by J. R. Helton
“Right.”
Rather than putting an ad in the paper, I went to Corky, the deal man. When I told him I wanted to sell the Honda and get a cheap car and cash he got very excited.
“I know exactly what to do,” he said. “I know this guy who has an LTD that runs great.”
“What year is it?”
“I think it’s a ’72.”
“With a million miles on it.”
“Listen, this guy’s a big dealer. I know he’ll want to buy your car. And maybe we can get some surplus coke out of this, too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’ll take care of everything.”
And he did. Two days later, the Honda was sold. I went over to Corky’s to check out the LTD I’d bought sight unseen. Corky called me inside first. “Let’s go in my room.”
We went back there and did a few lines. I could tell he was up to something. He was acting silly, gushing niceties on me.
“You know you and Susan are our best friends. You’re really the only people Jill and I can talk to. And now you’re moving. I can’t believe that. I finally get some friends I really like, people I want to see, and you’re moving.”
“We’re just going thirty minutes up the road, Corky.”
“Yeah, but it won’t be the same. We’ll never see you.”
“Probably not.”
We sat there quietly. I was waiting to hear the outcome of the car transaction but Corky kept stalling, doing out more lines. Finally, he reached in a drawer and pulled out a stack of one hundred dollar bills. He handed them to me with a big smile on his face. “Thirty-five hundred dollars,” he said.
I counted the money and didn’t say anything.
“Thirty-five hundred cash,” Corky said.
“What is this shit?”
“What?’
“That car was worth six thousand bucks. I told you I didn’t want to sell it for any less.”
We sat there and stared at each other.
“You really don’t trust me, do you?”
“Not really.”
Corky reached in a drawer and threw a plastic bag into my lap. “Well, here. Fuck you.”
I put the cash in my pocket and picked up the bag. It was filled with coke.
“That’s a very heavy bag,” Corky said. “And it’s excellent coke.”
I stared at the bag and felt myself getting an erection at the sight of it. I grabbed a pen cap, opened the bag up and did a few bumps. I offered it to Corky and he took two hits.
“This is excellent coke,” I said.
“Of course it is, man. I wouldn’t fuck you. But listen . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s make a deal, as they say. That cost three thousand dollars and it’s yours, but if you let me, I can cut the living hell outa that shit and get rid of it for a gigantic profit. These college kids have been snorting laxative and speed for so long they have no idea what real coke is, and that, my friend, is real coke, almost at least. All you have to do—”
“Yeah?”
“All you have to do is let me split the profit with you. I promise you’ll end up with even more money and some coke besides.”
I sat there and thought: Susan wouldn’t like this. She’d say take the money, the coke, the car, and go.
“How quick can you get rid of it?”
“Quick.”
“It won’t be that big of a profit . . .”
“It’ll be big enough for both of us.”
“How do I know this cost you three thousand dollars?”
Corky sat back. “You know something, I’m gonna get pissed in a minute. I’m doing all this work, I got you a car, cash, blow, and all you gotta do is split some profit with me . . .”
“All right, all right . . . you’ll save me some uncut stuff?”
“Of course.”
I reached in the plastic bag and pulled out a small blueish white rock. “Let’s pulverize this thing.”
“There you go,” Corky said.
We ground up the rock, did a few lines and went outside to look at the car.
“It’s got a few problems,” Corky said.
“Oh really?”
“Just minor stuff. What do you expect? I got it for five hundred bucks.”
I walked around the car. It was light blue, a two-door LTD with a dark blue vinyl top. There was no radio inside, just a hole where it should have been.
“It’s got a 454 in it that runs great,” Corky said. “The title and registration are in the glove compartment. The car is yours. The hood won’t stay up though so you have to prop it open. Other than that, everything works great. Brakes work, power steering.”
“A.C.?”
“No A.C., but there’s a heater, which brings me to the minor problem.”
“What is it?”
“There’s no side windows.”
“Really?” I tried to look down inside the door.
“The guy who owned it was a real coke freak. He takes shit apart all the time and never puts it back together. He’s got a Harley in his living room that’s in a thousand pieces. He’s never gonna get it together. He took the electric motors and windows out of this car and never put them back in.”
“Does he still have the motors?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How ‘bout the windows?”
“Nope.”
“Well shit, what if it rains?”
He shrugged. “Maybe it won’t.”
Susan wasn’t too pleased with a windowless car, but she liked the cash. Within a week we had several thousand dollars, some high-grade coke, and our suitcases and boxes in the back of the LTD.
Corky and Jill threw a party for us the last night we were in New Braunfels. It was at Corky’s house and there were only about ten people there. Susan, Jill and I played Trivial Pursuit with some friends late into the morning. Corky was in and out most of the night, but he kept a constant supply of good coke coming to us for the whole game. When the sun came up, Susan and Jill’s friends went home. Jill said goodbye to us casually. Corky followed us out to the LTD.
“We’re really gonna miss you two. You have to come see us.” He gave Susan a big hug. “We’ll miss you.”
“We’re just going to Austin,” Susan said.
“Yeah, but you never know,” Corky said. He walked over to my side. Before I could get away, he grabbed me and gave me a bear hug. “You take it easy, man.”
He looked very serious and emotional. I guess he knew we weren’t going to call them anymore. Susan had asked Jill about a coke dealer in Austin and she’d given us the name of a good one.
“Come see us sometime.”
I got in the car. “We’ll definitely get together soon.”
“Bye,” Susan said.
“I can help you get those windows,” Corky said.
“Okay, I’ll give you a call.”
“I know a junkyard where we can get some and I’ll put ’em in for you.”
“Okay, thanks, bye.” I started up the car and put it in reverse.
“Be careful, come see us,” Jill said, waving from the front door.
We backed out and drove away.
“I thought we’d never get out of there,” Susan said.
“Corky looked like he was going to cry.”
“He really did.”
We drove out of New Braunfels and headed north on i-35. The sun was coming up. It was a clear day and the wind blowing into the car was freezing cold. Susan covered herself up with a blanket and huddled next to me.
“We need to get some windows,” she said.
“We do.”
I gripped the steering wheel tightly but could
barely feel it. My fingers and hands were numb from the coke and the cold. I looked in the rearview mirror. My jaw was moving back and forth uncontrollably and my pupils were so dilated they looked like two giant black holes in my head.
“I’m gonna rest for a minute,” Susan said and she put her head on my shoulder and she fell asleep.
-5-
The money was running out so we both took jobs, Susan as a waitress. I went into construction, working as a house painter for a big company, rather than going back to the university. We found an apartment complex, El Madrid, in south Austin off Congress. We put down a 300 dollar deposit on an unfurnished one bedroom on the third floor. The only things in there were a couple of hanging wrought iron lamp fixtures made during the Inquisition. We went to the mall and bought a mattress, a big Quasar color TV and a video recorder. We didn’t have any tables so Susan put some contact paper on a couple of cardboard boxes and we ate off those. The mattress was in the living room with the TV and video. The bedroom floor was reserved for all the clothes, books, and crap in our trunk including the dishes and utensils Susan’s Aunt Odessa had sent us as a wedding present.
There was a video place around the corner. I went over there and rented a bunch of movies. I got a couple of triple Xs and late at night I got one out. Cocaine stimulates the libido though it also can make you impotent if you take too much. It was about three a.m. and Susan was sitting on the mattress chopping up the blue flake.
“Hey,” I said, “I got a dirty movie. You wanna watch it?”
“Okay.”
“We’ve got Party Girls, or Inside Josie.”
“Jose?”
“No, Josie. I think Orson Welles is in Party Girls.”
“Let’s watch that.”
I popped in the video and turned it on. I went back over to the mattress and watched Susan do out some lines. I held her hair back while she did hers and then I did mine. The coke was laid out on a heavy, gold-framed picture of Susan when she was a baby.
“You were a cute baby.”
“Thank you.”
We started kissing. The video was boring but it gave me an erection. I stood up, turned the volume down, and went back to the mattress. Susan started rubbing the lump in my pants.
“This is a big dick,” she said. “How come it’s so hard?”
“I guess I want to fuck.”
She unzipped my pants, pulled out my cock, and kissed it.
“Who do you want to fuck?”
“I want to fuck you. I want you to suck my cock.”
She put it in her mouth and slowly sucked on it, moving her head up and down.
She stopped. “Tell me something?”
“Yeah?”
“Have you ever put this dick in another girl?”
“Yes, I have.”
Susan got excited, pulled off her pants, and climbed up on top of me. I spread her lips apart and she sat down on my cock slowly, watching it go in.
“Oh baby, who did you fuck? Tell me about it?”
“I fucked your best friend in college, Susan. I fucked Rebecca many times.”
Susan got more excited and fucked me harder.
“I came in Rebecca’s mouth, bit her tits and kissed her cunt. I fucked her in her little blond pussy.”
Susan slowed down, bent over, and whispered in my ear. “Let’s go slow, baby. Let’s go slow. Who else did you fuck?”
“I fucked Jill.”
“Oh, yes, oh God, did you really fuck Jill?”
“I fucked her on her couch. She’s got a real tight pussy, Susan with just a little bit of hair on it. She got on top of me and we fucked.”
“Just like I am now?”
“Just like you are now.”
“Oh God, I love this cock inside of me.”
“Who did you fuck, baby?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Tell me now.”
“I fucked Corky.”
I almost came but stopped myself. “Tell me about it.”
“It was late at night over at his house and I was really ready to fuck . . .”
“Yeah?”
“But you weren’t around.”
“So what did you do?”
“Well, it was cold in the house, so I got up next to Corky. And I was just barely brushing my tits up against him, getting him real horny.”
“Yeah?”
“And I could see that he had this big hard-on, so I put my head down in his lap, and I unzipped his pants, and I pulled his big dick out and put it in my mouth—”
“You put his cock in your mouth?”
“I did baby, and I sucked him off and he held my head down and I couldn’t get away and he shot all of this cum into my mouth, it was so much cum I couldn’t swallow it all and it started running down the sides of my mouth. And then he just turned me over and started fucking me from behind—”
“You’re a whore—”
“That’s right, I’m your whore. And I fucked Jill—”
“You fucked Jill?”
“I sucked on Jill’s clit and stuck my tongue in her pussy.”
“You—”
“Wait, I’m gonna cum.”
“Wait—”
We picked up speed and came at the same time. After we caught our breath, Susan started kissing me all over. “I love you,” she said. “I love you so much. I just want you. I just want to fuck you and nobody else.”
“Did you really fuck Corky?”
She hesitated. “No.” She started to kiss my neck. “Did you really fuck Jill?”
“No.”
Susan looked me in the eyes as she moved down and kissed my stomach. “Tell me about it,” she said. “Tell me the truth. Tell me everything.”
I began to talk and we started all over again.
The New Braunfels coke ran out. We’d been up for days and crashed hard. We slept for eighteen hours and then got up and showered. It had been a long time since we’d eaten and both of us were looking forward now to that first meal. We got dressed and went to The Shoreline and I had a big steak and Susan had lamb. The food was excellent and we stuffed ourselves lingering over the bread and the wine, watching clouds of black bats fly from beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge. After we left the restaurant, I told Susan, “Let’s call that dealer Jill told you about.”
“Okay, but they’re supposed to be real paranoid.”
“Do they know us?”
“Yeah, Jill told them we’d call.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know, but Jill said they have a great house.”
“Let’s call them.”
I went to a Pulse machine and got some cash. Susan called on a pay phone and they were home and she wrote down directions to their house. It was a nice place on the west side of Austin in Tarrytown. We drove up in front of the house and parked.
“Her name’s Mercedes,” Susan said.
“I wonder if she’s got good coke.” I looked up at the big house. “It looks like she does.”
“Jill said she’s from Bolivia.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, also her father was or is an ambassador.”
“Great.”
“Yep.”
Their front door was tall and heavy, surrounded by a sheet of painted steel about a foot wide. I rang the bell.
“This looks kind of suspicious,” I said.
“I think it looks nice.”
A short, pudgy man with curly brown hair opened the door.
“Hi guys, I’m James, come in.”
We followed him into the foyer. Everything was tasteful and sparse, wood floors with expensive rugs, high ceilings with strange art on the walls. We sat down o
n a couch in the big living room. Mercedes made her entrance. She was very thin, with long black hair and a beautiful but somewhat harsh and pointed face. Her blue dress was extremely tight and you could clearly see the outline of her nipples.
“Hello, I’m Mercedes.”
“Nice to meet you.” We shook hands, her fingers even colder than mine.
Mercedes immediately brought out a small mirror and a huge white rock. “James, honey?”
James took the mirror. “I’ll take care of that.”
He shaved some flakes off the rock.
“You two are very cute,” Mercedes said.
“Why thank you,” Susan said.
Mercedes sat down close to Susan, put her hand on her thigh and said very intimately, “Susan, your husband is an Adonis. You better watch out or I might have to seduce him.”
“Be careful, he might hear you,” Susan said.
“You’re both sweet and gorgeous,” Mercedes said. “I think we’re all going to be friends. Don’t you, James?”
“Oh yes, definitely.”
James handed me the mirror with some long lines on it. I noticed he was constantly raising his eyebrows and licking his lips. Mercedes’s little fingers were moving uncontrollably. They must have been going for days. I did a line and started to wipe the mirror with my finger. I found out quickly that wiping the mirror was incredibly gauche in Mercedes’s house. She jumped from the couch and grabbed the mirror from my hands.
“No, no, no, no, don’t!” She regained her composure. “I’m sorry, please don’t do that. There’s plenty for everyone. You see, the oil from your fingers gets all over the mirror.”
James smiled. He had a strange, knowing smile. “There’s plenty. There’s no need to do that.”
And there was plenty. We chopped on that rock all night and we barely made a dent in it. Our hosts were very talkative and nice and only slightly standoffish. Mercedes stood up often to show Susan and me a painting or a particularly expensive rug. She’d comment at length on the object’s background, her Spanish accent coming and going. She kept a string of Julio Iglesias records playing all night. Julio was her favorite singer and she was shocked that we weren’t really interested in him.
“You do not know Julio? You’ve never listened to him? Oh, but he’s so wonderful, so handsome, his voice, oh . . .”
