Futureproof (23 page)

We come into the house and Splinter is doing his coke spiel, talking about the machine of capitalism being oiled by the blood of the workers, while Damien continues trying to score the money shot. Blood-soaked paper towels lie on the Formica table.

Andie dabs at his arm, waiting for her turn, then bangs herself again and turns pale, lays her head on the table. I'm still feeling the residual effects of my shot and am gritting my teeth, though the smack has helped greatly in cutting out the foregone anxiety. I ask Andie if she's OK and she drags her forehead slowly back and forth across the tabletop without looking up.

Splinter keeps talking, rabbiting on about the decay of society because of antidrug laws.

 

It's been nearly an hour and Splinter's still in the bathroom. I bang on the door and ask if he's OK but no answer comes back. And then we're all beating on the door but he still won't unlock it. So at the count of three the skin-popper—I think his name is Damien—and
I run our shoulders through the paper-thin door and there sits my best friend on the toilet like John Belushi or goddam Elvis.

The needle is still poking out of his vein and a small trickle of blood trails down his arm to a half-dollar-sized puddle on the floor beneath his wrist. His eyes are rolled back to the whites and his mouth is foaming.

After a few smacks in the face he stirs and his shirtsleeve flies up seemingly of its own accord to wipe away the spittle from his mouth. Then his eyes come back around. “What the fuck did you smack me for, asshole?” he growls. His speech is slurred and slow. He flails at us to back away from him.

“You almost died again, you retard. How long have you been doing this and you're still OD'ing? You'd better quit while you're ahead,” I tell him.

But it doesn't matter. He probably likes the fact that he almost dies sometimes. A near-death experience every now and then holds much of the thrill of living like this. Because this isn't some kind of daisy-tripping mind warp we have going here. This is life and death. And every time the hit is a little too big and we can feel the life slipping from our grasp, one heartbeat at a time, it is cause for reevaluation of the self. You can't play with Death without looking him in the face while you're doing it. You can't walk away without knowing a little more clearly why you're here in the first place. Because once that initial shock wears away and you realize that Death is not necessarily as imminent as you thought—
that
is the best time to be a junkhead. You have the best possible high going and you
know
that, because you felt yourself nearly slip away—but somehow you held on. And
that
means you couldn't have gotten any higher without actually going away to that Other Place for good.

This is the constant tightrope walk, between life and death. We are always straddling that line, trying to get as close to the other side as possible without falling over the edge.

Splinter lumbers out of the bathroom just as some guy bursts through the front door, limping, a crazed look in his eye. He tells Splinter he just got a great score at Kmart and the old lady never realized that he was going through her purse as he stood behind her in the checkout line.

“She was looking straight ahead, the whole time. It was so goddam easy, man,” he snorts, phlegm crackling down the back of his throat. “Mind if I fix here? Just got a brand-new kit.” He drops into a chair at the table, pulls his bags out, and boils the liquid in a well-used spoon, its bottom black with soot. We need to score again.

 

When we return to the apartment, the unshaven guy is still sitting at the table where we left him. His breathing is sharp and heavy and it's obvious that he's high as fuck.

Empty baggies are scattered across the table. Splinter tells him that he needs to be leaving in the next few minutes because his girl will be getting home soon and she can't know about his junkie friends. The guy's arm suddenly shoots straight out in front of him, followed by his leg in mock karate action. He looks to be fighting imaginary forces of some kind, and yet he begins conversing with Splinter like nothing out of the ordinary is happening.

“Might I inquire as to the nature of what you've injected on this occasion, good sir?” I request. That's how I say it, too, because sometimes I like to make like we aren't lowlife junkheads at all, but rather connoisseurs of recreational pharmaceuticals, the wine tasters of the ghetto community. Talking like an uptight prick also helps take the pressure off in an unfamiliar situation. It's a bit like laughing while you fend off blows during that tender and critical moment when, say, your girlfriend catches you with your tongue accidentally inserted in another girl's mouth.

The karate guy says he always mixes it up: a little ketamine, a little Heroin, a little speed. I tried shooting speed months ago and
found it far too painful to justify the high it delivered. It was like shooting fire, burned the whole way up the arm.

I ask the dude if he wouldn't mind if we join him for a little bit of the old in-out, in-out—the shooting-up kind. This with a terrible cockney accent.

We sit down at the table and I toss Splinter a bag. Andie and I get two each. This leaves little to last out the day and I have exactly $134 left. But I've got a trick up my sleeve. Tucked away safely in the trunk of the T-Bird is a brand-new DVD player—“the wave of the future in home entertainment”—lifted from a Kmart in Atlanta. We wrote a bum check for it just before we left, my brilliant idea of a backup plan in case anything went wrong up here in the Big Apple.

You always need a backup plan. That's straight-up Boy Scout shit. If worse comes to worst, we take the DVD player to our friendly neighborhood Kmart and they give us the four hundred bucks so that we will give back the merchandise we rightfully stole from them. We're Robin Hood, his merry band of men, and all the fucking peasants rolled into one.

Andie hands me my work and moments later we're banging away once again.

The karate guy's arm flies out and even when I'm high I can't get used to that shit.

 

The Kmart is on to us before we even get to the Returns Desk. The Jhericurled black woman behind the counter looks us up and down with obvious disdain. We are clearly not the first people to approach her with an unopened box of merchandise looking for a no-receipt refund.

“Do you have a receipt?” the woman asks before I can even set the box on the counter.

“I already have one of these,” I say, sticking to the script.

She stares at me, waiting.

“I got this DVD player for an early Christmas present and I don't need it. I already have one,” I reiterate. She stares at me. “So I don't need this one.”

She points to the sign that denounces all who would attempt to get something for nothing by approaching the desk without a receipt for “ANY” article worth more than ten dollars.

I'm tempted to ask for a manager, but by the looks of her I know she probably
is
the manager and this is a waste of everybody's time. I've never been too good at this part of the scam. And now, standing in front of this woman, with Andie next to me, I'm about to vomit.

For a moment I'm afraid that she's going to insist on keeping the DVD player, so I scoop it up without a word of argument and turn to leave. Andie chews her gum and gives the woman the finger. I wince, because I know that if the woman had any reservations about us being thieves and junkies before, she has none now.

“Look, we're in New York,” I tell Andie, “and this town is always primed for the taking if you just know how. If they have fucking donut shops that sell cocaine I know there has to be somebody out here that'll want a top-of-the-line DVD player for a fraction of the store price.”

“Yeah?” Andie asks. She reaches over to massage my crotch in that way that indicates she is starting to come around to my logic. “Well who do we ask?”

“I don't know…maybe I can ask my dad,” I say. “He hasn't done shit for me ever, in my entire life, so he owes me. I'll just play the old guilt card and get him to wire us a couple hundred bucks.”

“You always think of everything.”

She nuzzles into my chest and I feel warm and hopeful. We're gonna make it out of here intact. I know it. My dad is going to make
up for everything in one fell swoop: the missed birthdays, the letting my mother's new old man give me his fucked-up last name under the guise of “doing what's best for you and your brother.” All of it can be wiped clean in this one expansive gesture of paternal concern. If he can bail me out just this one time.

He can do it—and he will. I'm certain.

 

I'm shaking as I thumb through the contents of my wallet: old receipts, stained photographs, an expired coupon, a resin-covered roach in a cigarette cellophane. I've kept the phone number since that day he materialized out of nowhere during my freshman year of high school.

As I pick up the phone to dial, I almost wish I hadn't found the number, that there was some other way out of this. I never return any of his phone calls or letters. His interest in me is cursory, at best.

He answers and immediately I am filled with regret, because he has an intonation of suffering in his voice. I know already that he isn't going to be able to do anything. Not now, not ever. But I'm already on the phone with him so I tell him anyway. I don't beg or plead, I just give it to him straight.

He dances around the subject a bit, asks me how I've been. He sounds so pathetic and needy. I almost tell him that I love him and all is forgiven. But I don't. Because I'm standing in Splinter's girlfriend's shoebox apartment asking for money from a guy I've met in person a grand total of twice and talked to on the phone possibly three more times than that.

And that's when I realize that I really do feel for this man. I want him to know he isn't hated. And that's when he gets to the point and tells me he “just doesn't have it.” I contemplate giving him the speech I've had running through my head over the years, the “I've
never asked you for anything and the one time I come to you for one fucking favor you shit on me” speech. But I don't. I'm welling up and I can't get another word out. This guy can't do anything for himself, let alone anyone else.

I hang up and stare at the pearl-colored plaster walls and reinsulate myself like I always do, square my jaw, try to nonchalantly wipe away any escaping salty discharge, breathe.

Andie comes up behind me and puts her arms around my waist and tries to sound all sexy, like she always does when she wants something.

“Is he gonna send you the money?”

“No.” I try to sound as though it isn't a thing to be worried about one way or the other.

“Why not?”

“He doesn't have it.”

“Well, what the fuck are we gonna do?”

I breathe in slow and exhale again, move back to normal.

“I've got a plan,” I say. “Plan fucking B.”

 

This is Plan B.

We're standing on the corner displaying our wares to myriad passersby. I'm holding the DVD player and Andie's got her favorite motorcycle boots and about ten of our CDs. The catch to this type of selling is that you can't set the stuff down on the sidewalk or the cops will take it from you on the grounds that it's stolen property. I don't know why the law says the shit's stolen if you're not actually holding it. According to Captain Spaz-o over at Splinter's apartment, if you want to sell merchandise on the street you have to have some kind of vendor's permit, so the loophole is that you can hold the stuff and sell it—but you can't set it on the ground.

New York is dark and I'm freezing even though I'm wearing four
layers. Within twenty minutes Andie has sold all the CDs for two bucks a pop, and her boots for ten. That's three bags right there. I'm having no luck with the DVD player, though. Nobody's willing to part with two hundred bucks on the street. Then a man approaches me and says that he has “people” in a deli right down the block that would be interested if I'm willing to bargain. I follow him inside and there are three Italian-looking guys sitting at a table.

One is wearing a blue tracksuit and the other two are decked out in three-pieces. They tell me they'll pay $80, nothing more, and I say I'm only selling it to get home to Atlanta, that the gas alone is going to be $120. My T-Bird is a rudder away from being an actual seagoing vessel and only gets about seventeen miles per gallon on a good day. I know they can resell this DVD player, brand-new and still in the box, for three or four times what I'm asking. They wave me off and the tracksuit guy gets up and ushers me out of the store.

Andie's probably already back at the apartment and high by now and I'm still standing in the street with this bullshit DVD player. Just when I'm about to say fuck it and go back to the deli, a late-model Lincoln Continental pulls up and two Middle Eastern guys jump out. One says, in a thick accent, “How much you want? I give you a hundred dollars right now.”

“Man, this is tip-top. Never used. I need one twenty just to get back to Atlanta. I'm not some crackhead. I'm just trying to get home.”

“I give you a hundred, nothing more.”

He hasn't even looked at what I'm holding.

“One twenty and it's yours, man. It's a Sony,” I repeat, steeled in my resolve by his audacity. I'm tired and cold and ready to fuck somebody up if one more person tries to give me the high hat.

“You can get computers, too?”

“No, man, I can't get computers. I don't do this shit on a regular basis. I'm just trying to get home.”

“You drive hard bargain. I give you one ten.”

“Fine. Give me one ten.”

He motions to his crony, who has been standing by the back passenger-side door of the Lincoln, and they speak for a moment in what I can only guess is Arabic, at which point the doorman whips out a thick wad of cash from his jacket pocket and tears me off five twenties and a ten. I hand him the DVD player and he puts it in the trunk. The guy I was bartering with pulls out a business card and reiterates his desire for black-market computers.