A Cool Breeze on the Underground

by Don Winslow

  “Are you going to lecture me, or just sit there?” he asked Graham. There were days, many of them, when he hated Graham.

  “I’m going to lecture you. I’m just dragging it out because I’m enjoying it so much.

  “You see, Neal, when you want to get lost, the first thing you got to lose is yourself. You got to become a different person, otherwise you bring all your habits, and likes and dislikes, and all your connections with you. Anybody who knows you has a good shot at finding you. And I know you, son.”

  “Yes, you do, Dad.”

  “I know you got this spring vacation. I even know you got a thing to write. I know you want peace and quiet.

  “I also know you’re too cheap to rent a hotel room, even though Friends would have picked up the bill, and I know you haven’t got your driver’s license, so you didn’t drive out into the country, where you probably should, have gone.”

  Neal carefully poured the ground coffee into the filter and measured out the water in the carafe.

  “I hate the country.”

  “So where is Neal going to find a place? From a classmate who lives off campus but is going away on a nice little student vacation. So your Dad gives you this assignment and then does some asking around. Now I know Neal isn’t going out to Queens or Brooklyn, because he wants to enjoy himself. And I know he’s not staying on the Upper West Side, because he doesn’t want to bump into his Dad on the street, but he also doesn’t have the discipline to stay inside and really hide like he should. And I know he’s not going to the East Side, because it’s all rich people and he’s prejudiced against them. And I remember how many times Neal has told me that if he ever left the West Side, he would move to the Village. So it became a simple matter of elimination and a little legwork. How many of Neal’s classmates live in the Village and are going to Florida for spring break?”

  “One.” Neal was disgusted.

  “I only waited the two days so you could get some work done on your paper so you don’t flunk out and embarrass me.”

  Neal looked at him with true awe. “That’s amazing. That really is. That’s like Sherlock Holmes!”

  “Right. Also you wrote down the address on your phone pad.”

  “You broke into my apartment?”

  “I have a key.”

  Neal was confused. “Yeah, but I took the note with me. I remember ripping it off the pad and putting it in my pocket!”

  “Are we going to drink the coffee or admire its delicate aroma?”

  “It’s not done yet, and tell me.”

  “You tell me.”

  Neal thought for a minute, then he knew. He was so goddamned angry at himself, he wanted to scream. “I wrote the note with a ballpoint pen and it left an impression on the next page.”

  “That’s right. You’re an idiot.”

  “I am.”

  “But you’re a live idiot.” Graham stood up, walked over to Neal, and took him by the collar with his one real hand. “Listen, son, anytime you have to disappear, it’s serious. You disappear because you have to. Now your fuckup with the notepad made it easy, but I would have found you anyway, for all the reasons I told you. When you disappear, you don’t leave anything behind except yourself. You become somebody else. Or you’ll get found. And the next time you get found, it might not be me, but someone who wants to kill you. You got that, son?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  Graham let go of him. “Good. Now get lost. I’ll drink the coffee.”

  Neal walked down the stairs and onto the street. Two days later, he was unhappily ensconced in a sleeping bag in a state park in Rhode Island. He hated every minute of it.

  Graham didn’t find him, however.

  28

  Getting off heroin won’t kill you. Problem is, you wish it would.

  The body is a vindictive fucker. It wants what it wants, and when it can’t get it, it starts dreaming up ways to motivate you: runny nose, runny eyes, aching joints, aching muscles. It makes your skin crawl and your nerves jump. It makes you shake, rattle, and roll. You get cold, freezing cold, and then you get colder, and you think you’re going to shake apart, actually shake to bits. You start to breathe in short, nasal snorts and exhale in long sighs and groans. Sometimes the floor starts pitching like the deck of a small ship in a big storm, and then you just want to lie there and hold on to your knees, because they hurt so much. And if you could just get warm …

  Neal wrapped Allie in blankets. She shivered anyway as she stalked the bedroom, trying to walk away the ache and the cold.

  “‘She can’t take much more, Captain,’” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Didn’t you ever watch Star Trek? When Captain Kirk would make Scotty take it up to Warp Eight and the Enterprise would start shaking and Scotty would get on the intercom and say, ‘She can’t take much more, Captain’?”

  “And then they’d all tilt from one side to the other.”

  “Yeah. Right. But then it would be okay.”

  “Until the next week.”

  “Give me something.”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Please …”

  “I threw it all away.”

  He was sitting on the bed. She dropped to her knees in front of him.

  “I’ll blow you,” she said.

  “Alice …”

  “I will. I’m good.”

  “C’mon,” he said, lifting her up. “Walk. I’ll help you.”

  He put his arm around her shoulder as they paced the room.

  “Neal. I’m not going to make it through the night.”

  “Yeah you will.”

  “I’ll die.”

  “No you won’t.”

  Yeah you will? No you won’t? Brilliant stuff, Neal thought. Maybe you can open up an office, charge forty bucks an hour, and say, “Yeah you will,” “No you won’t.” He almost wished he hadn’t thrown the smack away. This girl was hurting bad. And his record at getting women off heroin wasn’t so great.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  “Wrong answer, you asshole! You’re scared? Now you fucking tell me? This whole thing was your goddamn idea!”

  She started to laugh. “You’re scared.”

  She was laughing as she started pounding on his chest and his arms with her fists. Her laughter quickly turned to tears.

  The cramps started later. She tried to throw up but couldn’t, and her retching dry heaves hurt as much as the cramps. Neal held her from behind—one hand on her neck, and the other pressed into her lower stomach muscles. Between heaves, he draped her head with a cool cloth and talked to her, telling her she’d get past it, she’d be okay, that she wouldn’t die. He sang her songs, whatever lullabies he could remember from his mother’s snatches of maternal cogency. He summarized the plots of Star Trek episodes, playing all the parts and making the noises of phasers and communicators. They played games: Name a rock group for every letter of the alphabet (The Angry Aardvarks, The Zony Zebras), sing the theme music from old TV shows. (They got The Brady Bunch but couldn’t recall The Partridge Family.)

  Morning came at last.

  Neal thought it had probably been the toughest night of his life.

  He knew it had been the hardest of Allie’s. She had sweated it out, hung tough, all those good cliches. Now she was finally asleep. With the dawn had come a little peace.

  He needed it. It had been a night spent with a tortured Allie, and a night spent with his own ghosts: a girl that he could help, a mother he couldn’t. A thousand memories of that woman in pain and need, and a little boy unable to do a thing who hated her for it, hating himself for it. But on this night, in the here and now, he had helped, And they got through it together.

  As he slumped in his chair, watching Allie sleep, getting rested for the next paroxysm of need that would hit her, he realized that his rage was gone. The sorrow would always be there, he knew, but the rage was gone. Maybe there is a God, he thought, and he sent,
me Allie Chase.

  Allie didn’t know where she was when she woke up a while later. She sat up with a start, then noticed Neal and managed a weak smile. Then she leaned over and threw up into the bucket Neal had put there for the purpose.

  “I love morning, don’t you?” Neal asked, receiving a muttered obscenity in reply. He tossed her a damp cloth to wipe her face.

  She tried to get out of bed, but her legs were wobbly. Neal grabbed her elbow and helped her up. They made a shaky trip down the stairs and he plunked her down in a chair in front of the fireplace. It took him a couple of minutes to get the fire started, and then he carried a smoldering stick into the kitchen and lit the wood-burning stove. He put the water on for tea, and spooned a large dollop of honey into Allie’s cup. “You okay in there?” he yelled.

  “Terrific.” He took the sarcastic tone as a good sign. “Be right in.”

  “Yip yip.”

  He looked out the window while he waited for the water to boil. Up the hill to his left, he could just make out a small dog hustling a herd of sheep along the crest. He wondered where the shepherd was and how far away he lived. Surely he’d notice the smoke from Simon’s chimney and maybe stop by for a cup and a chat. Neal started to work on some lies to tell in that eventuality. Lost in mendacity, he was startled by the shrill whistle of the kettle.

  He dumped what he figured was a couple of teaspoons of smoky, black tea into the bottom of the pot and poured the boiling water over it. Then he swished the pot gently a few times and let it set. He found the strainer and a tray and took everything over by the fire, where he poured Allie the first cup.

  “Drink,” he ordered. “Yummy.”

  “Ill throw it up,” she warned.

  “Jesus Christ, we wouldn’t want you to throw up!”

  She took the cup and sipped. “Sweet enough.”

  “Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

  “That’s what I am.”

  Neal shook his head.

  “What? I’m not a bitch?”

  “Yeah, you are. But I think it’s more of a habit than a permanent condition.”

  “I like being a bitch.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  Her look of total disdain answered his question.

  “I am,” he said.

  “Then eat.”

  He found some oatmeal cookies in a cupboard and took them back in.

  “Is today going to be as bad as yesterday?” She looked like a scared child. It reminded Neal how young she really was.

  “No. You won’t get as violently sick. You’ll be real jittery, though, and you’ll get the aches again. But not as bad.”

  “How come you know so much about this?”

  “I read a lot.”

  “Can I have a cookie?”

  He handed her the bag. “Knock yourself out.”

  They sat quietly for a few minutes. Then she said, “I don’t suppose there’s like a radio in this hole.”

  “There’s like not.”

  “Sure, make fun.”

  She got out of the chair. Slowly. It looked as if it hurt. She walked over to the front window and looked out. “Pretty.”

  “Yeah.” More brilliant repartee, Neal thought.

  “I stink.”

  “Don’t get so down on yourself.”

  “No, I mean I smell. Like bad.”

  So much for Dr. Carey and positive reinforcement. “Do you want to take a bath?”

  “Like yes.” She smiled back at him. If you can make fun of me, she was telling him, so can I.

  “Like okay.”

  “Where’s the bathroom? I don’t remember …”

  “Outside.”

  “Get real.”

  “That’s as real as it gets.”

  She lookod at him real hard. “Next time, I pick the hotel.”

  Next time?

  “C’mon. I’ll show you where it is.” It took them a good five minutes to walk the hundred feet to the tub. She was like an old lady. They stopped twice while she bent over to ease the soreness in her lower back. He hadn’t planned to heat water for her, but then he figured it would make her feel better.

  “I’ll get a chair, you can sit outside for a while. Air’ll do you good.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Heat the goddamn water.”

  “How come you’re being so nice?”

  “I’m a jerk.”

  “Then can I have more tea?”

  He took the cup from her and strode back into the cottage. Student, private eye, butler. May I help you?

  It took forever to heat enough water for even a shallow bath. He’d check on her every few minutes, look out to see that she was still in her chair and not gimping in the direction of the village to get the next bus back to London and the needle. Never trust a junkie, he thought. But she stayed in her chair, dozing off from time to time, or watching the sheepdog work his flock.

  The awkward moment came when the water was ready. Neal poured it into the tub, saving a bucket to rinse off with, handed her a towel, and started to walk away to give her privacy. She got up, stared at the tub, stared at Neal, stared at the tub, and then back at Neal again.

  “What?”

  “I don’t think I can get in.” She tried lifting her left leg to demonstrate. She could barely lift her foot to knee level.

  “You want me to help you?” he asked, without the trace of a leer.

  “I’d have to get undressed,” she objected. “In front of you.” A shy hooker? he thought. The proverbial new wrinkle.

  “Alice, don’t you get undressed in front of men all the time?”

  “That’s different. They’re strangers.” He appreciated the inverted logic that made what she said make sense.

  “Okay. I’ll turn my back. You get undressed. I’ll help you into the tub as quickly as I can, then I’ll go away. You call me, and we’ll reverse the process.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The water’s getting cold. If you’re not getting in, I will.” She thought about it for a second. Neal checked her out to see whether this was just a hooker game, a little hide-and-seek seduce-the-cop game. But she looked shy just then. She really did.

  “Okay. But don’t look where you don’t have to.”

  “Think of me as your doctor.”

  “I could tell you stories…”

  He turned around and heard her fumbling with her clothes. Her hands being none too steady, it took a couple of minutes. Then he heard a long sigh before she said, “Ready.”

  He tried to focus on her eyes, but you know what it’s like when you try not to look at something. Her body was beautiful, and Neal quickly dismissed the sinking feeling in his gut.

  “Come on, before the water gets cold,” she said. She was blushing, and the gooseflesh must have come from the crisp morning air. She crossed her arms over her breasts and looked away from him. It might have been the sexiest gesture he had ever seen.

  “Turn around,” he said.

  “What?”

  “So I can lift you into the tub, idiot.”

  “You don’t have to get mad.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “You sound mad.”

  She turned around and Neal made a determined effort not to look at her as he held her around her waist and struggled her into the tub.

  She let out an unholy shriek as she hit the water. “Getting cold? This is boiling!”

  “It’ll feel great in a minute.”

  “I thought you were going to go inside.”

  “On my way.” He talked as he walked. “Now don’t try to get out on your own! You could fall and hit your head!” He realized he sounded like somebody’s mother.

  I have to get out of this business, he thought. He went inside and drank two cups of tea and ate six oatmeal cookies.

  “Neal!”

  “What?”

  “I wanna get out!”

  “Okay!”

  She had spent a good half hour lying in th
e bath. He had looked out every few minutes (well, she was in a tub, you couldn’t see anything) to make sure she hadn’t drowned or run away. When he came out of the cottage, she was sitting up, her hair full of suds.

  “Rinse me?” she asked. “I can’t bend over to get my head in the water.”

  He poured the bucketful over her head, and she shook her hair out like a wet dog.

  She held her hand out and he turned her and lifted her out of the tub. Their bodies touched as he set her on her feet on the ground. He let go of her quickly and wrapped a towel around her.

  “We’d better get inside,” he said, and started walking her to the cottage. She did much better this time, and only needed a little support climbing the stairs. She got dressed in some old clothes he had found. They were too big for her, but the pants stayed up with a belt and the jersey was comfortably baggy. Neal was stoking the fire when she came downstairs, all on her own. She stepped gingerly into the sitting room.

  “Neal?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I need some smack.”

  She came into his arms and cried for a long time.

  29

  Colin hated living this way.

  He had scrunched himself down in his grandda’s flat, a dingy cellar in the Old East End. He had a mattress in the corner of the sitting room and he could see the street through the one tiny window. He tried hard not to watch every pair of feet that came by, but the thought that Dickie Huan was tracking him down made it tough.

  The room was a pit, a real trash heap, and the old man smelled bad, what with the steady diet of cheap sausage and cheaper beer. Plus the filthy old codger watched telly every second that he wasn’t down to the pub, and he liked those quiz shows where fat old bags in pink frocks won holidays to Brighton for knowing the Christian names of every Prime Minister since Christ was a road guard, or the titles of every ultraboring song they used to sing before they took a quick poke up the old canal and started breeding. If Colin had to sit through one more episode of Poldark, he thought he would just let Dickie Huan slice and dice him into pigeon feed. It might be less painful.

  And the old one couldn’t shut up, either, not for a moment. He engaged in a never-ending monologue about the war, and then it was Gerry this and Gerry that until Colin would scream out that he wished Gerry had won the bleeding war, anyway, so that at the least the beer would be worth drinking.