by Rob Hart
“Neither am I.” Athena leans down to me. “I’m not a psychic either. What I am is very protective of my man and his business. We can’t have some cop-looking motherfucker coming around our neighborhood and bothering people and asking questions that shouldn’t be asked. Plus, I heard all about what went down in Port Richmond. Brother wants to ask you a few questions, you got to take his gun away? Fuck is wrong with you?”
“What the fuck is wrong with him?” I ask. “All he had to do was ask. He didn’t have to draw down on me.”
She puts a finger in the air. “Excuse me. Did he remove his motherfucking gun from his motherfucking pants. Or did he just show it to you?”
“He just showed it to me.”
“Then nobody drew down on nobody. Christ, you are a jumpy motherfucker. And that’s the kind of thing that makes Brick nervous.” She spreads her hands. “And we can’t have that.”
There’s a finality to the way she says ‘we can’t have that’ that I really do not like. It sounds like the period at the end of the sentence. I realize something very disconcerting: they told me their names and let me see their faces. Could be they’re careless, but I don’t think so. Could be they expect me to be too scared to contact law enforcement or seek retribution, but they already know I was willing to snatch a gun out of someone’s belt.
More likely they don’t expect me to be make it out of this room alive.
“Look, I don’t want to cause anyone any trouble,” I tell them. “I’m not a narc and I’m not going to fuck things up for any of you. I tried something and it didn’t work. I’m sorry. So how about we call this one a draw, okay? I’ll stay off the hill. You won’t see me again.”
Athena purses her lips. Thinks about it. Then says, “No, no, we’re well past that. Stupid people take chances. We ain’t stupid.” She turns over her shoulder. “Tim, you got the thing?”
After a few seconds Timmy comes back in, holding something in his hands. He won’t look at me. Takes a few steps forward and keeps his hands down. Athena gives him a hard smack on the arm.
He holds up a needle.
Paris takes it from him, holds it up to the light, and nods.
“Enough to drop an elephant,” she says. Glances at Timmy. “Ain’t that right?”
Timmy looks away from me. My body surges with panic. I yank and jerk at the bindings, but they’re tight and I don’t have good leverage. Next I try to kick at Athena’s knee, thinking that’ll buy me a second, but she sees it coming, steps out of the way and slams her boot into my stomach. I double over, cough, try to breathe.
“You… motherfucker,” I tell Timmy.
“I’m sorry Ash, I really am. They said if I helped they would carry me for the next year.” He pauses. “And if not, they’d cut me off. Not just from them, from everyone. You don’t know what it’s like. I can’t live like that. I’m sorry.”
Paris kneels down with the needle and I jerk away, throwing myself toward the corner of the room, trying to come up with something, anything. But Athena climbs on top of me, holds me down as Paris pulls up the sleeve of my coat. The weight on me increases so that I can’t move. A strong hand grips my forearm. There’s a slap against my skin and a little sting as the needle goes in.
Liquid gold blooms through my body.
It feels like a cold winter day. But winter is outside where it can’t reach me. Like I’m in a warm bed under a heavy down blanket, frost on the windows and sunlight barely filtering through the blinds. I’ve got nowhere to be in the world but under this blanket. I’m not tired, not hungry.
I drift.
When do we ever just drift anymore? When do we even have the time?
Those moments you wish you could disappear down.
Except better.
Because I know I’m about to die and even that doesn’t bother me too much.
Life is the leading cause of death. Why get so worked up over an inevitability? That’s like being upset the sun is going to rise.
I’m sad, briefly, for my mom. Someone’s going to find me and the last thing she’ll know is I came home and didn’t bother to see her, but did find the time to overdose in some half-built home in a broken neighborhood.
I wonder if anyone will be surprised.
All told it’s a pretty clever way to do me in. I’m an addict. Always have been. Drugs and alcohol. Pain and violence.
Why do I do it? I tell myself because it’s the right thing, because someone needs to do it, but in the end, isn’t it also pretty nice when someone is thankful for a thing you did? Doesn’t matter how altruistic your motives, sooner or later it’s going to pay off.
Acceptance is the first step.
I close my eyes.
The pain in my ribs is gone.
Take a deep breath.
Hear breathing.
The bed I’m in. I’m not alone.
There’s a bundle of blankets, pulsing gently. Heat radiating. I slide my hand across the smooth surface of the sheets and feel skin, warm and soft. The bundle turns, and I expect that given this is the last sparks of consciousness granting me something pleasant before I die, that it’ll be Chell.
But it’s not. It’s Crystal.
Those blue-green tempered glass eyes. Black hair fanned out on the pillow. One half of her head shaved. She smiles at me and that smile looks like all I ever wanted in this world.
She opens her mouth to say something but I can’t make it out.
I ask her to repeat it.
Her voice is muted, stretched, like it’s coming from another room.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
A pulse travels through me.
She’s right.
Giving up is easy.
There’s a way out of this. I know there is. I know there is.
Because I remembered something. Put it in my pocket before I left Bombay’s.
Thoughts slip through my fingers like they’re coated in oil.
The naloxone. I remembered the naloxone.
I’m not in a bed.
I’m on the floor of a house.
A house in South Beach. My mother a few miles away. My friends, the people I love, all around me.
Slide my hand across to the inside of my coat pocket.
Stop the overdose in its tracks.
Try to work my hands inside.
Find I can’t.
The feeling of being in a bed is replaced by the feeling of falling.
Everything warm and soft.
Peaceful.
I can’t reach it. Too far gone.
This is it, then.
Sorry Chell.
Sorry dad.
Sorry mom.
I tried.
And I let you down.
As per usual.
The falling stops and I hit the ground. My sinus cavity blazing. That feeling of serenity and comfort is replaced by the polar opposite—pain. Throbbing, angry pain that comes at me in waves. The hardness of the floor feels amplified, the cold on my skin hard and metallic. Sunlight through the window stabbing me in the eyes.
I struggle to get into a sitting position and in the process, heave my guts onto the floor. Cough and sputter and cry and something plastic drops and rattles next to me.
A spent naloxone injector.
There’s someone else in the room with me.
Athena calls out. Her voice muffled. Downstairs.
“Spencer! Clean out this motherfucker’s wallet and let’s go. He’s taking us to Wendy’s.”
Spencer?
Above me. His face a mix of fear and relief. He’s nervous, shaking, holding the other naloxone injectors in his hands, which he places on the floor. His face is dirty, left eye bruised, hair greasy. He looks thinner than he did in his pictures. He pauses, like he’s going to say something. I want to speak to him but am concentrating on not throwing up again. He reaches into my pocket, pulls out my wallet, takes a little cash but not all of it, and drops it on my lap.
“Wait…” Fe
els like I have a mouthful of clay.
He turns and hurries out of the room.
“Wait…” I tell him.
He doesn’t.
I’m alone.
I consider getting up, but instead I puke on the floor again. Wonder how it is my body can expand to make room for so much pain. Wish more than anything in the world I can go back to that bed built by a needle.
Bombay isn’t in the apartment when I get back. Small mercies. I drag myself to my bedroom, strip, grab a clean pair of clothes, and hit the bathroom. Turn on the shower full blast, let the small room fill with steam. Look in the mirror.
It’s like I’ve got the flu but my head’s not stuffy. My body aches and I’m tired. My brain feels like it got stuck in a mosh pit and stomped on for hours. I look worse than I feel. My skin is waxy, my eyes heavy. It’s a relief when there’s enough condensation on the mirror I can’t see myself anymore.
I spend a little time checking the structural integrity of my ribs. Every little stab of pain is a blessing and a curse. It reminds me I’m alive—that’s the closest I’ve ever come to death, one foot dangling over the precipice—but it also makes me think of not having that pain.
Even knowing I was dying, I want back.
For years I crammed my head full of drugs. Coke, prescriptions, sometimes ecstasy. Stuff that blew out my serotonin and made me feel happy and shiny and chatty. Like the entire world was one big party and everyone was a new best friend waiting to be made.
Stuff that made me feel not so alone.
The thing about uppers is they’re psychologically addictive. You want them because they make you feel good. You come to think you can’t feel good without them. It’s a feedback loop, but one you can break if you try hard enough. I was a heavy drinker, too, enough that at one point I went through alcohol withdrawal. Even then, I didn’t feel like I couldn’t live without it.
Heroin, though. It’s a whole new universe. And not the feeling of need that’s gnawing at me, like how sometimes I want a cigarette and I can feel a little tug in my body. That tug is there, amplified so that my skin aches.
But more than that, it’s what the heroin gave me.
Oblivion.
I get it. Intellectually I know heroin is pure destruction. That the first high is the best and you’ll never match it, but you will end your life trying.
And knowing these things, all I want is another taste. Just a little.
Best thing I can do is distract myself.
Because there’s something else I want right now.
Answers.
I ring the buzzer for the penthouse in Ginny’s building. No answer. Try the door for the lobby and it doesn’t budge. I call the number she gave me—again—but it just rings. I go to the bodega on the corner, get myself a cup of coffee. It has the taste and consistency of motor oil. I go back, sit on the steps. The cold serves to keep me awake. I wonder if I should see a doctor after getting pumped full of heroin and then naloxone.
My head spins when I think about the needle. I hope it was clean. But they had no reason to use a clean needle.
All of this is bad.
All of this is very bad.
My stomach threatens to empty itself for the fifth time. I don’t know if that’s from the drugs in my system or the fear in my chest, thrashing around like a wild animal. Maybe a mix of both.
Maybe it’s the shitty coffee.
A black SUV pulls to the curb. I know it’s Samson before he rolls down the window. He glares at me through his sunglasses, even though the sun is going down and he doesn’t need them. We sit there like that for a minute, me sipping my coffee. He looks at me like he wants to hit me.
“So how ‘bout them Yankees?” I ask, practically yelling.
“Season’s over, motherfucker,” he says. “Get in the car.”
The SUV pulls up to a restaurant in Little Italy. As I climb out I say “Thanks, pal” to Samson. He doesn’t say anything.
The place is old, classic. Red checkerboard tablecloths, candles on tables, olive oil instead of butter for the bread. I know I should eat, I know I need the calories, but my stomach isn’t having that. The sight of food makes me nauseous.
The place is busy and I don’t see Ginny. After a moment of standing awkwardly at the front, a short Mexican man in a white shirt and black slacks comes up to me, beckons for me to follow. He leads me first into the kitchen, a cramped, hot space where men move around each other in choreographed routines. There’s a door at the back. He nods toward it.
I squeeze through and find a small room, decorated much like the front: red paint, wood paneling, gold accents, tin ceiling. There’s a table that seats four, and Ginny, sitting alone amongst the remnants of dinner. Empty glasses and empty plates. Three chairs are pulled out like they were vacated in a hurry.
Ginny is done up slightly more than normal. Her wig is brunette and ornate and there’s a trace of glitter in her eyeliner. She’s wearing a dark, sequined dress with spaghetti straps that show off her bony shoulders. Sitting on the table in front of her is a martini.
I sit across from her and we stare at each other for a second. Then I point to her drink. “Always figured you for a gin and tonic girl. Would you call this ironic? I don’t know if that’s the right word.”
“What in the sweet lord happened to you, darling?” she asks.
We run through it. My path to Brick, or at least, Brick’s people. That I saw Spencer. That they know all about Ginny. That they loaded me up with a hot dose of heroin. When I get to the end, Ginny nods, a look of concern cast over her face. She takes out her phone. Taps away at it for a few moments, then looks up at me.
“You need to be seen by a doctor,” she says. “I have someone. Samson will bring you there straight after this. No charge, of course.”
“Ginny.”
“Ash?”
“What the fuck is going on?”
Ginny sighs. Takes a long sip of her martini. Looks around the room and her eyes settle on me. “Drink?”
“Holy fucking shit.”
“Okay, okay. Look, I wasn’t lying about Spencer. I wasn’t lying about the fact that his parents want to know where he is. But, yes, I did hold some things back. He didn’t go to Staten Island for the fun of it.” She pauses, purses her lips. “I sent him.”
“For?”
“There’s a new player on the board,” she says. “Not Brick. Someone else. Someone who’s amassing a great deal of power, very quickly. Enough that people are noticing. Brick has the biggest operation on the island, but it seems like this new player is angling to take over. Do you follow me? It’s a turf war. As you can imagine, the isle of Staten is a very valuable market right now.”
“And what’s your interest in this?”
“Things like that have a way of encroaching on my business,” she says. “I wanted to learn more. That’s it. So I sent Spencer. He was supposed to work his way into Brick’s crew and see what he could see. And then he stopped responding to me. I figured he was dead, or else they had him locked away somewhere and were keeping him fed on heroin. It’s so hard to find loyalty among users.”
“Tell me about it. Remember Timmy, from high school?”
She pauses, thinks. Smiles. “I do.”
“Yeah, he’s the one sold me out to Brick.”
“Well that wasn’t very nice.”
“So where does this leave us?”
Ginny throws back the rest of her martini, places the glass down with a great deal of care. “Well, it leaves you in a bad spot. They’ll probably want to kill you after they find out it didn’t work the first time. But from what I hear, all you have to do is wait. This new player wants to take Brick off the board. In the meantime, just try to keep a low profile as you try to find Spencer. We know he’s alive now. You’ve actually made a good bit of progress.”
“Nope. No fucking way. I’m done with this bullshit.”
“Don’t you want a little revenge?”
“Not worth
it.”
Ginny smirks. “That’s new. Used to be you would have given the money back for the pleasure of putting some hurt on them.”
“That’s not me anymore.”
“Fine. I’ll double your fee.”
“What?”
“Forty thousand. Find Spencer for me. Forty thousand.”
“This isn’t about the money.”
Ginny stands, brushes her hands down her dress to smooth it out. “Yes it is. Everyone needs money. And more than that, you need to protect yourself. Your friends. Your family. Yes, Brick is close to being deposed, but until then, he’s a problem. So you can run and hide from it, or you can confront it.”
I don’t bother getting up. “Is that a threat, Ginny?”
“No, it’s a warning. The smartest thing you can do is see this through.”
“It really feels like that’s not the case.”
Ginny raises her hand, gestures for me to stand, and leads me toward the door. “Sleep on it. See the doctor first. I suspect a good night’s sleep will help you put this into perspective.”
“Yeah, I really fucking doubt that,” I tell her.
“This new player,” she says. “He’s dangerous. Nobody moves that quickly that fast unless they’re willing to hurt a lot of people. There’s something bigger at play here, Ash.”
“What’s his name? Do you know?”
“Not his real name. He goes by Kid Vicious.”
I sigh. “Fucking Christ.”
Samson drops me off outside an apartment building in Chinatown. He rolls down the window, says “number four” and rolls the window back up. Doesn’t pull away. Must be waiting to give me a ride home.
There’s a metal panel next to the door, rounded buttons next to numbers. I hit four and the door buzzes. Climb the stairs to the fourth landing, and there’s an apartment door sitting open a crack. Inside is a small living room area with comfortable seating, and a stack of magazines on a coffee table. The room smells of vanilla.
I go to take a seat when a tall and lanky Asian man steps out from the hallway in baby blue medical scrubs. He’s model-handsome, with a mop of black hair. Bones tattooed on his arms, like they’re meant to be an x-ray of what’s under his skin.
