The Story of Junk

by Linda Yablonsky

  “Maybe it was Jerome.”

  “Not him. Are you serious?”

  He’s right. It’s never the first person you suspect. “Find out who it was, then. Can you?”

  He says he’ll ask around.

  “He didn’t do it,” I tell Kit. “Maybe it was Betty?”

  She stands up. “I don’t think so. Betty’s dead.” I didn’t know this. I feel awful. Kit’s expression doesn’t change. “Why couldn’t it have been Daniel?”

  “No,” I say, under my breath. “Not Daniel.”

  “I don’t know who did it,” she says with resignation. “I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  I wish I could say what’s really on my mind, but I can’t seem to find the words. My mind’s gone. Like Daniel.

  “Vance isn’t such a bad guy, really,” she goes on, picking up one of the cats. “None of these guys are. These guys: Vance, Daniel, Jean-Paul—they’d be pretty together if they weren’t so fucked up.”

  “Wait a minute,” I say.

  She stares at me. “Jean-Paul?”

  That asshole. Was it only a week ago I threw him out? That slime. I tried to be good to him—his wife had OD’d on a trip to Asia. He loved her, I guess. I gave him a consoling bag of dope, but he wanted more. When I gave him a little more, he called me a bitch. He didn’t want just a little. Why couldn’t I help get him back on his feet, come on. I could do that, couldn’t I?

  I never did trust that Jean-Paul. Didn’t like him. He would have to pay up front, I said. That was the only way. I never thought he’d do anything; sick junkies say a lot of things they don’t mean. I thought, bottom line, he needed me.

  “I guess you could have been nicer,” Kit tells me.

  There’s another argument brewing, we’re both getting mad. The cats have left the room. I agree with Kit about one thing, though: it doesn’t matter now who did what. We can’t do anything. Can we?

  OUT THERE, WAITING

  From the living-room window I can see the roof garden of a three-story building below. It hides part of Sixth Avenue from view. I can see the subway entrance beyond, I can hear the traffic pass. I can’t see if anyone is still out there, waiting.

  The stuff Dick and his crew confiscated at the bust didn’t arrive by pigeon. I got it from one of those names Dick wants to hear, one who wants to be paid for that stuff. Malik.

  The easy thing to do would be to turn him in. Also the hardest.

  When Dick isn’t around, I get a cab to Malik’s apartment. He thinks I’m bringing him cash, but I’m there to tell him about the bust. He can plainly see I’m sick. He asks who set me up. A creep named Jean-Paul. Then why am I not in jail? “I have a good lawyer,” I say. He accepts this. He really only wants to know one thing: how I expect to pay him.

  How does he expect I can?

  “That’s not my problem,” he says. “My problem is the guy I owe.”

  I let him know some of my customers are willing to pay more if I’ll cop for them. That would be madness, I say, but I’ll gladly turn their business over to him.

  No, he says. Definitely not. No one can know he has anything to do with this stuff, or me. He has a wife, a kid, a legitimate business—painting, construction, design. Like Vance, he’s trying to finance a film, but unlike Vance, he can probably pull it off. Malik used to run a theater company. He’s not all talk and no show.

  What can I do? I can’t turn him in. He’s my brother’s friend.

  I start going around the neighborhood on the sly, picking up money. I keep my eyes at my back. I never see any dicks. I go uptown and sit in Malik’s kitchen, where I weigh the bindles and go back to make the drops. It’s tiresome, and dangerous, but each time I meet with Malik, he gives me a line to relieve the sickness and another one to go.

  “This has to stop,” I say after a week has gone by. I’ll never be able to pay what I owe. We’ll both get busted.

  He pats the money on the table. “We won’t get busted,” he says. He seems to think he’s immune. He still has to pay his guy, he says, and this isn’t a guy you want to mess with. This guy owes somebody, too.

  “I understand the problem,” I say, but I have problems of my own.

  “I am going to be paid,” Malik says slowly. “I am going to be paid, and you’re going to do the paying.” He’s angry, I can see that. I also see his fear. Not of the people he owes. I’m the one making him nervous.

  “You can’t turn him in,” says Kit when I get home. I’m scraping out a line for her. “We need this.”

  “It’s not worth it,” I say. “But I won’t turn him in.”

  As the lawyer said, I’ve cooperated enough. Too much. More than I can bear.

  MONSTERS

  I sit on the edge of my bed and watch the cats roll around on the carpet, listen to them meow. They must be hungry. I can’t move. Sweat drips from my hair, goosebumps appear on my skin. My tongue feels swollen, I’ve been vomiting for hours. Haven’t slept in a week.

  “I can’t stand it,” Kit says. “I can’t stand it.”

  Cal Tutweiler calls. He knows about a rehab Kit’s insurance will cover—her parents pay all her premiums. I say she ought to go. Anything’s better than this.

  “I’ll go if I can take my own pills,” she says.

  The phone. Who now? Must be Dick. Can’t he take a day off?

  “Darling, you are out of jail!” It’s Prescott. Fucking Prescott Weems.

  “Yeah,” I grunt.

  “I hear you informed on your friends,” he gurgles, his voice a simmering venom stew.

  “Don’t start,” I say.

  “Darling, I don’t like hearing you’ve been a rat and I don’t want to believe it. But I promise you, if it turns out to be true, I will personally destroy you and I’ll do it in print. You know I can, so don’t try me. Under this genteel exterior, I’m a vicious old queen, and I will make sure you never show your face in good company again. You will not be able to get a job even licking dishes, much less cooking them. Just forget it.”

  “I can’t talk now,” I say through my teeth. “I’m sick.”

  “You didn’t turn anyone in?”

  I hang up, feeling grim. The phone rings again. Oh, God. He’s worse than Dick.

  It’s Lute. “Thank God you’re there!” she bellows.

  “I’m here, all right. What’s up?”

  “Please please go to the hospital to see Grigorio? Honey asked me to call you. She was there this morning but she’s not in any shape to go back. Please go, there’s no one else I can ask.”

  I’m not sure my legs will support me.

  “You’ve got to go,” she says. “Everyone else is either working or not answering, and I have to stay here with Honey. I know what Weems is saying and I don’t care. I don’t care what you did or didn’t do, we’ve been friends too long. I’m glad you’re not in jail—okay? Honey needs you. Please do this for her. Please go over there now. Will you go?”

  I’ll go. I know better now than to walk away from the sick. It empties your world, doing that. It makes your place in it small, and my spot is tight enough.

  I call upon myself. I call. I hobble to the sink and splash water on my face, down two clonidines, pop an Ativan for good measure. My pupils are huge. It takes every ounce of strength to dress; I can hardly lift my coat. Kit can’t believe I’m doing this. But I have to do it. I must.

  I throw the coat over my shoulders and inch down the stairs to the street. The wind nearly knocks me down. I pray I’ll live till I get there.

  My heart jumps when I see him, a disfigured stick of a man many years older than I know he is. The long thick curly hair now hangs in thin wisps from his crown. His cheeks are sunken and his eyes bulge. They don’t look real. He’s barely more than a skeleton.

  It’s been only a month since I saw him last. He was in a different room then, the one he was sharing with Honey. It looked like a circus tent then. Now it’s a chamber of death.

  The tubes are gone, he’s breathi
ng on his own somehow. Two large garbage bags sit on the floor, stuffed with his belongings. They’ve packed him up already. Couldn’t they wait? He doesn’t deserve this—what did he do? He got hooked on drugs, said some funny things, and made my best friend glad to be alive. Should this be a capital offense? Death is a blessing compared to this shit. My own sickness leaves me. He calls for a nurse.

  “Bitch!” he cries, and then he’s out of breath. “They hate people with AIDS,” he says, his voice barely a wheeze. “They turn us into monsters.” The fight goes out of him and he lies still, his breathing labored as a dog’s on a hot summer day. A dog’s life is better.

  I grasp his hand. It’s cold as ice. All I see is his morphine drip. This is hell.

  What is it about this life, I think, makes people willing to suffer so, just to have another moment in it? Let go, I want to say. His eyes flutter open and rest briefly on the TV above his bed. He still wants to look at pictures. “So stupid,” he says. “So dummy.” His cheeks seem to sink even deeper.

  His lips move again but I hear nothing. I move close to his face and with a tremendous effort he tries again. “Have you seen Honey?”

  “I’m going there when I leave here,” I say. I guess I will. Nothing else to do. Wait for Dick? I’ll go see Honey.

  “It was all my fault,” he says, his face ashen.

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” I reply, though I’m not actually sure about that.

  “So dummy,” he says. “There was a time …” He forced a smile and gripped my hand. It sent another chill up my spine. “It was amusing,” he whispers. “Wasn’t it?” An awful odor escapes his mouth, deep skank. His head falls back on the pillow.

  Is this it? Is he going to die now? What if he does? I can feel the life draining from his hand like dripping paint. Will I have to be the one to tell Honey?

  “Bebe said I’d find you here.”

  What? The voice in the doorway startles me. It takes me a minute to focus on the face. I can’t quite believe what I’m seeing. It’s Mark Murano—Angelo’s friend. The junkie who introduced us. I let go of Grigorio’s hand.

  “What were you thinking when you talked to those cops?” Mark bellows from the doorway.

  All the stories I’ve heard, all the lies I’ve told. I can’t think of anything to say.

  “That was me with Angelo that night, you bitch! He was on his way to see you! You ratted us out. It was you.” His face is red, his hands shake. The bastard’s a pillar of fury.

  “Pipe down,” I say, edging away from the bed. “This man is dying.”

  “Let him.”

  I wish I could faint. But nooo.

  “Look,” I say, “you think I set myself up? You crazy? Somebody dropped a net on Angelo and we were in it.”

  “Who?” He moves toward me now. I step back.

  “I don’t know.” I still don’t, not really. How could I?

  “You sold us out!” Mark screams. “Why else are you walking around?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Why are you?” Now we’re facing each other, inches apart.

  “My wife paid the bail,” he says. He’s shaking me and shouting. “Bebe told me you didn’t even go in front of a judge. You did it. It was you!”

  That fucking bigmouth Bebe. “Bebe is grabbing at straws,” I say. Am I choking? “She doesn’t know any more than I do.”

  “She said Kit told her you ratted.”

  Kit?

  This is an outrage. We tussle. It isn’t much of a fight. He’s as dopesick as I am. I pull myself away. “You’ve got some nerve,” I say. Wait till Dick hears about this. “Look,” I say, “the shit I’m in is just as deep as yours. I’m not in jail, because it wasn’t me they were looking for. It was Angelo they wanted and it was Angelo they got. They thought I was someone named Laura. Who’s Laura? Some friend of yours?”

  The nurse peeks in. “I have to ask you to step outside,” she says. “You’re disturbing the patient.”

  “You better watch your back,” Mark says, withdrawing. “I’m not through with you yet.” He pauses in the doorway. “Bitch.”

  A sound comes from Grigorio. I lean close. “Tell Honey I waited,” he says.

  I find Honey in her kitchen, rearranging the furniture, hanging a light. “Glad to see you up and about,” I said, suddenly remembering that when we’d met ten years before, she was doing exactly the same thing.

  “Did you see Grigorio?” she asks. I nod, a terrible black cloud.

  “It’s okay, hon. Don’t get upset.”

  “I can’t help it,” I said.

  “I can’t complain,” she says, dragging herself back to bed. Now she walks with a cane. “I’m lucky I found him when I did.”

  “Did he have AIDS when you met him?” I ask. “Did you?”

  “We both did,” she says, pushing away her hair. She’s feverish. “I couldn’t tell anyone then,” she says. “I didn’t want anything to change. Anyway, it was worth it. I did what I wanted and I fell in love, too. What more could a girl ask? I only wish I could have finished my novel. That’s my only regret. That, and leaving Mike.”

  “He knows you have AIDS now, doesn’t he?”

  “I’m not sure if he does,” she says.

  She’s not sure? “What’s this novel?” I say. I think I’m getting mad. “I didn’t know you were writing a novel.”

  Her ice-blue eyes are now a soft gray. “Write that book of yours, hon.”

  “I don’t know if I can. I don’t know anymore if drugs should be legal. I don’t know what I’d write.”

  “Just write your book, hon,” she says.

  Well, I’m writing it.

  SOMETIMES

  Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if what happened hadn’t. Probably, it wouldn’t have changed anything. It didn’t change anything. Life always goes on. Time does. Heroin doesn’t change that. You think it will, but it won’t. It lies heavy on your chest like an unripened fruit, never finishing what it starts. Time doesn’t stop and people you love slip through your hands against your will. Like Kit.

  “How much are they paying you?” I whisper in her ear. The truth, I think, is always quiet. “You turned us in, didn’t you?”

  She jerks her head away. “Why do you hate me?” she says. “Is it because you wish you could be with a man?”

  “You set us up. I know it was you. You wanted to run the business all along. I know how sly you can be. What kind of deal did you have? Did Dick promise to take me and leave you alone?”

  She can’t speak. She can’t move. I’ve got her.

  “Maybe Betty was right,” she says then. “You are crazy.”

  “You turned us in. You hate me. You’ve hated me since you were sick. I could never give you enough. Not drugs, not sex, not money. You wanted it all to yourself. You dropped that dime, it was you. That’s why Dick lets you go to Bebe’s every day. That’s why you still had dope when we were busted. That’s why everyone excuses everything you do—it was you all along. You hate me.”

  She pushes me into a wall. I wriggle free and push her back. She runs in the office and throws my typewriter through the window. She crashes a chair on my desk, tries to tear the folding table from the wall. I stand in the kitchen and watch. Then she hits me. She hits me again. I look in her eyes. She hits me.

  KIT’S GONE

  Kit’s gone. Cal Tutweiler came and took her to a rehab on Second Avenue. He’s off drugs this week. Good for him.

  I sit by the window and look out. Maybe I should open it. These windows have been shut for a year. I can see a few leaves on the trees outside, a ship passing on the river, people on the street below.

  She did it. I know she did. She won’t admit it, but she did.

  I stand up and puke on the rug.

  How could she do it? Why?

  Two weeks pass. I get clean. Kit’s still in the rehab under severe restrictions, with two more weeks to go. I haven’t heard a word from Dick, but she calls every day to say she’s co
ming home.

  They aren’t giving her enough methadone is what it is. They’ve cut her down too fast. Nearly everyone there is in for crack, and they stay up all night and pace the halls outside her room. She can’t sleep, she can’t eat, and they give her demerits when she doesn’t show up for breakfast. They won’t let her out for air. “I’m coming home,” she says. “I’m gonna check myself out and go home, whether you like it or not.”

  I don’t like it.

  I wonder why Dick hasn’t called. Then I wonder why I’m wondering.

  I pick up the phone and call my father. He’s had the operation on his heart and I want to do the right thing.

  “So,” I say, “have you been resting?”

  “All I can do is rest,” he says. “I’m so tired … it’s a terrible thing, getting old.”

  “You’re not old,” I say. “Take it easy.”

  “I have no choice but to take it easy,” he tells me. “You can’t understand how hard this is. I’m floundering here, doing nothing.”

  “Dad,” I say. “You’re recouping. That’s something.”

  “For instance,” he says. “This morning I got up, I went into the bathroom. I picked up my hairbrush and brushed back my hair. Then I flossed my teeth. Then I was pooped!”

  “At least you have hair to brush,” I point out.

  “Yes … yes … I guess that is something … to be glad of. Still, I’m a man, honey. I can’t just sit around and powder my nose.”

  “I know how it is,” I say.

  “You don’t know,” he replies. “You can’t know. You only think you can. You can’t understand till it happens to you. It’s indescribable.”

  “Dad,” I say. “I understand perfectly.”