The Story of Junk

by Linda Yablonsky

  Every few weeks, Angelo leaves town for destinations unknown and I have to fend for myself, with Vance, or Massimo, or Daniel—I buy from them, they cop from me. We’re always trading places. When Angelo returns, business continues as before, only better. I’m the best customer the guy ever had.

  JUST ANOTHER DAY FOR A DEALER

  July 1985. I’m standing in my office in the dark, half-dressed, hands at my sides. I can’t remember where I hid the dope. I go through the usual drill, picking at the scatter under the sink, taking up the carpet in the living room, peering through the holes in the floor. Where on earth can it be? It’s almost noon and I’m stumped. The phone’s gonna ring any minute, then the junkie jamboree: “Are you in? Can I see you? I mean, can I see you?”

  I head into the livingroom/bedroom, the shades are up. The room’s full of sun, light the color of pale honey pouring in from the east. It takes me a minute to adjust. Kit’s sitting at the foot of the bed, hunched over a guitar in her lap, unplugged, her hands absently working the strings. The cats surround her in tight little balls, furry little humps on the pillows.

  “Any idea where I put the dope last night?”

  She looks up. “Don’t you know?”

  “It’s not where I thought it was.”

  “I never know where you put it anymore. And I have to tell you, I hate that.”

  “It’s better you don’t know,” I say.

  “It doesn’t look that way to me.”

  “Come on. I know you watch me.”

  “You were in your room a long time last night. For all I know, you finished the dope yourself.”

  “I did not.”

  “Then it’s here,” she says, turning on the TV. “Somewhere.”

  I light a cigarette, racking my brain.

  “I hate when you smoke,” she says.

  I return to the kitchen, catch myself in the mirror above the sink. My hair is thinning. I can see my scalp showing just above the tuft of my widow’s peak.

  Then I remember.

  It’s in the box of hair dye! A safe place. Dangerous, too. Kit’s been sleepwalking—the Valium. The band has split up again, she’s been nearly despondent. I keep finding her standing in the kitchen in the middle of the night, mixing hair dye in a cup of water. She thinks she’s making Jell-O. Jell-O’s her latest kick. She likes drinking it cold, without bothering to cook it. She says it takes too long to set.

  “I found it,” I call out.

  “Let me have my share now,” she barks. “Before you sell it all.”

  The door buzzer sounds. It’s Lita, one of my first-ever customers. She moves up the stairs unbearably slowly—she could be visiting Planet Jupiter instead of me. Is she two hundred pounds or ninety? I look down through the landings. She’s hanging on the rail, gasping. When she reaches the top, she looks more strung out than anyone I know. It’s been a few days since I saw her last. Copping in the street again, I suppose.

  She turns through the kitchen into the office, a frail bird who’s lost her wings. Her black hair hangs over her ears in sodden strings, her dark eyes showing almost no whites. The large pupils swim in their place unfocused, unable to rest. Her olive skin’s a urinous yellow, her long nose brims with doper’s drip. She makes no attempt to hide it. She wants me to see how bad she is, so I’ll give her a freebie, throw in an extra scoop. Too bad for her—supplies are low, and I have to pay the rent.

  She lays her forty dollars on the table. The tracks on her hands are badly abscessed, just above the wrist. Her long-sleeved black T-shirt hides the rest, thank God. Looking at her is exhausting.

  She stares at the money, two twenties, tries to smile. It’s all she has in the world, I’m sure, but I can’t let myself worry about that. Was I the one gave her this monster habit? I try to smile, too, don’t know if it shows.

  I hand her a preweighed pack of folded white paper. “What’s this?” she asks, with a sniff. Her voice is higher than usual, thinner, like the rest of her. She puts the bindle back on the table.

  “A tenth,” I say. “You know.”

  “Don’t you have to weigh it out?”

  “I didn’t think you’d want to wait.”

  “Oh,” she says, doubt creasing her voice. “Okay.”

  Lita holds the dope in her scabby, wraithlike hand, makes a fist. I think about the others who might be over soon, what they’ll say if they see her here like this, how they’ll hiss and jabber about the class of people I am now compelled to serve. As if they were better off. As if it couldn’t happen to them.

  Lita sits with the dope in her hand, not moving. Her pupils look large enough to spill from her eyes. They’re huge. Is she too sick to open the bag?

  “What is it?” I ask, taking an offended tone. “You want me to weigh it again?”

  “No,” she whispers, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. I wish she’d take it and go. “Look,” she says. “I have to ask a favor.”

  My back stiffens. Lita knows I don’t give credit. And she knows I don’t let anyone shoot up in the apartment, not since Kit’s illness. But, she says, she has so little and she needs it so much, and she’d rather not have to get off on the stairs. Could she please do herself here, this once?

  “You shoot up in the hallway?”

  “Everyone does,” she says. “Shoots or snorts.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “But it is.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about,” she says.

  “Like what?” I ask. I hear the edge on my voice. I’m thinking, No wonder the super’s been so nosy. The other day he said someone kicked in the building’s front door; he said it was some friend of mine. Had to be, he said. I have so many.

  Lita shows me the dope in her palm.

  “Okay,” I say. “But do it in here, in the office. I hate it when people shoot up in the bathroom.”

  “In here?” She’s incredulous. “Isn’t someone else coming?”

  “Not yet,” I tell her, though I can’t be sure. “Stay here. I’ll get you some water.”

  I tiptoe into the kitchen while she ties off, removing from a pocket in her jeans a spoon and cotton, and some battered gimmicks. If Kit sees this, we’ll be back on the needle in no time.

  I return to the office and close the door. Lita’s searching her hands for a vein.

  “Jesus,” I say. “Couldn’t you get new works?”

  “And come over here two bucks short?” She’s making fun of my no-credit policy. I force a laugh at myself, then she boots it. After a minute her face takes on a more natural color, her fidgeting stops. She looks at me with relief.

  I don’t know, she’s not a pretty sight, but watching the calm settle over her now gets me hankering for the needle again, too. I’m tempted to give her a free line and cab fare if she’ll go back to the East Side and get me one. Instead, I ask why she bothers with that junk from the street, it’s so dirty. That’s the reason she gets so sick.

  “I know it’s stupid,” she agrees. “But I always think, better to spend twenty there than forty here. At least your stuff stays with you till morning.”

  “Yeah,” I agree. But it never stays with me. I ask what’s been going on in the hall, stress the importance of protecting my position. If we don’t keep this quiet, there’ll be no dealer here to complain to, no dope to relieve the complaints.

  “Don’t the neighbors know?” she asks, suddenly fearless.

  I insist they don’t, just Henry, who deals coke on the floor below, and Fowler, the pot-and-pill freak on the second. I tell Lita to be more careful. I start to say something about AIDS, then I don’t. I offer to get her some meth.

  She looks at her hands and laughs. “You’re the only dealer I know who tries to talk her customers out of buying drugs.”

  “You think I don’t know what it’s like?”

  “Yeah, okay,” she answers. “But it’s different for you.”

  “Not really. This drug t
reats me just the same.”

  “I don’t know how to stop,” she sighs. “I think I’d go nuts if I tried.”

  “No,” I tell her. “You wouldn’t. Why don’t you think about buying a bigger quantity? You get a discount on larger amounts, and you won’t have to wake up to an empty bag.” How can I bait the poor wretch this way? Or do I just want to scare her off?

  “I’d just do it all,” she says with a shrug. “I’ve never been able to hold on to drugs.”

  “I’ll hold them for you,” I tell her. “I’ll dole it out, a little less each day.”

  “Then I’ll have to come over here every day.”

  “What’s the difference?” I say.

  She looks at me sharply. “What’s the discount?”

  I give her a price. “I’ll think about it,” she says. I give her a hug as she leaves. Her shoulder pierces mine. She’s so bony.

  Kit emerges from the bedroom. “Lita looks really bad,” she says.

  “I know. I spoke to her.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I had to. A dead giveaway like that, she could ruin us.”

  “I’m going out,” Kit says, disapproving. She wants a check for the rent. I write it. “I wish you’d make some money,” I say.

  “Let me do some of the business then.”

  To this, I don’t reply.

  When she leaves I realize this is the first time I’ve been alone in weeks. I smoke a line and feel the tension run out of my body. I sit in the living-room window, in the sun. I feel nothing. I sit in the sunlight and listen. The place is silent. There’s a quiet in my body too, a hush too delicate to disturb. Is it so strange to love the thing that shuts out the noise inside you? All those primitive, inarticulate, derisive sounds, that confusion of waking thought. I’m fixed to the spot. For a minute the world is new and uncomplicated, a world with no need for drugs. A world without need, period.

  At four o’clock, I’m sitting in the office with Cal. He’s come from a visit to a shaman who he says can help us all get off dope.

  “How does he propose to do that?” I’ve already tried vacations, vodka, deprivation, methadone, and pills. What else could there be?

  “This stuff’s pretty strong,” says Cal, taking a tiny snort from the mirror on my desk.

  “It’s the same stuff I always have. What about the shaman?”

  The doorbell rings. It’s Magna. Kit lets her in and they both sit down.

  “Vance shot himself in the foot,” she announces, plopping herself in the chair next to Cal’s. She’s in a terrible sweat.

  “Literally shot?” I say. “With a gun?” Since when does she cop from Vance?

  “With a GUN. He was waving it at ME. Can you imagine? That man is really INSANE.”

  “Was he smoking base?” Kit asks.

  “Yes, of course,” Magna says, pulling her hair across her cheek. “That’s all he ever does, as far as I can tell.”

  “Why didn’t you leave sooner?” I ask. She looks as if she hasn’t slept in days.

  “You don’t understand,” she says. “He KIDNAPPED me—I couldn’t leave. It’s difficult to admit, but I found it sort of exciting, at first. There was a THRILL to it, somehow, being around all those drugs, watching those movies. You know. Half the time I was barely conscious, which I have to say I LIKED. It was comforting. Vance was. You’d be surprised how much.”

  “Who’s Vance?” says Cal, brushing powder off his nose.

  “Oh,” she says, avoiding his eyes. “This dealer-type we know.” Now she looks my way. “I’m sorry,” she says. Someone took her to meet Vance when Kit and I were on vacation.

  “Did you have sex with him?” I ask, pushing the counterweight on the scale to the gram mark.

  Cal utters a sound of surprise. He knows I never ask questions.

  Magna’s eyes turn a dull gray-green. “Vance doesn’t really fuck,” she says. “But he can usually SAY the right things.”

  Cal is looking at me strangely. His eyes are narrow slits. “You’re evil,” he says.

  “But,” I say, “the world has a need for evil.”

  “You’ve been treating me shitty enough,” Kit allows. “Everyone says so.”

  “I don’t tell them how you are with me.”

  “Girls, girls,” Cal starts to say, pursing his lips. He reaches in the pocket of his coat and hands me a flat, glittering piece of stone.

  “What’s this?” I ask. It fits snugly in my palm, has almost no weight at all. It looks like a piece of fool’s gold.

  “Can you see the sparkle?” he asks. “That’s its magic. This comes from a very special place, it’s blessed—I got it from the shaman.”

  “Are you giving me this in trade?”

  “No,” he says. “I just want you to have it. It’ll protect you from the grip of evil. As long as you’re in it, this stone can help take away your pain.”

  “But I have no pain,” I remind him.

  “Oh, right,” says Kit with disdain.

  “We’re living in very dark times,” Cal says. He’s staring at the spine of a book on my shelf, the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I don’t know where it came from.

  Magna lights a cigarette and sniffs. “I think death must be bliss,” she says.

  “Yeah,” Cal nods. “You haven’t lived until you’ve fucked Death. We’re part of the Second Coming, you know.”

  “When is it?” I ask. “I haven’t got a thing to wear.”

  “That’s easy,” he says. “Sparkle sparkle!”

  The rush hour comes and goes, and then I have to re-up. I call Massimo and say I’ll be over soon. He doesn’t keep me. A minute after I’m back, Lita’s on the horn. She wants to see me right away. In the office, she lays her hand on the table and opens it. She’s holding five crisp hundred-dollar bills. I don’t ask where they came from. I measure out the gram.

  “I’m going away,” she says. “You’ll never have to see me again.”

  I can’t look at her now. I’m filled with envy, only one arm to feed instead of thirty. I wish her luck. I know she won’t get far.

  At eight-thirty, Honey calls. Grigorio’s in the hospital in Naples. He’s too ill to leave the country. Bad liver, they think. Maybe cirrhosis. They started to think it was AIDS, but there are no documented cases in Italy so it can’t be that. Whatever, he’s too sick to move.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Well,” she says, “I’m not going to worry about it. If I have to, I’ll move to Italy—I don’t care. I love Italy. Okay if I come over?”

  Around eleven, I hear from Claude Ballard. Can he and a buddy stop by? I want to say I’m not open, but Claude’s a good friend now and I can’t say no to a friend. Besides, he’s a famous artist. You just don’t say no to the famous.

  Claude strides past me, leading a tall dark man who introduces himself as Fred. This guy’s a beaut. His black satin skin fits over his cheekbones like a sheet pulled taut on a wire rack. No problem having him around. His eyes sparkle at the sight of me. Can’t help but like the guy. I’m just not in the mood for company.

  “Where’s Kit? She here?” Claude asks, taking a peek in her studio.

  “Not right now,” I say. She’s over at Bebe’s getting us some coke, been gone more than an hour. Nothing unusual.

  He’s spotted a couple of her photographs hanging on the wall. I really ought to have one of his paintings, he says. I’d like one—his paintings appeal to me—but my cash is always tied up and his prices have gone beyond anything I can afford. Besides, I won’t trade anything for drugs. I already have all the TVs, VCRs, air conditioners, and cameras I ever wanted. I have my books. I pay for my drugs in cash, so should everyone else.

  “I don’t trade art for drugs, either,” Claude says, screwing up his nose. But he’ll trade something for one of Kit’s photos. He doesn’t mind trading art for art.

  Come to the studio, he says. Pick something out. Sure, sure, I say and weigh out his gram. Wait, he says. Just a quarter, ok
ay? I wonder what’s going on.

  They want to get off in my kitchen. That’s a surprise. Thought Claude was a snorter. Shit, what a day.

  Since we’re alone, I tell them okay. Fred ties off first, boots it up. Claude can’t find a vein. Finally he pushes the plunger. His eyes fall back in his head. His color changes, his mouth droops, his knees buckle, but Fred catches him before he falls.

  Oh, Jesus. This can’t happen here. No way.

  “Hold him up!” I bark. “Hold him, I’ll get ice.”

  I pull two trays from the freezer but I can’t get the cubes loose. Fred snatches one of them from my shaking hands, slides it upside Claude’s neck, but he can’t hold the ice there and keep Claude on his feet, the body’s slipping. Fred drops the ice, it clatters to the floor. Claude’s lips are already blue, his limbs flaccid, his eyes lost.

  “How could he do this?” I say, complaining as I help Fred move Claude’s body to the shower stall next to the kitchen sink. We force him in and turn on the cold. The minutes tick by, each a nail in his coffin.

  “He hasn’t been getting high,” Fred gasps. “He just came back from Hawaii. Had a cure.”

  Great. Doesn’t he know what kind of stuff I sell? Stupid, very stupid, shooting up God knows how much when you’ve got no tolerance, when you’re practically clean. How am I going to explain this? Will I have to call 911? I envision the cops blowing in the door. Wait—me, call the cops? Am I insane?

  “Fred,” I say, swallowing hard. “We’ve got to get him out of here.”

  “I know.”

  “He can’t stay here.”

  “I know.”

  “Conscious or not, he’s gotta go.”

  “I know. I’ll take care of it.”

  “How?” I ask. How is this babe going to “take care of it”?

  We back Claude out of the shower, the minutes tick by. His arms and legs flop like damp rags across his body. There’s no expression on his face at all, no joy, no pain, no anger. Nothing. Fred embraces him from behind, grips him across the chest. We go on trying to revive him, to walk him, but nothing we do moves him back to life.