by Karen Tucker
Greenie spoke into her phone. “Hello, is Flo available?”
“Fine,” I said. “If you won’t drive me, I’ll find someone else. Someone who actually cares about my well-being.”
“Tell her it’s about a new client,” said Greenie.
“Teena,” I said. “You remember her, right? From the old days?”
Greenie turned to me with a grunt of displeasure. She didn’t want us talking to our former dgirls under any circumstances. “You know what, let me call you back in a minute.”
I glanced at Luce, hoping she’d be impressed with my distraction tactics. She just went over to the door and began putting her shoes on. “Whatever, you win. Long as we take Irene to Walmart, I’ll go to your damn meeting. I can’t listen to her gripe about her stupid knee for one more second.”
“Good girl,” said Greenie. She checked the time on her phone and turned to me. “We’re going to be cutting it close. You sure we can’t get the brace after the 1:30?”
“Not if you’re planning some big one-on-one session,” I said. “Those things take forever.”
“We could always skip that part,” said Luce.
“Nice try,” said Greenie.
Soon we were zooming east on 27 in Greenie’s VW Beetle. Luce had her head stuck out the passenger-side window like one of those country dogs you always see riding shotgun in summer. I was in the back, my bad leg stretched across the bench seat. Even though Luce and I were finally on our way to a meeting, I felt off-balance and nervous. Maybe because the last time I was at this particular Walmart my mom got popped for sneaking a case of Progresso chili out through the garden center entrance. The security guard who nabbed her, a woman with a sticky-looking puff of yellow hair and what looked like those plastic aligners from the SmileDirectClub, hauled us both in the back, took my mom’s photo, and made her sign a paper swearing she’d never again set foot on the property. Talked to her like she was a complete garbage-head even though my mom had been on a timeout from drinking since New Year’s. Of course the timeout ended the second we got home. The whole thing was a real turning point for my mom, and in the wrong direction. I’ll never forget the beaten look she had on her face while the security guard shamed her in front of her daughter.
We got to Walmart, Greenie parked, cut the engine. “You girls wait here. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
“You sure?” I said. “I can go get it.”
“With that knee of yours, it’ll take all day.” She looked around the lot. “Just stay in the car and roll up that window. Don’t talk to anyone. I swear this place gets worse every time I come here. You’d think security would do something about it.”
“Don’t worry,” Luce said. “Everyone knows this place is press central. We’re not stupid.”
A look of relief passed across Greenie’s face. “Okay then, see you in a minute.” She got out of the car and went lumbering toward the entrance.
The moment the automatic doors slid shut behind Greenie, Luce got out of the car. Without waiting to see if I was coming, she made straight for the bank of vending machines—Coke, Redbox, purified water—where a man in a too-small pink puffer was examining a slip of paper. I hurried after her as best I could. See, the scam goes like this: find a Walmart receipt someone lost or discarded and then go into the store, pull whatever they bought from the shelf, and take it to customer service. Get refunded cash if you’re lucky, but chances are they’ll hook you up with store credit—and every dealer I ever met will give you fifty cents on the dollar.
When Pink Puffer looked up and saw us, he gave us the classic chin nod as if he’d been expecting our arrival. “Gimme five minutes. Just got to find the vacuum section.”
“Other way around,” Luce said. “We’re looking.”
“Are you serious?” I said to her. “She’ll be back any second.”
Luce kept her gaze fixed on Pink Puffer. “Who around here’s reliable?”
“I mean it,” I said. “If we’re not in the car, she’ll completely lose it.”
“So let her. She’ll get over it.”
Pink Puffer shook his head in amusement. “You ladies best figure yourselves out. You’re still here when I get back, I’ll make an introduction.” Before either Luce or I could say anything further, he went hurrying down the sidewalk.
“Better be careful with that guy,” a voice behind us said.
I hadn’t noticed her earlier, but sitting on the ground nearby was a ruddy-faced woman who looked to be somewhere in her thirties, gripping a cigarette in her knuckles like it was the only thing left in the world that could save her.
“Why’s that,” Luce said, barely glancing over.
The woman exhaled two dragon-like plumes of smoke through her nose. “Take it you girls are on your way to a meeting?”
That got Luce’s attention. “How’d you know that?”
“Saw you pull up earlier. I’d recognize that green bug of Greenie’s anywhere. Was in the rooms with her for a while, couple years ago maybe.”
“Really?” I said. “You switch to a different meeting, or?”
The woman shrugged and went back to smoking.
“Hey, it’s cool,” I said. “We’ve been trying to stay out of the game for eleven months now. It’s not easy.”
“Don’t go kidding yourself,” said the woman. “We’re all in the game. You, me, Greenie, and everyone else on the planet. Even the little tiny babies, so fresh and pure they don’t have any idea who they are or what the hell they’re doing. You see what I’m saying?”
“Sure,” I said, trying to hide my confusion. “Absolutely.”
“Okay then,” she said.
Her name was Gayle Crystal, she went on to tell us. “Like the singer, but backwards. You know, the one whose hair went down past her butt. Would have been a singer myself, but my lungs are fried from asthma. Not to mention I used to be a sniffer, and now the doc says my chest is chock-full of scar tissue.”
“I have asthma too,” Luce said. “Ever since I was little.”
“Yeah?” said Gayle Crystal. “You’re not a sniffer, are you?”
A horn was honking somewhere in the distance.
“No,” Luce said. “Or yeah, once in a while. But me and her are mostly clean now. Greenie’s our sponsor.”
“Greenie, Greenie, Greenie,” Gayle Crystal said. “She was half as smart as she thinks she is, she’d be a certifiable genius.”
Before that moment, I’d never heard anyone say one bad word against Greenie. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think,” said Gayle Crystal, watching me closely. Her face took on a folded-up, secret look. “So what’s the deal with your knee? Spent too much time on it buffing pickles?”
Luce busted out laughing. I didn’t get what was so funny.
“No, but seriously,” said Gayle Crystal. “The three of us should hang out sometime. I’ll show you how to rig a bendy straw so your lungs don’t get all clogged with powder. How to sniff so you get the most bang for your dollar. Key words being low and slow. It’s too late for me, but maybe not for you two.”
“She has an inhaler,” I said. “Does a pretty good job of helping.”
“You kidding? Those things, you’re squirting poison straight down your throat.” Gayle Crystal turned to Luce. “You want, I’ll hook you up with my personal doctor. He’s got one of those pay-what-you-can deals. Your name’s Lucille, right?”
I gaped at her in disbelief. “How’d you know that?”
Even Luce looked shaken.
Gayle Crystal gave us a knowing smile. “Irene, better not ask a question if you don’t want the answer.”
“Fuck man,” said Luce. “Are you some kind of fortune-teller or something?”
“You could say that,” Gayle Crystal said. “And I hate to be the one to tell you, but your fortunes just took a serious turn south. You didn’t hear old Greenie bawling your names and blasting her horn the past couple minutes?”
In a single
move, Luce and I ducked into the shadow of the Redbox dispenser.
Gayle Crystal mashed her cigarette out on the pavement. “I was you, I’d lay low till she comes to her senses. That temper of hers is something.”
Another long horn honk, and then Greenie belted Luce’s full name so loud I swear the sky tore right in two. Moments later her green bug zipped across the parking lot, almost nailing a dude in a yellow safety vest pushing a stack of carts toward the cart collector.
“Like a goddamn exploding sun,” Gayle Crystal said.
She offered to give us a ride to her doctor. “We’ll get him to check your lungs, make sure everything’s working the way it ought to. While we’re there, we could get him to look at your knee. He might even have some medical-grade painkillers for you, if that’s one of your interests. We’re talking rare high-end stuff. Pricey, but worth it.”
Luce smiled so big you’d never have guessed how profoundly unhappy she was. “Why didn’t you say you were a middle?”
“Never know who you can trust,” said Gayle Crystal. With effort, she pulled herself to her feet. “Now then, break’s almost over. Let me go tell my supervisor I got a family emergency, you two get some dough, and we’ll meet up in ten minutes.”
“Wait, you work here?” Luce said.
“Course. Asset protection.” She unzipped her jacket. Sure enough a Walmart security guard uniform was underneath. “Shoplifters love this place. Someone’s got to stop them.”
“What about that guy in the pink puffer?” I said. “You didn’t try to stop him.”
“My partner.” Gayle Crystal gave me a slow grin of triumph. “I told you I got this game figured out.”
After Luce and I withdrew a couple hundred bucks each from the MoneyPass ATM inside Walmart, the three of us headed north in Gayle Crystal’s little blue hatchback. It didn’t feel great to dip into my savings, but I told myself in the long run it wouldn’t matter. Turns out once you’re not feeding a habit, it’s not so hard to put back a few dollars each week. Over the past eleven months I’d accumulated almost thirteen hundred bucks in savings just by picking up extra shifts, working doubles. As soon as we got our licenses restored the first week of March, it was all going to fix Luce’s car.
Luce. I did my best not to worry. You’re way less likely to OD from sniffing than needles, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Maybe she’d listen to Gayle Crystal and her bendy-straw suggestion. Gayle Crystal, I was beginning to notice, had a funny singsong way of talking. All during the drive she kept up an endless jabber, her voice rising over the music, and soon I felt dizzy and light-headed, but in a good way. Sort of like how I used to get when Luce and me would sneak into the walk-in at work and do a few whip-its before tackling our closing duties. I should probably also mention that before we left Walmart, Gayle Crystal pulled a bag of dope out of her coat pocket and divided it up into three fat lines on the hood of her car. “A little pregame action to get us going.”
“Gayle Crystal coming through,” Luce said.
Was it Megadeth we were playing? Early Slayer? Anthrax? I don’t remember for sure, but looking back I doubt it. More likely Gayle Crystal put on Waylon Jennings or Tanya Tucker or some other outlaw country singer that Luce and I would never have signed off on if we hadn’t been faded. And although it took us close to an hour to get to the doctor, we hardly noticed. Car trips are so much better when you’re feeling right. When we finally arrived, the office wasn’t in some shady mini-mall like I’d expected, or in the back of a tattoo parlor full of dudes with wizard beards and big rubbery bellies. No, this was one of those massive office parks, the kind with professional landscaping and tidy lines painted onto the asphalt. Buildings that looked like they’d been cranked out of a giant machine. I tried to focus so I could find the place again in the future, but it didn’t take long for me to get completely turned around.
We pulled up in front of a cluster of maybe eight units. Gayle Crystal said to give her our money and she’d be back in a minute.
“No way,” said Luce. “We’re going in. Our money’s not walking.”
“Yeah, that’s not how my guy operates,” Gayle Crystal said. “His number one rule is staying anonymous. Like he’s an actual doctor and all. He’s got a lot more to lose than most people.”
“Tough shit. We got a lot to lose also.”
With a regretful shake of her head, Gayle Crystal started the car, put it in reverse, backed out in silence.
“Okay okay,” Luce said. “You can go in solo.”
Up until that point I’d never seen Luce break her own rule about money walking. She must have wanted the dope pretty bad.
But Gayle Crystal wasn’t having it. “Yeah, I can’t work with folks who think I have shady intentions. Hurts my feelings.”
“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” Luce turned to me in the back seat. “Give me your dough. Hurry.”
Not wanting to upset her, I handed it over fast as possible. She dropped our cash in Gayle Crystal’s lap.
With a final wounded look at each of us, Gayle Crystal counted our money. Once she was satisfied, she tucked the wad in her coat, parked again, and got out of the car. Approached the building and rang the bell of the corner unit. When the door swung open she gave Luce and me a jaunty thumbs-up before disappearing into the office.
A solid minute passed before either of us spoke.
It was Luce who broke the silence. “She’s cool, right? We didn’t just fuck up, did we?”
I hesitated. “She’s a little off, but I think we can trust her.”
Luce went back to watching the building. “Hope so.”
Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. “Dumb bitch is probably blowing him for extras,” Luce said. She reached over and pressed the horn. When that didn’t get a response, she leaned out the window. “Finish him off! We need to get going!”
Even though I had a sick feeling in my stomach, I started laughing. No matter how bad things got, you couldn’t help being happy around Luce.
At fifteen minutes, she hauled herself out of the car and motioned for me to follow. The blinds were closed, but we put our ears to the side window. When we couldn’t hear anything, Luce went around front and pounded on the office door. “Gayle Crystal! Let’s get a move on.”
Within moments, a petite older man opened up. “May I help you ladies?”
“Yeah,” Luce said. “Tell Gayle Crystal to get her flat ass out here.”
He gave us a puzzled look. “You didn’t see her? She just went out the rear exit.”
Behind us, a car engine sputtered and came to life. Seconds later Gayle Crystal was speeding away and giving us a middle-finger salute out the window.
“Our purses,” I said. “Our phones. Your inhaler.”
“Bitch!” Luce yelled. She swung back around to the doctor. “Don’t tell me you two aren’t in this together.”
“Miss.” He reared up stiffly. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Gayle’s a patient. I hardly know her.”
“Motherfucker, don’t start with me,” Luce said. She was only a little thing herself, but when she was mad she was downright scary. “For your information, a very good friend of ours works in law enforcement. You want us to tell him about your medical-grade horseshit? Get him and his pals nosing around your office?”
At last something in the doctor appeared to relent. “How about I give you girls a generous helping of samples and we’ll call it even. I’ll throw in a taxi, since Gayle accidentally drove off without you, and then we can forget all about this unfortunate incident.” He stepped aside and waved us into his office with a wrist so delicate a child could have snapped it.
Luce and I exchanged glances. Already I knew she planned to steal his drugs.
Under the harsh fluorescent lights, the doctor looked even more fragile. Elfin features set off by a pale, chalky complexion. Eyes a little too big for their sockets. He couldn’t have been more than five one, five two, tops. With an apologetic smile, he gestured to a
nearby cubby. “I hate to ask, but would you mind taking your shoes off? You can put them there if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Sure thing,” Luce said, prying off her sneakers. “Hey, you think maybe your receptionist or whoever could get us some water? My throat’s kind of scratchy.”
“Oh, it’s just me here right now,” the doctor said. “But I’ll be happy to get you girls a beverage. Is flavored seltzer all right? I’m afraid it’s all I have at the moment.”
“Perfect,” Luce said.
While he stepped into another room to get our drinks and call a taxi, we sussed out the situation. For the most part the place resembled any other doctor’s lobby. White walls, beige office furniture, a few waxy-looking houseplants. A whiff of disinfectant. The only item that seemed the least bit homey was the dog leash hanging on a hook by the door. Probably for some little poodle with ribbons. “I wish we had a dog,” said Luce. Then she spotted the pair of filing cabinets tucked away by the window. The first one had nothing but a bunch of useless papers, but the second one was locked up tight as a bank vault. “Bingo,” Luce said.
By the time the doctor came back in, we’d settled ourselves on the sofa. He placed a tray with two glasses of a foamy pink liquid and a saucer of shortbread cookies on the coffee table before us. “Your ride will be here shortly. Please help yourselves. I hope you like sparkling grapefruit. The slight bitterness I find to be quite refreshing.”
Luce took several noisy gulps of seltzer. “Man, I needed that. Getting ripped off is a thirsty business.”
“Again, I apologize.” The doctor settled into an armchair. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Let’s see what we can work out,” Luce said.
She proposed that he give us each two bottles of Dilaudid, scripts for ninety more, and three hundred bucks so we could buy new phones and purses. In exchange, we’d forget all about him and Gayle Crystal.
The doctor leaned back and gave a jolly little laugh. “Oh dear. I’m afraid you misunderstand. I’m a PhD, not an MD. I’m not qualified to write prescriptions and I certainly don’t keep hydromorphone on the premises. My focus is research.”