by Rick R. Reed
Through all this, and my attempting to put my all into serving the new rush of customers, I can’t get my mind off the guy who came in an hour or so ago. I call him the tweaker. He stays with me because I think of Charles Dickens. Yes, Charles Dickens… and the Ghost of Christmas Past. Just a glimpse of that guy was like looking at myself in a mirror that has a magical ability to reflect the past.
I try to forget about him, but I can’t. So when there’s a lull in the flow of things, when everyone has their meals, their coffees, and their Cokes, I say to Erma, “I’m gonna take a little break.”
“Need to smoke?”
“Something like that.” It’s funny. I haven’t had a cigarette all morning, and even Erma’s mention of smoking doesn’t ignite any desire to do so. What I do have a desire to do is talk to the tweaker. I don’t really understand the pull, which is almost irresistible. I’m hoping this urge is not a veiled way of tempting me—a trigger. I shrug.
I walk over to the bar side of the diner, and there he is, sitting hunched over a half-drunk tap beer. His thin fingers drum restlessly on the edge of the bar, and I notice how his one foot never stops moving, bouncing up and down on the perch at the bottom of his stool.
“What are you drinking?” I take a seat beside him and smile.
He looks at me like I’m a ghost, like I just appeared next to him out of thin air. He leans back, regarding me. “Do I know you?”
I lean close. “No. But I know you.”
“What the fuck?” He musters up what I guess is his best dirty look and then returns to staring into his beer.
“So, what are you drinking?”
“Mac and Jack’s,” he mumbles.
I motion toward Kyle, the bartender, “Bring this guy another Mac and Jack’s. It’s on me.”
The tweaker stares at me. “Look, dude. I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but I’m not in the market for any action.” He sizes me up, looking me up and down. “Especially not of the gay variety.”
Kyle sets his new beer before him. I watch as the tweaker drains the first and starts in on my treat.
“You’re welcome,” I say.
He raises the glass to me while simultaneously rolling his eyes. “Thank you very much.”
Today seems to be my day for receiving sarcastic gratitude. I’ll take it.
I lean closer. “Look, I’m at work, so I don’t have much time, so I’ll come to the point. Before, when I said I knew you, it was because I know myself, and I see a lot of me in you.”
“You’re nothin’ like me, man.” He has some beer foam clinging to his upper lip. He wipes it away with his finger.
“Not so much anymore, but once upon a time I was exactly like you. Always sweaty, couldn’t stay still….”
“I’m the nervous type,” he says. He takes another sip of the beer, stares down at the bar. I notice how he tenses—his shoulders rise, hunching up.
“Yeah, right. I think we have a friend in common. Goes by the name of Tina?”
He puts down his beer and turns to me, allowing himself a brief eye connection. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.” I just let the words lay there for a minute or so. I’m not sure what I expected from this encounter or why I felt compelled to reach out.
As the silence stretches out, I think how I need to be getting back to the other side, to the tables I know will now need my attention.
I’m about to throw a couple of bills down on the bar for the tweaker’s beer when he says something to stop me.
“Yeah, you do.” He shrugs. “What are you? Some kind of undercover cop? You part of some sting operation? Because if you think you’re fooling me, you’re not. I see you parked outside my crib—or someone like you, watching me all the time.”
Ah, the tweaker paranoia. Classic. I’d almost forgotten about it. Once I used to think my neighbors were piping in voices through my radiator.
“Right, I’m an undercover cop who just happens to work as a waiter, and the waiting I do is in the hopes that some guy, high on T, will stroll into my clever trap and I can arrest him.” I chuckle at the scenario, but he doesn’t. He merely looks uncomfortable.
“You’re not a cop? You have to tell me, you know.”
“I’m not.”
“Are you sure? Because—”
I cut him off. “Will you listen to yourself? That shit is making you crazy. I know because I’ve been crazy like you.”
Erma peeks into the bar. Our gazes connect. She crooks a finger at me to come hither. She’s not smiling.
I touch his arm and am relieved that he doesn’t pull away. “Look, I gotta get back to my job.” I add, by way of reassurance, “You know, my job waiting tables? Anyway, I’ll be done in a couple hours. Maybe we could talk after.”
He doesn’t say anything and has resumed his position of staring down at the bar’s dark wood surface.
When I get up, he looks up at me and I can see his eyes are glossy—like unshed tears stand in them. “You look just like my brother.”
I cock my head. “What?”
“Nothin’.” The connection breaks.
“I gotta get back to work, but if you wanna hang and just talk a little bit more, I’ll be done soon.”
He only shrugs. I think I’ve done all I can do here and head back to what I know will be some very impatient customers.
LATER, WHEN my shift’s over, I go and look for the tweaker, but he’s no longer in the bar. Nor is he in the restroom.
I’m disappointed and don’t quite understand why. I should have figured he wouldn’t stick around to talk to a creepy dude like myself, sticking my nose all up in his business. After all, what’s it to me if he’s acquainted with Tina? He probably assumes I was either looking to score or hit on him. Still, I feel a certain sense of loss when I realize he’s not waiting. It’s been a hell of a day for loss, for disappointment, from the get-go.
When I step outside, he’s standing under our front awning, an unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He eyes me warily and then approaches.
The cigarette bounces up and down in his mouth as he asks, “Gotta light?”
I pull out my own smokes and the disposable lighter in my pocket. I hold it out to him. He takes it, lights up, and the smoke, a cloud, seeps out around the cigarette and through his nostrils.
I’m still addicted to this stuff. The sight of him, the smell propels me, almost as though I have no say in the matter, to ape him.
I exhale smoke and look at him. “Glad you stuck around.”
Smoking, he stares out at the busy street in front of us. More to the passing traffic than to me, he says, “I don’t know why. I got other things to do.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
His gaze cuts back to me, and he raises his eyebrows. He sighs, shrugs. “Nothin’.” He continues to smoke for a while and then says, “Nothin’ at all. Story of my life.”
“I think I know that story.” I start to walk away from the restaurant. “Take a walk with me?”
He eyes me warily. “What for?”
I stop. “Look, dude. I’m not trying to hook up with you. I’m not hoping for a hit off that pipe you have in your pocket.”
His eyes widen and his mouth drops open.
“I just wanna talk to you.” It occurs to me that if he’s going to ask why, I’m not sure I have an answer ready. I don’t know what fuels my compassion here, my need to connect with this stranger, but the intention, the will, is so strong that I can’t say no to it.
He shrugs and follows me without a word.
We head through the busy streets of lower Queen Anne. I let my feet guide us. Through no real conscious decision of my own, I find myself leading him up Queen Anne Hill. Let me tell you, the path I’ve chosen is a steep motherfucker, straight up for close to a mile.
Halfway up, I notice the difference in our breathing, in our whole demeanor. I’m huffing and puffing a bit—because of the smoking, I’m
sure—and my heart’s pumping at double time, but I feel pretty good, actually. Energized.
But the tweaker demonstrates the difference between a habitual user of crystal meth and one who’s been off the stuff for two years.
He’s panting. He can barely catch his breath. Sweat rolls down his face. He’s taken off the beat-up and filthy denim jacket he wore, and the pale blue T-shirt underneath is dark with sweat under his arms. A circle of sweat stain even blooms outward from his chest and around his collar. Add all this to the fact that it’s gray and overcast and probably only about, at best, fifty-one degrees out.
He notices me noticing. “What are you tryin’ to do? Kill me?” he gasps.
“Sorry. I just want to get us up to Kerry Park.” Saying our destination out loud informs me as much as it does him. “We can admire the view.”
“Really? Even if I’m dead?”
I laugh. “C’mon. You can make it. You’re a young guy.”
He gives me a dirty look. But we soldier on. Upward.
Once we get up to Kerry Park, on Highland Avenue, we collapse on a bench. Because it’s a weekday in the middle of winter, we have the park to ourselves, save for what appears to be a straight couple at the other end of the park, taking selfies with the gorgeous view as their backdrop.
The view from up here is one of the best in a city full of breathtaking views. From where the tweaker and I sit, the whole of downtown Seattle, the Space Needle, the ports, and what seems like all of Puget Sound spread out before us. It’s almost unreal, like a backdrop some movie art director set up.
Mount Rainier, because of the clouds, is the only landmark hidden from view. I watch as a couple of ferries cut through the slate-gray waters of Elliott Bay.
“You got a smoke?” he asks.
I finger the pack and the lighter in my pocket. “Seriously? After all that, you want a cigarette?” I chuckle. “Dude, you’re suicidal.” I contemplate giving him one because I kind of want another myself, but I shake my head. “Sorry. All out.”
He looks bereft. I mean, not just disappointed, but completely crestfallen. Almost like he’s about to start crying. Should I relent and feed his nicotine addiction? Is it that bad? “Dude, it’s not the end of the world. We can get more up on the hill. There’s a 7-Eleven.”
He seems to be engaged with the panorama before him and neither speaks nor looks at me for the longest time. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch him and notice the emotion clouding his features. I can see that under the sallow and slick complexion, the greasy hair and dirty clothes, there’s a handsome young man. Again, I think of myself and how I once was and how easily I could be him again.
At last he turns to me, and I see the tracks of tears on his face. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Jimmy.”
He doesn’t extend a hand for me to shake, but he tells me his name—Frasier.
“Like the guy on TV?”
“Yeah.” He nods. “Just like the guy on TV.” He snorts, and I relax a bit against the bench, glad I could make him laugh.
“You remind me of my brother,” Frasier says.
“Yeah? In what way?”
He shrugs. “You look a lot like him. That is, before he got into this crap.” He gropes in his pocket and pulls out his little glass pipe, stained with white residue and black on the bottom of the bowl. He looks around guiltily and slides it back in his pocket.
“He was a tweaker too?”
“Yup. He gave me my first taste.”
I close my eyes, and a wave of sadness washes over me. I think about the irony of his brother looking like me before he got into Tina and how I am now, post Tina—I hope. I should tell Frasier the truth. “I used to be a tweaker too, man.”
“I figured. You want a hit?” He slides his hand back into his pocket. He turns to look over his shoulder, searching, presumably, for a less public place for us to retire to where we can smoke up in peace.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to throw caution to the wind and fire up what’s left in that pipe right here in Kerry Park. But I say, “Nah. I don’t do that stuff anymore. But I used to be into it pretty heavy.” I even tell him I graduated to slamming—or injecting—toward the end. “I dealt that shit too. Only way I could afford my habit, once upon a time.”
“Wow. You’d never know it to look at you.” He eyes me up and down, taking inventory. “You look too wholesome. I had you pegged as some former frat boy at UDub.” He chuckles. I notice him fingering the pipe in his pocket.
This reference to fraternities and the University of Washington makes me laugh. I don’t think anyone’s ever used the word wholesome in the same breath with me before. I tell him that.
He shakes his head. “You look like the most powerful shit to ever cross your lips is maybe a couple beers on the weekend.”
“That’s funny. I don’t even drink beer anymore.”
“Good for you.”
We’re quiet for a while, just two guys sitting on a bench, enjoying the view. Well, it’s pretty to think so, anyway.
At last I ask, “Why? Why do you do it?”
“That’s a good question, especially in light of my bro.” He gnaws on his lower lip.
“Why? What happened to him?”
“Dead.”
It jolts me.
Frasier goes on. “He committed suicide. Jumped off the Aurora Bridge, back before they put up the extra fencing to keep people from doing that.”
I think, of course, of Miriam and how she died on the very same bridge.
Frasier lets out a breath, a shaky, trembling gasp edging on sobbing. “It was the shit that drove him to it, you know? He wanted to quit, man. Tried so fuckin’ hard too.” He laughs, but there’s no mirth in it. “I lost count of how many times he resolved to make the last time the last time, you know?”
I nod. “Oh yeah, I know.”
“I think he threw himself off that bridge when he just realized there was no way out.”
“And even with that, you still wanna get high?”
He pulls the pipe out again and lifts it, like a toast. “To his memory!”
“Put that away.” I push his hand with the pipe down toward his pocket. “Don’t you wanna get clean?” I draw in a breath, feeling my own rush of emotion rising up. “Don’t you wanna be free?”
I expect him to scoff at me, maybe make fun, perhaps walk away.
But Frasier turns to me quickly and grabs me up in his arms. He’s sobbing. This goes on for a couple of minutes, maybe more, and he doesn’t say a word, just cries.
I cry too.
Finally he pulls away, and there’s an intensity in our gazes as they look onto one another. He smiles through his tears. “I do. I do. But I don’t know how to get out of this mess. I’m just like him!” he moans. “I want to get away. I’ve tried. But I just can’t.”
I squeeze his shoulder. “You can,” I say softly. “If I can, anyone can.”
He shakes his head, and I anticipate him telling me it’s impossible. It’s what I would have said when I was in his shoes.
But he surprises me. “You’re him, aren’t you?” He touches my face.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re Tommy. You look just like him. You even talk like him.” He begins to sob again and puts his hand in his lap.
“Yeah,” I nod. “I’m Tommy. And I love you too much to watch you make the same mistakes I did. Give me that pipe.”
Without hesitating, he hands it over.
I get up and walk to the low fence that borders the park. The hill we’re on drops sharply downward beyond the fence, and I raise my arm and fling the damn pipe as far as I can. I return to Frasier. “Baggie?” I hold out my hand.
He brings out a tiny pink glassine bag that looks way too familiar to me. I feel both longing and disgust inside me. There’s very little left in there, some powder, one small rock. I return to the edge and open it, let its contents fly off in the wind. I move to a garbage bin and st
uff the Baggie down deep inside it, under all the crap already in there.
I return to him. “There. You’re free.”
“It’s that simple.”
I nod, stop, and then shake my head. “You know it’s not. But Tommy wants you to make this real.” I nod and smile. “He’s watching.”
Frasier looks around, as though he expects to see his brother hiding behind a tree or a bush.
I pull out my phone and hold it in front of him, turning it. “You got one of these?”
He pulls his out. “Of course. Who doesn’t?”
It still amazes me that even the poorest of the poor, these days, can manage to own a cell phone. But I recall what a lifeline one is when you’re a druggie, even if you’re homeless. I hold out my hand. “Give it to me.” He does, and I input my own name, number, address, and e-mail in his contacts. I want him to have every avenue possible for contacting me, if he wants to. “I’m Jimmy. Not Tommy. I’m here.” I hand back his phone. “Remember that. Call me. You can come to a meeting with me. I’ll help you. God help me, maybe I can even be your sponsor one day.” I get up. “I have to go now, Frasier.” I pause for a second and then say, “Brother.” I smile. “I trust that you’ll be in touch.”
I start away. He calls, “Wait! Don’t you want my number?” I stop, thinking about it, wondering if it’s a good idea. I could call him if I don’t hear from him. But at last I shake my head and say, “Eventually. But I wanna leave that first contact up to you. A very wise woman once told me that only one person holds the key to our freedom, and that’s ourselves.”
He nods. “I’ll call you.”
I smile. “No maybes.”
“No maybes.” He looks down at his phone screen. “I will.”
“I believe you.” I walk over to him. “Stand up.” He does and I hug him, long and hard. He pulls away first.
“Wow. This was quite a coincidence, huh? Us running into each other? Thank you.”