Rush

by Wozencraft, Kim

  The smell of frankincense preceded them up the aisle, battling the scents of women’s perfumes, men’s aftershaves, and over it all, the collective breath of the parishioners. I was afraid of what I looked like.

  There we were, gathered all in a row, fifth pew from the front. Dad, Mom, Valerie, Michelle, me. And Jim. High Mass at the Church of the Good Shepherd. Yes indeed. Jim and I had scored a quarter ounce of coke that afternoon before making the drive to Houston.

  “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” The monsignor’s voice, even with the aid of the microphone, was barely audible and shaky with alcohol.

  I stood between Michelle and Jim, wearing my court clothes, a conservative gray suit that had gotten at least a size too big for me.

  My sisters had pleaded over the phone. We’re a family, they’d said, we should act like a family. It’s only once a year, they said. It’s Christmas. You can make it for the day.

  I did my best to look like I was participating. My father sang beautifully from his seat on the aisle. I mouthed the words and tried not to sniff too much. I watched them go to Communion. I felt tacked on, an ingredient added at the last minute by a cook trying to salvage the stew.

  When we got home, I led Jim to my old bedroom. The single twin bed was still in the corner, wearing its light blue spread and matching dust ruffle. Above the small desk next to it, a bulletin board covered with medals, and ribbons of red and blue. First Place, Mile Relay, First Place, 220 Yard Dash, Second Place, High Jump, First Place, 80 Yard Low Hurdles. What did Babe Didrikson have on me, except that she’d gone the distance. On the dresser was a trophy from church-league softball, a monument to the sandlot league.

  “Man,” Jim said, “it’s like a fucking museum in here.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “My mother keeps talking about turning it into a study.” I stood staring at the ribbons, remembering. I had quit the team once, during my junior year, telling the coach that running around in circles no longer appealed to me. I’d managed to stay away for three weeks.

  Jim closed the door and came up behind me, pressing himself close and slipping his arms around my waist.

  “They gonna let me sleep in here?”

  “No way,” I said. “The folks are not big on mortal sin.”

  “Come on,” he said, “they know.”

  “Knowing and admitting are two different things. I’ll show you the guest room.”

  He reached next to the ribbons and took down a framed photo. There I was in high school, clearing a hurdle in front of seven other runners. Winning had been easy, had always been easy, because I’d loved running the race, I’d loved the race itself.

  Jim came out of his pocket with a vial and began tapping out lines on the photo.

  “First time I’ve been to a mass,” he said. “Preacher I grew up around said we’d rot in hell if we ever set foot inside a Catholic church. Said the pope was the Antichrist.”

  “Which pope?”

  “All of them. The position itself, doesn’t matter who holds it.”

  “So what do you think? Think you’ll burn?”

  “I’ve known that since I was eighteen,” he said, bending to snuff up a line. “I packed a bag and walked out the door, headed for Austin, and that was the last thing my mama said to me. You’re going straight to hell. Yelled it from the front porch, in front of God and everybody. Didn’t matter. She went kind of crazy after my dad ran off. Spent the next five years in the garden, pulling weeds and quoting from Corinthians. I didn’t know where I’d end up, but I knew I had to get out of Big Spring.” He handed me the tooter.

  I didn’t want any more cocaine. I had the shakes, a bad case of the shakes. We’d gotten a batch laced with crystal, I could taste it, and it would not leave me alone. My family was in the living room, waiting to say good-night. I didn’t want any more. I wanted rest. I leaned toward the photo. I didn’t want it. I did not want any more.

  Oh yes I did.

  I lay awake most of the night, my eyes too tired to read, the rest of me wired to the point that sleep was out of the question. I finally drifted off just as dawn was coming up.

  I was awakened by kitchen sounds, my sisters laughing about something while they set the table.

  The turkey was perfect golden brown. My father said it looked succulent. He sat at one end of the table, Jim at the other. My mother and Michelle were opposite Valerie and me. We wore the new clothes that we’d wrapped in brightly colored paper and given to one another the night before, when we got back from mass. There was even a dog, an arthritic collie named Herbert who’d been brought into the family a year or so after I moved away to campus. Herb sat at the dining-room doorway, his front paws planted on the imaginary line that he had been trained never to cross, his nose lifted to catch the aroma of dinner.

  I felt surrounded, as though I should be the one begging at the doorway. They were such good people, such believers, so very American. Michelle was on break from her biology major at SMU, Valerie a senior in high school. My parents? Nine-to-fivers. They kept the lawn trimmed and paid their taxes. They bought groceries and cheered, with restraint, for the Oilers. They voted Democratic, regularly, even in the primaries.

  They believed in law and order, and like all decent parents, were terrified about the drug problem. They thought my job was honorable. I couldn’t begin to explain.

  I watched my father carve the turkey meticulously, the way he did everything, and I tried to muster an appetite. When he finished, he smiled around the table and said, “Jim, would you like to offer grace?”

  Jim gave me a glance that said what the fuck have you gotten me into, then he smoothed his face over and said, “Certainly. I’d be honored.”

  During Jim’s prayer, I looked up to see my mother studying me, felt my mouth trying to smile at her, and looked quickly back down. I had her eyes. What did my eyes look like?

  “Amen,” Jim said, and the family echoed him.

  “Dig in,” said my father, reaching for the dressing. He spooned some onto his plate and handed it to Valerie.

  “So things are well in Beaumont,” he said, speaking to Jim.

  “Fine,” Jim said, “just fine. Have you been following the Oilers?”

  “What can you expect,” laughed my father, “from a team whose head coach is named Bum?”

  I put food in my mouth and I chewed. I think at that moment I wished that my father would jump up and slam a hand on the table and make some demands. Demand to know why his daughter looked like death warmed over, why she never called, why her eyes looked like they were coated with egg-white. Why she wasn’t laughing and joking at the table the way she used to.

  I wished for it and was afraid of it. But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t because he never had, had never questioned anything about his family. I wanted to deserve his concern. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t.

  I remembered the day I was hired in Pasadena. I’d gone to the house to tell them what I would be doing. My father asked only one question: was this what I wanted? I’d said yes, and he said, “I’m not thrilled about it. But you are, as they used to say, free, white, and twenty-one. It’s your decision.” That was it, it had been my decision, whether I was ready to make it or not.

  I looked around the table, at all the closed mouths politely chewing food.

  “Kristen,” Valerie said, “you’ve got to meet Steve. He’s soooh cute, and you can’t believe it. We’re going to see Rod Stewart next Saturday, and he got third-row tickets and everything, and he’s in a band, too, he plays drums.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. I took a bite of turkey and chewed it. It tasted like nothing.

  “What’s the name of his band?” Jim asked.

  Thank you, I thought. Just keep talking. I don’t know these people anymore. Everyone just keep talking, and I’ll sit here and force down this food and try to maintain.

  I rinsed the plates and handed them to Michelle, who put them into the dishwasher.

  “You do
n’t look so hot,” she said. “Mom’s worried.”

  “She said something to you?”

  “She said you looked bad.”

  “Why’d she tell you?”

  “Why does she always tell me? I don’t know. We talk.”

  “She shouldn’t worry,” I said. “It’s just long hours. Very long hours. It’ll be over soon and I can take a break. What’s happening at school?”

  “I’m not sure I like him,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Jim. There’s something about him. But he dresses nice.”

  Later in the afternoon, we watched football. That was safe, sitting around the television, listening to Jim and my father trade comments on plays. Michelle brought out the dress she was wearing to an upcoming New Year’s Party; it was chic and black and stunning. Everything Michelle wore was stunning. She knew how to direct her efforts.

  “I think you need satin pumps with that,” my mother said. She turned to me. “What do you think, black satin pumps?”

  “I guess,” I said. I had no idea.

  “Would you like some cake?” she asked. “Or there’s pecan pie.”

  “I’m still full from dinner,” I said. “Maybe later.”

  “All right then,” she said quickly, tones of hurt in her voice.

  I offended her without trying. I wanted to talk. I wanted to get the hell out of there.

  When evening came, good-byes were said and gentle hugs exchanged. It had always been that way, hands placed lightly on shoulders, as though if we squeezed too hard something might break. I watched my family standing on the front porch, waving at us as Jim eased the car away from the curb. I wanted to stay. I wanted to talk. I didn’t know them.

  When we rounded the corner, Jim’s whole body seemed to sigh. He draped an arm across my seat back and said, “Girl, your family’s a class act, but damn are they ever straight. I mean it’s 1978, for God’s sake, and you’re hardly sixteen anymore. I can’t go for that separate-rooms shit.”

  Maybe that was true, or maybe it was just that the vials were almost empty.

  9

  I am so damn good at what I do, I am crawling on the floor, crawling on the fucking floor, wearing the lovely black silk kimono that Jim gave me before he left me in his living room with a quarter ounce of coke and went out on “business.” Business is what we are about.

  I am crawling on the floor, scuffling, looking for one tiny speck of white, hoping for a rock, hoping for one more heart-slamming rush, wanting to get up there where I can smile eye-to-eye at the Holy Trinity and say, “Hey boys, what’s happening?” My body wants to go there and my body is crawling on the floor and my brain is trying to keep up, there’s a continent between my body and brain, there are light years between my eyes and hands, there is a nanosecond between where I was twenty minutes ago and where I want to be now. One more rock. One speck of white. So tiny. So little. Such a small space between misery and joy. I pick up white pieces from the brown carpet. My knees burn as I crawl. A bit of cotton, pieces of lint, a speck of white paint from the wall. Trash.

  I want to watch Jim put the needle in my arm, slide it smoothly into the vein, I love that little piercing pain that comes right before the ocean hits my heart.

  I am such a damn good narc.

  Jim and I, we could walk into a club cold and come up with three deals set up that same night and four more for the next day. We knew how to buy dope. We knew how to work our snitches, work the streets.

  So I pick up a little old jones, so what? We are the good guys. What we do is right.

  Right. I am crawling on the floor. There must be more cocaine here. If there isn’t more we have to get some. It’s evidence. We have to have something to turn in, even four percent will do. There must be more here. Somewhere. Have to find more.

  It’s like smelling blood, the way it takes over your body, the reactions, the smell everywhere, the pure, clean smiling smell of cocaine.

  Jim stood in the doorway, wearing his own kimono, maroon, with a dragon on the back. I saw his legs, the fine black hairs on his legs.

  When there is enough cocaine, too much cocaine, when I am kicking myself just a little bit higher every twenty minutes, watching the clock between shots, pressing my finger to my neck to count the pulsebeats, waiting for them to come down from one-seventy-four, down below ninety so I can do it again, sometimes hair starts to grow out of everything. Leg hair grows right before my eyes, on the pillows. On the walls, out of the carpet. Fine pale hairs or thick black hairs. I close my eyes and hair grows from the insides of my eyelids.

  We scored, scored cold a couple of nights ago, or weeks or months or years ago, I don’t know, from a scuzzball in a cowboy hat who said he had been the youngest bank robber ever in the history of the whole country. Gave Walker the night off and hit the clubs. When he was a kid, a nine-year-old kid, this cowboy, he helped pull a bank job. And his friend, standing there next to the cowboy, leaning on a pinball machine, got out of Huntsville yesterday and he’s got that look in his eyes like he’s waiting for somebody in a uniform to come snatch him up and take him back to the joint. Three grams of coke, not even a speck out of the tons that pour in, but we’ve got some real sorry asses here, some genuine fuckups, and a dope case is just as good as a robbery case when it comes to getting them off the streets. The baby bank robber, the cowboy, he said, “Hey, man, like we got to know you’re cool, man, like, here’s my rig. Let’s get down,” and while he’s saying it he’s got his hand wrapped around the pretty walnut grip of a Colt Lawman. So we do it, Jim and me, we run the dope right in front of his squinty red eyes, and it’s my first time with cocaine, and what did Willy Red know about a rush, this is a rush, I have never felt anything like it before, not even the heroin. I nod at God and whisper, “It’s nice up here,” and Jim is smiling at me because we’re both thinking of how this asshole will be screaming in court, “They shot dope! They fucking shot dope!” and when the prosecutor asks us did we ever take drugs we will say, “No sir, certainly not, we’re police officers,” and we will look so clean and All-American and the jury will just love us for taking armed robbers and dope dealers and fucking third-time recidivists off the streets. For making it safe for children. I find it right, somehow, that we beat the sleaze at their own scummy game. I am still capable of appreciating irony.

  I am crawling on the floor.

  Jim looked down at me, took the rigs from the coffee table and said, “I guess I’d better clean these up.”

  * * *

  They came to the door at all hours, staggering, stumbling, looking for sanctuary, a place where they could fix without getting hassled. Sometimes with Walker, sometimes because they’d heard on the streets. They gravitated to the scene: there’s a new kid in town.

  We bought their dope and wrote our reports, paying attention to times and dates and physical descriptions, omitting the details that might make them seem human to a jury: Nadean, a burned-out sixties azalea farmer, who also happened to grow marijuana and who delivered her pounds with a complementary houseplant and recollections of Woodstock; a guy named Buzz Saw who showed up to sell Quaaludes to his old friend Dice who “used to live here, I’m sure,” and I, who had six coke deliveries on Dice, calling to tell him Buzz Saw was looking for him and then myself scoring a dozen Quays from Buzz, whom I had never heard of until that moment.

  And then there were those like Lester the Mo-lester, who came by one day to show off his brand-new Smith and Wesson .38 Chief Special, that fit so nicely in the pocket of his baggy white pants and which he swore he would break in by shooting “the first pig that steps across my doorway,” leaving us to wonder whether he was trying to get a message across or just being his usual psychopathic self.

  He brought us to his home—come check out the latest merchandise—in a red ’56 Galaxy, bruising down Highway 10 like it was time to die, and we spilled dopesmoke and vodka all over a Sunday afternoon. We looked at hot TVs and stolen shotguns while Lester danced around the ki
tchen with a loaded syringe in each hand, getting ready to fix his not-so-sweet-sixteen girlfriend who had pulled jiggers that morning while Lester and his young brother Douglas broke the back windows of a couple of nice brick custom homes and went in to see what could be had while the owners were at church. We watched Lester tie Lisa off and inject the meth and we watched Lisa’s eyes get big and heard her gasp when the speed hit her heart. She made it to the kitchen sink before she puked, but came up smiling and looked on with fascination while Lester did the deed to younger brother. They wanted to party, and party we did, and yes I had a problem. I got the hard rush and smelled the chemical smell and tasted that burning acid crystal meth taste right there in the back of my throat even while I was just watching them fix.

  * * *

  Two days and how many cases later Jim was in the kitchen—what day was it, what month was it, how long have we been doing this—holding a Preludin under the faucet, washing the coating off. Five pink tablets in a row at the edge of the sink. A test tube, a glass stirring rod, two new syringes, and a pair of pliers.

  He looked up at me, his mouth curled into a question. The medicine smell rose up the back of my throat, oozed from my tongue, the Preludin taste different from coke or meth, and the needles were on the counter, begging.

  And this was what Jim liked: leaning over my arm, watching the blood mix, sitting back to look at my eyes before he pressed the plunger. It came in slowly, teasing my heart for a single long instant before it slammed like a head-on collision, standing me up, and I was coughing, spewing air, too much, he’d given me too much, and everything was red, Jim was red as he bent over his arm, and pink molecules danced in the room’s dead air, and the burn in my lungs, up the back of my throat, between my legs, and I went to my knees, and my arms were beneath me, bracing, waiting, my face on the floor, I smelled the carpet against my cheek, and Jim knelt behind me and grabbed my hips and it was nothing but fucking, pure and sweat-soaked and desperate, until we screamed, until we lay raw and gasping on the floor.