Shards (15 page)

“Nothing,” I said. “Doing some shopping for my sister.”

“Are you up to that?” he asked. “What does the doctor say?”

“There's this terrific oncologist here,” I said. “She's suggesting some new treatments. Really, I'm getting better.”

“Babe, I hope so because I want you back now. I miss you so much.”

I continued to throw all sorts of little lies at Keawe, but my heart always lifted when I spoke to him. For a while our relationship had been perfect for me because I could be a workaholic and
not have to handle someone who wanted to take me away from work. I had been blindsided by the loneliness and guilt and disappointment that came from being in love with a married man. But even now, though I couldn't speak to him without lying, my love for him was true.

Carol came home from work with Maya and Ella and bags and bags of groceries. I helped her empty the bags onto the kitchen table. Boxes of organic granola and containers of yogurt, bags of fresh fruit.

“You're looking pretty thin, Alli,” Carol said. I froze, a loaf of brown bread in each hand. If she had noticed how thin I was, she had to suspect I was using. The cancer lie was for the department alone—for my family there would have to be another one.

“Your pants are practically falling off you,” she continued. “Let's go shopping tonight. Let's get you some new jeans.”

This was my big sister—take-charge, generous, always looking after me. “You know,” I said, “I would love to, but I'm watching my expenses now so I don't want to buy anything new.”

Carol waved her hand in my face. “My treat,” she said. “Let's pick out something for your birthday.”

My birthday was more than a month away.

“Oh thanks, but really, I don't need anything. I just didn't pack the right clothes for this trip. I don't know what I was thinking.”

“One pair of jeans?” she said. “Please? Otherwise I don't know what I'll get you.”

I could imagine what shopping with my sister would be like. My sister coming into the dressing room and seeing how thin I really was.

“That sounds great,” I finally said. “But can we do it tomorrow? I've got a really bad stomachache. I think I'm going to lie down.”

Carol was used to my stomachaches, my headaches. My sickliness.
It had been there all my life, some ailment or another, more since my father had left. Carol was the strong one, the manager, the organizer, sometimes too much the taskmaster. Even losing her leg in the accident hadn't changed her basic approach to life.

I went into my room and took a hit, felt better. I kept the door closed, kept myself really high. I could hear my nieces running around laughing, shrieking, playing. I paced for hours while the household went through the motions of dinner, bath, bedtime. After a while I turned off the light so Carol wouldn't knock on the door, and as soon as I knew everyone was asleep, I took off for Evan's.

Same thing, different dealer. I told him, “You give the guy the money this time or I'm not sharing with you.” My addict's logic—I could steal from my sister, but I wasn't going to rip off some drug dealer.

I had brought Evan some stockings and a cute little outfit—a low-cut, ruffly purple top, a tight black miniskirt, something really provocative—and he loved it. I dressed him up like a girl and put some blush and eyeliner on him.

“Look at us,” he said. “We're like the homecoming queens.” I caught sight of us in the huge mirror he had over his dresser. He was right. I was way too thin and frail, but for better or for worse, I didn't look like the meth addicts you see on posters all over Hawaii. My skin was okay. I'd avoided those horrible staph infections. I hadn't become a picker. My teeth weren't rotting. I was twenty-seven years old, but I still had the look of a teenager. And Evan, he was skinny too, but dressed up he didn't look like the horrible addict he was. For tonight he was the gorgeous girl he wanted to be.

After we got high, we walked around a deserted park near his house. It was two, three in the morning. For him, this was the ultimate. In our crazy drug relationship he felt he could be himself
around me. He told me he didn't fit in anywhere. His parents refused to accept him, and his whole life was lived online, talking to other gay men. I was the first person who had told him it was okay to be a cross-dresser.

My third night with Evan, I let him shoot me up. My first time. I had never used with anyone before and I had always been too scared to try it by myself.

“I don't know what I have, Alli,” Evan said. “Hep-C, HIV. I have no idea.” I waved his words away with my arm, then held it out for the needle.

The drug felt strong and pure and scary. I loved it.

I wanted more slamming.

Worried that my sister would wake up one night—maybe Maya or Ella would have a nightmare and call out for her—I told her I'd received permission to work with the Everett Police Department on one of their narc ops. I'd be gone most nights. Of course my sister believed this. My family seemed to be in awe of my police work. I could tell them anything. This excuse explained my nighttime absences and also gave me permission to stay in my room all day, smoking meth while I pretended to sleep.

For five more nights I went to Evan's to share dope with him. Every time, his parents smiled. They didn't seem to care that I was coming over at eleven at night and leaving at five in the morning. They pretended I was his pretty girlfriend. They knew about the meth and hated it, but they didn't kick him out. He was their only child, and they were going to let him stay with them until he killed himself.

When I was in rehab, people would associate all their good times, their partying times, with meth. For them, that was the hardest part of being sober—missing the drug life and the crazy drug friendships. I was such an isolated user that I never had that; this
time with Evan was the closest I ever came. He told me he loved me, and I told him I loved him too. As messed up as it all was, I gave him a forum where he could talk about himself, where he wasn't trapped in an Internet world. For a week we were each other's best friend.

Each morning when I left Evan's, he made me take the dope-filled needles home with me. “I don't want to steal from you,” he said, “but if I'm alone with the dope I will. I'll use them if you don't take them.”

And so I would take these needles to my sister's house, where my nieces were two and three years old and into everything. I wasn't careful—they easily could have found the needles. One time I washed a pair of jeans that had a packet of dope in the pocket. I didn't care that my sister could have found it or that Ella could have chewed on it. I was just pissed that I might have lost the dope.

Paranoid that Carol would see the needle marks on my arms, I began wearing long-sleeved blouses over long underwear shirts. I wore rubber bands at the wrists of the long underwear so that the shirts would not ride up. Going shopping was now out of the question, so I made sure that my stomachaches persisted. Soon Carol was driving to all the Walgreens and CVSs all over town looking for the right antacids for me. I know she was worried about me, but to this day she swears that drugs did not enter her mind.

All during this time I was leading a double life with my sister and her family—sneaking into my room to smoke meth during my niece's third birthday party, using fifty dollars to buy her a present and then resenting her because I would rather have spent that money on dope.

Not just a double life, but a triple life, on the phone with the department and with Keawe, telling them I was doing better, getting stronger, that the cancer wasn't that bad.

“When are you coming home?” Keawe would ask eagerly.

“Soon,” I would say. “Soon.”

“Do you want me to come to Washington?” he would ask. “Do you need me there?”

We both knew I couldn't say yes because there was no way he could come. But it made me feel better that he asked.

And with MPD. Bryant called me and told me they had to move on the warrant, and I was so high I didn't care that I wasn't there. I had been convincing Kal via long-distance phone calls to trust Bryant and work with him, and he finally agreed he would.

The warrant resulted in the recovery of a couple of pounds of cocaine from the dealer's house, nothing major. Then, in a twist, Bryant was able flip the dealer, resulting in the seizure of a storage container holding over ten pounds each of cocaine and meth. A huge seizure, and then the DEA took over.

I received all sorts of praise and respect from my guys in vice and became the division's newest hotshot. Too bad I was so strung out I didn't care.

So Keawe and all of Maui thought I was dying of cancer, my sister thought I had stomach problems, and the only person who knew anything resembling the truth was a cross-dressing fundamentalist Christian tweaker I had known all of a week.

I probably would have shot up with Evan until it killed him or me or both of us, but I started running out of money for dope and Evan didn't have any. His parents paid him to volunteer at their church, and that's where he got the little dope money he had. He would also rob people, dealers especially. He prostituted himself out, not really caring whether he got paid or not. He just wanted some man to love him. It's rare that anyone who uses meth, homo- or heterosexual, doesn't turn to prostitution. You reach the point of desperation and you don't feel the emotions that you would usually
feel in that situation. If you're doing heroin or cocaine, you're still feeling something. You'll feel fear or shame. Not with meth. Also, meth hits the same part of the brain that gets hit with an orgasm, only times a thousand. You're so sexual. Taking that next step to prostitute yourself really isn't hard and most people in the meth world don't condemn you for it. Everybody does it.

The last night I saw Evan, I stole eighty dollars from my sister's ATM and we went to pick up some new dope. Back at his place, he shot me up. Right away I knew something was wrong. I felt a gurgling in my throat that reminded me of critically injured people I had seen on patrol who would aspirate. Evan's eyes widened in panic. I knew I had overdosed.

“Oh God, Alli, are you all right?” Evan took me in his arms and lay me down on the bed.

I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. Obviously he wasn't going to take me to the ER. Instead, I lay on his bed, terrified that I was about to die. For six hours I tried to stop my heart from exploding. Evan lay with me, stroking my hair and holding me.

“I love you,” he said over and over again. “I love you so much, you're going to be all right. I'm going to stay with you. I'm going to take care of you.” He stayed with me all night and never used the meth himself. I was sure I was going to die, but by dawn it was over.

Evan took me downstairs and helped me into the car.

“I'm glad you're all right, Alli,” he said, hugging me.

Later I thought about his parents, sleeping downstairs while a girl was overdosing on their second floor.

I never saw Evan again after that night. Though I would like to say it was because of what happened, that I was horrified or ashamed or something, it was really because of money. I had run out, and he didn't have any. Now that I couldn't use him for dope, I didn't need him. He called and called my cell phone that day,
leaving messages, asking me if I was all right, and I ignored them all. Finally he called my sister's house so I had to talk to him. I essentially broke up with him over the phone and that was the end of our beautiful tweaker bullshit love story.

I'm sure Evan's dead by now. He had already surrendered to the drug.

And I was about to.

All it took was meeting my last dealer.

After the overdose, I swore
I would never pick up again, but later that night I was back on Craigslist.

I found a guy who would be willing to give me dope if I had sex with him, and I went down to the Seattle airport area to meet him at a seedy hotel. He looked like a normal family man—forties, glasses, thinning hair. He actually looked kind of
tired
—and that comforted me somehow. I also worried that he might be a cop.

We smoked meth together and had sex. It was easy and fast. It didn't make me feel like a prostitute. I didn't cry after. I didn't even think about it. Later, yes, but right then meth was suppressing all my normal human responses. All I cared about was getting dope.

He gave me a very tiny amount so that I would have to meet with him again right away. After that first night, he wouldn't pay for a hotel. He lived an hour south of the airport, and my sister's house
was an hour north of the airport, so we would meet in a warehouse parking lot and have sex in his car. I preferred it that way anyway. In vice, we liked to arrange stings or drug buys out in the open, where you could run. Once you were in a residence, there was too much opportunity for trouble.

This man was pretty nice, but he was hard to get ahold of, and he never gave me very much dope.

The next man I met with, same thing: he looked like a normal family man, not a tweaker or a drug addict. He was kind of pudgy, midforties, really nice car. I gave that guy a blowjob and then he gave me a baggie. Meth has all these nicknames. It's called crystal, Tina, glass, or shards, and when I was chatting with him online we were using the code word glass. So afterward, when he gave me this baggie, he said, “Here's your glass,” and I saw that it was a bag of actual glass shards.

“Get the hell out of my car, you cunt,” he said.

That time I did break down, but I can't tell you if it was because I felt like a real prostitute or because I didn't get the dope.

I met with a couple of other different guys, always in parking lots, did the same thing, and was able to get a tiny bit of dope. I had unprotected sex with these men, every single one of them. I didn't think about AIDS or STDs or Keawe. I had gone from being a cop who wiped down her police belt with sanitizer every night to an ice whore.