wet. A trickle spills out onto his cheek and she grabs his hands without thinking.

  “No. No.” She shakes her head, but her voice drifts out again, quiet, unsure, “At least, I don’t think so.”

  His grip hurts her, but she doesn’t even try to pull away. “I tried to stop him,” he whispers. “Do you remember that, at least? When you called the next morning, I knew I’d been right, but it was too late….”

  “What?” She stares up at him, baffled and terrified at the hollow, windy place inside of her where all her memories should be. “The writing on the wall? Did you write that?”

  “I didn’t write anything. I didn’t see you after the party.”

  “What did I say? Did you learn anything else?”

  He hesitates.

  “You promised you’d tell me, Coffee!”

  She rips herself away from him, furious and taking it out on the nearest willing target. She wants him to scream back at her, but he doesn’t — just walks to the bench overlooking the lock gate. Bird has loved sitting on the canal in the summer, light streaming through the trees and the soft gurgle of water flowing past. Even in the stink of July, when the algae floats die in one great Malthusian jamboree, she has loved flying down the towpath on her bicycle, geese scrambling out of her way and clouds of gnats bumbling in confusion behind her. She would go with Nicky and Mo and little Aaron toddling behind on his tricycle. They would barbecue by the river and avoid the geese and complain about the mosquitos as the sun went down. Then Aaron would beg for “Papa’s music,” and Nicky would put on some scratchy Motown CD, the one where “Mr. Postman” always skipped, and she and Mo always belted out the last of the chorus….

  “Wait a minute, Mr. Postman,” Bird sings now, warm with the memory of heat.

  Coffee has rolled a blunt in the silence, and into a fragrant exhalation he looks at her and says, “What’s that?”

  Bird laughs. “We’d be terrible together,” she says. “You don’t even know music.”

  “I know plenty of music. Have you heard Caetano Veloso? Chico Buarque?”

  “Muddy Waters?” she counters, for the first time considering that she might have gotten a contact high. “Prince?”

  “Dude, Prince? I’m from Brazil, not Antarctica.”

  “Sorry.”

  He smiles a sweet, decidedly un-Coffee smile that melts her into the seat. She would kiss that smile in a different world. “We could teach each other,” he says.

  “You’re a fugitive from justice. I’m under the surveillance of a creep security officer and my asshole boyfriend and my mother. Also, there’s a plague. It’s not going to work out.”

  “Your mother doesn’t get an adjective? Cold? Ambitious? Demanding?”

  “Carol Bird is Carol Bird,” she says. “Wholly herself.”

  “And Emily Bird?”

  She wraps her arms around her stomach, holds herself in. “Still working that out.”

  Coffee looks away while his feet start up that restless tattoo against the frosted earth. She half expects him to launch himself off the bench and start pacing back and forth over the little bridge, but he keeps his warmth beside her.

  “I chased you down the driveway,” he says softly. His fingers drum the wood right beside her thigh. She wants him to touch her, and so holds herself rigidly to avoid it. “I stayed behind when the rest of you guys went to the woods out back. I figured, you wanted Paul, then fine, I’d leave you to him. But I felt … weird. Roosevelt had disappeared upstairs. I actually talked with that DEA guy, if you can believe it. Trevor had a grin wider than the Cheshire cat when he saw it. I mean, shit, you think I’m reckless. I finally asked Trevor where Roosevelt went, and he said something about Paul getting this killer job with the CIA. But Roosevelt left right around the same time you two headed to the woods. And then you came back … I knew something was wrong. I mean, sure, maybe you’d been pissed enough with me to get plastered at Trevor’s party….”

  “At you? Why would it have to be you? Maybe I just wanted to have a good time with Paul.”

  “Did you?”

  “Do you always have to be so egotistical?”

  “I just know you. Is that so bad? No one else realized anything was wrong. Maybe it’s egotistical, but not many people piss you off more than I do.”

  She clenches her fists against the fire in her chest, the flare of joy and frustration. “Fine, whatever, I’m smashed. Go on.”

  “Paul is practically leading you around the room like a puppy. He takes you outside. You look at me a few times. And … I don’t know, Bird, it felt like you were asking for something. But I didn’t know if I should try to talk to you or not, given the way we left things. And Paul was hovering, so there was no way to get you alone. I figured, hey, you’d made your choice pretty clear. Maybe it was time I stopped trying to save you from it.”

  “Nice.”

  He turns on her. “I didn’t think you wanted my help.”

  “You said … you said I was looking at you. Like …”

  He tilts his head back and sends up a column of exhausted smoke. “You ask me for help, I help. Even when I don’t like it. Every time. Forever.”

  Bird keeps quiet, the only response she can make when his words have punched the air from her lungs.

  Coffee stubs out his blunt, half-smoked, on the arm of the bench. “I followed you both outside,” he says eventually. “You were vomiting. Trevor and Paul were talking over your head, and Paul was nervous as hell. He tried to pass it off, but I could tell. They were arguing about what you drank, but then Paul suddenly stopped talking and hauled you over to the car. Trevor’s like, ‘What’s going on,’ and Paul said he left the canteen and asked Trevor to watch you. I didn’t really think about it, I just ran to the basement. I had a weird feeling. I remembered that canteen, some army surplus issue that he dumped half a bottle into right before you all left. I found it beside the couch and I locked myself in the bathroom with it before he got down there.”

  “You hid in the bathroom?”

  He grimaces. “I had a few-second lead. It seemed the safest place to be.”

  Bird wants to mock the idea of Paul being any real threat, but she remembers how it felt to be swaddled and immobile in the passenger side of his car. She shakes her head. “What did Paul do?”

  “I heard him cursing and slamming some things. Someone came down and asked him what was happening. Then his phone rang and he left to answer it. I wondered if I should try to get you away from him and take you home, but what excuse did I have? Paul’s your boyfriend, not me. But that canteen was pretty full for something that got you so smashed. And then I took a sip. There’s not many drugs I haven’t taken, Bird. At least once, just to see. I might not recognize all of them, but I recognize a lot. There was something in this drink, I could feel it after just a minute, but it didn’t feel like something I’d ever had before. So I sprint down the driveway just as you’re pu
lling away. You look at me like … like …”

  He gulps and fumbles for his lighter. He takes a toke and passes it to her. Bird wonders for a second what will happen to her if her mother finds out, and then realizes things between them can hardly get worse. She sucks in a lungful of organic tobacco and high-resin marijuana like the baddest kid at school, and then passes it back to Coffee.

  “I try calling the police. I don’t get very far — give them his license plate number and suddenly I’m passed up to some guy who tells me not to worry. So, I go home. I don’t sleep. I wait by my phone, because I never had your number. I Google everything I can about Synergy Labs and the Lukas Group and Roosevelt David, but I don’t get much. Let’s just say I doubt that’s his real name. But I saw his face when you mentioned Synergy Labs. He was interested in you before, maybe because of your parents, maybe because of Paul. But after you said that, something changed. I figure, he’s probably just brought you in for questioning. And maybe he’s not nice, but he won’t hurt you. But all I can remember is your face, staring at me like I was rescuing you from a fucking dragon…. Oh, I am so sorry. I should have grabbed you as soon as I saw Paul and Trevor talking.”

  He rocks back and forth, feet tapping, hands flipping an invisible spoon. She wants to grab him, pull him close to her, be the grounding wire for all of his bright static, but she’s in no position to offer him that comfort.

  “So I waited, like the asshole I am. And at six the next morning you called me. You were slurring your words, almost incoherent. You said, ‘They’re coming, Coffee.’ You told me to get away. You told me that someone had asked about me and I wasn’t safe. And then you hung up.”

  “Damn.” The pot has worked some magic; the horror of their situation feels distant, a sharp-edged but understandable object. “I don’t remember any of that. Roosevelt, in the hospital when I woke up, he said you’d given me a dissociative.”