I walked out again into the storm. After several blocks, I spotted a familiar red-and-white sign. When I got closer, the smiling, freckled girl on the Wendy’s sign made me tear up. I went in and looked at the menu on the wall behind the registers. I hadn’t eaten in, what, four days? A couple with two kids sitting at a booth stared at me as I grabbed a fistful of napkins and used them to dry off my face and arms. When I went to throw them away, I noticed a plastic salad plate in the trash barrel. I pulled it out and wiped it off with the wet napkins. Then I walked up to the salad bar and started to load up the plate with lettuce, pale tomatoes, shredded cheese, and croutons.
“Hey!” A guy in a Wendy’s shirt was waving his fat arms at me. “Get outta here.”
Humiliated, I slunk back out to the sidewalk. With the snow stinging my face and bare arms, I looked up and down the street, wondering what to do. I could flag down a car. I could call Pam, but she couldn’t help me. No one could help me. What if I just lay down right here and let the snow pile up over me? Maybe my family would think it was an accident, that I had somehow lost my way. A tragic loss.
I willed myself to keep moving. I came to an intersection and shielded my eyes from the blowing snow. To my left, about halfway down the block, I saw a white Toyota 4Runner just like mine. A cloud of exhaust blew out of the tailpipe; the car was running. I stumbled toward it, sure it was mine, and then sure it couldn’t be mine. All I could think about was how warm it would be inside that car, how much I wanted to be inside it. I moved faster, feeling scared, suddenly very aware that I was walking down a street I shouldn’t be on. A white guy in the hood wearing a T-shirt in a blizzard.
As I got close, I saw that the roof rack on the car looked just like the one I had on mine. Then I saw the North Carolina license plate. I started to run toward it, and a big woman struggling with a shopping cart in the deep snow looked up at me. I opened the driver’s-side door and saw the CDs I’d flung on the passenger seat and the sunglasses I thought I’d lost. It was my truck. The woman yelled as I scrambled in. I backed up, heard empty beer cans rolling on the floor, then slammed the truck into drive and pulled away from the curb, swerving in the snow.
“Yes!” I shouted.
I couldn’t believe my incredible luck. I made a quick turn, then another, hoping to find the highway. I was in my car. I was warm. I was free. Then I heard a high-pitched cry behind me, like that of a cat. I cranked my head around and looked in the backseat. A baby, maybe eighteen months old, in a blue snowsuit, was staring at me with huge dark eyes, mouth open, wailing.
I had to go back. I looped around to the street where I’d found my car.
“It’s okay,” I said to the crying baby. “It’s okay.”
I saw the woman standing in the street with her back to me and her hands on her head. When I got closer, she turned around and we made eye contact. I drove up and stopped. She ran to the car, opened the back door, reached in, and yanked the kid out.
- - - -
Pam didn’t even ask me about my disappearing act because she could guess what had happened. She didn’t need to know the details. Instead, she came to Denver and stayed with me while I finished the hail job. She had even more reason to try to keep me from coming off the rails again—and I had a new reason to try to stay clean: Pam was pregnant. We had only recently stopped using birth control, thinking that we wanted to start a family eventually. I’m sure Pam believed that my becoming a father would be a powerful impetus for change. I liked the idea of being a dad; I just didn’t think it would happen so soon. I was terrified. I knew I couldn’t afford to screw up anymore. In February 1992, we sold our house, despite the depressed real estate market in Monterey, and we moved back to Atlanta. Two months later, a buddy of mine in the dent-repair business called me from Florida. A storm had dropped baseball-size hail on thousands of cars in Orlando, and he’d landed a big repair job at a Cadillac dealer there. He had more work than he could handle and asked me to come down and help. Pam encouraged me to go. We desperately needed the money, and she probably wanted some time away from me.
I was ready for a little getaway, too. I needed to escape the constant guilt I felt about my drug use and drinking. With a baby on the way, I tried to stay clean, but every couple of weeks I would spin off for a few days. Based on no tangible evidence, I hoped that a change of venue would straighten me up for a while. But I couldn’t get away from myself. As I worked long hours repairing hail dents in the stifling Florida heat, the lowlight reel of my life played on a continuous loop. I was an addict. I was a terrible husband. I was going to be a terrible father. I had no business bringing a child into this world. I was an addict. I was a terrible husband. I was going to be a terrible father. . . .
For the first week or so, all I did was work and go back to my room. But my anxiety and self-hatred escalated, and finally I felt I had to find some release. No drugs, I told myself, just a couple of beers. An excellent plan, except for one simple fact: I had never, ever, gone home after only a couple of beers. Sure enough, a few hours and many drinks later, I was shitfaced and steering my 4Runner through a seedy section of the city.
My first mission, as always, was to make a friend. It didn’t take me long to spot her: a tall, gaunt light-skinned black woman in tight shorts and stiletto heels.
I rolled up next to her and leaned toward the open passenger-side window. “What’s up?”
She peered in at me. “What’s up with you?”
“Anything good happening around here?”
“You a cop? You look like a damn cop.”
“I’m not a cop. I’m just looking for something to do.” Even though I already knew the answer, I asked her if she knew where I could score some coke.
She leaned in through the open window. “This look like Beverly fucking Hills to you? Ain’t no powder in this neighborhood. Maybe some rock.”
I shook my head. If I started smoking crack, I knew things were guaranteed to get very bad. I hesitated for a second, but even in my hesitation I knew what I was going to do.
“What’ll a hundred get me?”
She pulled a glass pipe and a lighter out of a pocket, took a small cream-colored rock from her mouth, placed it in the pipe, and held it out to me. “I gotta see you hit this first.”
I knew she was testing me to see if I was a cop. They always thought I was a cop. A part of me got a little rush from that—even though my bearing was more Barney Fife than Sonny Crockett.
“This isn’t part of what I’m buying.” I took the pipe from her. “This is on you.” I held the lighter to the pipe, heard the familiar sizzle and pop, and smelled the burnt-plastic odor as the rock melted. Then I held it in my lungs as long as possible before letting out an involuntary “Ahhhhhh” as dopamine pinballed into my brain.
“Aight. I think we can do some business.” She climbed into the passenger seat. Her name was Monica. She smelled like booze and flowers and something else that made me think of a carnival midway. “Down there.” She directed me through the neighborhood. “Turn here. Pull over.”
On the corner, seven or eight young guys were passing things among them, looking up and down the street, doing the dealer shuffle. I stopped the car. Monica leaned out of the window and talked to one of them while two others walked slowly around my truck, making sure I spotted the guns tucked in their waistbands. After a few minutes, I had what I was after—a nice fat eight ball of crack. Monica and I drove around the block, pulled over, and did a couple of hits. Then we cruised. Life was beautiful. My worries had disappeared.
That eight ball should have been enough dope to last us through the night. It was gone in less than three hours. We scored again on another street corner and got a dark-paneled room on the fourth floor of a dive motel where all the doors opened to an outside landing that ran the length of the building. Monica and I kept partying, chipping away at my dope.
During the night, another
woman showed up. She talked too fast and bounced around the room in a way that nauseated me. When she sat, both her knees jackhammered so hard that the TV shook on its stand. Every time she came near me, I got up and moved. Finally, to get away from her, I went into the bathroom. Monica and the other girl started talking in a ridiculous stage whisper that I heard perfectly through the thin door.
“How much cash he have?” the fidgety one asked.
“Tapped out,” Monica said. “Just some rock.”
Monica sounded as if she were protecting me, but I was not fucked-up enough to believe that this was actually the case. She didn’t want to have to share.
“Let’s get him to take a killer hit and see if he passes out or croaks. Then we take whatever he got left,” the new girl said.
I opened the bathroom door and stood in the doorway. Both women looked at me.
“You looking like you need this,” the new one said, and gestured for Monica to give me the pipe. I took the massive hit they had prepared and made a big show of sucking every last bit of smoke into my lungs. Who did they think they were screwing with? I was superman.
“Damn . . . ,” Monica said.
“You some crazy-ass motherfucker,” the friend said, slowly shaking her head. Then she got up and left.
I was high out of my mind but I still wanted more.
“Maybe you ought to slow down,” Monica said to me a few times, which just spurred me on. I was not a person who slowed down. She even stripped down in front of me one time, making it clear that sex was available. But all I wanted to do was smoke.
When the drugs were gone, we ventured out to buy more. We repeated that pattern for the next few days. Sometimes we went out in bright sunlight, sometimes in the dark. A few times, Monica went out alone to buy booze. I was a wreck while she was gone. I alternated between sitting motionless on the bed and staring at the door, certain it was about be bashed in, and peering through the curtain, looking for the bogeyman who was no doubt lurking at my door. I turned the television volume up, but still I heard footsteps, sirens, shouting, motors racing, a weird shrieking bird that surely wasn’t a bird at all, but a signal of some sort. I stared at the peephole in the door, certain someone was outside looking in. When Monica finally returned, I nearly cried with relief. She handed me a bag with a toothbrush and toothpaste in it, which surely was for her own benefit. I hadn’t brushed my teeth in days.
On the third or fourth day in the room, a special news report came on the TV to say that the white cops who had beaten Rodney King had been found not guilty. Riots were breaking out in LA and in cities all over the country—including Orlando. A local news crew was on the scene in one neighborhood: shop windows had been broken and the streets were filling with angry mobs.
“Hey, that’s my street!” Monica said. “Couple of blocks from here.”
Suddenly, someone pounded on the door. I nearly shit my pants.
“Monica!” It was a man’s voice. “Monica. Open up!”
“Crap,” she said, and then, to my great horror, opened the door. Two of the biggest men I had ever seen entered. In my fog, I could only guess that Monica had told these guys to come if they had anything to sell. But something seemed wrong. They were giving off a terrible vibe, ruining my high. I wanted them out of the room. I bought some of their dope, hoping that would get them to leave. When they finally took off, we smoked what we had gotten from them, and right away I knew I’d been ripped off: it was terrible—absolute shit.
“Assholes,” Monica said, but I was certain she’d set me up with those guys. There was only one way to feel better. I needed more drugs. Good drugs. We drove back to the neighborhood where we’d scored before. Things had changed. Hundreds of people were out on the sidewalks and down one side street; a car was in flames. I felt the dangerous energy of it. We got what we needed and hurried back to the room. Now a TV news report was showing a white big-rig driver being dragged out of his truck in LA and getting his head smashed in. Monica and I sat on the bed, staring at the TV screen.
The only way to deal with all of this was to stay as high as possible. Eventually, we ran out of dope and I must have passed out. The next thing I knew, the phone next to the bed was ringing. I reached over to the table and knocked over a glass of water as I fumbled for the receiver.
“What?” I croaked.
“Get the fuck out of there!”
Monica. I was barely able to process that she wasn’t in the room but was, instead, screaming at me over the telephone.
“Leave now. I mean it. Those guys that sold you the fake shit last night, they are coming up there. Going to rob you and kill you, man.” She dropped her voice. “Sorry.”
I bolted up in bed. My whole body was trembling. I needed a hit so I could think. I tore the room apart. I emptied the drawers in the bedside table, crawled around patting the stained carpet looking for crumbs, went through all my pockets. I didn’t find dope, but amazingly, I did find my car keys. I rushed out of the room, looked over the railing, and spotted my car under the only working light in the parking lot.
I ran down the metal stairs, then stopped in the shadows at ground level when I heard angry male voices. I peered around the corner but saw no one, so I slipped between cars and hurried to my 4Runner. Even in my stupor, I remembered that my car would chirp and the headlights would flash when I clicked the unlock button on the key. There was no way to open the doors quietly.
I heard the voices again and looked up. Moving up the left stairwell were the two big guys from the night before, and they were carrying baseball bats. In the still night air, their words were clear:
“This white boy so damn stupid, he ain’t gonna know what hit him. I bet the dumbass just opens the door and invites us in, like last time. We get a free pass tonight thanks to Rodney King.”
I watched them walk to my door. I had left the lights on, and the edge of the curtain was still pulled back from my peeking out. One of them peered in the window while the other guy turned around to scan the parking lot. Chirp-chirp! My headlights flashed as the four door locks shot upward. I had flinched and involuntarily hit the unlock button on my key. It was as if my car were screaming, Hey! Down here!
My two pursuers looked over the railing. I froze as we locked eyes, then I pulled the door handle. But I’d waited too long; the alarm had automatically reset itself. Now it was blaring, cycling through a dozen different sounds, each more obnoxious than the last. The two men sprinted for the stairwell.
I scrambled into the car, jammed the key into the ignition, and turned it. Nothing. The car wouldn’t start. The men had reached the ground and were heading for me, bats poised to do damage. Somehow, I remembered that I needed to turn off the alarm before the car would start. I pushed the alarm button and tried the key again. At last the engine turned over, and when it did, the stereo came on so loudly that I thought someone was screaming at me from inside the car. It was Nine Inch Nails singing “Head Like a Hole.”
I slammed the car into reverse and turned the wheel hard. My bumper scraped the car backed into the space next to mine, then snagged and yanked off its front bumper. I shifted into drive, and as I hit the gas, the rear window of my 4Runner exploded from the impact of a baseball bat. I screamed and pulled away, tires squealing, then turned back to see the two guys running behind me. One of them threw his bat at my car but it came up short and bounced toward the curb.
In my rearview mirror, I spotted the men getting into their car—the very one that I had just stripped of its bumper. It was still hanging on from one side, and their car was essentially trying to run it over again and again, like a speed bump that wouldn’t quit. Their car lurched forward, spraying sparks. I cackled the way one can only cackle at the end of a four-day crack binge and sped down the road.
As I drove, I kept glancing in the mirror half expecting the car to come flying up behind me, like a scene from Miami Vice. No car
appeared. The immediate danger seemed to have passed. I turned the music down and looked around. My rear window had a big hole in it—sure to rouse suspicion from any cop on the predawn beat. But I could hide that by rolling the window down to get it out of sight. I pushed the button and the window groaned and descended about halfway before jamming to a stop. Even when I released the button, the motor kept whining and pulling.
“Goddamnit!” I yelled.
The motor continued grinding away. I smelled smoke. Finally, the racket stopped, as if the rear window had accepted that it wasn’t going any farther. A few seconds later, my headlights turned off and the hazards came on. Next came utter silence. The engine had stopped. I was like a glider losing altitude. I turned the wheel hard to the right, trying to get off the road. The steering wheel locked up and the brakes became stiff. Useless. The car rolled to a slow stop at about a forty-five-degree angle to the guardrail.
I had wanted to hide my shattered window so I wouldn’t attract attention. Now I was sticking out in the road. Each time my car’s hazard lights flashed, they illuminated the gaping hole in my back window. I had been smoking crack and drinking for four days. It was four in the morning and I was probably the only white person in a ten-mile radius on a day when much of the country had erupted in racially charged violence and mayhem. And now I was on foot.
Before I started walking, I decided that it was a good time to do a little housecleaning, as if having a tidy car would make me look more respectable to whatever helpful officer happened along. I tossed beer cans and an empty vodka bottle—When did I drink that?—into tall weeds alongside the road. Then I spotted my glass pipe in the driver’s seat. So that’s where that went! A black hole about the size of a quarter was burned into the upholstery under the pipe. I reached back and felt a hole in my pants that matched up exactly with the one in the seat. Then I poked my finger into my pants and discovered a painful burn on my skin.
Running Man Page 6