The Story of Junk (35 page)

“Did you find anything yet?”

I shake my head.

“I wish you would call him. Call Vance.”

I close the books.

“I think we should talk to him,” she says.

“What's going on?” I say, when I get him on the phone. “When you gonna return that favor?”

Don't worry, he tells me. I'm not really worried, am I? I have no cause to worry, not about him. How could I be worried? About him? It's coming, he promises, any day now. He's working on something special—“a new film.” Why can't I trust him? Aren't we friends?

I have many friends, I say, and none of them owe me money. I don't confess my own lingering debts. By now, they've disappeared into the bowels of the U.S. Federal Building.

“Stop this,” says Vance. I can hear him smoking crack. “Don't be so hard,” he says. “Haven't I always taken care of you girls?”

I tell him what's happened, sort of. Dead silence. Then, “You calling me from home?”

It's all right, I say, I only want to know who set me up. Does he have anything to tell me?

“Are you saying it was me?” he shouts. “I can't believe you'd say a thing like that! To me! A
friend
. I would never do that to anybody! Especially you—you girls! I've
never
done you dirt. What about all those times Kit came up here with those big sick eyes? I've never seen eyes like that. It didn't matter what time it was or what else I was doing, did it? I was always here for you.” Now it sounds like he's going to cry.

“Maybe it was Jerome.”

“Not him. Are you serious?”

He's right. It's never the first person you suspect. “Find out who it was, then. Can you?”

He says he'll ask around.

“He didn't do it,” I tell Kit. “Maybe it was Betty?”

She stands up. “I don't think so. Betty's dead.” I didn't know this. I feel awful. Kit's expression doesn't change. “Why couldn't it have been Daniel?”

“No,” I say, under my breath. “Not Daniel.”

“I don't know who did it,” she says with resignation. “I guess it doesn't matter anymore.”

I wish I could say what's really on my mind, but I can't seem to find the words. My mind's gone. Like Daniel.

“Vance isn't such a bad guy, really,” she goes on, picking up one of the cats. “None of these guys are. These
guys:
Vance, Daniel, Jean-Paul—they'd be pretty together if they weren't so fucked up.”

“Wait a minute,” I say.

She stares at me. “Jean-Paul?”

That
asshole
. Was it only a week ago I threw him out? That slime. I tried to be good to him—his wife had OD'd on a trip to Asia. He loved her, I guess. I gave him a consoling bag of dope, but he wanted more. When I gave him a little more, he called me a bitch. He didn't want just a little. Why couldn't I help get him back on his feet, come on. I could do that, couldn't I?

I never did trust that Jean-Paul. Didn't like him. He would have to pay up front, I said. That was the only way. I never thought he'd do anything; sick junkies say a lot of things they don't mean. I thought, bottom line, he needed me.

“I guess you could have been nicer,” Kit tells me.

There's another argument brewing, we're both getting mad. The cats have left the room. I agree with Kit about one thing, though: it doesn't matter now who did what.
We
can't do anything. Can we?

OUT THERE, WAITING

From the living-room window I can see the roof garden of a three-story building below. It hides part of Sixth Avenue from view. I can see the subway entrance beyond, I can hear the traffic pass. I can't see if anyone is still out there, waiting.

The stuff Dick and his crew confiscated at the bust didn't arrive by pigeon. I got it from one of those names Dick wants to hear, one who wants to be paid for that stuff. Malik.

The easy thing to do would be to turn him in. Also the hardest.

When Dick isn't around, I get a cab to Malik's apartment. He thinks I'm bringing him cash, but I'm there to tell him about the bust. He can plainly see I'm sick. He asks who set me up. A creep named Jean-Paul. Then why am I not in jail? “I have a good lawyer,” I say. He accepts this. He really only wants to know one thing: how I expect to pay him.

How does he expect I can?

“That's not my problem,” he says. “My problem is the guy
I
owe.”

I let him know some of my customers are willing to pay more if I'll cop for them. That would be madness, I say, but I'll gladly turn their business over to him.

No, he says. Definitely not. No one can know he has anything to do with this stuff, or me. He has a wife, a kid, a legitimate business—painting, construction, design. Like Vance, he's trying to finance a film, but unlike Vance, he can probably pull it off. Malik used to run a theater company. He's not all talk and no show.

What can I do? I can't turn him in. He's my brother's friend.

I start going around the neighborhood on the sly, picking up money. I keep my eyes at my back. I never see any dicks. I go uptown and sit in Malik's kitchen, where I weigh the bindles and go back to make the drops. It's tiresome, and dangerous, but each time I meet with Malik, he gives me a line to relieve the sickness and another one to go.

“This has to stop,” I say after a week has gone by. I'll never be able to pay what I owe. We'll both get busted.

He pats the money on the table. “We won't get busted,” he says. He seems to think he's immune. He still has to pay his guy, he says, and this isn't a guy you want to mess with. This guy owes somebody, too.

“I understand the problem,” I say, but I have problems of my own.

“I am going to be paid,” Malik says slowly. “I am going to be paid, and you're going to do the paying.” He's angry, I can see that. I also see his fear. Not of the people he owes. I'm the one making him nervous.

“You can't turn him in,” says Kit when I get home. I'm scraping out a line for her. “We need this.”

“It's not worth it,” I say. “But I won't turn him in.”

As the lawyer said, I've cooperated enough. Too much. More than I can bear.

MONSTERS

I sit on the edge of my bed and watch the cats roll around on the carpet, listen to them meow. They must be hungry. I can't move. Sweat drips from my hair, goosebumps appear on my skin. My tongue feels swollen, I've been vomiting for hours. Haven't slept in a week.

“I can't stand it,” Kit says. “I can't stand it.”

Cal Tutweiler calls. He knows about a rehab Kit's insurance will cover—her parents pay all her premiums. I say she ought to go. Anything's better than this.

“I'll go if I can take my own pills,” she says.

The phone. Who now? Must be Dick. Can't he take a day off?

“Darling, you are out of jail!” It's Prescott. Fucking Prescott Weems.

“Yeah,” I grunt.

“I hear you informed on your
friends,
” he gurgles, his voice a simmering venom stew.

“Don't start,” I say.

“Darling, I don't like hearing you've been a rat and I don't want to believe it. But I promise you, if it turns out to be true, I will personally destroy you and I'll do it in print. You know I can, so don't try me. Under this genteel exterior, I'm a vicious old queen, and I will make sure you never show your face in good company again. You will not be able to get a job even licking dishes, much less cooking them. Just forget it.”

“I can't talk now,” I say through my teeth. “I'm sick.”

“You didn't turn anyone in?”

I hang up, feeling grim. The phone rings again. Oh, God. He's worse than Dick.

It's Lute. “Thank God you're there!” she bellows.

“I'm here, all right. What's up?”

“Please
please
go to the hospital to see Grigorio? Honey asked me to call you. She was there this morning but she's not in any shape to go back. Please go, there's no one else I can ask.”

I'm not sure my legs will support me.

“You've got to go,” she says. “Everyone else is either working or not answering, and I have to stay here with Honey. I know what Weems is saying and I don't care. I don't
care
what you did or didn't do, we've been friends too long. I'm glad you're not in jail—okay? Honey needs you. Please do this for her. Please go over there
now
. Will you go?”

I'll go. I know better now than to walk away from the sick. It empties your world, doing that. It makes your place in it small, and my spot is tight enough.

I call upon myself. I call. I hobble to the sink and splash water on my face, down two clonidines, pop an Ativan for good measure. My pupils are huge. It takes every ounce of strength to dress; I can hardly lift my coat. Kit can't believe I'm doing this. But I have to do it. I must.

I throw the coat over my shoulders and inch down the stairs to the street. The wind nearly knocks me down. I pray I'll live till I get there.

My heart jumps when I see him, a disfigured stick of a man many years older than I know he is. The long thick curly hair now hangs in thin wisps from his crown. His cheeks are sunken and his eyes bulge. They don't look real. He's barely more than a skeleton.

It's been only a month since I saw him last. He was in a different room then, the one he was sharing with Honey. It looked like a circus tent then. Now it's a chamber of death.

The tubes are gone, he's breathing on his own somehow. Two large garbage bags sit on the floor, stuffed with his belongings. They've packed him up already. Couldn't they wait? He doesn't deserve this—what did he do? He got hooked on drugs, said some funny things, and made my best friend glad to be alive. Should this be a capital offense? Death is a blessing compared to this shit. My own sickness leaves me. He calls for a nurse.

“Bitch!” he cries, and then he's out of breath. “They hate people with AIDS,” he says, his voice barely a wheeze. “They turn us into monsters.” The fight goes out of him and he lies still, his breathing labored as a dog's on a hot summer day. A dog's life is better.

I grasp his hand. It's cold as ice. All I see is his morphine drip. This is hell.

What is it about this life, I think, makes people willing to suffer so, just to have another moment in it?
Let go
, I want to say. His eyes flutter open and rest briefly on the TV above his bed. He still wants to look at pictures. “So stupid,” he says. “So dummy.” His cheeks seem to sink even deeper.

His lips move again but I hear nothing. I move close to his face and with a tremendous effort he tries again. “Have you seen Honey?”

“I'm going there when I leave here,” I say. I guess I will. Nothing else to do. Wait for Dick? I'll go see Honey.

“It was all my fault,” he says, his face ashen.

“It's nobody's fault,” I reply, though I'm not actually sure about that.

“So dummy,” he says. “There was a time …” He forced a smile and gripped my hand. It sent another chill up my spine. “It was
amusing,
” he whispers. “Wasn't it?” An awful odor escapes his mouth, deep skank. His head falls back on the pillow.

Is this it? Is he going to die now? What if he does? I can feel the life draining from his hand like dripping paint. Will I have to be the one to tell Honey?

“Bebe said I'd find you here.”

What? The voice in the doorway startles me. It takes me a minute to focus on the face. I can't quite believe what I'm seeing. It's Mark Murano—Angelo's friend. The junkie who introduced us. I let go of Grigorio's hand.

“What were you thinking when you talked to those cops?” Mark bellows from the doorway.

All the stories I've heard, all the lies I've told. I can't think of anything to say.

“That was me with Angelo that night, you bitch! He was on his way to see
you
! You ratted us out. It was you.” His face is red, his hands shake. The bastard's a pillar of fury.

“Pipe down,” I say, edging away from the bed. “This man is dying.”

“Let him.”

I wish I could faint. But nooo.

“Look,” I say, “you think I set myself up? You crazy? Somebody dropped a net on Angelo and we were in it.”

“Who?” He moves toward me now. I step back.

“I don't know.” I still don't, not really. How could I?

“You sold us out!” Mark screams. “Why else are you walking around?”

“I don't know,” I say. “Why are you?” Now we're facing each other, inches apart.

“My wife paid the bail,” he says. He's shaking me and shouting. “Bebe told me
you
didn't even go in front of a judge. You did it. It was you!”

That fucking bigmouth Bebe. “Bebe is grabbing at straws,” I say. Am I choking? “She doesn't know any more than I do.”

“She said Kit told her you ratted.”

Kit?

This is an outrage. We tussle. It isn't much of a fight. He's as dopesick as I am. I pull myself away. “You've got some nerve,” I say. Wait till Dick hears about
this
. “Look,” I say, “the shit I'm in is just as deep as yours. I'm not in jail, because it wasn't me they were looking for. It was Angelo they wanted and it was Angelo they got. They thought I was someone named Laura. Who's Laura? Some friend of
yours?
”

The nurse peeks in. “I have to ask you to step outside,” she says. “You're disturbing the patient.”

“You better watch your back,” Mark says, withdrawing. “I'm not through with you yet.” He pauses in the doorway. “Bitch.”

A sound comes from Grigorio. I lean close. “Tell Honey I waited,” he says.

I find Honey in her kitchen, rearranging the furniture, hanging a light. “Glad to see you up and about,” I said, suddenly remembering that when we'd met ten years before, she was doing exactly the same thing.