The Heroin Scene in Fort Myers

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  Haley obviously was used to being treated this way by cops. "They don't give a shit," said cried. I gave her a hug, led her to my car and handed her some clothes. She got in and changed. She said: "They think just because I turn tricks, I can't be raped. Any guy can do whatever he wants to me, and I'm supposed to be ok with it. Like I'm not even a person."

  She told me that she was doing drugs in the back room of that house. Then she passed out on the bed. When she woke up, she was naked and all her things were gone. Her vagina hurt, and she could tell that someone had raped her while she was passed out. I had never seen her this upset. She was ranting and raving about setting the house on fire and killing the guy who did this to her.

  When we got back to my house, she calmed down a little. She had asked me to buy her some alcohol at a gas station, and it relaxed her. She told me this wasn't the first time she had been raped. She said at least this time she was passed out while it happened and she didn't have to go through it awake. Somehow that made it better in her head.

  The next morning she asked me to drop her off at another trap house on Ione.

  A few weeks later, Cirque du Soleil was performing at the Germaine Arena, and we made plans to go see the show together. I made her promise not to stand me up, because the tickets were expensive. She promised she wouldn't. But of course she stood me up anyway. Drug addicts are so damn unreliable, you can't make any plans with them at all.

  But we did spend my birthday and Thanksgiving together. We went out to eat at Golden Corral, her favorite restaurant.

  A couple of days after that, she called me up with yet another emergency. She was hysterically crying again, and I couldn't understand anything she was saying, as usual. At some point I gathered that she was in Cape Coral somewhere and had a court date, and if she wasn't going to be there, they would issue a bench warrant for her and she'd go to jail. She asked me to give her a ride to court.

  I drove all the way to Cape Coral, and when I got there, she wouldn't answer the phone. Great. If she made me drive all the way out here for nothing, I was really gonna be pissed. But after a few minutes, she finally came out of the house. She was either totally drunk or high as a kite. I don't know, but she wasn't wearing a shirt, just a bra. And she didn't have her glasses on. Without them, she was blind as a bat.

  "If I take you to court like this, you're gonna get arrested," I told her.

  She started crying again, really bad.

  "What the hell happened to you?" I asked. "Did you get raped in that house or something?"

  I couldn't understand anything she was saying at first, but then I think she said that a bunch of guys were in that house and they had sex with her and they wouldn't let her leave.

  "Wow. So do you want me to call the cops?"

  "No," she cried. "They don't help girls like me anyway. Just take me to court, or I'll get arrested."

  "Ok, but can you at least put a shirt on?"

  She went back in to get a shirt. I waited for about 10 minutes, but she didn't come back out. Suddenly some black guy walked out and approached my car. Great. Now what?

  He seemed scared, and said: "Look, I don't know what Haley told you, but this is not a trap house. This is a family residence. Nobody did anything to her. There's children here, and she's running around the house naked. You need to get her outta here."

  "Well, I'm trying! She said she wants me to take her to court. Can you get her out here?" I replied.

  He went back inside. Then nothing. I waited for about another 10 minutes. Then some fat girl came out. She also looked nervous and told me the same thing he said: "I don't know what Haley told you, but this is not a trap house. This is a family residence. There's children and she's running around naked. She needs to leave."

  "I'm TRYING! Can you please get her out here and make sure she has a shirt on?"

  Then Haley finally came back out. Still with no shirt or glasses. Still totally blitzed.

  The fat girl brought her a shirt. Haley was so fucked up, she couldn't figure out how to put the shirt on. Her head and arms kept getting stuck in the wrong holes. I tried to help her, but even then she couldn't get it on until the third attempt.

  She told me the black guy was a dope boy who had just been released from prison, so he got himself 3 hookers and he kept feeding them crack and fucking them.

  Then she called her lawyer to ask him what was going to happen at court. She was still sobbing, and he couldn't understand her, so I took the phone and told him she was in no condition to go to court right now. What did he want me to do? He said I should take her back to the house and leave her there. Then the judge would order a bench warrant and she'd go to jail and get help. He said that's the best thing for her right now, or she'd end up dead. I agreed. Haley overheard the conversation, and threatened to kill herself if she had to go back to jail. She insisted that I take her to court. Alrighty then.

  As we were going over the bridge from Cape Coral to Fort Myers, she suddenly started taking her pants off.

  "What are you doing?" I asked.

  "I gotta pee," she said.

  "Do not pee in my car. DO NOT PEE IN MY CAR!!!" I yelled, while she was getting ready to relieve herself on the passenger seat.

  "I can't hold it in. I really gotta go," she said.

  Luckily there was a McDonald's right after the bridge. "Look! I'll stop there and you can go pee in there," I said.

  When I pulled into the parking lot, she got out of the car and said: "Don't leave me here."

  That thought had never even occurred to me, until she said that. Normally I would never dream of just leaving someone behind somewhere, but that was the perfect solution right now. Someone would call the cops, and she'd get arrested for public intoxication. They'd take her to jail and then she'd go to rehab. Perfect plan! So I drove off without her.

  A few hours later Haley called me from jail. The plan worked, I thought. She was confused: "How did I end up in jail? I don't remember anything."

  I looked up her charges on the Lee County Sheriff's website a few minutes later. She didn't get arrested for public intoxication. She got arrested for grand theft auto! What the hell?! When I left her at McDonald's, she decided to steal a car. She spent the next year in jail.

  THE ESCAPE

  "She goes from one addiction to another. All are ways for her to not feel her feelings."

  Ellen Burstyn

  "Romantic love is an addiction."

  Helen Fisher

  When Veronica told me that she was really going to run away from the Salvation Army rehab this time, I thought she was going to change her mind again, like the first time. But she really did run, together with 3 other girls.

  It was dark. I was parked in the back of the building, as agreed. Veronica was carrying a big garbage bag with all the clothes and stuff I had bought her, when she ran out of the back door of the rehab dorm and jumped into my car. A second girl, Alexis, followed her. Veronica asked if Alexis could come home with us, until she could figure out where to hide from the police.

  The two other girls, Kim and Sandra, got into someone else's car. I later found out the other driver was Erin. Small world! All the drug addicts in Fort Myers know each other. And Kim, Sandra and Erin had grown up together in Cape Coral.

  Veronica and Alexis were totally hyper, talking a mile a minute. When we got to my condo, Alexis called her baby daddy, a 40 year old black drug dealer. When he heard that she had run away from rehab, and now had a new warrant, he told her he wanted nothing to do with her. She called her back-up boyfriend, a latin drug dealer who lived in Lehigh Acres. He agreed to pick her up at the Miromar Outlet Mall and let her hide at his house.

  After we dropped Alexis off at the mall, we went home. Veronica said she really wanted to smoke some crack. I tried to talk her out of it for hours. I told her she was just nervous and excited right now, but in a day or two she would calm down, and then the urge to do drugs would pass.

  But she wouldn't take no for an answer: "I just
ran away from rehab. Now I have new charges. There's no way I'm not gonna do drugs now. Either you let me smoke crack here, or I'm gonna run away, fuck some dope boy for drugs, and smoke crack in some trap house. Is that what you want?"

  I replied: "If you smoke crack even just once right now, you won't be able to stop. You'll be back in full-blown addiction in a matter of days, and you'll end up on the streets or tricking on Backpage again. Is that really what you want?"

  I was trying to appeal to her common sense. But her prefrontal cortex wasn't home right now. There was only her midbrain, screaming for drugs. Right now there was not a single part of her brain capable of considering the consequences of what would happen after she smoked crack. I felt like I was talking to a mentally challenged person. Someone with advanced Alzheimer's maybe, who couldn't understand even the most basic logic.

  She pleaded: "I'm just gonna smoke crack tonight, and then I won't even touch any more drugs at all. I swear! Let me show you! Let me prove it to you! Just let me smoke some crack tonight so I can get it out of my system, and then tomorrow I'll be clean. I'm not saying I'll never smoke crack again, but I won't touch that shit for at least a week. I swear! Let me show you! If I ask you within the next 7 days to let me do drugs, you can even call the cops on me and have me put back in jail. I'm serious. Let me show you! Just let me smoke some crack tonight. Please? It'll make me really horny. You'll love it. When I smoke crack, I just want to fuck all night."

  This went on for hours, like a broken record. I couldn't take it anymore. She was relentless. Finally I caved: "Alright, fine. But only tonight. And then don't even ask me for drugs for at least a week, ok?"

  "Ok," she promised. Then she grabbed a prepaid pone that I had lying around and she started calling and texting a bunch of dope boys. When addicts try to line up their next hit, they furiously text and call, as if their life depended on it. They have a singular focus, and they completely forget the world around them. Then she asked me for some money and told me to drive her to some little dead-end street in the hood off of Martin Luther King Boulevard. She said she would buy some crack and ecstasy pills. "They make me really horny. You should try some," she suggested with a smirk.

  After Veronica picked up her drugs, she asked me if we could pick up her friend Kim. She said the others had dumped Kim by the side of the road in the hood somewhere, and now she had nowhere to go.

  I really didn't want to. I was sick and tired of driving around all night. I hadn't been able to have any alone time with Veronica in almost a year, ever since she went to the hospital with the MRSA infection in her leg. I just wanted to cuddle up in bed and make love to her. But we went and picked up Kim anyway.

  When we got back to my place, we sat in the living room and watched some music videos on YouTube. I showed them what they had been missing while they were in jail and rehab. First and foremost: Gangnam Style by Psy.

  Kim and Veronica were making calls on the prepaid phone. Kim called her parents. They were really pissed at her for leaving the program and wanted nothing to do with her. Veronica called one of her roommates in rehab and asked if their escape had been discovered yet. It had. They were both full of nervous energy. It was getting later and later. By 4 am I decided to go to bed. I figured Veronica would follow. But she didn't. I was pissed.

  At 6 am she walked past my bed to go to the bathroom in the master bedroom. I woke up and gave her a dirty look. She asked if I was mad at her. "Yeah, of course I am," I said. "I can't believe you would rather sit in the living room with Kim than come to bed. We haven't seen each other in forever!"

  Of course she'd rather sit in the living room and do drugs with Kim than come to bed. She's a drug addict!

  "I'm sorry. I'll come to bed in a few minutes," she said. She went back in the living room, and by 8 am she finally came back into the bedroom, and we had sex for the first time in almost a year.

  Then she said she would like to go to the beach today. Sounds like a good idea, I thought. Wholesome. A non-drug-related activity. Yayy! I got almost no sleep that night, but I figured we could doze off at the beach.

  "Ok, let's do that," I said with a smile. Then we had sex again and fell back asleep.

  When we woke up in the afternoon, Veronica said: "Let's get some weed for the beach."

  "What? I thought you said after last night you wouldn't ask for any more drugs for at least a week," I replied.

  "Weed isn't like a real drug. It's not like crack or heroin," she said. "Wouldn't you rather have me smoke some weed than crack?"

  "Yeah, I guess." I figured if smoking weed keeps her happy, and away from crack, fine. It's definitely the smaller of two evils.

  I should have known better than to trust her. She told me to drive her and Kim back to the same drug dealer's house near Martin Luther King Boulevard where she had bought crack last night. That should have tipped me off to the fact that she really wasn't buying weed, but more crack. Let's blame my stupidity on the fact that I didn't have enough sleep that night.

  Before we got there, Veronica had conned her father into wiring her some money, by telling him on the phone that she was still in rehab and that she needed money to buy some books or something. He wired her $100. After she picked up her drugs, she said she was too tired to go to the beach, and just wanted to go back home and get some sleep. Of course. Figures.

  On the ride home, she asked me to stop at a fast food joint on 41, so she could use the bathroom. She and Kim went into a single person bathroom together. I knew what that meant. They were going to do drugs together. That's when it dawned on me that they hadn't bought weed and ecstasy, but crack and Ds.

  Kim came out of the bathroom first. I was pissed: "You two just shot up some Ds in the bathroom, didn't you?" She tried to deny it at first, but her mind wasn't working right because she was high, so she started tripping over her own lies.

  Then Veronica came out of the bathroom. We all got back in the car. I gave Veronica a dirty look and told her I knew she had lied to me and they did pills in the bathroom.

  "No we didn't. I swear," she said.

  Meanwhile Kim was nodding out on the backseat. I had seen those droopy eyes and open mouth often enough by now. I knew she was high on opiates.

  "No, Kim just took a Xanax," Veronica claimed.

  "Bullshit. I've seen people on Xanax, and I've seen people on Ds, and she's high on a D," I said angrily.

  "No, it's just a very strong Xanax. It's a new kind. Extra strong," Veronica said. She didn't make much sense anymore, because she was starting to nod out, too.

  When we got back to my place, we went back to sleep for a while. When we woke up, we sat on the porch while Veronica was smoking a cigarette. I told her I was really upset, because she didn't keep her word about not doing any drugs for at least a week.

  "I just said that because I really wanted to smoke crack. I'm a drug addict. I lie. What do you expect? I'll say anything so you'll let me smoke crack," she said, like it was ok. She obviously didn't even feel guilty about it.

  We argued for a while, and she was getting more and more agitated. She told me she was more fucked up in the head than any other person I'd ever met, and that if I didn't stop telling her not to smoke any more crack, she would kill herself.

  Then we agreed not to argue anymore for the rest of the night. I assumed we were all gonna watch a movie in the living room. Instead Veronica disappeared in the guest bedroom with Kim. I was really pissed that this was Veronica's second night home, and just like the first night, she didn't spend it in bed with me, but doing drugs with Kim.

  The next morning I woke up really early around 6 am, because I had to use the bathroom. Then I decided to get something to drink in the kitchen, before going back to bed. I saw Veronica standing by the sink, crushing up a D with a spoon. I just gave her a dirty look, but didn't say anything at first. She looked back at me, didn't say anything either, and quickly tried to flush the crushed up powder down the drain.

  "What the fuck are you doing?" I
finally asked.

  "I'm making Jello," she said.

  "What the fuck are you talking about? We don't have any Jello," I said.

  "Yeah, it's Jello. Lime Jello," she claimed.

  "We don't have Lime Jello. That's a crushed up pill. You haven't just been smoking crack. And those pills you bought weren't ecstasy. You bought Ds! What the fuck is wrong with you?" I said. I was so disgusted with her and her neverending lies. I went back to bed.

  At 10 am I woke up again. When I walked out of my bedroom, I saw that the guest bedroom door was open. I could see inside. Veronica and Kim were in bed together, making out.

  "WHAT THE FUCK?!" I yelled. "Get over here right now! We need to talk!"