Memoirs Aren't Fairytales (6 page)

Que held the foil for me, and I followed the smoke with the end of the pipe. The taste was an odd mix, sweet like kid vitamins and bitter like vinegar, and it burned my lungs. I felt it, slowly, at the tip of each limb and then a rush up to my head. The rush wasn't anything like coke. This, well, this was euphoric—tingles and sparks and melting—like I was being swallowed by a cloud of cotton and the sun was wrapping its rays around me like a blanket. I could feel my chin falling towards my chest, my back hunching forward. My body was acting on its own, and my mind was empty, like all my memories had been erased. There was scenery behind my lids. Aqua colored water and powdery sand that extended for miles. The beach looked familiar. Maybe it was Ogunquit Beach, where my parents had brought us as kids, or Nantasket Beach, where my grandparents lived in the summers when they were still alive.

I didn't know how long I was like that—asleep or awake or totally fucking out of it—but when I came back, Eric and Que were staring at me.

“What do you think?” Eric asked.

“Give us four bags.”

I was never going back to coke. I wanted more heroin. And I wanted it now.

We needed tin foil, so on the way home we stopped in an alleyway a few blocks from the mini market to count the change in my wallet. It added up to less than a dollar.

“We're at least two dollars short,” I said.

“Buy a pack of gum,” he said. “And I'll meet you down there.” He was pointing to the corner of the street.

There were three people ahead of me in the checkout line. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eric walk in and go down one of the aisles. There was only one camera, aimed at the register, but there were mirrors near the ceiling in all four corners of the store.

The line moved fast. I unzipped my jacket, undid the top three buttons of my shirt and arched my back. The customer in front of me finished paying, and I reached for a pack of Juicy Fruit, setting it on the counter.

“Forty-nine cents,” the cashier said, but his eyes weren't on me, they were scanning the aisles.

“Can you tell me how to get to Quincy Market?” I asked, handing him two quarters.

He looked at the change, and then his eyes slid a few inches up to my chest. “You, uh…”

While he watched, I adjusted the underwire, and my boobs popped out even more. “I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you said.”

“Err, t-take the Orange Line to State Street and it's, uh, a b-block from there.”

I heard Eric cough, and then the bells on the front door chimed. We were in the clear.

I told the cashier to keep the penny and thanked him for the directions. He didn't say you're welcome, but I still gave him a little shoulder shake for being so helpful.

I caught up to Eric at the end of the block. “Did you get it?” I asked.

He leaned forward and the box of foil poked out from the collar of his jacket.

“That was too easy,” I said.

“You made that dude almost swallow his tongue.”

“I did good?”

Eric laughed and put his arm around my shoulder. “They did good,” he said, nodding towards my chest.

We rushed back to the apartment. Eric's hands were shaking so bad he dropped the keys before he got the door open. We took the stairs two at a time and already had our jackets off before getting inside. We sat on the floor by the bed, and Eric followed Que's instructions. The heroin was cooked up, and he spread it over the foil.

When I was in fifth grade, a cop came into our classroom. We were all wearing our black t-shirts with D.A.R.E across the front. We stared at the cop while he paced in front of the chalkboard, showing us poster-sized pictures of different kinds of drugs. When he got to heroin, he said it was like a terrorist. I didn't know what that meant, but I knew it was something bad. During my sophomore year at UMaine, I watched on TV the attack on the twin towers. How could that cop compare tragedy and murder to this harmless white powder? Something that made me feel this incredible shouldn't be categorized as a terrorist.

Heroin deserved the top shelf in Que's drug cabinet. It deserved the highest rank.

Coke gave me energy. Ecstasy made me dance and want to be touched. Shrooms made me hallucinate. But heroin. Shit. Heroin was kind. It didn't trip me out like acid or bring me into a dark hole like PCP. It showed me the quietness of the waves.

When the smoke came out of my mouth, I felt every muscle relax. The replay of my parents' nagging was muted. The looks of pity that flashed in my head from when I moved out of my dorm room were blurred. And the dirtiness I felt inside my crotch was wiped clean.

I heard Renee walk through the door. She dropped her purse on the floor. I felt her sit down next to me and I opened my eyes just slightly to greet her.

“Chasing the dragon, huh?” she asked.

I was chasing something. And damn it felt so fucking good.

CHAPTER FIVE

When the three of us got back to the apartment at two in the morning, all our stuff was dumped in the hallway. The bed frame was in pieces, and the mattress leaned against the wall. All our clothes were thrown in boxes piled on top of the couch cushions. We were only two months behind on rent. Shit, I thought our landlord would be more forgiving than that. He had changed the locks while we were at work and put a No Trespassing sign on our door. We tried to break in, but the door was like steel, and Eric couldn't knock it down. We needed a pick-up truck to move it all and a place to crash. With seventeen dollars, we weren't going to get very far. We filled our backpacks with as much as they'd hold and headed for the park.

I could have called Michael and asked him to put us up, but since I started basing dope three months ago, I'd only been to his place once. It was weird too, sitting there all high while my brother talked about—I don't know what. I nodded out after dinner, just so full and warm. I woke up in the guest room, tucked under the blanket with pillows surrounding my head. He had taken my sneakers off before putting me in bed, and on the dresser was a towel and toothbrush. All the lights were off in the living room and kitchen, and his bedroom door was shut. I grabbed the leftover pizza from the fridge and left. We didn't talk again for a few days, but when we did, he told me he'd planned on cooking me breakfast.

If we stayed at Michael's, we'd have to hide our smoking. And then there was the whole nodding out thing. What would I say about that? I'd have to deal with his questions too like why I didn't have a place to live. I decided Michael was for emergencies and this was a fender bender. The way I saw it, as long as I had Eric, Renee, and a bag of heroin in my pocket, everything else would work itself out.

There was a hotel near the bar that advertised rooms for nineteen a night. Eric wanted to check the place out. Renee didn't. She rested her back against a tree and pulled out a full foil and a pipe. After she took a hit, she said sleeping under the stars on H would be an adventure. I didn't disagree with her, but I sided with Eric. There weren't any cops around, but if they showed up, we couldn't afford to get arrested.

When Renee was high, she'd agree to anything, so it didn't take long for us to swing her decision. The owner of the hotel hooked us up with a week's stay for a hundred bucks. We could pay the hundred in installments as long as we gave him a little cash each day.

As we walked down the hallway to our room, I could hear moaning and yelling from the doors we passed. Flies swarmed around the flickering overhead lights. And there was a strange smell, not smoke or burning chemicals, although there was plenty of that too. The scent was like rotten peaches.

Renee passed out when we got in the room. Eric and I took the other bed and shared a foil between us. The mattress was comfortable compared to Renee's lumpy couch and the grass in the park. The room wasn't too bad either, even with the funky smell and smoky haze that made everything inside look yellowish.

We never made it back to the apartment to get the rest of our stuff. Before we smoked, we talked about borrowing Mark's truck and moving everything to the hotel. After the pipe hit our lips, our plans went to shit. We promised each other before we went to bed we wouldn't smoke the next morning until all our stuff was moved. Then a week passed. We figured by then it was too late, the landlord had probably scrapped it all anyway.

When I first started basing, I'd smoke an hour before work, and I'd be high the whole shift. Being on dope at work was like sitting in class the morning after a keg party. I had no energy and couldn't concentrate. All I wanted was to sit in front of the TV and rip cig after cig. I'd forget to check on my tables, glasses went empty and I ignored them, and requests like extra napkins and silverware never got delivered. I used the other servers to help me out. Mark had a hard time keeping employees, so there was always a new face who wanted to prove herself. I'd have her run my food and check on my tables, and I'd pretend to be too busy. By the time the waitress got sick of doing my job, she had either quit or was let go.

Soon the high was lasting only a couple hours, and the cravings would set in at work. I'd leave during my dinner break to smoke at the hotel. The thirty minutes I was given would turn into an hour, sometimes two. I'd come back to the bar prepared with an excuse like a doctor's appointment or family drama or the ATM machine had eaten my card. My excuses weren't very creative, but somehow they worked.

It didn't take long before Mark caught on to my lies. I told him one day I had food poisoning and had gone to the hospital to get checked out. He wanted proof like an invoice or a statement from my insurance company. He knew I didn't have either and chewed my ass out. I'd seen him fire other servers over stupid things like forgetting to roll the silverware in napkins and stock glasses at the end of their shift. And here I was, stumbling into the bar three hours late, and all Mark did was yell at me. He must have had a thing for brunettes with big boobs, because there was no other reason he was keeping me around.

Renee was never late to work. The way she moved behind the bar was like she was on coke again. When Mark reamed me out for being late, I asked her how she was holding it together so well, and she taught me how to be a functional smoker. It was common sense really: take just a few hits rather than basing half a bag, and pound Red Bull to give me the energy the dope took away. So instead of spending my dinner breaks nodding out in the hotel, I smoked in a bathroom stall at work. I thought I was being more responsible. I was real slick about it too. I'd blow into the toilet and flush, so the water sucked down all the smoke.

And then I got busted. Someone must have ratted me out, probably one of the prissy waitresses who was picking up my slack. It all happened so fast. I was freebasing off the foil, and the next thing I knew, Mark had pried open the stall door. Our eyes locked. His got all watery, and his hand went over his mouth like he was witnessing a car wreck or something. There wasn't anything I could say that would justify what I was doing. He saw the foil and the pipe, the bag of dope in my lap, and the stream of smoke coming from my lips.

He yanked me by the arm and pulled me out of the bathroom, dragging me through the restaurant. His grip was strong and should have hurt. The customers glared and whispered from their tables. I didn't feel the pain or the humiliation. All I could see in the back of my mind was a foil of heroin Mark flushed down the toilet, and I wanted to dive into the water and save it.

He plopped me down in a chair in his office and sat in front of me on the edge of his desk. I was expecting a lecture about how much potential I used to have and how I screwed up all the time, and blah-fucking-blah about my lies and excuses and worthlessness. If he did say any of that, I didn't hear it. I couldn't hear anything. My ears were buzzing like bees were dancing on my eardrums.

Damn, I had smoked more than I thought. I couldn't keep my eyes open. My chin was falling to my chest, and I couldn't stop it.

When my eyes were closed, I saw fields of sunflowers. When my lids fluttered open, I saw compassion and tenderness like I was Mark's sick child.

I couldn't control the nod. I couldn't tell him I wasn't sick. All I could do was follow the path of sunflowers, smell their petals, and touch their prickly stems.

“Nicole, stay with me,” Mark said.

I felt the warmth of his breath and the light slaps of his hand on my face, and my eyes shot open.

Mark was no longer sitting on his desk. He was kneeling in front of me and his hands were rubbing my cheeks. “Are you okay?” he asked, his lips close to mine.

I thought, without a doubt, I was getting fired. I needed him to believe I was sorry, even if I wasn't.

“It won't happen again,” I said. “I'll change, I promise.”

My eyes filled and I blinked, so the tears ran down my face, a skill I'd learned in drama class at my high school. I'd stare at something without blinking until my eyes welled. Right now, that was Mark's face, and he reacted by pulling me into a hug. When he finally let me go, he put his arm around my shoulder and walked me to the employee entrance. He told me to go home and rest. I still had six hours left of my shift, and there was some big game on TV, so the tips would be good tonight. But I didn't argue with him.

Eric was sleeping when I got to our hotel room. I woke him and asked him to cook up for me. While he spread it over the foil, I told him what happened.

“You're shitting me, right?” he said.

From the look I gave him, he had to know I wasn't joking.

“He hugged you, isn't that a good sign?”

I took a long pull and held it in until I coughed. The point wasn't that he hugged me. I was pretty sure the tears had worked and I was in the clear. The point was how careful I was going to have to be. I couldn't smoke at work anymore. I couldn't go back to the hotel to smoke because I couldn't be late. I couldn't go more than five hours without smack. How was I going to make it through my shift without hitting the pipe at least once? He might as well have fired me.

“You have any dope left, my foil's short,” he said.