The Story of Junk (36 page)

“Did you see Grigorio?” she asks. I nod, a terrible black cloud.

“It's okay, hon. Don't get upset.”

“I can't help it,” I said.

“I can't complain,” she says, dragging herself back to bed. Now she walks with a cane. “I'm lucky I found him when I did.”

“Did he have AIDS when you met him?” I ask. “Did you?”

“We both did,” she says, pushing away her hair. She's feverish. “I couldn't tell anyone then,” she says. “I didn't want anything to change. Anyway, it was worth it. I did what I wanted and I fell in love, too. What more could a girl ask? I only wish I could have finished my novel. That's my only regret. That, and leaving Mike.”

“He knows you have AIDS now, doesn't he?”

“I'm not sure if he does,” she says.

She's not sure? “What's this novel?” I say. I think I'm getting mad. “I didn't know you were writing a novel.”

Her ice-blue eyes are now a soft gray. “Write that book of
yours
, hon.”

“I don't know if I can. I don't know anymore if drugs should be legal. I don't know what I'd write.”

“Just write your book, hon,” she says.

Well, I'm writing it.

SOMETIMES

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if what happened hadn't. Probably, it wouldn't have changed anything. It didn't change anything. Life always goes on. Time does. Heroin doesn't change that. You think it will, but it won't. It lies heavy on your chest like an unripened fruit, never finishing what it starts. Time doesn't stop and people you love slip through your hands against your will. Like Kit.

“How much are they paying you?” I whisper in her ear. The truth, I think, is always quiet. “You turned us in, didn't you?”

She jerks her head away. “Why do you hate me?” she says. “Is it because you wish you could be with a man?”

“You set us up. I know it was you. You wanted to run the business all along. I know how sly you can be. What kind of deal did you have? Did Dick promise to take me and leave you alone?”

She can't speak. She can't move. I've got her.

“Maybe Betty was right,” she says then. “You are crazy.”

“
You
turned us in. You hate
me
. You've hated me since you were sick. I could never give you enough. Not drugs, not sex, not money. You wanted it all to yourself. You dropped that dime, it was you. That's why Dick lets you go to Bebe's every day. That's why you still had dope when we were busted. That's why everyone excuses everything you do—it was you all along. You hate me.”

She pushes me into a wall. I wriggle free and push her back. She runs in the office and throws my typewriter through the window. She crashes a chair on my desk, tries to tear the folding table from the wall. I stand in the kitchen and watch. Then she hits me. She hits me again. I look in her eyes. She hits me.

KIT'S GONE

Kit's gone. Cal Tutweiler came and took her to a rehab on Second Avenue. He's off drugs this week. Good for him.

I sit by the window and look out. Maybe I should open it. These windows have been shut for a year. I can see a few leaves on the trees outside, a ship passing on the river, people on the street below.

She did it. I know she did. She won't admit it, but she did.

I stand up and puke on the rug.

How could she do it? Why?

Two weeks pass. I get clean. Kit's still in the rehab under severe restrictions, with two more weeks to go. I haven't heard a word from Dick, but she calls every day to say she's coming home.

They aren't giving her enough methadone is what it is. They've cut her down too fast. Nearly everyone there is in for crack, and they stay up all night and pace the halls outside her room. She can't sleep, she can't eat, and they give her demerits when she doesn't show up for breakfast. They won't let her out for air. “I'm coming home,” she says. “I'm gonna check myself out and go home, whether you like it or not.”

I don't like it.

I wonder why Dick hasn't called. Then I wonder why I'm wondering.

I pick up the phone and call my father. He's had the operation on his heart and I want to do the right thing.

“So,” I say, “have you been resting?”

“All I can do is rest,” he says. “I'm so tired … it's a terrible thing, getting old.”

“You're not old,” I say. “Take it easy.”

“I have no choice but to take it easy,” he tells me. “You can't understand how hard this is. I'm floundering here, doing nothing.”

“Dad,” I say. “You're recouping. That's something.”

“For instance,” he says. “This morning I got up, I went into the bathroom. I picked up my hairbrush and brushed back my hair. Then I flossed my teeth. Then I was pooped!”

“At least you have hair to brush,” I point out.

“Yes … yes … I guess that is something … to be glad of. Still, I'm a
man
, honey. I can't just sit around and powder my nose.”

“I know how it is,” I say.

“You
don't
know,” he replies. “You
can't
know. You only think you can. You can't understand till it happens to you. It's indescribable.”

“Dad,” I say. “I understand perfectly.”

“The doctor,” he goes on—I don't think he heard me—“the doctor said I was his Olympian star patient. I'm making a champion comeback, he said. Tomorrow I can have my first shower in a week. Amazing, how having a shower is the greatest thing that can happen in a week.”

I haven't had a shower in days. Can't bear the touch of water. “Life's great when it's simple,” I say. “Soon you'll be running around crazy like everyone else—”

“—just another Joe Schmo.”

“Not a schmo, Dad.”

“I don't like doing nothing,” he says.

“Look, you gotta get better,” I tell him. “Okay? It's not nothing.”

“I know you're right,” he says. It's the first time I've ever heard him say that. “The thing is,” he says, “I'm weeping so much of the time.”

“Don't worry about it,” I say.

“Doesn't seem like I have so much to be sad about.”

“Let it out. It'll be a relief.”

“I have no choice,” he admits. “Out it comes, on and off, all day, when I'm conscious. Gee—imagine looking forward to a shower, like it was the greatest invention known to man!”

“Imagine,” I concur.

“Haven't shaved in a week, either. Sheesh! It's terrible.”

“It's not terrible, for Heaven's sake—it's trendy. My God, you are rough.”

“You're a good kid,” he says, “always have been. Are you eating? You're always so thin.”

“Well, I haven't had much of an appetite,” I tell him. “Actually, I've been ill.”

“I'm sorry,” he says.

“I've been poisoned,” I say. My voice is gravel.

“
Poisoned?
”

I take a breath. “This good kid has been on drugs, to tell you the truth.”

“You mean … an
addict?
”

I keep silent.

“Are you saying it's my fault?”

“No.” Another silence.

“The doctor said I was his chief star patient, did I tell you?”

THAT DEVIL D

At the end of March, I'm still feeling terrible. I still tense up when I hear the phone; I still can't open the mail, but I've learned the location of every muscle in my body. Every ache and pain I have, every sleepless shudder and each nervous twitch comes right from that devil D. It's dying, at last, but it's putting up a fight, it screams in the night; I ignore it. Whoever said you could kick dope in three days must have been stoned; that's just another junkie fib. It takes a lot longer—for me, a lifetime, however long that is. Longer than five to fifteen years.

I call the lawyer. Has he heard anything? Have they set me a date in court? No, nothing, he says. He thinks the cops are losing interest.

On the thirty-first of March, that devil starts kicking me something fierce. It's bad. I'd give anything for even an hour's sleep, anything. I let myself out for a walk. Up and down the stairs, several times. As long as I'm talking or walking, as long as I stay in the light, I can breathe.

Kit calls to say she's coming home for real, they're letting her out after tomorrow. Tomorrow is her last fucking day. Could I bring her ten dollars in quarters? She owes them to a woman there who didn't make so many calls.

“I don't have ten dollars,” I say.

“Call Bebe,” she tells me. “Bebe always has quarters. Are you going to come and get me?”

There seems to be a brick lodged in my throat. “No,” I say. “I'm not coming.”

She hangs up.

A minute later, Bebe's on the phone. She has the quarters, I can come over whenever. Around dinnertime, I find myself ringing her bell.

“Uh-oh,” she says. “You look unhappy.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Well, you know.”

“Bet you'll be glad to have Kit home again.”

I say nothing.

She says I look like I could use a line. I tell her no, I'm trying to stay clean. I still have a couple of pills, I'm doing okay. Then I snort the offered line. To take the edge off. If I was on methadone, it would be the same thing.

One little line—it stones me. I walk on air all the way home, eat a small dinner, my first in weeks. I sleep a bit, maybe an hour or two. In the morning, I can't raise my head. My eyes are open, but my body … What did I do? Just a line. One line. I can't believe what I've done. I look at the calendar: April 1. April Fool. No kidding.

HOME, TAKING A SHOWER

When Honey died I was home taking a shower. I'd been at the hospital all night—that night before Kit came home. I wouldn't have been able to sleep no matter where I was. Mike, Honey's son, and Lute were with me, Magna, and Ginger, who was taking pictures. For twelve hours we stood by Honey's bed, watching her writhe in a blue plastic diaper, listening to her gasp for breath. She had a terrible, rasping cough, and was in and out of a coma all through that sleepless night.

“I'm here for the duration,” Lute said when I left, but I wasn't planning to be gone long. I didn't think the end would come soon. Grigorio hadn't let go easily and Honey was a lot like him.

I returned to see Magna nodding in a corner of the hall and Ginger standing outside Honey's room, weeping. A few others were milling around them. Honey never could feel popular enough. Lute told me when Honey died, everyone happened to be off in the lounge and she was all alone.

Mike came out of her room and I went in and closed the door. She looked good, I hope she knew that. No bags under the eyes. Good skin. I stared at her body as if from a great height. I wasn't feeling rational. Now that her wretched cough was gone, I half expected her to breathe, but nothing moved, not even the air. My eyes fell on the tattoos around her fingers. They seemed faded.

The door opened then and two orderlies appeared with a gurney, asking me to go and close the door behind me. When it opened again, they were wheeling her out in a body bag. It looked very small, child-size. How could our Honey be there? I caught Magna's eye and we both went to pieces. Fury took me back down the hall, down the stairs, to the street. I hate drugs, I said to myself. I hate them.

I hate them.

Kit was watching TV when I got home. Neither of us tried to speak. I lay down in bed and started rocking. I couldn't stop trembling, shivering. I had my overcoat on top of me; it lay on the quilts, but it didn't take away my chill. Kit took me in her arms and held me. I hated her touch, but it was warm. The rocking subsided, my legs took a rest. I drifted a little, maybe I slept, and for that day and the next and the next, Kit's arms, her warmth, her poisoned, scarred body was all that kept me from the grasp of that devil D. She was all the protection I had.

Three more days pass and nothing else happens, except I know what Kit is and she knows what I did and we live, rid of that devil D. That's all it was, I know that now, the reason she gave us up: she wanted at last to give him the slip but she had him confused with me. More days pass and we take separate bedrooms and in a month I'm well enough to get a job. First I clean yards, picking up fallen leaves, then I'm cooking again, in a restaurant serving health food. I make ninety dollars a week, before taxes. It isn't much, but it's legal, and so nothing happens. Kit goes to work for an interior designer making wall art, and more weeks pass and still nothing happens, except the days grow longer than the nights and Dick's calls get fewer and farther between. Then one day in June, I open the door and he's there.

“I was just going out,” I say. “You feel like a walk?” He leads me down the stairs.

We sit on a bench on the sidewalk and smoke. “How you doin'?” he says. “How's Kit? Heard anything from Daniel?”

“Questions, questions!” I exclaim. “What are you—a detective?” He laughs, and turns his head.

“So, did you ever figure out who set you up?”

He'll never stop playing with me, never. I wonder how he's doing with Angelo, but I'm too mad to ask. When there's nothing else to say, I ask. “How's Angelo doing, anyway?”

“He's been sweating it out. Like you.”

Right, I think. But I'm not in jail.

“And what does he say about me?”

“Nothing,” Dick replies, very cool. “Not a word.”

We share a moment of silence.

I know I'll see Angelo again someday, it's inevitable. Dick says he'll turn eventually. Everyone does. I'll be walking down the street, or sitting in a restaurant, or standing in line at a movie and he'll be there, eyes burning. Will he know me? Will we speak? I don't know but it doesn't matter; by then I'll have nothing to hide.