The Story of Junk (23 page)

When he shows up again, it's with Magna. Now
they're
a pair. A drug couple. NO sex. That's what Magna says. Cal's legs aren't right or something. Too long. She likes his arms. Cal has effeminate arms. She thinks they're SWEET. He says she's his “precious light,” but he must be referring to her trust fund. Toni's left him for Davey Boxer, and Magna is filling the gap.

Magna. She's the touchy-feely type: snakeskin boots drive her wild, chairs with suede cushions give her goosebumps, most of her clothing is silk. She can't keep her hands away from Cal. Her father, the son of a lumber baron, died when she was only eight and left her all his money. I gather she loved him a little too much, albeit from afar. She spent most of her childhood in boarding schools, kicked out at sixteen for drugs. She went to Europe and met a man her father's age. She moved in. She came back at eighteen and married a musician who was also a junkie and a car thief. When she dumped him, she moved to Paris to finish school, came back to New York and enrolled again, this time for graduate study. She still has a hankering for older guys. Any guys, from the look of it.

After they get high, we sit in the office with the
Times
Sunday crossword, the way Big Guy and I used to. Heroin is the perfect puzzle-solving tool. Words flow and connect in a dazzling stream; obscure references come to mind as if they were common slang. We're hooked.

“Those people were here an awfully long time,” says Kit on her first Sunday home from the hospital. After six weeks apart, we have to make adjustments.

“It's just the crossword,” I say. “We had a hard time with this one.”

“You'd rather be with them than me.”

“That's not true.” I reach out to give her a hug, but she turns away to look for the cats. The kitten Massimo has given us is all that delights her. I don't want to say I don't love her. I don't want to say that.

Daniel phones. He's coming to pick up money.

“I'm going to bed,” says Kit, clasping the kitten to her shoulder.

“But I want you to meet him.”

“Are you going to get high with him?”

“Probably.”

“Wake me when he gets here.”

They hit it right off. Guys always like her. The next time Weems visits, she doesn't make any noise. He's here to look at her pictures. He's seen them at Davey Boxer's and now he wants to buy one for a French collector. But Kit doesn't trust Prescott. She thinks he's a flake. Drug addicts tend to be flaky. It doesn't say that in any of the books, not in so many words. I rethink my collaboration with Honey. It's not dealers who need a manual; it's junkies who need a book of etiquette. I reach for the phone but it rings in my hand.

It's Betty.

“Put Kit on the phone,” she commands, the voice of doom. “And don't try to tell me she isn't there.”

I motion for Kit to pick it up in the bedroom and close the office door. I have a book to write.

This call could only mean trouble. I know Betty still wants Kit back. Has she got some sort of plan? Is she going to drop a dime on me? No telling what's on her mind. Not the crossword.

“She's coming over,” Kit calls out. “She wants to get her things.”

Oh, no. Moments later, I hear Betty whining in the hall. I stay in the office, pretending to be out, but when the decibel level rises, I pull the door ajar.

“You!” she yells when she sees me.

I don't know what she means. She looks awfully thin. She was always so voluptuous.

I step into the kitchen, she makes a move toward the office. “Your stuff's not in there anymore,” I say, blocking the door. “We moved your things to the closet.”

“I already looked,” she says. “It's not there. What did you do? Sell it all?”

“Everything you left is still here, come on. You're the one who abandoned it.”

“I told Kit I'd be back to pick it up.”

“But that was two years ago,” says Kit. I'm glad to see she's on my side; for a minute, I wasn't sure.

“I know what you're doing in there!” Betty shouts, pointing at the office. “You think it's a secret? Everyone knows! Everyone talks about you, and what they say isn't
nice
. You don't want to fuck with me, I'm telling you … see?”

She's got someone with her, a stocky older man in a plaid shirt and chinos, with a brushy mustache and silver hair. “This is a cop,” Betty says, grasping his shoulder. He gives her a wary look. “That's right,” she says. “A cop. I came here to get my stuff, so get out of my way and let me get it.”

“Betty,” I say. “Calm down, okay.” I'm lookin' at this guy, Kit's backing into the bedroom. He could be a cop, he certainly could. He could also be Betty's pimp. Pimps might easily look like cops out there in the suburbs, where Betty lives now. She's moved back in with her mother. Maybe this is her mother's friend. Maybe I'd better do what they say.

But I don't. Betty's sick and I'm sorry about that, but it's my house and they're not welcome. “Get out of my way,” she says, and moves to push me aside. The cop stays where he is, leaning on the kitchen table, watching. Betty barges into the office and shrieks when she sees the desk.

“My table!” she cries. “My mother's good table! Get your shit off. I'm taking it out.”

“That's my book there,” I say, indicating the papers I've spread to hide the mirrors. I've put away the scale. “I'm writing a book to decriminalize drugs.”

“Ha! Ha ha! That's very funny,” she says.

“Look,” I say. “I'm serious. Read my notes.”

“You're crazy,” she says. “You are really nuts.”

“Look, Betty,” I say. “How much do you want for this table? I'll pay you, even though you did leave it behind.”

“I don't want your dirty drug money!” she yells. “I don't want to look at you another second! You ruined my life, goddamit. And you totally fucked over Kit. You did that, not me! You! If it wasn't for you, I'd be—”

The cop moves to settle her down. “Betty,” says the man.

“All right, I'm going! Let's go! But I'm coming back, I tell you. I'm coming back to get my shit.”

“You think that guy was really a cop?” I ask Kit when they slam the door.

“I don't know—maybe. It doesn't matter. She's dying, can't you see? She won't do anything to hurt us.”

NO ORDINARY SUNSET

I'm standing in the living-room window looking down toward the river. Over the water I can see the sky. This is no ordinary sunset. It's beautiful. Beauty is power—more powerful than drugs. Beauty makes you forget you live in a sixth-floor tenement walkup the police have just closed the door on.

They've taken Kit out in an ambulance. Over the last few days, she swallowed ninety Valium. She said the first eighty didn't do anything. She was taking them by the handful. After the last ten she started convulsing. Maybe she'd done some coke, I don't know. Must have been something.

We've both been kicking, bad. Punched all the feathers out of our pillows. Kit thought it was a good idea to call Mr. Leather. Kit wanted him to go out and refill her 'scrips, but he saw through her. Mr. Leather's quit drugs for AA. He picked up Kit's prescription and then he called 911. Kit punched out another pillow.

The two EMS workers, a woman and a man, walked in through a shower of gently falling feathers. I didn't try to explain. Didn't have to. A couple of dumbfounded uniformed cops were with them, a man and a woman. They didn't stay long—about as long as Kit stayed in the E.R. Not very. They couldn't find anything wrong with her. As a matter of fact, they ignored her. She walked home and fell asleep.

Poor Kit. It's all those pills. Pills are much worse than heroin. They get into the liver and they don't come out. Heroin's pretty safe, as drugs go, in tolerable amounts. Too bad it isn't legal.

Dick says heroin will never be legal. “This country's at war,” he reminds me. “The President says so—the war on drugs? I'm part of the solution to the drug problem.”

“The problem with drugs is they work,” I explain. “They work a long time, then they don't. That's the problem.”

“Shouldn't the question be
who
is the problem? Is it me or is it you? The government or the dealer? The junkie or the junk?”

“If I knew the answer to that question,” I reply, “the drug problem in this country would be over.”

PART SIX

I WANT OUT

I WANT OUT

Christmas 1983. Kit's been in an awful funk since the endocarditis. The antibiotics have zapped her strength, the demise of her band has stripped her spirit. The dope has done the rest. Most of the time she stays in bed. Now she's hooked on soap operas.

I'm sympathetic at first. I cook the meals, pay the bills, sit with her and watch TV. In three months, she hasn't improved. Paul says there's been no damage to her heart but he doesn't know it the way I do. My sympathy turns to resentment.

I never have a single moment to myself. When Kit isn't here, the customers are. Sure, I make money, so what? I spend it—on a new guitar for Kit, a typewriter for myself, new clothes. When the linoleum on the kitchen floor wears out from the hallway to the office door, I have the whole thing tiled over, carpet the other rooms, buy new chairs. I never care what I spend; what goes out one day comes back the next. Yet, I wake up every day feeling robbed.

Kit isn't to blame but I blame her. We have a fight. It isn't just an argument; we come to blows. That is, I throw dishes and she kicks the walls. We never have physical contact. That's over.

“You wish you could be with a man again, don't you?” she says, her eyes cold as the air.

“No,” I say, my voice flat. “I don't want anyone else.”

I want out.

I'm tired. Junk makes me tired, Kit makes me tired, dealing is exhausting. I'm out of it. Not my mind, my body. I want to eat and it doesn't. I want to sleep and it won't. I want to fuck and it isn't in the mood. There are days when the sadness of this life weighs so heavily I can't see the sky. I don't lift my head to look. The winter air snaps at my teeth, the wind burns my face. The apartment's so cold I live in my coat. I never really sleep. The darkness tucks me in and I go missing for a while. When I wake up, it's dark out again.

Maybe, I think, maybe it's the season. The holidays are numbing. But I feel something: boredom. I'm hearing the same things too many times; I don't want to hear them anymore. I don't want to know who steals what to get money for their drugs. I don't want to know who they lie to or why. I don't want to know who's dying or who's getting famous, who they're fucking or how, if they're shit-eaters or thumb-suckers or virgins or witches. I'm sick of it.

Doctor Paul comes but not to check on Kit. His girlfriend wants something for New Year's Eve. It's been a heavy week with her patients. She's an AIDS nurse. He's in love.

“This is probably the last time I'll see you,” he says, but I don't pay him any mind. They all say that, at least once. “We're getting married,” he says then. “Leaving the country. The atmosphere now is depressing. I want to do work that has some meaning and I don't have it here. People are too paranoid and suspicious.”

He's talking about AIDS. Doesn't AIDS work have meaning?

He shakes his head. “You can't help people with AIDS,” he says. “They're dying. People don't want to help and I can't fight it alone. Besides,” he says, biting a nail, “you can't help people with AIDS.” He's going to Ethiopia, where people are starving, where he can lay on hands. Those people can be helped.

AIDS is keeping Big Guy away, too. He's bought a house in Honolulu. Mr. Leather called to say our old apartment's up for grabs. Do I want it?

Kit and I could use some breathing room, but what happens to her if I leave? Maybe I could use Big Guy's place as the office. Maybe we'd both feel better. No, I can't afford that, get real. I'll wait. Kit will get better someday. Someday a record contract will come. Someday we'll be off drugs. I'll simply have to wait.

I wait till April, counting money, marking time, my head bent over the foil, couching myself in the dark. I have a room of my own, Kit says. Why can't she have one, too? We move the bed to the living room, behind a shelving system that acts as a screen. The old bedroom is now her studio. People really like the necklaces she wears; maybe she'll make some jewelry. Maybe she'll do some painting. Maybe she'll do some drugs.

Little by little, Sylph draws Kit back to work. In May they start recording a demo with a new drummer and bass player—Poop and Gloria are gone. On the new band's last night in the studio, Kit asks me to come along.

I go and sit stoned in the dark, drinking beer with the band. We're passing lines of cocaine, smoking pot. I listen to the music. Every song seems to end with a death wish. Kit turns up the volume on her guitar tracks; the producer turns it down. He wants to hear the drums. Sylph says he's burying her vocals. Kit thinks the lyrics sound like shit. Why should they take up more tracks than her guitar? I find this all very tedious. What am I doing here? Kit doesn't need me.

Next thing I know, I'm sitting up in bed and it's the middle of the afternoon. Magna's in the armchair by the television. Mr. Leather's sitting on the floor by the bed. Kit stands in the doorway while Honey talks on the phone.

“Listen,” Magna's saying. “Don't worry about the bill. I can take care of it. GLAD to.”

“What are you talking about?” I say. I feel groggy.

“The phone bill,” she says. I see it in her hand. “Weren't you depressed about not having money to pay it?”

I don't understand this. I pay all my bills when they're due.

“You all right?” Mr. Leather asks.