by Karen Tucker
“Come on now, upsy daisy.”
Luce.
With her help I managed to get to my feet, but my legs kept buckling. She held me by the shoulders and gave me a shake. Not rough or anything, just enough to get me to wake up a little.
“Stick your finger down your throat and make yourself barf,” she said. “Go on, you’ll feel better.”
“You girls okay?” A man’s voice. My body clenched up so tight it was painful.
“Doing great,” Luce said. “Just got ourselves roofied, our shit stolen. Not bad for a Tuesday.” She pulled my finger out of my mouth, stuck her own hand in and rummaged around and then I was vomiting onto the pavement.
“Gross,” the man said, hurrying away.
It helped. Soon I was able to stand on my own and with Luce’s arm around me I could walk without too much trouble. She steered me into what turned out to be a convenience mart. Not one I’d ever been in before. One glance at the hot dog bar made what remained of my insides turn to liquid, but at least the bright lights made me feel safer. Luce propped me up next to the condiment station—the cheese sauce had a nasty skin on top and smelled like sweat socks—and called out to the clerk behind the register. “Hey man, sorry to bother you but can I use your phone for a second?”
He lifted his head so slow you’d have thought someone had to go back there and hand-crank the lever. “Got a phone booth outside. You walked right past it.”
“Yep, we surely did,” said Luce. “Which is how I know it’s been vandalized. All you got in there is a cord with a bunch of sticking-out wires.”
“Huh,” the clerk said. “Guess I forgot. But you can’t use ours. Store policy.”
Luce gave him one of her smiles. “Come on, guy. Work with me a little.”
“Okay, let me spell it out for you.” He nodded at the ceiling behind us. “See that camera? My boss catches me letting customers use the phone, I’m dunzo.”
The word camera made me feel woozy all over again.
Up by the Bartles & Jaymes display, a door I hadn’t noticed before creaked open and a girl who looked to be our age, maybe younger, came gliding out of the restroom. She brushed past me, whisked a bag of Whoppers into her pocket, and went sailing out the exit. You could almost see the trail of smoked foil fumes floating behind her. It smelled like toasted marshmallows.
“I saw that,” the clerk called after her. He turned back to Luce. “Now then. Where were we.”
“Your phone?” she said. “Look, I get it about the camera but we all know they’re not watching footage 24/7. Please? Me and her just got our bags stolen. We got nothing.”
At that, the clerk’s face shifted. He pulled a cell phone out of his back pocket, set it on top of the register. Ran his eyes up and down Luce. “You want to use mine, I’m sure we could work out something.”
A moment passed, and then another. You could tell by the way Luce’s face got all splotchy that she was trying her best to choke down her anger. Her fists tightened up into hard little buds. I took a deep breath and a fresh wave of nausea slammed into me with such force I had to grab on to the condiment shelf to keep from falling.
“Sorry, guy,” Luce said. “You picked the wrong night.”
“Hey now, you don’t have to get all butt-hurt about it. It’s just a fun little idea.” He glanced at me. “I’d even settle for a couple pictures. Got a whole album going thanks to girls like you and Miss Whoppers.”
That did it.
“Go fuck yourself,” Luce said.
She headed straight for the exit. More than anything I wanted to follow her but I guess my hand had other ideas. I watched as it raked itself across the shelf full of hot dog toppings, sending all the metal containers onto the floor with a noisy crashing.
“Hey!” The clerk came out from behind the counter. “The fuck?”
As he stood gaping at the chaos of rancid cheese sludge, ketchup, pickle relish, the quivering blobs of mayonnaise that stretched from one end of the aisle to the other, Luce pulled me into the restroom and slid the dead bolt. I barely made it to the sink. There wasn’t much left in my stomach, but what came out was a horrible shade of yellow and smelled like garbage.
“Good job,” she said, rubbing my back.
She told me to rinse my mouth out and drink some water while she ducked in the stall for a quick second. By this point the clerk was pounding on the door and threatening to call the cops. Luce’s response was to flush about a thousand paper towels down the toilet and once she got a good flood going, she poked her head out the door and informed the clerk there’d been a teensy accident. He went sprinting into the back room to shut off the water. Luce took my hand, led me over to the register, and snagged his phone.
We hurried outside and took off running. The one good thing about all the chemicals in my system was my knee didn’t hurt and instead it just felt warm and prickly. Within a couple blocks we came upon an all-night laundromat. After tucking ourselves behind a wall of dryers, we tried to figure out who we could call to come get us.
“I know,” she said. “Nogales.”
“Absolutely not. Forget it.”
“Why? For you, he’ll speed right over.”
“He’s the last person I want to find out about this. Not to mention he’ll make us take a drug test to see what that guy put in our seltzer. They find out we’ve been using, our probation’s done for.”
“Nobody’s finding out shit,” Luce said. “And anyway, they can’t prove he didn’t give us dope along with whatever else he snuck in there.”
“No Nogales!”
“Okay,” she said. “Chill.”
The only other person whose number we knew by heart was Teena, our very first dgirl. We’d met her way back when we worked at the pool hall and though she’d pretty much been the worst bartender ever—she once asked me what was in a gin and tonic—she turned out to be a total pro when it came to dealing. Returned all texts, showed up when she promised, made a run down to Broward County once a month and came back with a suitcase full of orange bottles. This was back when Luce and me didn’t mess with anything but legit pharms.
Only thing was Teena could be a real hothead when the mood struck her. We’re talking the kind of temper that goes from ice to batshit with zero warning. One night I saw her hold a knife to a guy’s throat after he accused her stuff of looking like presses. Another time she went after a dude with a baseball bat for shorting her twenty bucks. She never pulled anything like that on me and Luce, but when Teena got popped for distribution and landed in County, I was secretly glad we had to find someone else to buy from.
At least she got to the laundromat fast. Within minutes Teena’s old Mercury Cougar was pulling into the lot out front, music pumping so loud we could hear it over the spin cycle. As we hurried outside, she gave us a couple toots of the horn. “What’s up, fellas? Been a minute.” She held her hand out the window.
Luce slapped her palm. “Thanks for coming. We owe you.”
“You know I got you. We go way back.” Teena turned to me. “Hey Irene. What’s in a vodka soda?”
At first I thought she was serious. We all had a pretty good laugh after that.
While we drove back to Anklewood, Luce told her what happened. Before we even got to the worst of it, Teena was rocking back and forth in her seat, saying how most dudes were complete monsters, even the nice ones. By the time Luce got to the part with the dog leash she was ready to drive straight to the sheriff’s even though she hated cops more than just about anything. “Bro, you got to file a report, get the exam, start the ball rolling.”
“Not happening,” Luce said. “We already discussed it.”
“Seriously?” Teena glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “These guys laid hands on you!”
“We’re still on probo,” Luce said. “Can’t have any trouble.”
“Okay. I hear you,” Teena said. She stared at the road in grim concentration. “So we’re taking care of this ourselves. You think we should round
some folks up or can the three of us handle it?”
“Fuck man,” I said, leaning forward. “She told you we’re not doing anything! Just take us home already. We need some peace and quiet.”
Luce gave me a look of warning.
“Easy now,” Teena said.
We kept driving. Billboards ticked by us one after the other. ADULT SUPERSTORE NEXT EXIT. JESUS HAS THE ANSWER. WE BUY HOUSES—CASH OFFER! No one spoke. From the helter-skelter way she was driving, Teena was boiling with so much rage she could hardly control it. Beside her, Luce was playing some kind of game on the clerk’s shitty burner. Even with the constant electronic beeping and booping you could hear her breath coming in harsh little rasps. All I wanted was to get in the shower, scrub myself raw, and try to blot out the images that kept flashing before me. The dog leash, the dog leash. Next thing I knew the interior light was on and Luce was turned around in her seat, telling me to calm down already. I think maybe I was punching Teena’s car door or something.
“We’re almost home,” Luce said. “Try and hang tight, will you?”
“Sorry,” I said, cradling my knuckles. I glanced at Teena in the mirror. “I didn’t mean to.”
She didn’t say anything to that, just put on her turn signal.
Luce looked over. “Actually our place is a couple more exits. I mean you could go Old Road, but it takes way longer—”
“Yeah, we’re making a quick stop,” Teena said, glancing back at me. Her voice was flat, but there was no mistaking the fury rumbling beneath it.
“Okay,” said Luce. “Sure.”
We turned down a service road and pulled into a gravel lot with a squat little single-wide hunkered down by the entrance. GRIFFIN & SONS WRECKING, said a nearby sign. Teena swung her car around and used the headlights to scan the perimeter. Only then did I realize we were surrounded by piles of scrap metal that loomed up all around us. Huge silvery monsters watching us in the dim.
Once she was satisfied the place was empty, Teena cut the engine. Got out of her car, left the door open, which wouldn’t stop dinging, and popped the trunk. Various sounds soon joined in the ruckus: the clank of a tire iron, a buzzing zipper, a plastic bag rustle.
I whispered to Luce. “She’s not going to do anything, is she? I didn’t mean to beat her car up.”
Luce rolled down her window and stuck her head out. “Teena, you okay back there?”
The hiss of a vacuum-sealed bottle being opened. “Bring me my phone charger cable, will you?”
“I fucking knew it,” Luce said.
She got out of the car and went around back with me right behind her. Teena’s kit was laid out nice and neat inside the trunk. Bottle of water, rig, lighter, pinch of cotton. She was tapping a bag into a spoon. Luce said, “Can’t you at least drop us off before you get started?”
“Hand me the water,” said Teena.
“Come on. We just want to get home,” Luce said. “You can do that at our place if you want. No one will stop you.”
Teena got the water herself, dribbled some into the powder. “Relax, champ. This here is for you two. You went through some serious fuckery. Your girl was losing it back there.”
“Sorry about that,” I said. “I’m okay now.”
Teena held the lighter under the mixture. “Bullshit.”
I started to argue, but Luce cut me off. “What she’s trying to say is, is me and her don’t exactly do needles.”
Teena glanced up. “No way. You girls are still pills only? What year is this?”
“We sniff a little too,” Luce said. “You want to slice up some lines, great, let’s do it.”
“A sniffer.” Teena shook her head in disappointment. “With your lungs. No wonder you were huffing and puffing the whole ride over. Here, take off your jacket.”
Luce hesitated and shrugged off her hoodie. All she had on underneath was Wilky’s Florida tee. “You sure we can’t do this back at our place? Cold as balls out here.”
Teena told her not to worry, that she wouldn’t be cold much longer. After asking me to pass her the phone cable, she wrapped it around Luce’s bicep and let out a low whistle. “Virgin veins. Haven’t seen that in a minute.”
“Hold on,” I said. “Are we really doing this?”
“Relax, I’ll tie you off too,” Teena said. “And I’m only giving you a little cause I don’t want you two yakking all over.”
“You sure?” I said to Luce. I didn’t feel cold, but for some reason I couldn’t stop shaking.
Luce glanced at me. Her face had a funny torn-up look I’d never seen in all our years of friendship. She turned back to Teena. “Just do it already,” she said.
Teena put the cotton in the liquid, drew up the shot, eased the spike into the crook of Luce’s arm. When the barrel went red, she pushed down on the plunger.
A few seconds passed. Nothing. My chest thudded so hard I could hear it all around me. A few more seconds. Still zip. Maybe IV wasn’t as powerful as people kept saying. Maybe it didn’t have the usual effect on someone like Luce. Right when I thought we might be getting off easy, her head bobbed a little and her eyes rolled back in their sockets.
“Fuck,” she said, the word pooling out like syrup.
Teena turned to me. “You’re up, sister.”
And that was that.
LUCE WAS SITTING CROSS-LEGGED ON THE COUCH IN a rectangle of sunlight, scrolling through her phone and eating an apple. I was stretched out on the BarcaLounger, her afghan bunched down around my ankles. The sense that something ugly had happened the night before rippled all through me, but I couldn’t think what it was. My head felt packed full of dirty wet cotton.
“Look who’s awake,” Luce said. “Listen, they’re saying today’s going to be super nice out. Might even hit 70. We should try and bike somewhere now that the snow’s all melted.”
Her voice had the knife’s edge it always got when she was upset and didn’t want to discuss it. I tried to sit up but my body had a weird spongy quality. It didn’t hurt exactly, not even in my knee, though there was an odd pressure in my pelvic region. Sort of like a bruise, but on the inside. I glanced at Luce. She was still eating her apple, her jaw working in anger. I reached down for the afghan and drew it protectively up to my shoulders.
For the next few minutes I lay in my chair and tried to think what had happened. Slowly the night came back like a slideshow of humiliating photographs. The doctor. The cabdriver. The clerk behind the register. The needle sliding into Luce’s arm. Me lying across the hood of Teena’s car, laughing about how the Big Dipper looked like a giant cooker. I pushed up my sleeve and saw a reddish prick in the tender inside of my elbow. An insect bite, if I hadn’t known better.
“We still on for a meeting?” I said.
“Most definitely,” Luce said through a mouthful of apple. She set the core on the arm of the couch, wiped her hand on her sweatpants, and went back to scrolling. Her phone, I realized then, belonged to the clerk. “Whoa, check it. We have the same exact forecast as Palm Beach County. In February. I swear, Nature’s as fucked-up as we are.”
I asked why she was looking at Florida’s weather.
“Cause I’m moving there,” she said.
I pulled myself onto my elbows. “Wait. You’re moving to Florida?”
At last Luce glanced in my direction. “Man, you’re easy to mess with. Don’t worry, nobody’s leaving. I just wanted to wake your ass up. Now go get dressed, we’re hitting the road in five minutes.” She slid off the couch and trotted into the bathroom as if everything was perfectly fine.
Soon Luce and I were biking up to Broad Street. We got breakfast tacos from the little mom-and-pop truck that liked to hang out behind the self-serve car wash. We paid in quarters. The only cash we had was from the jar in the kitchen where we kept our laundry change. After eating, which helped a little, Luce said she wanted to hit up the one decent motel pool in Anklewood. I told her we should probably stop by the bank first, get new debit cards, take out some money
. “Also we’ve been bounced out of that pool a million times. We’ll never make it past the lobby.”
“Wrong again,” Luce said. “Turns out their new security guy went to school with Wilky. Got me and him in last month, no problem. Brought us a stack of towels, little cups of lemon water. We’ll swing by for an hour or so and then head to our meeting.” She looked at me. “It’s warm enough you could even swim.”
We biked over to the motel, the sun shining on our faces, the wind blowing our hair back. Luce had a point: if all the bad stuff makes you want to parachute right off the planet, the only thing left is to try and focus on the good. Soon it would be spring and after that, summer. Maybe by then things would have calmed down a little. We’d be back in our daily routine for starters, not to mention we’d have gotten our licenses restored and Luce’s car in working condition. Once we were driving, we could apply for better jobs at better restaurants, which would help us earn some better dough. Take a class or two at Anklewood Tech, like we used to talk about way back in the beginning. Start playing a different kind of game.
But when we reached the motel front entrance, a woman we knew from the rooms told us Luce’s security connection had been fired for stealing booze out of the mini-fridges. Carla worked in housekeeping, and though she always iced us out at meetings (Luce once called her the c-word when we first quit using), she must have forgotten she thought we were trash. We found her outside on her knees, scrubbing graffiti off the walkway with a little wire brush and a bottle of toilet cleaner. She’d gotten a lot of it already, but you could still see the faint outline of a dick, its dumb slit of an eye squinting up at us.
“Who’s in charge around here,” Luce said. “It’s important.”
“There something I could help you with?” Carla said.
Luce explained we were hoping to use the pool, try and relax a little. “It’s kind of a mental emergency, if you know what I’m saying.”
“I thought you couldn’t swim,” said Carla.