The Perils of Intimacy
Page 16
He comes close, and I can see already the pleading in his eyes. I could script out this little scene, because I’ve been here so many times myself I know exactly how it could go. I push him away. “You stink.”
“Sorry.” He plops down on the couch.
I visualize Marc coming up the front steps. What will he think if he sees me here with this other guy? Will Marc know enough to recognize a tweaker? Will it make any difference if he does?
Of course it will make a difference! I answer myself in a booming voice in my head. I do a little side glance at the DVR on the stand under our TV and see it’s twenty past seven. I let out an annoyed chuff of breath and then smile at Frasier to minimize it.
“Look, Frasier. I’m glad you came to me. But I don’t know what I can do for you right now. Not in the state you’re in.”
“What state’s that? Idaho?” he asks and grins.
I lean in close. “You’re fucked up. Let’s not play games. Do you want to do it again?” I hold out my hand.
“Do what?”
“Give me what you have.” I hold my outstretched palm closer.
“I might as well finish it,” he mumbles.
“Oh yeah? So why did you bother even coming here?” I ask. I continue to hold my hand out.
“Thought you might want a hit.” He brings out a pipe. A new one, this one looks cleaner and has a longer stem.
I stare at the pipe for a long time, then at him for a long time. “I do. I want a hit.” I glance over my shoulder at Kevin’s closed door. “I’d be lying if I told you different.”
Frasier pulls out a clear glassine bag. It’s full of white powder, shards. It makes my mouth water. I snatch it from his hand.
Frasier smiles. And I get it. I get his smile. There’s a certain pleasure in being the corruptor, the seducer. There’s a certain joy in dragging others down into the slime and muck with you.
“Go ahead, man. Smoke up.” He smiles wider.
“Why are you doing this?”
He shrugs. “You seem like a cool guy. And nobody likes to party alone.”
I stand up. My hands tremble a bit with need. My stomach hurts, feeling as though it’s twisting in on itself. My heart beats hard in my chest, faster and faster, so fast it scares me. Already I’m thinking about grabbing Frasier and slipping out the back door, what excuse I can make up to give Kevin and, eventually, to Marc.
Am I gonna do this?
No. No, of course not. I hurry into the bathroom between Kevin and my rooms. Frasier follows. “What the fuck?”
I don’t give him a chance to stop me. I don’t give myself a chance to stop me. I pull up the resealable closure on the tiny baggie and upend it over the toilet. The drug falls into the water, the bigger pieces freefalling to the bottom of the bowl. I push a shard that clings to the side off into the water with my foot. And then I flush, holding the empty bag up in a kind of triumph.
“Dude. That shit cost me over a hundred and forty bucks! You owe me.”
I move close to Frasier. “No. You owe me. You try this again and you’ll get the same result.” Sweat has broken out on my forehead. I’m not so much in shock that I did it to this guy I hardly know, but more in disbelief that I did it to myself. I know I wanted that stuff—bad. I guess the urge never goes away.
And that’s a sobering thought.
Frasier’s slack-jawed. “You didn’t think I was serious, did you?” I ask him.
“I think you’re nuts.” He looks longingly at the toilet.
While he’s looking, I snatch the pipe from his hand. Quickly, I wrap it in toilet paper, and then, in the sink, I smash it. I smile at him again.
Frasier says nothing for a minute or two. He shrugs. “I can just get another one. They’re five bucks at a smoke shop on Broadway.”
I nod. “That’s your choice.” I turn and go back into the living room. It’s seven thirty now, and I think, with a little nervous tremor, that Marc will be here any minute. I don’t want Frasier here when Marc arrives. I can’t have him here. One, Marc could get the wrong idea, and believe me, there are lots of wrong ideas he could get. And two, I need to be alone with Marc. I need to have that space and that intimacy of one-on-one to say what I need to say to him.
In the living room, I plop down on the couch, dying for a cigarette, but it will have to wait. Frasier moves to sit too. I hold up a hand. “Don’t. You’re going.”
“You really want me to go? Go buy a pipe? Some more T?” But he doesn’t sit. He doesn’t leave either. I can see what looks like despair on his face, or maybe it’s confusion. He didn’t come here to get high with me.
He came because he was lost.
“That’s not what you’re gonna do. You didn’t show up on my doorstep because you wanted to party with me. You came here because you needed me to stop you.” I smile. “Because, right now, you can’t stop yourself.”
Frasier looks hurt, but I see a little relief mixed in with the pain, the way a patch of blue can peek through a sky clogged with gray clouds. I give him what I hope is a kind smile and not one of victory. “Mission accomplished.” I hold up my empty hands. “I stopped you.”
Frasier backs against the wall, the one closest to our front door, his hands clutched behind his back. Even though I guess the kid can be no more than his early twenties, he looks older. Pasty skin, dark circles under green eyes. When did he last sleep? I can see him swallowing. I’m about to offer water when he says, voice pitched just above a whisper, “Thanks.”
Someone is thanking me for stopping him from using? This is truly a new chapter. I stand, and I turn him toward the front door. “You’re welcome. You’re always welcome. The single most important thing I can tell you right now is this. I. Am. Here. For. You.”
He nods. “What am I gonna do now?”
I laugh. “Change of plans from what you thought you had laid out for your Saturday night, huh?”
“I don’t know what I expected.”
“You came here,” I say.
“Exactly. But I repeat. What am I gonna do now?”
I press a hand to my forehead. “I have the feeling you expect me to say you can crash here or something. Especially when I just flushed your stash and broke your pipe. But I can’t let you do that for two reasons. One, my roomie, Kevin, would not allow it.”
Something occurs to me—a little epiphany. “He’s to me what I am to you now.” Frasier’s eyebrows come together in confusion. I tell him, “Don’t worry. That’ll make sense later. I hope.” I breathe in and then out, almost a little sigh. “And two, someone very important to me is coming by any minute now.”
And as soon as the words are out of my mouth, as if fate ordained it, the buzzer sounds.
“Ah! I think he’s here. And he and I need to have an important conversation. Alone.” I point toward the kitchen. “There’s a back door. I need you to leave that way. Now. No argument. I don’t know what you’ll do with the rest of your night, but I’m trusting you no longer have the funds or the will to use again.”
He gives me a sheepish grin that allows him to have some of his youth back. In fact, he looks like a little boy. “I don’t really have any place to go.”
And that gets my heart. It’s cold out there. It’s probably raining.
The buzzer sounds again.
I shut my eyes, feeling just as I did a short time ago, paralyzed.
Chapter 16
MARC
I’M NOT sure what I expect to feel as I watch Jimmy come to the front door in his bare feet. He’s smiling. Any fool could read that smile—he’s delighted to see me. I could look at that smile and easily pretend everything’s normal.
It’s tempting, save for the fact that things couldn’t possibly be further from normal.
In spite of myself, I grin back.
I didn’t expect to be happy to see him. If you’d asked me, as I walked to this very front door in the rain, in the dark of night, for my prediction on what I’d feel, I would have guessed rage.
I would have laid odds on it.
Yeah, anger. Rage.
So why the hell am I giving him a smile?
He opens the door. He looks young. Fresh. Handsome. Dare I say it? Wholesome.
“I’m so glad you came.” He opens the door for me, steps back to let me inside. He jumps in front of me to lead me to his own front door, and damned if I don’t take a quick glance at his ass as it rises and falls on his trip up the short flight of stairs leading to his apartment. I shake my head at my body’s own perfidy, its will-of-its-own reaction to a fine-looking young man.
That’s what Jimmy is. I can’t deny it. Even back when we first met, as twisted and horrible as that night was, I still remember opening the door to him. Looking back at that moment, it was like Dorothy opening the door to Munchkinland. Suddenly the world was in color. I was thrilled. He was cuter than the pics he’d posted online. Much cuter. I thought I’d made a good choice inviting this rough-around-the-edges guy into my home. It didn’t take long to prove myself wrong! Here in this moment, that last thought causes a little twinge to rise up inside, a little flicker of nausea.
He’s standing at his front door now, waiting for me to precede him into the apartment. Still smiling. Hope radiating out of that fresh-scrubbed face like a beacon. He looks way better than he did that night two years ago. Younger. Healthier. Full of vitality.
A selfish part of me wants to tell him to forget about resolving things. Let’s just hop into bed, get that frat boy getup off you, and get down to business.
But I won’t be that stupid. Not again.
I go into the apartment. I refuse now to smile back. I even give him what I know is my best wary and disapproving glance.
There’s a weird sense to the living room—a kind of energy I can’t put my finger on. It’s like something just happened here. Who knows what? Reality tells a different story. It’s just a run-down and empty living room, save for us. There’s dust on every surface. A stack of paperback novels on top of the TV stand, which is made from cheap particleboard crafted to look like wood. The rug, a Persian knockoff, turns up at one corner where a Converse sneaker lies, like a dead body, on its side. The coffee table is littered with an old issue of Time, a bunch of remotes, and a small plate with crumbs on it. Above the nonworking fireplace is a mirror, gilt-edged, with a little mottling on its silvered surface.
I catch sight of myself and think how I look like death. I dressed, with no conscious thought, all in black for our encounter. My hair’s still damp and darker from the rain coming down hard outside. And my face? It looks petrified. Like what I want to do more than anything else is turn and run.
And maybe I do.
But I need to see this through. Whatever the outcome will be. We both, I think, need some kind of resolution to move on, wherever that moving on takes us.
I plop down on the couch, legs spread before me. I kick off my shoes, trying to strike a casual pose, as though to say If anyone should be nervous here, it’s not me. It’s you, Jimmy. After all, I did nothing wrong.
Did I?
I force that niggling little question back down into my subconscious.
Jimmy stands in front of me, wringing his hands. “Glad you’re here, Marc.” He swallows. His gaze darts around the room and finally lights on me once more. He’s still smiling, but now the expression has morphed into one of sick fear. “You want somethin’? You hungry? A drink?” He glances toward the kitchen. “I got some Coke.” He chuckles nervously. “Cola, I mean. I know you like it.”
I shake my head. “I don’t need anything.” I sigh. “Can we just get this over with?”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, however much I can justify them as deserved, I feel bad because Jimmy looks crestfallen. I never really realized what that word meant before this moment. His smile, the very light of him, is snuffed out by my harshness. It makes me feel both guilty and powerful, all at the same time.
He sits down near, but not next, to me on the couch. He’s clutching his hands together, almost wringing them. “I guess I deserve that,” he says softly.
And then I feel what I predicted. The rage comes upon me all of a sudden, like a horde of bees buzzing around inside my brain. I feel the heat of my face flush. I want to hit him, which is a totally foreign sensation. I don’t think I’ve ever laid hands on another person in anger in my whole life.
And I won’t now. But it startles me that the urge rises up, undeniable, that I possess the capacity.
Jimmy begins to talk. “I want to thank you for coming over. I know you didn’t have to. I know you probably didn’t want to. So I get that you’re doing me a favor. A big one.” He leans toward me.
I hold up my hand. “Shut up.”
He leans back, and his shoulders rise up to meet his neck, as if I really did hit him. His mouth drops open.
“I said shut up. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Got it?”
He nods, and his eyes are alive with what I see as terror. He folds his arms across his chest. Is it a protective gesture?
“You might think I came here to hear your side of things. Why you did what you did to me. But you flatter yourself, Jimmy. Or is it JD tonight?” I shake my head. “But I need to speak. I need for you to know just what you did. Just how you hurt me.” I stop, a little breathless. That urge to pummel him is mixed now with a sudden need that I fight with all my will—to cry. I won’t give in to it. I won’t allow him to see my pain, not to that extent.
I go on. “Listen, what you did was terrible. It wasn’t so much that you stole from me. Except for two precious items, everything you took could be and probably was replaced. But those two things? One was my grandpa’s ruby ring. He left that to me, man. It wasn’t worth a whole lot, as I guess you found out when you pawned it, but it was a piece of him, and I really loved my grandpa. I lost him too soon….” My words trail off. I’m struggling mightily now not to cry. I draw in a big quivering breath. I clench and unclench my fists. I think of that ring, my mom handing it to me when I came home from college for Grandpa’s funeral after his sudden heart attack. He was her father, and she clutched the ring in her hand, eyes rimmed in red, waiting for me. All she wanted in that moment was to give it to me, knowing she was passing along a little bit of his legacy.
My only comfort is that I’ll always have that memory, but not the ring. I guess the memory is what counts? Scant comfort….
“You don’t have the ring, do you?” A flame of hope flickers to life inside me, hopeless as I know it is.
He shakes his head, staring at me like a dog waiting to be hit.
And for just a moment, I hate him. And I think how I never hated anyone, not really, in my whole life.
I lean back into the couch cushions, my mind awash with disjointed thoughts. I can’t remember what I wanted to say. I only know that I want to hoist myself up off this couch and get out of here. I contemplate doing just that when Jimmy says, his voice a sad whisper, “You said two things.”
“What?”
“You said you lost two things that night. I need to hear what the second thing was. Please.”
I close my eyes. The hatred I felt just a minute ago diminishes just a tiny bit. And maybe an even tinier bit of respect for the man rises up. “Okay. The other thing? The other thing was you took something from me that I don’t know how to explain. I had you into my house, man! I trusted you. It never crossed my mind that someone I’d have over, someone I’d be intimate with, would steal from me. Believe it or not, I never had a hookup do that to me ever.” I smile bitterly. “And I’ve had more than a few hookups.” I look down at the floor, thinking of the number of hookups I’ve had, especially back when I first met Jimmy. That number is impossible to quantify, I’m embarrassed to think.
I steer myself away from such musings and continue my diatribe. “The things you took were just things, even that damned ring, but you took something from me that went a lot deeper.” I stop and take a breath. “You took my trust. Not just in you, but in people. You stole
my judgment, which I was naïve enough to think was pretty good. Now I doubt myself so much that it’s hard for me to let anyone else in.” I stop and catch my breath. That last realization just came to me in the heat of this moment, and it grips me like icy fingers with its raw truth.
Is Jimmy—or JD—the reason I haven’t been able to get close to anyone in the recent past? Did he spoil me? And not in a good way?
“I’m sorry,” Jimmy says softly.
“No. No, I’m not ready for your apology. I don’t know that I’m even finished here.” I stare at him. And something occurs to me—he’s just another guy, another human being, crafted of the same stuff as I am. Again, I’m overcome by a paradox: wanting to wrap my fingers around his throat and wanting to wrap my arms around him. The way my feelings pull against each other, so contrary, is almost overwhelming. I honestly feel like entertaining both ideas is a portal to insanity. I can’t maintain both for long.
So which do I choose? I have no fucking idea.
“Do you get it?”
He nods. “I think I do. And I’m ashamed.”
“You took a piece of me that night. It’s a piece I don’t know that I can ever replace. So while you might see that night as a little bit of ripping some gullible dude off, I see it as something much bigger.”
“I don’t see it that way,” he says, and I think too quickly.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“I just wonder about your empathy,” I say. And all of a sudden, I feel like I’m beating a dead horse.
“You shouldn’t,” he says. “You shouldn’t wonder. I get what you went through, what you still go through, and it hurts me too, more than you know. I don’t say that to try and make you feel sorry for me, but because it’s true. Back in those days, I did lots of things I’m not proud of. Some of them make me shudder, make me feel sick to think about. Sometimes I can give myself a little relief by looking at that time as though I was another person.
“And I was. A different person. That’s what I want you to know, Marc. I’m not that guy who ripped you off. I’m not that addict. Well, I am, but my recovery means more to me than getting high these days. But the drug, where I was then, who I was then, all contributed to me being able to do things I can’t even imagine doing now.