Deeper Illusions (16 page)

Chapter
Twenty-Four

After talking to Shaun, I went
up to the house that he told me about. I was very careful to put my red diamond in my underwear, along with the wad of cash and my simple wedding ring. I hoped that, at the very least, the red diamond and the band would be safe there.

There was still a large part of me that would be beyond devastated to lose these treasures.

The house was a shirt-waist, like Shaun’s house, but it had boarded-up windows. I doubted that it had electricity. Still, I felt that I had no choice but to stay here for the time being. I didn’t know anyplace else that I could safely do what I was about to do.

I knocked on the door, but nobody answered. Then I just went ahead and opened the door.

I immediately felt uncomfortable. This was all so foreign to me. The ironic thing was that, between Ryan and me, I was the one who grew up broke, and Ryan was the one who grew up privileged. Yet Ryan would, no doubt, feel much more comfortable in this setting than I ever would.

A guy with dreadlocks looked at me. He was a white guy, ghostly pale, very slight frame, wearing a Green Day T-Shirt that was full of holes, as were his jeans, with a heavy coat, gloves and a hat. He was one of only thre
e conscious people in this enormous house. The others were lying in sleeping bags, or sitting on the floor, holding their arms with a vacant expression in their face. Two guys were sitting back to back, both of them unconscious. A guy in the corner was injecting himself. Another guy was eating a sandwich from his position on the floor.

The dreadlocks guy spoke. “Who are you?” Then he looked me up and down. “You don’t look like a cop, but you never know anymore. Those undercover cats can look pretty good these days.”

Should I give them my real name? Sure, what the hell. “Iris. Iris Gallagher. And yours?”

Still looking slightly suspicious, the dreadlocked kid held out his hand “Brad. Brad White. Now, why are you here?”

“Shaun sent me from down the street. He said that I could, uh, maybe stay here for awhile.”

Brad narrowed his eyes. “Let me see those arms. You don’t look like a junkie.”

“I’m not. At least not yet,” I said, showing him my arms.

“Then why are you here?”

“I…something happened to me. Well, a few things have happened to me. And I need some way to forget them for awhile.”

He nodded. “Sounds like a familiar story.” Then he motioned his hand in a sweeping motion. “You can stay here for as long as you need. There’s no electricity here, and no running water. But we got a guy bringing us food every few days and soda from the 7-11 around the corner.”

“I hate to ask this, but-“

“Where do we do our business?” He apparently was trying to be at least somewhat delicate to my sensibilities.

I nodded.

“Well, let’s just say that after a little while you’re not going to care about that, and leave it at that.
”

“Meaning?”

“Come here,” he said, taking my hand. He led me up the creaky stairs, which included a missing stair, and into a room with a closed door. There were several newspapers stuffed into the crack underneath the door. Then he opened the door, and I almost fled right then and there. There were newspapers on the floor, and, on these newspapers, was where the people in the house did their business.

I looked at him and asked “how does this get cleaned up?”

“We have designated people to do this every day. You get to earn drugs that way, so it is actually a popular job, believe it or not.”

“And the food runner, what does that entail?”

“We take turns doing that. Sometimes the food comes from the convenience store, other times the person dumpster dives. It doesn't really matter. If you're hungry, you eat it. If you're high, you don't care about it. Sometimes the dumpster dive is pretty good shit, though. Jackson over here,” he said, motioning to an unconscious young black guy with a bald head, sunglasses, low slung jeans and baseball t-shirt, “gets some good shit. He takes the bus over to a pizza joint a couple of miles away on a Wednesday, and finds about five pies there in the dumpster behind the place. Wednesdays are good around here,” he said, rubbing his slender belly.

I nodded my head, already looking forward to Wednesday. What day was this? Monday. Two more days until pizza day. That is, assuming that young Jackson climbs out of his present stupor to get the promised pizzas. Then I asked “I notice that you seem to be the only person around here who is conscious. How does that work?”

“In this house, there is always one person who agrees to not get high on a designated day. My day is Monday. Penny over there,” he said, motioning to a slight blonde girl in a t-shirt dress under a heavy coat, “is Tuesday. Jackson is Wednesday. Etc. We always have to have somebody around with their wits, in case the cops come, or there's an emergency, or something like that.”

“I guess if I stay here, I'll get a designated day, too, huh?”

“Sure. We may be a bunch of junkies, but we also have a kind cooperative society around here.”

I took a deep breath, then looked at the white powder in my little baggie. How much should I use? How do I find a
vein? The only drug that I had ever done was pot and, once, mushrooms. I looked over at Brad, who was eyeing me with an interested expression, while he munched on a bag of potato chips.

“First food I’ve eaten in three days,” he said. “You look like you might need some help.”

“I do,” I said, fighting back tears. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Ok. Let’s see, you’re, what, a buck oh five, buck ten?”

“Somewhere around there.”

“Here, let me fill the syringe for you.” At that, he put a tiny dab on the spoon and lit it, just like Shaun had showed me. Then he filled the syringe to the right CC level. “Look here,” he said, taking out a sharpie and making a tiny black line. “This is how much you need to do. Anymore than that, and you might have problems. Any less, then you might not get a very good high. It’s like Goldilocks – you gotta get it just right.”

Then, he brought out the rubber tourniquet and tied my arm off with it. I started to feel panicky upon feeling the tourniquet on my arm, as the memories of Rochelle and her attack started to flood my brain. I fought it down, though.

Brad said “here, feel your vein.” I did, putting my finger into the position where his finger was. “Ok, now, you get your needle, and stick yourself right there.” I did so. “Now, push down the plunger.”

I felt nauseated and terrified, but I did as I was told.

At first I didn’t feel a thing. But then, after a few seconds....there were no words. I had never in my life felt this way. Rochelle and the bad man receded into the background. It was paradise. I literally hadn't a care in the world. I had the most vivid dreams about myself and Ryan. He was here with me, and nothing bad had happened at all to me, nor to him. We were perfect, whole and happy. So happy. So very happy....

I had
no idea how long I was in this state of bliss, but it was better than anything that I had ever felt before. Well, maybe not better than making love with Ryan, but it was the equivalent.

But when I started to crash, it was horrible. First, I got hot, so hot that I walked out into the December air and stood outside, and was still burning up.
I walked up and down the streets with no coat or hat, still in my Hello Kitty pajamas and tank top. I even had taken off my shoes. I wanted so much to take an ice cold bath, but the house didn’t have running water. I was halfway tempted to go and pay Shaun another visit, and ask him if I could take a cold bath there.

Then came the shakes and the chills. Suddenly, there was no way for me to get warm.
I piled my coat, hat and gloves on, and stood by the stove, which was woodburning. I would stand by that stove for hours, not feeling the heat at all. I was still chilled to the bone.

Then came
the violent twitches, pounding headache, nausea and vomiting.

All this was cured with another hit, though, and paradise began anew.

I did this for days, and didn't think anything of it, because everybody around me was doing the same. They were all going through the same thing.

I started to get to know some of the people who were also staying at the house. Jackson, I learned, was a performing arts college grad who once performed on Broadway. He was a music major at a prestigious college, so he always had a radio with him that played his c
lassical music CDs. Nobody seemed to mind, and it was relaxing to hear Vivaldi and Rachmaninoff, to tell the honest truth. It sure as hell beat rap.

Penny was a girl who grew up much like Ryan, with a silver spoon in her mouth. From what I could tell, she did drugs for much the same reason Ryan did them – to forget about some serious sexual trauma in her youth, perpetuated at the hands of her father. She left home at age 14, same as Ryan, but didn't have a benevolent mentor like Ryan. Instead, she started living on the streets, prostituting herself and getting high. At age 25, she looked around 50. She told me that she had been living at this house for six months after having been thrown out of her last home by her pimp.

There were several others who lived there as well. There was Lakisha, a thirty-something black girl who was the sometime girlfriend of Brad. There was Terry, who was a former computer geek. He graduated from a tech school and went to work in Silicon Valley in California before his drug habit got the best of him. There were also various transient people who came in and out, sometimes when I was conscious. Other times, I would wake up and they were just there.

At some point, I needed a change of clothes, because I wa
s getting ripe. A nice guy with extra pairs of sweats and t-shirts gave me one of his pairs of sweats and one of his t-shirts, and I put them on. “You didn't come prepared, didya, little one?” he said. To this, I merely shook my head. I changed in another room, being very careful about the rings in my underwear. Those rings were my connection to my real world, which was frightening. But, they were also my connection to Ryan, and this made me feel elated and depressed all at once.

There was a nagging voice that told me that I needed to call him, but I couldn't bring myself to do so.

I also wasn't thinking about what would happen when that gram was used up. I didn't want to face it.

I ate and drank water when the desi
gnated runner brought food and soda from the convenience store down the street, which was every few days. As promised, Jackson brought pizza on Wednesday, but I was unconscious that day. When I came to, on Friday, all the pizza was gone. So, I didn't eat much, nor did I want to.

All I wanted was on this spoon.

Then, one night, to my absolute horror, Ryan appeared. My mind knew what was happening. My body couldn't react, though. My mind was somewhere else, but I was vaguely aware that he was picking me up and slinging me over his shoulder. Then he put me down on the floor next to him, then I was being picked up and put into a bed, a heavy coat being draped over me. Then his body was covering mine on the rickety cot. Then it was morning, and I was once again being picked up and carried down the stairs and into his Porsche. By then, I was more conscious about what was going on, but the twitches, chills and shakes were starting, and I was in serious need of another fix. My mind started to get desperate as I realized that a fix was not going to be coming now that Ryan had found me.

How did he find me? I was trying not to be found. I didn't want reality. He was going to take me back there, where the bad man...attacked me. Insid
e my head, I was screaming, I was freezing, and I was feeling ready to puke. And I couldn't quit twitching. The car was making me more and more sick.

Please, please, please Ryan, just give me what I need. I'll do anything, just give me what I need.

But I couldn't talk. I just kept twitching, and panicking.

Then I was in a hospital bed, an IV in my arm. I could feel myself convulsing on the bed, and Ryan's hand on my hair, stroking it as he was talking to me.

On and on and on it went, for days. I shivered, convulsed, and shook, and was transferred to the drug floor as soon as a bed opened, then shivered, convulsed and shook there. My head was splitting, my ears ringing, and the feeling of dry heaves was constant. I had nothing in my stomach, so dry heaves was all there was. I felt like I was dying. I wanted to die. Anything would be better than this. Burn me at the stake, boil me in oil, bury me alive. Anything would be preferable to this.

Finally, after days of the constant feeling that I wanted to die, I was able to sleep.

Then I came to, apparently days later, although it seemed like only minutes. Ryan was sitting by the bed.

He took my hand. “Hello, beautiful.”

I looked at him, then looked away, feeling more than ashamed. I suddenly realized that I was now going to have to face what happened to me on the kitchen floor.

I couldn't possibly get away from it now.

“Ryan,” I said weakly. “I'm so sorry,” then started crying.

“Beautiful, don't cry. I was worried sick about you, but I found you. We'll get through this together. What happened to you that made you go off the grid like that...we'll get through it.”