Night Town

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Night Town Page 21

by Cathi Bond


  “Vic raped me.”

  I told them I bashed his head in and they both laughed. I think Cope kind of admired me. There was something in his expression. I didn’t mention that I’d been a virgin. Nobody would believe it and besides, there was no point dwelling on yet another thing that was gone forever.

  “What am I going to do?”

  Charlene gave me a look. “Sex for drugs is the way it works,” she said, turning to Cope. “Like it or not. Isn’t that right?”

  Cope grunted something about Vic’s manly pride as I opened the scissors.

  “I won’t do that, can’t do that,” and the blades seemed to snap themselves shut, making Cope jump back. “But Vic said he’d kill me if I hit him again.”

  What I didn’t say is that if Vic ever tried touching me again, I’d be the one doing the killing. He was never going to get his pig hands on me, no matter what the rules were. Cope could tell I was serious because the room got so still until Charlene couldn’t stand the quiet anymore.

  “What’s an occipital?”

  I resumed cutting Cope’s hair. “It’s part of the brain. It lets you see.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Read it.”

  “You’re weird,” Charlene said. “You should stay away from Vic. He did time in the pen for assault.”

  So that’s why he was older than us.

  “Don’t you ever want to quit using and go home and read about occipital shit?” she asked.

  Even if I did, that door was closed and locked up tight. Dad wouldn’t let me back into the past and speed controlled the present and future. Charlene smacked her lips. I liked Charlene, even though all she talked about was how badly she wanted to get balled.

  “I’m sick of this shit. But my old man hates me more than my mother loves me,” she added, getting up to go to the bathroom. “He’d beat the crap out of her if she stood up for me. So I’m stuck.”

  I knew what that was like. There was a mental hospital waiting for me. Charlene shut the bathroom door as I set the scissors on the table. The haircut was done.

  “Maddy,” Cope said. “You know how it works. Chicks put out. Guys take the risks.”

  I looked at my friend straight in the eyes.

  “I can’t…and I think you know why.”

  Cope picked up his hand mirror. “You did a good job,” he said, admiring the cut. “Let me give you something.”

  He rummaged through the closet and pulled out a red cowboy shirt. It had white mother of pearl snaps and white lassos that roped across the back. He tossed it to me.

  “For real?” I asked.

  Cope nodded, pulling on a pair of jeans. I buried my face in the cloth. The shirt was so soft and faded. I loved it.

  “Thank you.”

  Cope slipped on a clean shirt, checking out his reflection again. “It’s okay to be into girls, you know.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You ever love anyone?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Some chick?”

  I nodded again. “But she didn’t love me back.”

  “I know what that’s like.”

  Was he thinking about what Charlene did with Hermann? Business rules or not, that would hurt so much. Cope ran his fingers through his hair, slipped on the leather coat and flicked the tails. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Hermann and Gabe had the same stomping grounds. John’s Open Kitchen was home to alkies and speeders, a place for them to eat a cheap meal or nurse a coffee. Cope and I sat in one side of a vinyl booth while Hermann sat in the other, staring at me with his crazy rabies eyes.

  “Girls aren’t runners.”

  “That’s stupid,” I said.

  Hermann’s eyes narrowed. “You calling me stupid?”

  “No. You’re the smartest guy I know. It’s the rule that’s dumb –”

  Cope broke in. “That’s why it’s so brilliant. We’ve had a lot of heat lately.” He poured a steady stream of sugar into his coffee. “Not only is she a chick, the cops don’t know her, and she looks like she just walked out of a church for chrissakes.”

  Cope took a sip of coffee and spat it back into the cup.

  “This would expand your territory. Make you the biggest dealer in town.”

  Hermann grabbed Cope by the lapels, yanking him over the table, index finger nearly up a nostril. “She’s your responsibility?”

  Cope nodded. “And you handle Vic.”

  Hermann released Cope’s lapels. By the time we left, Hermann had taken all the credit for the idea. I had a job and Vic never touched me again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I took two buses across town to make sure I wasn’t tailed and circled the block three times checking out suspicious cars for undercover narcs. Once I was satisfied everything was safe, I jumped the neighbour’s fence and walked across the yard. While other runners used cabs or personal cars, I flew across the city in subways, streetcars and buses. That was my own personal touch. Narcs would never be looking for a sweet faced girl in a blue and white sailor shirt riding the TTC.

  The speeder house where Hermann had been crashing the past month was a wreck. Two windows were broken and an old sofa with the stuffing punched out was thrown on the back porch. Mom would have called the house a “civic embarrassment” and enlisted the United Church Women to engage in missionary work and clean it up.

  I took the key out of its hiding spot in the drainpipe and opened the back door. The living room was full of beaten up chairs and cushions. The kitchen table was in the dining room, covered with glasses of water, the odd broken fit, spoons with used filters and the residue of dried up speed. I climbed the stairs and walked down the hall, past bedrooms with mattresses covered in twisted sheets. Milk crate coffee tables covered in candle stubs cast wild light on the ceiling at night. One of the speeders had a guitar and used to jam till dawn, but Hermann didn’t let him play anymore because he thought the music would tip off the cops. Hermann had never been what Dad would call stable, but things had gotten a whole lot worse since he’d turned paranoid.

  I peeked in. Hermann was sitting in a chair by a second floor window, staring through a slit of a heavy brown curtain. A suitcase rested by his feet. Charlene said she’d heard Hermann had a gun, but I never saw one. He looked like he could use some sleep. I’d been there every day and he hadn’t moved from that chair in a week. I rapped lightly on the door jamb and Hermann jumped.

  “Don’t sneak up on me,” he snapped, still staring out the window. He leaned down, pulled four ounces of speed out of the suitcase and told me to deliver it to an address on Main. His eyes never left the street.

  “I’ve never been there before.”

  “You got a problem?” he asked, turning to glare at me with his rabies eyes. He’d been chewing on his lower lip, making it bleed.

  “No.”

  “Then do the fuck what you’re told,” he said and turned back to the window.

  The buyer, a scrawny girl under twenty, answered the door. I couldn’t get a good look at her because she kept the house dark. I followed her down the hall and into the living room. A pot of tea sat on an old coffee table beneath a floor lamp with a fringed shade. The house smelled of weed and something else –something that reminded me of the root cellar in Granddad’s house near the cistern. Roots, dirt and the faint aroma of decay.

  “Grab a chair,” she said, going into the kitchen.

  It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. The girl came out holding a glass of water and two spoons.

  “Let’s do a taste.”

  “I’ve got to get back.”

  It was late. Hermann was waiting for me.

  “I’m spending a lot of money.”

  True. I pulled an ounce out of the bottom of my purse. Hands shaking, the girl tore open the bag and filled her spoon with white rocks. I prepared my fix, tied off and hit up. The good feeling rolled in, the feeling that washed everything else away. I closed my eyes. When I o
pened them the girl was stabbing the needle into her arm, trying to find a vein. The syringe was full of blood and speed and she was starting to cry.

  “The vein’s dead. The fucking vein’s dead.”

  I went over, knelt down and reached for the syringe. “Let me help you.”

  She released the syringe but yanked her arm, hiding it away. “Use the other one,” she said, sticking her right arm out.

  Her arm was so skinny I could see the blue arteries pumping like oil fields. Using my belt I tied her off and hit her up. Once the speed hit, the girl stopped crying and she slumped back, eyes closing as she entered amphetamine orbit. I glanced at her arm. Green puss oozed out of a swollen hole in the centre. No wonder she couldn’t find a vein in that mess. It was a furious abscess, her body revolting against all the crap she’d been pumping into it. A body that had simply had too much poison and was starting to rot away, piece by piece. I’d never seen real gangrene before, but I’d seen the photos in Dad’s medical books and knew that if she didn’t get antibiotics soon, she was going to lose her arm. I told her what I thought, but she didn’t want to talk about it.

  I dry heaved into the toilet bowl. That girl was so revolting. She had no dignity at all. Stabbing a syringe into raw meat like that over and over again. If I hadn’t helped her she would have shot up in the back of her knees or maybe tried the jugular vein. Cope told me he saw a guy do that once. I didn’t believe him then, but now I did. That girl would have stuck a needle in her eye if it meant getting the speed.

  There was nothing to vomit so I pulled down my jeans and sat on the seat, trying to pee. Lately it had started to hurt but I had to go. Waiting for the urine, I examined my legs. They weren’t much more than bone. Since the pee wouldn’t come I stood up, stepping onto a beige scale. The needle bounced around and then settled, but it couldn’t be right. When I left home I weighed about 140 pounds and now I was down to ninety. I did it again. Same result –ninety pounds.

  Who was I to judge the rotting girl? Mom would have called me a hypocrite. The girl and I were exactly the same. That was the smell in the house –the stink of rot and death. She was going to die and so was I. It was just a matter of time before I flamed out in an overdose or got busted and thrown into prison where a bull dyke would murder me. The weird thing was I didn’t know if I cared. All I knew for sure was that I was on a train hurtling through darkness, I didn’t know if I’d survive a jump, and if I did, where I would land. One thing was certain: there’d be nobody there to catch me. Those arms were long gone. I lifted the washroom blind to get some light but the sun was down.

  Yanking up my jeans, I tore back into the living room. “It’s dark out. Hermann’s going to be pissed.”

  I pulled the rest of the speed out of my purse and asked for the cash.

  “I don’t have it.”

  “Oh shit,” I said, stuffing the dope back into my purse.

  “I’m good for it.”

  “Do you know what Hermann will do to me if I show up without his money?” I cried, snapping the purse shut. “I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

  “Wait. Just wait!” she was already on the phone. The whirl of the dial.

  “I don’t front,” I said, hand on the door knob.

  “It’s Cope,” she said, passing me the receiver.

  He told me to give her the speed and meet him back at the house.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Cope had seniority, so I handed the girl four ounces of whiz and headed back to Hermann.

  Slipping through the back door, I ran down the hall, past a boy in the dining room, who glanced up from his spoon and told me that I’d better have a good story.

  “He’s been up there screaming for you.”

  Scared, I climbed the stairs and found Hermann still peering through the slit in the curtain, talking to himself.

  “I see you out there. You think you’re so smart, but I’m smarter.” I cleared my throat. Hermann spun around.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” he yelled.

  “The buyer wanted a taste.”

  “Give me my money,” he said looking back out the window, sticking his hand out. His fingernails were filthy.

  “I don’t have it.”

  My heart pounded in my throat because I could see what was in his lap. Charlene was right. Hermann had a gun.

  “It’s coming,” I sputtered.

  Hermann pointed the gun at me. “Get your ass over here.”

  There wasn’t a choice. He would have shot me in the back if I ran. I walked across the room, standing before him. Hermann grabbed my wrist and yanked me down into his lap, ramming the cold metal barrel up against the side of my head.

  “How stupid do you think I am?” he yelled into my ear, so hard my brain clanged.

  I took a breath and kept repeating in a quiet voice, like the one Dad used with the lady who got up on the roof after her husband died, “Everything is fine, the money is coming.”

  But Hermann wasn’t listening. The barrel of the gun, the icy metal, kept sliding between the hair and skin on my temple.

  His breath quickened as he whispered, “You fucking bitch. I knew from the beginning that you were a narc.”

  Right then I realized I should have taken a chance with the bullet in the back because he was going to pull the trigger anyway.

  “So this is it,” I thought, staring at a single spot on the wall. “My time to die.”

  Was Mom scared when her turn came? When the angel came into her room, was she ready to go and escape all the pain? Where was my angel? I had one when I was little because she used to come and visit me, but now I was no good and she’d gone away.

  Hermann cracked me in the cheek with the butt of the gun and said crying was for weaklings. He kept looking through the slit in the curtain, rambling on about how there was this van across the street, which had been there all day. Something was coming down. I started to sweat through the tears. The end of the gun barrel slid across my temple. Hermann turned and looked at me, totally insane in the face and then cocked the hammer, hissing that he knew I was the one who turned them in.

  “Please,” I moaned, trying to get up and run away.

  His free hand grabbed my hair, holding my head fast to the gun, while his finger squeezed down. It was time. I closed my eyes and thought of Mom, Dad and the boys. As I took my last breath, I realized I didn’t want to die.

  Then there was a shout, running feet and the metallic click of the trigger as the bullet fired. Its energy swept by me like a falling star.

  Cope had pushed the gun away from my head. The bullet ricocheted off the wall and into the ceiling. Hermann and I hadn’t heard Cope, but we all heard the explosion of glass and wood rocketing up from downstairs as the front door crashed down.

  Cope flew out the window and onto the roof. Hermann tore down the back stairs and I hid in the back of the clothes closet as the narcs stormed up the stairs, through the bedrooms and finally into Hermann’s room. I held my breath, trying not to breathe or move. The bed crashed as it was flipped.

  “Shit,” a man’s voice said. “He’s gone.”

  Footsteps headed towards the hallway. They were leaving. I closed my eyes, silently thanking God, when the door handle turned over and light spilled in. Hands pushed back heavy coats on the railing and there was Al Hanson. The same cop who’d come to Dad’s house to bust me for selling acid.

  “Who do we have here?” he said, pulling me out.

  I said nothing as the happy narcs started rifling through my purse and pockets. Their happiness didn’t last long because there was nothing to find. The rotting girl had been my last stop and she took everything I had.

  “Give him up!” Al yelled as his fist hit the desk. The files jumped.

  I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I was too scared. I sat in the metal chair beside Al’s desk. We were in the police station. Speeders who were holding more than a quarter ounce were lined up on benches waiting to
be booked. Everyone else had been let go. Cope was slumped up against the wall, his black leather coat wrapped around him like feathers, his beautiful glossy hair hanging down, shrouding his face. They picked Vic up at a pool hall with two pounds of meth in the trunk of the Mercury. There was still no sign of Hermann.

  “Do you want me to call your parents?”

  The threat didn’t scare me. Nobody would come. “Go ahead.”

  “Do you know what Hermann’ll do to you if he catches you?”

  Yes I did and I stood a lot better chance if I didn’t roll over. “I don’t know anything.”

  And the cops didn’t know about me. I’d been so good covering my tracks that the narcs had never fingered me as a runner. Too bad the same wasn’t true for Cope. They’d been following him for nearly a year. Al slammed Hermann’s priors down on his desk. I saw the list: arson, theft, drug dealing, assault with a deadly weapon and rape. He’d never been successfully prosecuted. I wasn’t going to be their dead stool pigeon. The cops would have to get Hermann on their own.

  “Get her out of here!”

  Charlene and I went to sentencing in Old City Hall. The courtroom, long and wide with wooden wainscoting and marble floors, was packed with nervous users shifting in their seats, waiting to see what happened to their dealers, their source to the one thing they loved and needed. Tall oak doors at the back of the room swung open and Cope, Vic and the other guys who’d been charged shuffled out in shackles and handcuffs, surrounded by armed guards.

  “He looks terrible,” Charlene said.

  She was right. Cope tried to smile, but I could tell he was scared. Someone had cut off his beautiful hair, and he was swimming in a suit that was way too big for him. Cope reminded me of Dad on his wedding day.

  The judge, dressed in a long black robe, emerged from his chambers as the bailiff called, “All rise.”

 

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