I look at Kit’s face, see the fear in her eyes, and the next thing I know we’re in each other’s arms. It feels strange, it’s been so long. “Well,” she says. “Why don’t you tell me about your trip?”
Before we leave for Montauk, I meet Honey and Grigorio in a Japanese restaurant on Bleecker Street. “We have something to tell you,” Honey says.
I smile. “You’re getting married.”
“Yes,” she says soberly. “That’s not it. You can’t tell this to anyone. Not a soul. You really can’t.”
“Not even Kit?”
“If you swear her to silence.” I think I know what’s coming. I give a slight nod and reach for my drink.
“We’ve got it, hon,” she says. “HIV—we’ve both tested positive.”
My body locks. “How long have you known this?” I ask. “When did you get the test?”
“I’ve known awhile,” she says. “We’ve both had lots of tests. Actually, we’re not just positive. We have AIDS.”
Grigorio’s toying with a chopstick. I down the rest of my drink. The perfect couple, I’m thinking. Isn’t this just perfect.
“There aren’t too many people I can tell this to,” she goes on. “For Mike’s sake. He’d be ostracized at school if they knew, the way people are. I wouldn’t get any work. But we have to be able to talk to someone.”
“I have to tell Kit,” I say. Did we share needles with them last summer? I can’t remember.
“You can tell her, that’s okay. Lute knows too. So does Ginger.”
“What about Mike?”
Grigorio says they can tell him when the time comes.
“You don’t look sick,” I observe. Poor Mike.
“We’re not sick,” says Honey. “Not right now, anyway. Anyway, we’re not going to go that fast, if at all. We’re not going to change the way we live.”
“That’s not true,” says Grigorio. “We’ve stopped doing drugs.”
“Yes,” she says. “We thought we’d try that. But you’ll stick around, won’t you? In case we need anything?”
SILENCE
I had a right to remain silent, Dick said so. I had a right. Silence is not held against you, not in a court of law. Silence doesn’t put you in jail, but it doesn’t keep you out of it, either. Not when your keeper is Dick.
He knows I sit here all day cooped up in my turkey body, suffering the junkie’s maximum despair. I’m like the bridesmaid who’s never a bride: always detained, never incarcerated. Why won’t he leave me alone?
“I thought we should talk,” he said. “About a friend of yours. About Daniel.”
Oh God, I thought. Not Daniel.
“What’s happened with Angelo?” I asked.
“We’re trying to turn him,” Dick said with a casual air. “He’s stubborn, that guy, but I think he’ll turn. We want him to give us his source in Thailand.”
“Thailand is in your jurisdiction?”
“Everything is in our jurisdiction,” he replied. “That’s one of the perks of this job—travel. We go everywhere. The war on drugs—you know.”
I wish he would take me away.
“What about Daniel?” he asked again. I took a breath.
“Dan-iel,” I answered. “He’s French.”
“Whatever. We’re very interested in this Daniel. We think you know where he is.”
I never did know where Daniel lived. Like the others, he always made deliveries. “I think he sells antiques,” I said. I don’t think I sounded convincing.
“No, not antiques. We’ve traced him to an East Village dress shop. Do you want me to believe you’ve never been?”
“When have you seen me in a dress?”
Daniel, my friend Daniel. It was him I called from the pay phone up the street after Dick took Angelo away. Call Daniel, Kit said, and I did. I bought the gram from him. I did it against my better judgment, but I was clean out of judgment that night.
He chose the place we met, a neighborhood tavern on First Avenue, one step up from a dive. We huddled with Kit at the bar, a noisy crowd around us, bodies in overcoats, beery voices.
“I have to quit the business for a while,” I whispered in his ear. “A friend’s been busted by the Feds.”
“How good a friend are we talking about?”
“Pretty good. Good enough.”
“Not Massimo!”
“No, someone else.”
He turned toward the window of the bar, straining to see the street through the crowd. He turned back and looked at me close. I took a sip of my drink. If Daniel knew me as well as he thought, he would have known everything then. I’ve never been a sipper.
“Are you sure it wasn’t you they busted?”
I watched the bartender. “It wasn’t me.” I only wanted to warn him. I didn’t want to scare him off.
Daniel finished his drink. “These cops, they wouldn’t be watching you, too?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so? You mean, they are.” His handsome face twisted up like a pretzel, anger wound up with dismay.
“I don’t think so,” I said. I didn’t say the cops were too busy with Angelo to spare any time for us. What would that have accomplished?
“Where can we do this?” I said. “In here?”
“I want to trust you,” he said, uncertain.
Part of the game, I was thinking. Risk you take.
“You have cash?”
“In my coat.”
Kit stood close behind us while Daniel found my inside breast pocket. I let his hand reach around where it liked. Finally, it took the cash. “Meet me outside,” he said. “Wait five minutes, then come out.”
“I may need to see you again,” I said when we were standing in a doorway outside.
“Okay, but you pay cash every time now—no credit, okay? I’m not taking any chances.”
I put on a wounded look.
“Don’t call, I’ll come by on my own,” he said as he turned to go. Then he wheeled back around. “It really wasn’t you they busted?”
“It wasn’t me,” I said.
“After all I’ve put up with from you, this had better be the truth—you hear me?”
Who is he to make these demands? I was thinking. Just a guy I know—not really a friend. That’s what I had told Dick, anyway, in those hours in that cell of a room in the Federal Building, when he was pressing me for names. “Well, there’s Daniel,” I said, just to say something. I’ve been biting my lip ever since.
Maybe it was all those stories I’d heard over the years and had to hold inside, maybe I was just sick and scared, but I couldn’t be brave and I couldn’t hold my tongue. When I opened my mouth that devil D flew in, and it gave up Daniel’s name. After that, I fell back into silence and I never told anyone till now.
PART SEVEN
THE END
I WATCH THE RAIN
February 1986. A Sunday, gloomy Sunday, day of rest. Slept ten hours and I’m still exhausted; it’s five p.m. Dark out already. It’s raining again, the weather’s fucked. Every weekend it rains. Weekends now mean rain. Can’t remember when I last saw daylight. Last week? Week before? Been living in bed, in my overcoat, and pajamas, wrapped in two quilts. Always cold in here—it’s the wind in the fireplace. Whoever said heroin keeps you warm must have lived in the tropics.
I feel like a long Russian novel, full of epic, tortured passion and masochistic need. In the architecture of indifference that frames the modern world, I’m a lump of forbidden clay, a cave turned inside out, petrified, hollow. Junk doesn’t fill it, money either. It just sits there in the cave and digs it deeper. No wonder heroin’s called Down. It sinks you.
I can’t think of any reason to get up out of bed. I’ve tried everything I know—I haven’t tried meditation. Cal Tutweiler thinks I should. He says the future depends on an alteration of consciousness today, on getting to another level. I’ll wait to see what happens. As Honey likes to say, you never know what will happen, but s
omething always will. Something always happens.
It’s happened to her—both she and Grigorio are in the hospital. They have the same pneumonia, but his is worse. His lungs have both collapsed. He sits up in bed with a drawing pad, making cartoons of himself with tubes in his chest and angels around his head and she writes captions for all of them. There are balloons all over the ceiling and cartoons all over the walls.
It was in this room they finally tied the knot. People came from all over the planet to see them—they’d made that many friends. The room was so crowded it seemed more like a nightclub than a hospital. For a moment, it seemed like fun to be sick. Then she went home and he stayed in and Lute came back to be with Honey.
Without opening my eyes I pull the drawer of the bedside table and feel for the dope, lift it out. I get my fingers around the foil and straw. There’s a movie on, Key Largo. It’s raining there, too. I slump back against the pillows. I hear Kit moving in the kitchen, can’t tell what’s up. I listen to the rain.
“You want coffee?” she calls out.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll have to heat it up. You slept a really long time.”
I hate reheated coffee.
“What are you watching?” Kit says, coming toward me.
Her face—she’s been picking at her face. She looks like a kid with bad acne, except that she doesn’t look like a kid and the acne is open sores, from cocaine. She picks at her face and I lie in bed. I smoke dope and watch movies, and wait.
“I can’t believe it’s still raining,” she says.
“The coffee’s boiling,” I say.
“Does that mean you want me to bring it in to you?”
“Would you?”
“Will you give me something for it?”
“For Christ sake! It’s only in the next room!”
“How far away is the dope?”
“It’s not the same thing at all! Coffee’s a lot cheaper than heroin.”
“The phone’s been ringing,” she says. “I didn’t know if you wanted me to answer it. Are you in today, or not?”
It’s Sunday. I don’t have hours on Sundays.
“Let them go,” I say with a dramatic wave. “We’ll be doing them all a favor.”
I could be Styrofoam, the way I feel. I let Kit take the dope. I don’t care anymore—let her do the business. When the day is done, Angelo’s dope will be gone and I’ll still owe him ten thousand dollars. Vance doesn’t have anything; Daniel, either. Nobody’s going anywhere but under. I heard Mr. Leather got clean, and Belle, I haven’t seen her at all. I passed her on the street once, a while back, but she didn’t notice I was there. She was walking mighty fast.
A customer calls who wants to bring by a friend. “Maybe you know him,” she says. “Malik?”
Malik? I know him, sure—he’s an old school friend of my brother’s. Since when is he a dealer?
When he shows up, we don’t get into any of that. We get right down to business. He produces an ounce of rock; I come to attention. He lays out a taste, and in no time I feel like myself. Maybe, I think, not all the stuff I brought back for Angelo was so pure. Who can you trust, after all? Some Thai you never laid eyes on? I ought to complain to Angelo, but then I’d have to see him and I don’t know where he is. He’s been gone since December, and meanwhile I’ve smoked all the dope. I don’t care, he’s done fine by me, he’s made a fortune. Give someone else a chance. How many times should I have to return his investment? How many risks can I take?
“You know what?” I say, smiling at Malik. “I think you and I are in business.”
The sun shines in—spring is in the air. For two weeks life returns to normal, customers in and out, dealers. Everyone likes this stuff. Orders are large, but I know it’s the end. I knew it the day it rained. Something happened to me that day. I had a feeling, a funny kind of feeling. Maybe Dick had it, too, that day, because now it’s March 1986 and he’s coming through the door like all the rest, asking do I have any heroin?
THE SOUND OF THE DOORBELL
“Have you come up with any names?” Dick began, the third day he came around. That day was really the longest. We were running out of things to say.
“Let me ask you,” he said as the sun began to set. “Do you know how to make a Welsh rarebit? The kind of places I eat in never have it.”
“I don’t feel like cooking,” I snapped. Welsh rarebit? Give me a break.
“Just trying to make conversation.” He shrugged. The time was barely moving. My Catapres was wearing off. I was tired of playing games.
“C’mon Dick,” I said. “You can tell me—who dropped the dime? Who fingered me for the bust?”
“I’ll tell you what,” he answered, smoothing his tie. “Here’s something we can do: why don’t you try to guess? You guess the names and maybe I’ll let you know when you’re right.”
He almost had me on that one. I wanted to know pretty bad. I almost said, “Was it Maggie?” I almost said, “Was it Massimo? Vance?” But none of them ever knew Angelo—did they?
The sound of the doorbell startled us both.
“Who’s that?” Dick said with a grunt. I sat up on the edge of my bed, hands pressed flat on my thighs. My heart had jumped into my throat.
“I’m not expecting anyone,” I said hoarsely. “Maybe it’s the mailman.”
“Go see.”
My shoes seemed to have grown soles of lead. I dragged one foot after the other, sliding across the floor. Dick trailed right behind.
“Watch the door,” he said to his walkie-talkie.
“We’re there,” said a voice.
“Hello?” I said to the intercom.
“Daniel!” I heard from below.
My hand was still on the listen button. I heard him shout, hit the ground, roll.
The walkie-talkie breathed static. “He’s clean,” we heard the voice say.
Dick gave me a questioning look. “Let him go,” he said to his man. “But follow him.”
I moved away from the door. I felt sick, out of focus, like a double exposure. Dick stayed in the hall. His eyes had narrowed, his chumminess was gone.
“You didn’t happen to tip this guy, did you?”
“Who?” I said. My voice squeaked. “You mean Daniel?” I shook my head to hide my smile. What I wanted to say was, “Guess!”
WHO?
I don’t understand why Dick won’t say who it was set me up—haven’t I been friendly? Who’s he trying to protect? Someone who got caught before we did? Do we know anyone like that?
“Well,” says Kit. “There’s Vance.”
Of course. He owes me two thousand dollars. And he was busted by city cops three months before. It cost him just a few nights in jail, after which he was mysteriously released. Later he said it wasn’t anything, not anything about drugs. Maybe, I thought, wanting to believe him, maybe it was about Marcy, who had left him while he was in the Tombs. She had come over here one night to escape him. It seemed he was slapping her around. Would I help rent her some wheels? She thought I had credit cards. No, I said, I always pay cash. I pay cash for everything. “Oh,” she said. “Can you spare any?”
Would Vance have nailed us to get back at me for that? He thought I knew where she was. Maybe he wanted to get out of paying what he owes. I’m not behind bars and I know why. Maybe he did it, too—cooperated.
On the other hand, it could have been Jerome, the fey weasel coke-dealing crackhead. I can’t believe Bebe’s gone in with him. They’re sharing a commercial space over on Lafayette; he works there. She calls it a design studio, but Kit’s the only one who produces anything there besides a crack pipe—necklaces she strings with tiny dice and religious medals, miniatures on rubber chains. She’s there all day with Jerome. He could easily have dropped the dime. It was his order I had on the scale on the day of the dicks. When the mailman-cop knocked on the door, it was Jerome I expected to see when I opened it.
“Bebe told me Jerome was busted,” Kit says. “I di
dn’t want to say anything before, but I’ve been wondering about him, too.”
She’s sitting in the chair by my desk, twisting strands of hair around her ear. We can’t seem to talk anywhere but the office. “This is a bad habit, coming in this room,” I say, drumming my fingers on the phone.
“Are you sure there’s nothing left in here?” she asks, her voice hollow. “Nothing hidden away?”
“No drugs,” I say. I’ve looked, many times. “Maybe there’s money.” I pull books from the shelves on the wall. “Here,” I say. “Help me look.”
“Doesn’t Vance owe you money?”
“That scumbag. He’ll never pay.”
“Did you find anything yet?”
I shake my head.
“I wish you would call him. Call Vance.”
I close the books.
“I think we should talk to him,” she says.
“What’s going on?” I say, when I get him on the phone. “When you gonna return that favor?”
Don’t worry, he tells me. I’m not really worried, am I? I have no cause to worry, not about him. How could I be worried? About him? It’s coming, he promises, any day now. He’s working on something special—“a new film.” Why can’t I trust him? Aren’t we friends?
I have many friends, I say, and none of them owe me money. I don’t confess my own lingering debts. By now, they’ve disappeared into the bowels of the U.S. Federal Building.
“Stop this,” says Vance. I can hear him smoking crack. “Don’t be so hard,” he says. “Haven’t I always taken care of you girls?”
I tell him what’s happened, sort of. Dead silence. Then, “You calling me from home?”
It’s all right, I say, I only want to know who set me up. Does he have anything to tell me?
“Are you saying it was me?” he shouts. “I can’t believe you’d say a thing like that! To me! A friend. I would never do that to anybody! Especially you—you girls! I’ve never done you dirt. What about all those times Kit came up here with those big sick eyes? I’ve never seen eyes like that. It didn’t matter what time it was or what else I was doing, did it? I was always here for you.” Now it sounds like he’s going to cry.
The Story of Junk Page 26