by Karen Tucker
“Not buying whatever it is you’re selling,” she said.
“Ma’am, we’re here to buy from you,” said Luce. “Your son sent us?”
The old woman looked us over. “Christ, this shit again.”
We followed her into the dim of the kitchen, down an unlit hallway, and into the so-called parlor. It had a damp medicinal smell, which I recognized as a combination of iodine and menthol cough drops, with a top note of that depressing acetone odor bodies give off in their final stages. Still no lights, just a bit of watery sun leaking through the curtains and a dull glow from a TV set up in the corner. The picture was so scrambled you could hardly make out the scene. When she switched on a table lamp, a foldout couch rumpled with sheets and blankets jumped out at us. Her sickbed, most likely. It made me think of my father.
“Mind if I use your restroom?” I said.
The old woman’s upper lip curled in displeasure. “We get this over with nice and quick, you can go shit in the road for all I care. Pills are thirty bucks each. How many you wanting?”
Luce’s mouth fell open. “It’s supposed to be ten. Your son said so.”
“His cut’s ten. Mine’s twenty. You girls know how to add, don’t you?”
“False advertising,” Luce said. “Not cool, lady.”
“You don’t want them, say the word. People like you are ten cents a dozen.”
Luce and I exchanged glances. On one hand, we had a personal rule about not letting ourselves get hustled by dgirls, no matter how senior. On the other, pandas/Opanas were basically the best thing out there, with a high so smooth and dreamy you felt like you were sailing through heaven on a first-class ticket. They were also strong enough that you needed far less to get you going, but as luck would have it they were pretty rare. The last time we’d been able to find them we had to deal with a real charmer named Harold who kept adjusting his nutsack during the whole exchange and asking if we wanted to party. Even then he charged forty per. And afterward, surprise-surprise, he started texting Luce a bunch of unimpressive crotch shots until in a fit of anger she deleted the contact and blocked his number. Only problem was when we ran out and wanted more, we had no idea where to find him. We went all over town asking if anyone had seen a guy with two little beard pigtails sprouting from his chin and pentagram ear gauges and still we came up empty-handed.
After some deliberating, Luce suggested we spring for twelve total. “We stick to our taper, that’ll get us through till d-day.”
It was the best I could hope for. I nodded in agreement.
The old woman gestured at the coffee table. “Count her out.”
Luce sat on the floor and took her time separating the ones and fives, putting some into tidy stacks and fanning out others. When she started up with a bunch of distracting patter I knew she was fixing to pull one of her shortchange scams. She explained the reason we had so many small bills was because we waited tables and our manager wouldn’t let us trade our ones in for twenties since it made counting his bank deposit take forever. “Course dude has plenty of time to sit in the back, monkeying around with his phone, posting dumb pictures—”
“Save it,” the old woman said, cutting her off. “Never did understand tipping anyways. I never leave extra unless they bend over backwards.”
“All done,” Luce sang. She scooped up the cash and held it out like a treasure.
The old woman fixed Luce with one of her spooky skeleton gazes. “I was you, I’d count that again. No offense, but you didn’t seem to be paying attention.”
When Luce started talking again, this time about how crazy it was that the restaurant could legally pay us two dollars and thirteen cents an hour, the old woman leaned over and smacked the coffee table. “I said shut up and count.”
After that it was quiet except for the shuffling of money. My bladder was tight as a drum. I told the old woman I really needed to use the bathroom, and as if I’d jogged her memory, she took a long drink from her bottle of magnesium citrate—a laxative every opioid user gets to know at some point.
“Sister, you and me both,” she said. “Ever since I been on these suckers, it’s all kinds of problems. Nothing works, not coffee, not prunes, not molasses, not even this nasty lemon-lime stuff my boy got me this morning.”
Luce looked up. “You mean you never tried G-777s?” She pulled a ziplock of green pills out of her handbag.
“You can stop right there,” I said.
One of Luce’s favorite hustles, and she had many, was saving the sugar pills from our birth control packets and bagging them up to sell on college campuses alongside whatever else we were middling. Dudes only, of course. So far we’d just tested it at Elon and High Point U, but both times we’d made a couple hundred bucks in less than half an hour. Next on our hit list was Duke, where we planned to charge some serious money. You’d be surprised how stupid educated people are. But here, with some gun-toting maniac outside? No thank you.
“You’re right.” Luce started to put the pills back in her purse. “Forget it.”
“Not so fast. What are those exactly,” said the old woman.
Luce broke into one of her waitress smiles. “Canadian laxatives. Instant release. Can’t buy them here cause the FDA won’t approve the green dye in the coating.”
“Libtards,” the old woman said in disgust. “I’m over here needing real medicine but they’re too busy trying to regulate stuff that don’t need regulating.”
“I hear you loud and clear,” Luce said. “You know we’re all in trouble when hardworking Americans can’t even go to the bathroom when they want to. This dinky bag of pills? Five hundred bucks on the black market. Never mind what my girl here had to do to get it.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
With a regretful look, Luce put the pills away and went back to counting. I hoped that would be the end of it, but you could tell by the way the old woman kept eyeing Luce’s bag that she wasn’t about to drop the subject.
“You think I can get a couple of them green pills? I’ll throw in two extra on my end.”
Luce turned to me. “Boss, how about it?”
“Maybe we better just wrap this up. I’m sure our driver wants to get going.”
Luce’s face flickered for the briefest of moments. You could tell she’d forgotten all about Wilky. A nice little bonus I hadn’t expected. She gave the old woman a shrug of apology. “You heard her. No can do.”
As she counted bills in silence, our host stewed in her juices. Meanwhile I had to go so bad I was about to head outside and squat in the grass. At last the old woman aimed her skeleton spook in my direction. “Look here, you need to use the facilities, go on ahead. Back through the kitchen, on the right. Me and your friend can finish up without you, can’t we?”
“Course we can,” Luce said.
I didn’t trust either of them, but I also didn’t have a good choice one way or the other. Bodies are such fragile things. I hurried into the bathroom, locked the door behind me. I peed and peed and peed. Once I finished I made sure to check the medicine cabinet, but there was only a tube of Zilactin-B for treating mouth ulcers and a box of Antivert—the stuff my dad had used to fight off nausea. I sat on the edge of the bathtub and crunched up the other half of my k8. When it didn’t kick in as fast as I wanted, I chewed another, a whole one this time.
There it is, I thought.
It wasn’t until I heard a distant pounding that I lifted my head and came back from my travels. I struggled up from the tub, cracked the door open. When I saw it was Luce I got so happy I threw my arms around her.
“Really?” she said. “You couldn’t hold off for five minutes?”
I tried to explain, but before I could she hollered something over her shoulder.
What a mystery she was!
She pulled me back into the parlor. Parlor? I glanced around the room in confusion. Something sharp dug into my ribs. To my delight it turned out to be Luce’s elbow and I followed it up her arm, past her shoulder, alo
ng her jawline. Entranced, I stared at the side of her face. A spot of red burned high on her cheekbone and her mouth was moving.
“Remember, you have to take them with liquid.” She was talking to the old woman. “That magnesium drink you got there is about 99 percent water, so you might as well chase them with that. Nothing else, it’ll keep your son happy.”
The old woman shook her head in admiration. “Sure hope he finds himself a girl like you someday. He was a tiny bit younger, you’d make a great couple.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Luce said.
She slipped her hand into mine and led me out of that funeral parlor. As soon as the door shut behind us, she leaned in close. “Dude, we just set ourselves a record. Got all twelve for free. Now zip it till we’re in the car. Don’t want to give our boy any excuses.”
“Tick-a-lock,” I said happily.
It had grown even darker since we’d last been outside and as we rounded the corner the wind pushed into us, cold and oily. Chicken Feathers was sitting on the hood of the Outback, resting his gun on his knee and gazing off into the horizon. Wilky leaned against the fender, his hands plunged in his pockets, the afternoon’s strain playing out on his face. It couldn’t have been easy to drive us out here, not if he was trying to stay sober.
“Wilky!” I threw my hand in the air. “We’re back!”
He looked up, startled. His eyes went straight from me to Luce. “Finally. I was getting worried.”
“Took you girls long enough,” Chicken Feathers said. He slid off the car, made his way over.
Luce told him if he’d given us the right price from the get-go, we’d have been a lot faster. “This stuff of yours better check out is all I’m saying.”
“Comes straight from Walgreens.” He tucked his gun in his holster. “None of that pressed shit here. Should be plenty of it for the next couple months, longer if we’re lucky.” His voice trailed off into nothing.
“Copy that.” Luce turned to Wilky. “You ready?”
Wilky nodded with visible relief and got out his car keys.
“Whoa, slow down,” Chicken Feathers said. He reached in his blaze-orange vest, dug around in an inside pocket. With a flourish, he pulled out a bun. Little glassine bags of what looked like brown sugar, all rubber-banded together. “For you ladies, fifty bucks. Deal of a lifetime.”
It was right around then I felt the first drop of rain.
“Yeah, we don’t do the hard stuff,” Luce said, glancing skyward. “Got to draw the line somewhere.”
Chicken Feathers squeezed out a mean little laugh. “Had a pill every time I heard that, I’d have ODd long ago. Looks of you, I’d say you’ll be hitting the powder by summer. Sniffing through fall, needles by Christmas. Probably be going bare for it come springtime.”
Just like that my mood went from 14/10 to zero.
“Fuck you,” I heard myself say.
Chicken Feathers turned to face me, taking off his sunglasses so he could size me up better. He was even rougher-looking than I first thought. Pale eyes with red veins worming all through them. Scar tissue across the bridge of his nose from a beating he’d once taken—a nasty one too, from what I could tell. He took a step toward me, his cheeks flushed with anger. “You got some kind of problem?”
“She’s a little touched,” Luce said, tapping her forehead. “Go on now, get in the car, sweetie.”
But I wasn’t going to let him talk to Luce like that. I informed Chicken Feathers it was clear from his idiot lowball prices he didn’t know anything about anything and he really should leave the selling to the pros. “Else you’re going to keep getting ripped off over and over.”
Even Wilky, who had one of the most chill demeanors I’ve ever encountered, came up and took hold of my elbow. “Come on, hotshot. Time to get going.”
“Ripped off?” Chicken Feathers looked me over and then he turned and faced the cottage. “Mom, get out here!”
He wasn’t so easy to talk to after that, but even back in those early days I was a pretty good liar. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all. Most people think the trick is staying as close to the truth as possible, but instead you’ve got to look at it like any other hustle—by which I mean figure out what they want to believe and tell them that. By the time I was done with Chicken Feathers he was convinced I had an older brother who’d served overseas, started selling when our dad got sick, and was now pretty much running the game in Cumberland County.
“You two are basically twins,” I said. “Your only problem is you don’t know the right people.”
“So give me your bro’s number. Maybe we could team up or something.”
“For a bill, you got it.”
Chicken Feathers stared at me. “A hundred dollars. For a number. You’re crazy.”
I informed him it was a small price to pay for jumping right to the top rung of the ladder. “Course maybe you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like taking risks. But man, if you could see the house he bought our mother.”
Before he could say anything to that, the front door to the cottage swung open. The old woman came out on the steps, still in her robe. “You call me? I was on the toilet.”
“Fuck me,” Luce said under her breath.
Chicken Feathers told her never mind and to get back inside and to please put some clothes on already. “And drink some more of that stuff I got you. You’ll feel better.”
“Do this, do that,” said the old woman. “Turns out I don’t need your nasty drink. Thanks to those girls there I just took the best shit I had in ages.” She went inside and shut the door so loud you could hear it echo all through the mountains.
Poor Chicken Feathers went speckled red.
“Chemo brain,” he said after a moment. “She can’t help it.”
“It’s cool,” said Luce. “We all got parents.”
“I know about chemo brain,” I said. “My dad went through it.”
Chicken Feathers turned to me. His face went soft like a little kid’s. “It’s the worst. All those poisons they pump through them. Is your dad still . . . you know.”
I tried to laugh it off, but it came out kind of strangled sounding. “Nah.”
This next part I don’t like thinking about so much, so I’ll get it out quickly. What happened was I told him the actual truth. Not the full-length version, just the teaser. VA hospital, wrong diagnosis, wrong treatment. The doctor wanting to discharge him even though he was so ill he could only suck on ice chips. Me and my mom stepping out to get a couple drinks in the cafeteria. And sure, maybe we stayed away a little bit longer than we should have, but when we came back to his room we found nothing but turned-off machines and an empty bed, a gray-haired custodian already sanitizing the handrails.
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” my mom said, a little too loud. She’d tipped a couple airplane bottles into her Pepsi.
Seconds later the clatter of nurse clogs broke out in the hallway and a frazzled redhead in pink scrubs appeared in the door. She had a bag of Flamin’ Hots in one hand and a clipboard in the other. “I was just getting ready to call you,” she said.
When I finished my story, I looked up to see Chicken Feathers wincing like someone had punched him right in his busted septum. “That’s messed up. I’m sorry.”
I told him it was okay, that it was a long time ago and I was over it.
“You say so,” he said. “Listen, about that number. All my cash is tied up in medical stuff right now, which is why I’m even in this business, but if you want I could give you a few bundles to middle. Make your dough that way.”
I pretended to think it over. “I guess it’ll do.”
He gave me three buns out of his orange vest and then he dug one of those old Razr phones out of his camouflage coveralls and told me to put in my brother’s number. I typed in my mom’s cell since she still hadn’t bothered to change the factory-preset message on her voice mail, and besides that, I knew she’d never answer. If nothing else, months of
me calling her over and over had taught me that much.
Even so, when Chicken Feathers said he was going to check it, the prickle of adrenaline went shooting all through my system. Beside me, I could hear Luce’s husky intake of breath. He tapped the screen, waited a second. Tapped it again. Made a face. “Reception here blows. You sure this number’s for real? No bullshit?”
I held his gaze without so much as blinking. “Swear on my father’s grave.”
And then we were racing away in Wilky’s Outback. Luce was so excited about our scam that she kicked off her shoes, put her seat all the way back, and did a little sock-foot jig on the ceiling. Wilky studied the road unspooling before us. It had begun to drizzle pretty much the second he started the engine and now the rain was coming down so furious the wipers could hardly keep up. We’d scored a dozen pandas and approximately three grams of dope and all it had cost us was a little over an hour. Well, that and the story about my dad. I felt bad about trading on his death, like it had become nothing more than some flimsy trinket to use in a hustle instead of the hard black diamond I carried around inside me.
Luce turned around. “Hey, you listening?”
“Sorry.” I sat up a little. “I think I missed the last part.”
She leaned in and gave me a teasing punch on my shoulder. “Dude, you kicked some serious ass today! The way you worked that motherfucker? Amazing.”
“What about you and your G-777s?” I said. “That was some pure uncut genius.”
“Are we a good team or what?” Luce smiled so big you could see the funny dogtooth incisor she was always hiding. It was one of my favorite things about her.
“The best,” I said.
We went back and forth for the next few minutes, jabbering about the low oral ba of pandas and how in this case sniffing would be better than parachuting and that it was actually a good thing the old woman had given us generics since these wouldn’t gel up in our noses like the name brand would. By the time we got around to debating if we should sell our bags on campus or one of the gas station hot spots, you could tell Wilky was seriously upset. Despite the rain, he was hitting close to eighty in the straight parts and taking curves so fast we were sliding all over. At one point he hit a bump and Luce and I flew up and bonked our heads on the ceiling. “What the shit?” she said.