The Story of Junk

by Linda Yablonsky

  Tears well up in Fred’s eyes, his face a mask of fear. I go cold, then hot, then cold again. I force my head into calm, think think. Then it hits me: saline. Saline shot.

  “I know what to do!” I shout. “Hold him. Talk to him. Walk him,” I say. “Don’t let him fall.”

  “Claude?” Fred pleads, his voice a whisper. “Claude, can you hear me? Don’t die on me, buddy. For Christ’s sake! Claude? Oh, man.”

  “Shut up, Fred!” I shout. I’m at the sink, dumping salt in a spoon. “He’s not gonna die. He can’t. We won’t let him.” If I say it, maybe I’ll believe it.

  “You think it’s too late?”

  “Just hold him, okay?”

  Shit shit shit—I can’t remember the proportions! How much salt to how much water? Do you cook it or not? Fred doesn’t know and I can’t remember. My brain fights my fear. I don’t know what I’m doing. I have to fake it. Fake it? This is no joke. My hands quake. The salt spills over the spoon onto my shoes, there’s salt all over the floor. I look over at Claude. He’s gone. He’s gone.

  I load the syringe, the one he’s just used. Fred holds him upright. I get on my knees beside them.

  I can’t find a vein. Claude’s arms are so smooth. The clock is ticking. I hold my breath and poke his arm. No good.

  “Try again.”

  I try again. Zilch. I give up on the vein, push the point into muscle. Fred is still holding him from behind. Now he stiffens and shakes Claude up and down, trying to shake him out of it, madly shaking, yelling Claude’s name. He feels for Claude’s pulse, listens for a breath. Nothing.

  “That’s it!” I say, too loud. “You’ve got to go, Fred! Get him outta here.” I move to help.

  “I can do it,” Fred mumbles, dragging Claude’s body toward the door. The goddam door. I want to pull it off its hinges.

  “I’ll call 911,” I say. I don’t want to, but I will. I know cops come along with the ambulance, but Claude is famous, after all. I better do what’s right.

  I make up a story in my mind as Fred drags the body through the door. “You haven’t been here,” I say. “If the cops happen to come, I don’t know you.”

  “I understand,” Fred says, not looking at me.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “He’ll come around. Just get him in the air. It’s air he needs now. Okay?”

  We heave Claude onto the stairs. Fred’s got his head and chest, I toss over the legs. I can’t stop trembling. I hear the clock ticking. “You start down,” I say in a rush. “I have to clean up. Then I’ll come out to help you.”

  Fred wraps one of Claude’s arms around his shoulders, grabs his waist, starts bumping down the stairs. I run back in and shut the door. No time to breathe. I dump the needles in the toilet. But the dope, what am I supposed to do with that? I can’t just smoke it all and I can’t simply flush it. I can’t. It’s not paid for.

  Shit, I didn’t get their money, either.

  Make the call! Make the call! I shout at myself. Slowly, don’t know why I move so slow, I dial 911. When someone answers, I start in. “There’s a man passed out in the hall,” I say. “He might be dying. Heart attack or something. Drunk, I don’t know. He looks bad.” I give the address and a phony name and number. “Hurry,” I say. “He might be dead.”

  I stash the dope in three different places, wipe up the floor. The place is a mess, straws everywhere, mirrors, razor blades. Damn, the spoons! The blackened bent spoons. I throw them in the sink to wash them, but I can’t get them clean, can’t unbend them. Those bent stems say it all. I bury them in the garbage. What about the scale? I have to put it somewhere. Clock is still ticking. I lock the scale in a file drawer, then consider what might happen if I put the dope in a trash bag and drop it down the airshaft. Minutes pass. Minutes pass. I hear nothing. Funny how the phone doesn’t ring.

  Half an hour goes by and nothing happens, no one comes. Finally, I open the door, step out on the landing, lean over the rail.

  I don’t get it.

  I go back inside and dial Claude’s number. Fred picks up. “What happened?” I ask. “Where’s Claude?” I hold my breath.

  “He’s here,” Fred tells me. “He’s fine.”

  “He’s fine?”

  “He woke up a minute or two after you went inside. All of a sudden, just snapped awake.”

  It’s the salt shot, I think. It worked. It worked. I did the right thing.

  “It must have been the salt,” I say. “Took a while ’cause we didn’t put it in his vein.”

  “Yeah,” says Fred weakly. “I guess.”

  “Did the cops come?”

  “Yeah, they came, but we were sitting on the stairs by then.”

  “What stairs?”

  “Your stairs.”

  “The inside stairs? Not the stoop?” I’m almost screeching.

  “Yeah, the stoop. I told them we’d been to a party, that someone must have spiked Claude’s drink. All they did was laugh. They asked if I wanted an ambulance, but we got a cab instead.”

  “They didn’t ask whose party it was?”

  “Yeah, they did. I told them I didn’t know, exactly. That I stopped there to bring Claude around.”

  “Good,” I say. Fred’s a good guy.

  “You gotta tell Claude what happened,” I say. “Or it’ll happen again.” Does Claude realize I saved his life?

  “He doesn’t know anything happened.”

  “You have to tell him, then. I don’t think I can.”

  “Yeah,” says Fred. “I guess.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “But you know … you know the situation here. I can’t risk the cops.”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  I hang up and make myself a promise: no one is going to shoot up in this apartment ever again. No one, not even a celeb. Especially not.

  I used to count myself lucky because I’d learned how to make drugs work for me. I had them in my employ. I used them to govern my world. Always, I stood in it alone. I longed for a companion. I imagined it would be Death. To addicts, death is a plaything, a fascinating friend. Alive, it’s us against the world. Die, and we join the ranks of millions. I see it happen every day, and I don’t even have to leave the house.

  Time for a vacation, I think. I have to get out of New York. I want to get away from this junk, from junkies, from myself. This room, this dark little room … this holed-up existence, this dark. The walls are closing in, there’s no light in my eyes. Every time I open the door, I feel a shadow cross my soul. So when Angelo stops by at two and asks if I’ll make a run for him to Thailand, I accept, without a thought.

  THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE

  Thailand, the Golden Triangle, the dope-smuggling capital of the East. Angelo’s not coming with me. He’s sending his brother, Mario, instead. I’ve never met Mario, and won’t until we leave. “I’d feel better,” I say to Angelo, “if I knew I was going with you.”

  We’re in the office, counting money. No, says Angelo. He can’t go. There are too many stamps on his passport. He shows me. It’s falling apart, every page covered with visas, yellow, red, green, black, blue: New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Los Angeles, Paris, Milan, Honolulu, Bali, Bangkok.

  “A collector’s item,” I say softly. He’s been making these trips for years.

  “Too long,” he says, rubbing his chin. He has to lie low awhile. He puts out a couple of lines.

  “Okay then,” I say. “Me and Mario.”

  No, he says, we need another mule to carry the dope. Do I know anyone we can trust? I know Kit would go, but someone has to stay behind to take care of the business and I guess it’ll have to be her. Oh, well. I can hear her moving in the kitchen, just outside the office door. She talks about a woman, another musician in an art band, who’s carried several times before, Amsterdam to New York. She’s not a regular user. This one smuggles just for the money. Mary her name is, Mary Motion.

  She’s a big-boned woman, tall, with droopy dark-blond hair falling over her pear-shaped
face. Her eyes are honest brown, her mouth thin, kind of serious. She looks perfectly normal and doesn’t ruffle easy. I hire her.

  Angelo is happy, especially when I tell him the deal I get on our excursion-fare tickets, New York-Tokyo-Bangkok-Singapore-Tokyo-New York. Funny how this was the one thing I would never do; now I can’t wait to leave. It’s a dream come true: the best dope in the world at the lowest price. At last, after all these years sitting in this chair, I’m going straight to the source.

  I buy a Southeast Asian guidebook, to study the local customs. Opium, it says, is growing in the hills. Watch out for tribal warfare. I feel my eyes shine.

  Angelo says each of us can keep an ounce of the total we’ll carry. “Maybe you can sell some of mine,” Mary Motion proposes.

  “Maybe,” I tell her, “but I think I’ll have my hands full.” I’m to hold two o-z’s for Angelo; the rest I’ll sell at the usual price. By now I owe him big, several thousand and climbing, more than this nickel-and-dime business can pay a woman with a family of four: Kit, myself, and our two growing habits.

  Angelo peels the large bills from the roll I’ve given him, lays them on my desk in a stack. “For the tickets,” he says. I don’t count it.

  The night before departure, we meet with Mario at Angelo’s East Side hotel. I tell them yes, I have the tickets, the itinerary. Where’s the money for the stuff? Mario smiles and pats his belly, shows me a moneybelt. It’s full. So is his belly. He’s a little on the plump side, this Mario, about thirty-five, round and jolly in the face, thin sandy hair brushing his ears, a few inches taller than me. His eyes are the lightest of blues. He bears no resemblance to the dark, ringlet-haired bantam who is Angelo. Hard to believe they’re brothers. Mario’s not even much of a doper. A schoolteacher, he says. Three kids at home.

  I ask where we go to make the buy. Mario knows the way, but he seems a little dim; Angelo draws him a map. Mario keeps it with the cash. Like Mary, he’s doing this for the money, the easy money—the stuff there’s never any of. I need money, too, but for me this is more about the dope. We do a few lines for the road and I go home to pack. Angelo’s leaving town, too, leaving the country. He doesn’t say where. He’ll call me. He doesn’t say when.

  It’s seventeen hours to Tokyo in a jumbo jet without a single unoccupied seat. Everyone but us is Japanese. Before the movie starts there’s a newsreel. The big news is a midair crash of a Japan Air Lines plane. There are a few survivors, somehow—I don’t get how, the broadcast’s in Japanese. Three of the survivors, a child and two young women, appear in interviews, heads bandaged, necks braced. Fire has left one badly burned. Our cabin is quiet. This is Japan Air Lines.

  Seven hours into the first leg of the trip, I get dopesick in my seat. I’m choking on my tongue, can’t swallow. My skin feels loose on my skeleton, my eyes are running. So’s my nose. The fellow in the seat next to me offers a pack of Kleenex, asks if I want any help from the crew. No, no, I say, and head for the john. I can see Mary Motion sitting a few rows behind me, her eyes wide and wondering, and Mario on the other side of the plane, pretending he doesn’t know me.

  In my bag I’ve got a couple of methadone biscuits, some Lomotil and codeine, but no dope. I’ve been too cautious. Didn’t want to travel with powder. What a jerk. What am I making this trip for, if not to carry? I stumble into the loo and bite off a piece of a meth biscuit, swallow a codeine. A minute later, it comes back up. My entire body retches, but nothing else is in it. I catch myself in the blue-green light of the tiny bathroom mirror. I have a sense there isn’t a drop of fluid left inside me, no bile, no blood. I don’t know how I can still be alive. If appearances mean anything, I’m not.

  I swallow another piece of meth. Before I return to my seat, a stewardess brings me the sugar I ask for in little packets; down they go. I stare at her, eyes full of tears, I’m choking on my breath. “More sugar, please,” I gasp. She hesitates a moment, gets me another handful. Soon the hacking cough stops, but I’m far from feeling right. My arms seem a very long distance away, my hair feels false. Maybe this is normal, I think, as I notice the other passengers. They look green, too.

  At the Tokyo airport, we change to a smaller jet for the trip to Bangkok, another five hours away. Everyone on this plane is Indian, they’re going to Kashmir. Three men dressed in flimsy white leggings and long flowing blouses, their heads wrapped in white turbans, their faces hidden by full graying beards, are the only passengers in the first-class seats. I’m at a window in coach. I don’t know why I feel resentful—this is their part of the world. White skin doesn’t always bestow privileges. I stare out the window. The sky’s black.

  For dinner we get soba noodles, seaweed, and some kind of bean cake for the third time since the trip began. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, the menu’s always the same. So is the entertainment: the plane-crash news. Over the summer of 1985, there have been more crashes than at any one time in the history of commercial aviation. I try to sleep. No use.

  It’s midnight when we arrive in Bangkok. Police are everywhere, soldiers too. There’s been a coup, the borders are closed. Our cab driver says, “It’s nothing.”

  Many more sleepless hours pass in the hotel room I share with Mary, who falls out the minute we get inside. The thin carpet is red, the bedspread is red, the curtains are red. The walls appear to be yellow, I’m not sure. We haven’t bothered with the lights. The neon glow from the street outside provides all the illumination I can bear.

  Mario spends the night in the hotel bar, chatting up a “sex-teen”-year-old girl, one of many. I stay in my room, chipping at the codeine. I’m trying to save the meth. We don’t know how long it’ll be before we can score—maybe hours, maybe days. I find more packets of sugar from the plane, eat them. I pull the thin bedsheet over my head. First I’m freezing, then I’m sweating. All night long I’m turning the air conditioner off and on, on and off, opening and closing the window. The air outside is rank. I listen for gunfire, hear nothing.

  In the morning I force myself into the shower. The water rails against my skin like pellets of thin steel. I order coffee from room service. It arrives in a steaming pot. I drink all of it.

  At the hotel travel agency, I buy our plane tickets north. We’re headed for Chiang Mai, a town in the hills near the Burmese border, popular with tourists. “It’s cooler there,” the ticket agent tells me. “May I arrange your hotel?” Angelo’s already given me the name of the place he wants us to stay. The agent reserves three rooms.

  My hands are shaking so badly I can’t hold the tickets. I stuff them in my bag, approach the hotel dining room. A breakfast buffet is set up on the bar, staffed by men in olive-and-gold bus jackets, standing where the hookers had been the night before. The men are all short and all have the same haircut, styled, possibly, with an ax. They look pockmarked and sallow. I down another coffee, try to swallow a piece of fruit, settle for a few bites of sticky rice. Mario comes in, smiling, clean-shaven, wet from the shower. The girl was very nice, he says. It was fun in the bar last night. He had a nice massage. We should have come on down.

  We still have a few hours to kill before plane time. In the narrow street outside the hotel, the air is so muggy and thick with smog I can hardly move my legs. Again I wish I’d brought something with me. Ridiculous, leaving all the dope at home. I’m much sicker than I ever expected, but I don’t want to take a chance on buying something here from a total stranger.

  We hail a cab, because it’s air-conditioned. The driver wants to sell us a nickel bag of pot. I frown at this but Mario thinks it’s great. I try to convince him otherwise. Everyone knows cabdrivers are cops, and besides, marijuana’s not what we’re here for. When I’m not looking, he buys it anyway. “Everyone does it,” he whines.

  “We’re not everybody,” I reply.

  He looks dubious.

  We drive along the Patpong Road, a main drag, strip joints mostly, a few jewelers. Bangkok’s a stinking place. Where are the temples of gold? Families are living in the stree
t, tending their woks over fires in the gutter, cooking breakfast. The sickening smell of frying palm oil wafts through the trees. With the auto exhaust fumes and heavy humidity, the air’s nearly impossible to breathe. I bite off another piece of meth.

  It’s only eleven a.m., but we head for a bar and knock back a few beers. I don’t taste them. My tongue feels bloody. I’m biting it. My eyes swim in my head. Mario wants a plate of French fries. They carry the stench of that sickening oil. I’ll kill him, I think, before this is over.

  We’ve all lost interest in a tour of the city’s canals recommended in my guidebook. Klongs, they call them. “King Klongs,” I say to Mary, who looks as glum as I feel. We walk back to the hotel.

  It’s almost noon and the equatorial heat has steeply escalated. All along the sidewalk, food vendors sitting under striped umbrellas display edibles we can’t identify. Never have I seen food like this: strange shapes, unnatural colors, horrid odors. Shops advertise silk and linen suits made to order in a day. Men and women in thin polyester clothing rush to jobs. What about that coup? No sign of an army anywhere. I buy an English-language newspaper. The coup was a failure, but a couple of English journalists were killed and the borders are still closed. There’s an article about the Thai Queen’s visit to the Paris collections. A woman in low-heeled leather pumps passes by. Everyone else wears flip-flops.

  The Bangkok airport looks different in daylight, clean and not too busy. The only activity on the tarmac surrounds a Vietnamese plane loading cargo. The terminal’s metal detector buzzes as I pass. Two attendants approach, and a nearby guard. They want to search my bag. At the bottom of an inside pouch, I have a small plastic paper-cutter with a retractable blade. It doesn’t look any more threatening than the prize in a Cracker Jack box. The blade is barely a half-inch long but it’s sharp enough to cut a piece from a solid rock of dope—or a face. There’s a small pocketknife in there, too, and a prescription bottle with my various pills. The guard seems more interested in my Polaroid. I waste a picture on him, and he lets me pass.