by Mann, Marni
The water from the shower turned off, and the curtain screeched when Eric slid it open.
“We should probably get dressed before he comes out,” she said.
She helped me put on my bra, and I helped with hers, and she told me she had to go. We hugged and kissed at the door, and when she walked down the hall, she left a trail of rainbows behind her.
Eric came out of the bathroom and asked where Casey was. I told him she had to go.
“Damn,” he said. “I like having her around, I wish she wasn't leaving the club.”
I liked having her around too. Actually, I wanted to hang out with her more. But only for the same reason I liked hanging out with Eric. I didn't need friends to get me off. My fingers were just fine.
The girls I worked with weren't fun and adventurous like Casey. They were catty and made fun of overweight customers, and when they didn't get a good tip they'd re-run the credit card and tack on an extra percent or two. And then I met Renee. She looked like a rock ‘n’ roll groupie. Her voice was raspy, her hair was dreaded in sections, and she had piercings in her nose, lip, and tongue. With her smudged makeup, unmatched clothes and short attention span, she seemed constantly hungover even though she said she rarely drank. She was the bartender, and during our breaks we'd go out back and smoke together. She had the dankest weed and didn't mind smoking me up as long as I didn't tell the other servers I was high or who I got the pot from.
She was a no-frills, no-bullshit stoner, and quickly we became pals. Her apartment had a real bed, a couch, and dishes in the cabinets. Her most prized possession was a two-foot glass bong named Baby, and many nights after work Baby got us so fucked up Eric and I had to crash there.
Renee became our go-to for weed. We'd been buying it from Eric's co-worker, but he was unreliable and expensive, and the herb tasted like dirt. Every payday, we gave Renee sixty bucks. She'd go to her dealer's house and come back with a half-ounce of the whitest, stickiest bud we'd ever seen. We used to get some sick shit in Bangor because lots of people grew it. This weed was different, hydro grown, and after a bowl you could barely remember your name. She referred to her dealer as Jesus. I was pretty sure she wasn't religious, but weed, she said, was her bread and wine, and Jesus was her savior.
Her secret lasted until the end of winter. Renee went back home to New Jersey for two weeks to visit her parents, and when she returned we noticed a change in her. At first the change was slight. She had loads of energy and never stopped talking. Then she started to lose weight. She was never fat to begin with, but the thickness on her arms, thighs, and stomach were disappearing. I watched her eat dinner at the bar and munch on snacks after we smoked. I also noticed her frequent trips to the bathroom. That meant one thing, she had to be bulimic.
One night after a few hits from Baby, Eric and I confronted her. She laughed when I said the word, bulimic, like I was crazy, and then asked if we wanted to meet Jesus. It was odd how she shifted the conversation and suddenly wanted to introduce us after months of keeping him a secret. Maybe she was tired of being the middleman, or maybe Renee wanted to share the blessing with us. Maybe Jesus could recite a prayer that would stop me from having nightmares.
We took the train to Jesus’ house on a Saturday night when we all got out of work. I was telling Eric about the tips I'd made when out of nowhere, he nudged me and signaled me to look up. Towering over my seat was a man, his legs inches from my knees. I didn't know how long he'd been standing there or how I hadn't noticed him before. He was dressed like the homeless, bundled in layers with a stained jacket. His eyes were closed, his mouth open, and his back was slowly bending forward, so his face was getting closer to mine. Eric kicked his shin, and the guy straightened his back and opened his eyes for a second. His pupils were the size of a grain of sand.
When the man started to take his second nosedive, someone on the train yelled, “Methadone saves lives,” and all the other passengers laughed.
Eric stood up and said, “Get the hell away from us.”
The guy stumbled toward the door, held onto a side railing, and continued to bend forward like he had done when he was in front of me.
I had heard of methadone. Bangor had a methadone clinic, and some oxy-head acquaintances from high school were rumored to be enrolled.
“What's he on?” I asked Renee.
“Heroin.” She said it like she'd seen the effects of the drug hundreds of times before.
I couldn't take my eyes off his face. He was young, close to my age or a few years older, although the wrinkles on his forehead and the dirt and scruff on his cheeks made it hard to tell. I found it strange that he didn't flinch when that person yelled or when everyone was laughing at him. If anything, his expression was peaceful like heroin had deafened him.
Watching him reminded me of the first time I tried ecstasy and the emotional numbness that came with it. The most devastating thing could have been said to me, like Michael had died, and it wouldn't have sunk in when I was tripping on that shit. Was that the kind of high he was feeling? If it was, I envied him.
Jesus' townhouse was different than the dealers I bought from back at home. Bangor pot-pushers sold to support their habit and lived in duplexes that weren't in the nicest part of town. This place was in a decent neighborhood, fancy electronics and leather couches furnished the living room, and there was a fish tank that took up almost an entire wall.
There were four men sitting on the couch, playing a video game on the giant TV. We stood in a line by the door, pressed against the wall, and listened to them yell. My attention shifted to the staircase when a guy appeared at the top of them.
“That's Jesus,” Renee whispered.
His head was shaved and covered with tattoos of spider webs and skulls. The tattoos carried down and wrapped around his bulging biceps and forearms. He stopped on the middle step and made eye contact with Renee. She moved to the steps and we followed behind her.
When all three of us were upstairs and standing outside a closed door, Jesus unlocked the five padlocks drilled into the doorframe. By the way he patted Eric and me down and flashed the gun holstered in the waist of his jeans, I thought we were entering the cash room of an underground casino. But it was like any normal bedroom with clothes dumped in the corners and a bed by the window. Once the door was locked behind us, we were told to stand in front of it. Jesus stood a few feet from us and his eyes shifted between Eric and me.
Eric said his name and stuck his hand out. Jesus reached forward with a closed fist, and Eric quickly balled his hand and pounded Jesus' knuckles.
“Que,” he said.
So Jesus wasn't his real name.
“I'm Nicole,” I said.
Que nodded at me.
“What are you guys looking for?”
“A half-ounce of green,” Eric said.
There was a padlocked wooden cabinet next to Que's bed, and when he swung the door open, I was shocked by what was inside. The dealers back home kept a small stash of weed, an ounce or two, and on occasion Vicodin or ecstasy pills. This was like a fucking pharmacy.
The top shelf was filled with a shopping bag of weed. The bag was clear, and the buds were the size of corn on the cob. The second shelf was pills. Rows of pill bottles were filed along the sides and back wall, and sandwich bags of white powder were in the middle. There was a metal pan on the bottom shelf holding wax-paper packets stamped with emblems.
Que took out the shopping bag and used a digital scale to weigh out a half ounce. Eric placed our money in Que's hand and pocketed the weed. Renee was next, but she didn't say what she wanted. Que just reached into the cabinet and pulled out two sandwich bags from the middle of the second shelf. They exchanged what was in their hands and he walked us out to the hallway.
“Can we start buying from you?” Eric asked. “Without having to bring Renee?”
Que wrote his phone number on a napkin and gave it to me. “Call first and just the two of you, no one else, ever,” he said.
We took the train back to Renee's place. Eric packed Baby with bud while Renee dumped some powder onto her glass table. She spread out three lines, rolled up a dollar bill, and gave it to me. I'd snorted coke a handful of times when I was in college, but I was always drunk, so I didn't feel it. Coke wasn't the only drug I'd tried. My roommate, Katy, and I experimented with pain pills and ecstasy, and tripped on shrooms and acid. But mostly, it was weed, and we wouldn't start our homework without smoking something first.
But sitting in front of Renee's coffee table, I was sober. The coke shot through the bill, into my nose, and straight to my brain. I took a hit from Baby, and the smoke expanded in my lungs and came out of my mouth like a chimney.
My jaw was swinging like a pendulum. My lips were moving like propellers on a speedboat. I felt good. Too good. And I had more energy than I knew what to do with.
The three of us went out for a walk, and I found myself talking to the men I passed on the street. I hadn't done that in the year I'd lived in Boston. I'd always kept my head down whenever I was outside to avoid stares. But I was looking up and making eye contact. I even smiled and flirted a little. I jumped in puddles of slush, and the snow and dirt hit the front of my legs. I thought, I'm never going to wash these jeans again. I would keep them as a reminder of this night, just like the battle scar I had under my chin from my last night at college.
I felt cloudy and sore when I woke up Monday morning. I didn't know when I had gone to bed or how long I slept, but I knew I didn't have any nightmares. My stomach was gurgling. We hadn't eaten since Saturday night.
Eric was curled up on the other side of Renee's couch, and I shook him awake. He opened his eyes, and I nodded my head towards the coffee table. Renee was sitting next to the table, separating the last of the blow. Eric looked back at me. His eyes gleamed, and his front teeth bit his lower lip. The last time I had seen that look was when we were driving over the Tobin Bridge.
Why not, I didn't have to be at work until five. I felt pretty fucking lucky, because not everyone had the chance to find Jesus.
CHAPTER THREE
Snorting coke was like being connected to a pair of jumper cables. Once that cane was up my nose, my battery ran perfectly. I flipped my tables faster than the other servers by delivering my own food and sold add-ons like appetizers and pitchers instead of mugs of beer. If the bar had been open twenty- four hours a day, I would have worked straight and never gone home. My boss Mark was loving me too. He told me almost every day I was his favorite because I was making him so much money.
It was like Que had written me a prescription that said, “Every hour, blow one line of coke on an empty stomach. Mix the drug with alcohol as needed. Don't try to sleep. You won't be able to operate machinery without laughing.”
The best part of it all was my nightmares were gone. Since coke kept me from sleeping, I couldn't dream about what those bastards had done to me. And how they dirtied my insides without even wearing a condom.
I'd come a long way since the month I'd lived on my parents’ couch. And I'd changed without the help of a therapist. My parents had nagged me that whole month to enroll in Bangor's community college, to go to work with my dad at the Bangor Daily News, and to meet with a therapist. My parents didn't get it. I wanted to be left alone. I didn't want to talk. I didn't want to listen. And I sure as hell didn't want to meet with a stranger who held a notebook and wrote as I talked, pretending like they cared or understood.
Eric got it though. Bangor was only twenty minutes away from the University of Maine. So he picked a city where, besides Michael, I wouldn't know anyone and no one would have heard about what happened to me.
I'd promised my parents before I left that I'd call them every night. I'd kept my promise, and recently they said they had noticed a change in my voice. They said I sounded happy. I was right, leaving Bangor had been the best thing for me.
Confidence flowed through me. I traded my baggy clothes for booty shorts and belly shirts and strutted around the bar like I was working at Hooters. I was that girl I'd been in college.
Phone numbers found their way into my apron, and men openly flirted. I'd kid right back too, like the night when five college guys sat in my section for happy hour. They called me beautiful and gave me all kinds of compliments like how my eyes were sexy and my smile was a tease. I told them I'd keep the rounds coming if they took extra special care of me. They said they would, and they'd make sure I was left satisfied.
One of the guys in their group was really cute. He was a little bigger than Eric and wearing a Boston College football t-shirt. I'd busted him checking me out when I was working my other tables. I liked the big linebacker type with messy hair and a baby face and hoped he'd stick around after closing, so we could get a beer.
At last call, I stopped by their table to drop off their last round and Boston College grabbed my arm, pulling me against his chest. “Will you come home with me?”
“I don't get off for a while,” I said. “We have a meeting—”
“Fuck the meeting, I want you.”
His hand moved to my ass, and he squeezed one of my cheeks.
“I'll think about it,” I said and tried to pull away, but he clamped down even harder.
“What's there to think about?” he asked. He placed my hand on his crotch. His dick was hard, and it was longer than my fingers. “We all want you.”
“All?”
He nodded at each of the guys around the table.
I didn't have a chance to respond because a pair of hands clutched me from behind and pushed me out of the way.
“What the fuck?” Mark shouted at BC. “Apologize to her.”
The five guys rose from the table and circled around Mark.
“Did you hear what I said? Apologize to her. Now.”
I backed away a few feet and watched the guys puff out their chests and clench their fists like they were getting ready to fight. Mark was tall, but standing next to these guys, he looked like a horse jockey.
“She's a fucking whore,” BC said. “Look at how she's dressed.”
All the other servers dressed like me, wearing shorts and tank tops. Why did my clothes make me a whore? And a whore would be having a lot more sex than I was. The last time a guy had touched me had been over a year ago—Casey fingering me didn't count as sex—and getting raped didn't count as sleeping with someone.
Mark swung at BC, and everyone attacked at once. Mark was at the bottom of the pileup and the five guys were on top of him, wrestling and kicking. The fight didn't last long because Big Dan, the bouncer who worked the front door, came running into the dining room. He pulled the guys off the floor by their collars and told them to get out before he called the cops.
Mark stood up and came right over to me. “You okay?” he asked. His lip was bleeding, and there was a scratch under his eye.
“Yeah, I…”
“They didn't leave you a tip,” he said and pulled out his wallet. He took out a wad of bills and handed it to me. “Take this.”
“You don't have—”
“And don't worry about closing up,” he said. “Just go home for the night.”
My closing duties would take me at least an hour to finish, and there was a bag of coke in my apron just waiting to be snorted.
“See you tomorrow,” he said and he walked towards his office. I said thanks, but I didn't think he heard me.
Renee was standing behind the bar, staring at me. With everyone watching, I didn't want to go over and tell her what happened. She had told me we needed to keep our friendship a secret from our co-workers. We kept our distance at work.
I flashed Mark's money and mouthed, “party at my house.” She had this odd smirk on her face. I thought she'd be excited I'd gotten a handout from Mark, but it didn't appear that way. Of course, later that night after we re-upped from Que, she was blowing lines of cane with a big 'ol grin on her mug.
The next morning, Casey pulled up just as Eric and I were walking out of our apar
tment building. We hadn't seen her since that night we'd tripped on shrooms at the club. We'd called her a few times, and she'd called us back, but we were never able to catch each other.
She rolled down her window. “What're you guys doing today?”
“We were just about to run an errand,” Eric said.
“You want to go get a tattoo?”
We didn't have the money for a tattoo. Plus, Que had told us to be at his house in twenty minutes.
“Can't, we're broke,” I said.
“I'll pay,” she said and smiled.
“You go,” Eric whispered. “And I'll go to Que's.”
I had always wanted a tattoo.
Her eyes bounced from Eric to me. “So…”
“Nicole will go, but I've got something I have to do,” Eric said.
I got in the car and asked about her new job. She said she was designing online ads for a big law firm and buying something called media space.
I hadn't touched a computer since college. My email inbox was probably full, if it hadn't already been shut off from not using it.
“Do you like working in an office?” I asked.
“I get to design and that's all I've ever wanted to do, but my cubicle is kind of small.”
Casey had gone to school for marketing and was now living her dream. I'd have to go back to school to become a teacher, but never wanted to step foot on another college campus.
She asked about Eric and some of the other bouncers. I guess she hadn't kept in touch with anyone. I filled her in on all the gossip Eric had told me about his co-workers, which kept us from talking about our hookup. I wasn't sure how I was going to tell her it was a one-time thing, and I really just wanted to be her friend. Luckily, I didn't have to. The shop wasn't too far from my place, and once she parked, we both got out of the car.
The walls inside the tattoo parlor were decorated with thousands of pictures of all the tats they'd done. They even covered the ceiling. Casey had brought a drawing she'd done herself. It was intertwining lines that formed a circle with three names in the middle.
