Crystal Clean (16 page)

“Yes. You told me to, remember?”

And I had been since that day back at my apartment when he told me to start keeping track of what I was sending with him on the road. And again, when I put up the earnest money for the house...and the bail...and the attorney...

He asked me to write it all down because he said that one day he’d pay me back for everything: MORTGAGE. ELECTRIC.
GAS. BONDS. LEGAL. MISC. MEDICAL. HOME IMPROVEMENT.
WATER/SEWER/TRASH.
Everything
was listed
by date in its specified column in a separate ledger.

“Yeah, I remember. So how much is it?”

Oh,
God
. No, no. I don’t want to go here now. Can’t we just watch a movie and have sex and not think about the money? Let’s get high and everything will be okay.

“I don’t know right off the top of my head.”

“Well, go get your ledger.”

“Allan, I don’t want to do this right now. Let’s just go to bed, okay?”

“I’m not mad. I just want to know.”

No, Allan. You don’t.

But he said he did, so I told him. I was right. He didn’t want to know, because at that time, he owed me close to ten thousand dollars.

“How the hell do I owe you ten grand?”

“Allan...”

“That’s impossible. There’s no way it’s that much.”

I felt like a greedy bitch. I felt guilty that he owed me so much money. At the same time, I was mad at him for allowing the whole thing to happen and then ignore it until I brought it up. None of it made sense to me and I wished the subject had never come up. More than that, I wished the whole money issue would just go away. I was confused and hurt and mad.

“Here, look at the ledger. I kept track, just like you told me to. If there’s something you don’t agree with, I have no problem...”

“I don’t want to look at it.”

He walked out of the room and didn’t speak to me for the rest of the night. The next day, he acted as if nothing had happened, so I let it go.

He paid some of the money back. There were small payments here and there, between fifty and two-fifty. Since we moved in together, he’d paid sixteen hundred dollars toward his tab. The problem was that the tab kept growing.

It was clear to me that something needed to change. Too many things were happening and I was beginning to get nervous. Allan and Kilo had both been arrested for drug charges, and Garnett was involved in legal issues of his own. I knew enough to know that when people start going down, others follow like
dominos. I was associated with all three men and one of them was playing a dangerous game using law enforcement to destroy his opponent: me.

Allan and I talked the day after the police came to the house and I decided that dramatic steps were needed to put an end to the crazy turn our lives were taking. There was only one thing I could think of to do. I had to get the drugs out of our home.

I needed an office.

Chapter 1
6

I found one downtown on the third floor of a lovely historic building. When the management asked what line of work I was in, I told them I was starting a gift basket business. I don’t remember exactly why, other than I’d been passing time in craft stores and floral shops spending money on pretty things that I didn’t need.

I had a theory that hiding in plain sight was the best way to go about the business of selling drugs, and in a building filled with four floors of offices for small businesses and lawyers, I felt safe. The Idaho A.C.L.U. was one door away from mine. Maintaining the appearance of a legitimate gift basket business was easy. With all the drug money coming in, I kept UPS busy delivering baskets, shredded paper, ribbon, dried flowers, greenery, bath products, gourmet chocolates and exotic foods from a dozen wholesale companies I set up accounts with. I hung a sign on the door beneath a hand-made wreath, lush with eucalyptus, cinnamon pinecones and dried roses.

One of my customers, a man who worked at Hewlett-Packard, had a three hundred dollar a week meth habit that he hid from his wife. After normal business hours, he brought me stacks of brand new ink cartridges that I listed and sold on E-Bay. That was how he covered his tab. Shipping out the cartridges put the finishing touch I was looking for on the gift basket business, so it worked out nicely for us both.

I had a state seller’s permit and a tax I.D. number. I filed and paid taxes each month on nonexistent sales for the gift basket business. Paying
some
taxes made me feel more like a decent citizen. Again, there were times when the line between the legitimate and illegitimate would blur and I would forget that it was all a front for what I was really doing, which was selling meth. I did actually make some baskets for friends. I was good at it and enjoyed making them, but the money was nowhere near what I was already making. Once in awhile, I’d thin
k how nice it would be if Allan
were able to take care of us long enough for me to really give it a shot making baskets, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

The office was five hundred square feet and housed my computer, a desk and two long tables laden with basket making supplies. Foam, paper shred, glue guns, basket sticks, glue dots, tags
and ribbon were strewn about giving the place a busy and productive ambiance. The office smelled heavenly thanks to the flowers, candles, potpourri and cinnamon scented pine cones, so I had no worries about smoking meth there. But just in case, I had an air purifier that ran constantly, and I would blow the smoke into it so it wouldn’t drift through the air ducts. The only windows I had in my third floor office were directly across from the elevator overlooking the arboretum in the center of the building. I kept the blinds partially open to maintain an appearance of normalcy; the worktables, boxes and baskets strategically placed to allow me the privacy I needed to smoke.

Sometimes, during the day, I would allow my boys to visit me there and pick up what they needed with the caveat that they be nicely dressed and didn’t look all twacked out. Most of the time, if I wasn’t visiting them at their home, as I did with Shadoe, I met them in bars. There was one bar in particular, different from the one my brother and I played the machines at, where I’d been spending more time. I knew the staff and most of the regulars so I felt safe there. They opened at eleven a.m., and had free pool until two ‘o clock. Two or three days a week, I’d be there when they opened, playing pool by myself in the back corner, receiving visitors and trading cigarette packs for money, just as I’d done in Jackpot.

The downtown office became my home away from home. I was comfortable with the nightly cleaning service because I kept everything in the locked drawers of my desk: meth and sometimes pot, baggies for packaging, paraphernalia, my ledgers, a pocket scale for weighing up to an ounce and an electronic postal scale for everything else. I had everything I needed.

Craig called one afternoon from Mexico. I hadn’t seen him or been able to get in touch with him for a few days, so I was relieved to hear his voice. Something happened, he told me, and he’d fled to where he had family deep in the heart of the country. He wasn’t clear about the details of the situation except to say that I was safe. He hadn’t mentioned anyone else and the police hadn’t asked, so my name never came up. There was no link between Craig and myself.

He was calling, he said, because he always told me he’d take care of me if anything happened to him, and he intended to make good on that promise. He wanted to make certain that this was something I wanted to do before he set up the meeting.

“Of course,” I said. “I trust you.” He said he’d call back in a couple of days.

The meeting was arranged, and I met Craig’s connection, Mario, at a Mexican restaurant. I didn’t expect to be as nervous as I was, but as I approached the table, I could feel my pulse quicken. This was as big as it would ever get for me. I knew that at the time. Craig told me very little, but I knew enough to know how deep I was about to go. Mario’s translator stood and motioned for me to slide into the booth next to him. He blocked my exit when he sat and it was as if the door between the rest of the world and me closed for good.

Until then, everyone I’d worked with, each step of the way was someone I knew. I didn’t know either of these men and the one I would be dealing with spoke no English.

They were already eating and I declined their offer of lunch. I sipped water while they quietly finished their meal, conversing with each other in Spanish. When the plates were cleared, I watched Mario as he spoke to the man sitting next to me.

He was extremely handsome: smaller in stature than American men, as Mexicans tend to be, impeccably groomed, well dressed in a crew neck sweater and slacks. The only jewelry he wore was a simple gold chain of tasteful proportion. No rings, no bling, no flash. He was unassuming, polite and had devastating chocolate eyes. I thought he must be quite the ladies man.

The meeting was brief. Mario made little eye contact with me and his translator asked only a few generic conversational questions before bringing up the subject of the money I owed Craig.

“It’s fifteen hundred. He and I talked about it and I’ll be sending him money through Western Union whenever he asks me to until I’ve paid that balance.”

He spoke with Mario and then to me. “We need you to pay money now. To Mario. He’ll make sure Craig gets it.”

I hesitated only a moment before asking how much they wanted. I assumed they were somehow testing me. Craig trusted Mario with his life, and I trusted Craig. He’d set up the meeting and I knew he’d take responsibility if anything went wrong.

They walked me to my car, I gave them three hundred and fifty dollars, the translator told me they would be in touch and that was it. I didn’t know if I’d fucked up, if they’d ripped me off or if
they simply didn’t like me. I had no way of knowing what was going on until Craig called again from Mexico.

Andy’s school called again. And again. And again. He began having accidents more than his usual couple of times per school year, and before long, they were happening at least once a week. I talked to his teacher who said she had no clue what was going on. On the off chance that the accidents were intentional so he could stay home and watch movies or play Mario, I grounded Andy from those on the days I had to pick him up. His teacher and I set up a schedule for him to go to the bathroom every two hours. Nothing helped.

The scariest thing for me about Andy is that he can’t tell me what’s going on with him. When he’s sick, he can’t tell me where he hurts. Sometimes, since I’ve been sober, he’ll bring his pillow and crawl into my bed in the middle of the night, wriggling himself close and tucking his head into the curve of my neck before drifting away. I’ve been sober four years now, and he’s done this only a handful of times. My instincts tell me he’s having bad dreams, but there’s no way to be sure. I ask him, but it’s moot. He can’t tell me. He doesn’t understand.

Andy talks in his sleep and sometimes I can understand the dreamy non-sense, but most of the time the Andowneese is too garbled for even me to understand. He laughs in his sleep, too. Funny, raspy giggles and full belly laughs. I watch him sometimes. I have since he was tiny. I watch as his eyeballs move in R.E.M. beneath his lids, and I wonder what his dreams are made of, but I’ll never know because he can’t tell me.

That’s why I’ve adamantly refused to hire outside babysitters or use the respite care available to me through Medicaid. If something happened to Andy, I would never know, and I will not take that chance.

I knew something was going on, but I had no way of knowing what. Frustrated and feeling helpless, I pulled him out of school and made an appointment with the director of special education for the district to discuss our options.

Frustration and helplessness are inadequate words to describe what I felt. I was enraged, and I had nowhere to put that anger because my rage was toward something I couldn’t identify. By all accounts, nothing out of the ordinary was happening at school. Those accounts, of course, did not include Andy’s, so they were
incomplete as far as I was concerned, but there was nothing I could do.

Something was wrong at school. Something was happening or had happened to my son, and not only will I never know what it was, but there wasn’t a
God
damn thing I could do about it.

I remember picking him up from school the last day he went. I wanted to destroy the classroom. I wanted to scream until I had no voice. I wanted to smack those looks of pity off the teacher’s face. Instead, I collected his things and left quietly, ignoring their polite goodbyes.

At home, I was exhausted and angry
-
not at Andy, but at the situation
-
and I didn’t want to feel that way. I wanted to be numb.

While Andy was in the shower, I smoked frantically, trying to make the feelings go away before he was finished. It’s hard to get high when you’re crying.

When he was in his jams, I sat on his bed and pulled him up to my lap. “Are you okay, Andy?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Okay, well, you don’t have to go back to that school again.”

“I sowry. No, no, no poop in annunderware. Enna trwy again tomorrow.”

“No, honey, I know you didn’t mean to poop in your underwear, but you don’t have to go back there.”

“Enna trwy again. I sowry.”

I sighed. “Sweetheart, it’s okay. We’ll find you a new school.”

He wrapped his skinny arms around my neck, kissed me on the mouth and whispered, “Enna twry again.”

“Andy!” I pulled him away so I could look at him. “I’m not mad at you.”
Then why am I raising my voice
? “You’re all done at that school, okay? You don’t have to go anymore. All done.” I searched his eyes. “Understand?”

“Enna watch
Star Wars
, essa Jedi.” He started pointing to the posters on the walls of his room. “Essa Wook (Luke) enna Vader, enna spookies (storm troopers.)”

I felt beaten. “Sure, bug. Go ahead.”

“Essa little pizza?”

“It’s not dinner time yet,” I said closing the door. “Wait until Allan’s home.”

I stood there in the hallway for a minute, listening to my son talk to the characters in his movies, acting out his favorite parts and growling like Chewbacca, and I felt utterly alone and not nearly numb enough.

I didn’t want to call Mom yet. Everything was too close to the surface and I knew I’d start crying immediately, turning the subject from Andy to my inability to cope with everyday life. I’d wait until I got high. Until I was numb. The meth wouldn’t take away all the emotion, but it might be enough to get through explaining to my mother why I’d removed Andy from school.

I couldn’t wait too long, though. She would want to know immediately and if not,
why
not. I sat on my bed, rocking back and forth, smoking, smoking and trying not to cry. Trying desperately to block out the anger and helplessness I was feeling, I made a macabre game of refusing to let the tears that brimmed in my lower lids fall. If they did, I thought, I would come apart. I thought of them as a watery, fragile dam. Everything inside me was shaking loose: my bones, my organs, my veins and muscles. It wasn’t visible on the surface, but inside I felt like a house of cards and if those tears fell, the wind would blow. I couldn’t let them fall, and I wouldn’t allow myself to wipe them. They had to recede themselves.

So I smoked. For two hours, I did nothing but rock and smoke, and eventually, the tears receded and I felt calm. I transferred the bail bond line and when Allan came home I fixed dinner, moving through the evening like a robot. I felt cold and empty
-
a huge improvement. I’d rather feel nothing than too much.

Craig arranged things between Mario and I and we began doing business together. He brought his translator the first few times, but after that, he started meeting me alone. He was picking up English fast, and I knew a little Spanish. I bought an English/Spanish dictionary for us to use when we needed to.

When Craig needed money, I sent payments via Western Union to some little town in Mexico I’d never heard of. I paid him everything I owed.