Some Are Sicker Than Others (7 page)

“Why should I? It’s all I have now. I can’t run. I can’t compete.”

“There are more important things than your running career, Dave.”

“Like what?”

“Like your children! Jesus, are you so busy feeling sorry for yourself that you forgot about your own kids? Don’t you even love them anymore?”

“What the hell kind of question is that? Of course, I love them. I love them more than anything in this whole godforsaken world.”

“Do you love them more than you love your dope?”

“What?”

“It’s a simple question, Dave. Do you love them more than you love your dope? Because if you spent as much time with your kids as you do getting high then we wouldn’t—”

“I spend plenty of time with those kids.”

“Oh really? When was the last time you helped Megan with her homework? And what about Mary? I mean, where were you last week? You knew how important that meet was to her. She finally did a full back tuck in her floor routine and you weren’t even there to see it. You used to love being with your children, but now we don’t even see you. You spend all your time out driving around doing God knows what.”

“I don’t have time to listen to this shit. I have to get to school. I’m gonna be late.”

Dave turned away and walked back to the kitchen table, picked up the newspaper and wedged it underneath his arm. He hobbled towards the front foyer, his bad leg dragging behind him like a ball and chain. But Cheryl wasn’t finished and came marching in after him, her bare feet slapping against the marble floor.

“Yeah, keep running,” she said. “Keep running away to your dope and see what happens. See what happens, Dave. This might be the last time you ever get to see your son again. Have you thought about that? Has that thought ever crept into your sick head?”

Dave rolled his eyes as he zipped up his green and gold jacket then bent over and scooped his blue gym bag off of the floor. “Cheryl, I told you, I don’t have time for this. I got a million things to do before our match tonight. I can’t stand here with you all morning and argue.” He stood up and slung the bag over his shoulder then turned away from her and walked across the foyer. But, just as he reached for the front door, Cheryl grabbed him, her fingers digging into the flesh of his forearm.

“Don’t do this,” she said, basically begging him, trying a new tactic since shouting didn’t work. “You shouldn’t even be driving around in your condition. What if something happens? What if you flip that bus?”

“Nothing’s gonna happen, Cheryl. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

“You are not fine. Look at you. You can’t even walk straight.”

Dave whirled around, pulling his arm away from her, his fists clenched, shaking by his sides. “Of course I can’t walk straight! I’m a god damn cripple! I’ll never walk right again thanks to you.”

“It wasn’t my fault. It was an accident.”

“Yeah right. If you’d been watching Larry like you were supposed to, he never would’ve run into me with that god damn golf cart.” Dave glanced at the kid. His face was buried underneath his mother’s nightgown like a frightened ostrich hiding its head underneath the sand. “Do you realize what you took away from me, Cheryl? What I could have been? What I could have done? I could’ve gone to the Olympics. I could’ve competed in front of the world.”

“The Olympics? Please, Dave, don’t be delusional. You weren’t even fast enough to make it when you were in college. You rode the bench most of the year.”

“That’s because I was too young and inexperienced.”

“But you never even won a race.”

“What about all those records I set in the 10,000 meter?”

“You were in high school.”

“What about that half marathon I won a few years back in Denver?”

“That was for charity.”

“So?”

“So, you were the only one in your heat!”

Dave snorted and turned away from her, then grabbed the knob and pulled open the front door. He didn’t have time for this shit. He had to get down to Aurora. It was almost seven-thirty. It was time to call Juarez.

“You’re sick, Dave,” Cheryl said. “You’re delusional. You need help.”

Dave rolled his eyes and turned away from her, then stepped out onto the patio while pulling the front door closed.

Chapter 5

The Score

DAVE stood on the porch for a moment trying to regain his focus, staring out at the lawn that was covered with a fresh layer of snowfall. Jesus, what a morning. What a horrible way to start the week. All that bitching and moaning was completely unnecessary especially for a Monday morning. Rehab? Please. What the hell was Cheryl talking about? He didn’t need no god damn rehab. It wasn’t like he was some junkie living out of a shopping cart, standing by the highway, holding up a sign. He was an Olympic runner for Christ’s sake. The best god damn middle and long distance runner on this side of the Mississippi. He’d set records in everything from the two to ten thousand meter. How did she think he set all those records? It wasn’t talent. It had nothing to do with talent. In fact, he didn’t even have the right genetics to be a great runner. His legs were too short, his upper body was too bulky, but he had one thing those fuckers in Ethiopia would never have—heart. He had more will and more drive in his little pinky finger than those bulimic fuckers had in their entire undernourished bodies. If he wanted something bad enough, he’d just go out there and take it. It didn’t matter what it was. The junior’s two thousand meter Colorado record? Please. He crushed that when he was only a teenager. And what about district 3A Cross Country Championship? How did three straight, back-to-back five thousand-meter titles sound? See, he didn’t need no god damn rehab. If he wanted to quit, he’d just do it. He’d do it on sheer willpower. But why should he? Why should he quit? It felt too good. It was the best feeling he’d had in a long time. It gave him that rush, that high he hadn’t had since high school when he was winning medals, running races, and leaving everyone in his heat a hundred yards behind. If he couldn’t have that, he had to have something—he had to have something to replace that feeling. Those pain pills the doctor gave him weren’t worth a damn. They were about as strong as Larry’s cough medicine. One measly bottle wouldn’t even get him through an entire day. But a few hits off that pipe—shit, that was all he needed. The only problem was getting it. It was quite a hike.

He adjusted his blue gym bag higher up on his shoulder then stepped down from the patio and stumbled across the front lawn. His little blue Volkswagen was parked out in the driveway, the back and rear windshields frosted with a thick layer of ice. Oh great, just what he needed. It was gonna take at least ten minutes to scrape off all this ice. Maybe he could just do the front driver side windshield. There wasn’t enough time to do both sides and the back.

He went to the trunk and pulled out the ice scraper then brought it back with him to the front of the car. As he came around the side, he noticed that the passenger side mirror was missing—in fact, it looked like it had been completely knocked off. What the hell? He crouched next to the tire for a closer inspection and noticed that the mirror wasn’t the only thing that was all messed up. The headlight was cracked, the front bumper was crumpled, and there were etchings of what looked like red paint all along the passenger side door.

He froze for a moment, staring at the damage, trying to remember what in the hell happened. But he couldn’t think, he couldn’t remember, everything from last night was all fragmented—a disjointed series of snapshots and voices, a blur of lights, colors, and music. He remembered going to Cosmo’s to pick up the pizza, but that was early in the day, like around one-thirty. What about after that? And what about Larry? Did he even pick the kid up from his Morningstar program? He must have, because Cheryl couldn’t have done it. She was up at the courthouse all day preparing for cases. Then what the hell happened? Did he hit something? Did he run something over?

He cursed to himself as he stood up from where he was crouching then looked up at the house then back at the car. He’d better get the hell out of here before Cheryl saw all this damage. He’d never hear the end of it, especially if she found out he didn’t even remember how it happened. But, what was he gonna do? How was he gonna fix it? How was he gonna find time to take it to a mechanic?

He bent back down and picked up the scraper, then rapidly chipped away the ice from the rest of the windshield. When he was finished, he opened the door and tossed in the scraper then picked up his gym bag and threw it on the passenger seat. He hopped in the car and turned over the ignition then threw it in reverse and sailed down the driveway.

Twenty minutes later, he was off the interstate heading west down Colfax towards Aurora, or as the natives liked to call it, Saudi-Aurora. It got its nickname on account of the fact it was all the way out in the boonies, about fifteen miles east of Denver, somewhere between the beltway and I-70. Because of its remote location, it was a city that seemed to have been forgotten, as if time and technology had gone on without it. In fact, every time Dave came here, he felt like he was going through some kind of time portal. The place looked like it was straight out of 1950. The buildings were all old, dirty, and dilapidated, and some even still had that retro 1950’s architecture; diners that looked like space ships had landed on top of them with bright, neon
Welcome
signs written in cursive…bowling alleys with pins the size of Volkswagens sitting on top of their wing-tipped entries. There was even an old drive-in somewhere around Havana. It wasn’t showing pictures, but it still had the original supporting structure that held up the movie screen. It was kind of neat, if you liked going backwards. Unfortunately, the farther west you got down Colfax, the more the city began to look like a slummy ghetto; hotels became motels that charged by the hour and bowling alleys became strip clubs that reeked of cum and stale whiskey sours. English turned to Spanish, burgers became tacos, and banks with glass windows became iron-barred pawnshops. Jesus, what a neighborhood. Every time he came down here, he thought he was gonna catch dysentery.

He eased on the brake as he pulled up to a stoplight then gently pressed down the door locks and peered out the window. A woman with wild, wiry hair was pushing a shopping cart, staring at Dave as she staggered into the crosswalk. Her cart was filled to the brim with aluminum cans and boxes, ratty blankets and torn up newspaper. Dave tried not to make eye contact as she walked out in front of him. She was muttering something at the pavement in a language that was definitely not English. On the opposite side of the street stood a bunch of Mexicans, waiting for the bus that would take them into the city. Their hands looked more like claws, clutching their grocery bags, shivering and waiting in the merciless Colorado winter. Poor bastards. Look at their fingers. They were all split and frozen like hot dogs with freezer burn. What a horrible life. What a miserable existence. Thank god he would never have to end up like them.

Finally, the light turned green and Dave stomped on the gas pedal, then put on his blinker and turned left at the next corner. He went about a quarter of a mile down the street then made a quick U-turn and pulled to a stop in front of a horribly plain brick building. The building was five stories high with microscopic slits for windows that made it look more like a prison tower than an actual apartment. In front of the building was a patch of dirt no bigger than the size of a pitcher’s mound that Dave figured was supposed to serve as the building’s front garden. Around the dirt stood a six-foot tall, chain-link rectangle that looked strangely familiar to the kind of fence you’d put around a prison yard. The only thing that was missing was some razor wire, a couple of free weights, and maybe some basketball hoops. Even the name of the place made Dave chuckle. It was called,
Casa Grande—The Big House
. How ominous.

He laughed to himself as he scanned the grounds of the building, but his temperament quickly sobered when he locked eyes with a short, angry-looking Hispanic. He was just a kid, nineteen maybe twenty, with a black baseball cap on his head that said
Colorado Rockies
. It was hard to make him out from underneath the building’s shadow, but Dave knew it had to be Juarez, because who else would be up this early on a Monday morning?

Dave tapped the horn once as a sign of identification then reached across the center console and rolled down the passenger side window. The kid nodded and put down his still-burning cigarette then trotted down the steps of the front porch patio. Before he got to the street, the kid stopped and looked down both ends of the corner. Once he was satisfied that there were no cops around, he opened the gate and walked towards Dave’s passenger side window. “What’s up?” he said, leaning in the window, one hand on the hood, the other dug deep into his jacket pocket.

“Hey, what’s up Juarez?” Dave said, unable to stop grinning, half because he was nervous and half because the glands in his mouth were burning with salivation. “How’s business?”

“Business is business. What you want man?”

Dave nodded and quickly reached into his back pocket and produced five crisp twenties from his brown, chewed up wallet. “I guess the usual,” he said, as he held out the money, his hands trembling from utter anticipation.

“The usual huh?”

“Yep.”

The kid smiled a smile of arrogance, probably because he thought he had Dave wrapped around his little finger. But Dave didn’t care, because he knew something this little punk didn’t; if he really wanted, he could quit tomorrow; no detox, no rehab, no counseling, no therapists; he could drop this shit right now on sheer willpower. Then, who’d be laughing? Who’d be smiling? Who’d be paying this kid’s rent and buying his groceries? Not Dave. That was for damn sure.

Dave smiled right back as he handed the kid the money, who inspected it and stuffed it inside his pocket. The kid disappeared from the view of the window, but returned a few seconds later holding a small, red plastic pill bottle. He unscrewed the cap and turned it over, counting off the rocks as they slid into his palm.