Hashimoto Blues

by Sarah Dupeyron

  “Hello?” He sounded fully awake even though it was 1:30 in the morning.

  “Max, I can’t come home. I’m messed up. I’m way too messed up.” It was an effort to make a coherent phrase.

  “Ellie? What’s going on?”

  “He made me smoke it. He hit me.” I started to cry.

  “Who? Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m really high. I want to come home.”

  “I’ll come get you. Where are you?”

  “You can’t. I’m in Canada.”

  “Shit. I’ll have Frank come get you. Or Raphael.”

  “No. I can’t leave the plane. I can’t fly home.” It was hard to keep my thoughts straight.

  “It’s okay. I’ll get someone to come wait with you. Do you want me to stay on the phone?”

  “No. I’ll be okay.” We hung up, and I sat in the grass until I felt too exposed, paranoia creeping up behind me and raising the hair on the back of my neck. The wind kept whispering to me, and I swore there was a guy standing by the trees. I crawled into the cockpit and closed the door. If I was going to spend the night tweaking out by myself, at least the plane provided a familiar place, a comfortable, locked location that was mine.

  About an hour later, headlights washed over the field. At first, I was tempted to hide. Or run. I felt like I could run a marathon. I didn’t know who it was and, in my current state, I imagined the tweaker coming back to harass me.

  “Ellie? Are you here?” I heard the familiar voice calling to me and realized it was Raphael. He had an apartment in Montreal, about 45 minutes away.

  I climbed out of the plane and ran to him. I don’t think I had ever been so glad to see someone in my life. I hugged him and didn’t let go.

  “Hey, it’s alright. Happy to see me, eh?” He held me and patted my back. “What happened?”

  I told him. When I finished, he pulled back and looked at my head. His face froze as he tried to hide his freaked-out reaction. He handed me a clean handkerchief and pressed my hand to the wound just above my hairline.

  “Here, hold this. Put pressure on it.” He looked worried. “Maybe we should go to the ER.”

  “No! They’ll see I’m high.” I knew my pupils were huge black saucers. The thought of people looking into my eyes and asking questions terrified me at the moment. “It’s not that bad, anyway. It already stopped bleeding.” I had taken the time to examine it with my fingers earlier and guessed it looked worse than it was. Even a small cut on the head bleeds a lot.

  “Do you want to go back to my place?”

  “No. I can’t leave the plane.” In my paranoid state, I was sure if I left it, somehow it would be gone when I came back.

  “Okay. We’ll stay right here. Let me get a blanket.” He pulled me off so he could take a blanket from his trunk, then he spread it on the ground. We settled down to wait.

  “Let’s look at the stars.” He tried to get me to calm down and focus. I was starting to feel better now that I wasn’t alone, but I couldn’t stop moving.

  I don’t remember much about the rest of the night. Raphael told me after I did some strange things. He never went into details, and I was afraid to ask.

  By the time the sun came up, I had a splitting headache and felt a bit nauseous, but I was confident enough to fly.

  “Are you sure? Your eyes look a bit funny,” Raphael said, clearly not convinced I was sober.

  “Yes, I’m fine.” I gave him a big smile. “Thank you for staying with me.”

  “You’d do the same for me.” He smiled and gave me a hug. “Say hi to Max for me.”

  “I will. Thanks again.”

  “Please be careful going home,” he added, a concerned look still in his eye. He turned and got into his car. He rolled down the window. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes! Really.”

  He nodded at my emphatic answer and drove away.

  When he left, I got the plane going and flew home. It felt like the longest trip, more like four hours instead of one. I was exhausted by the time I put the plane down on the landing strip, but thankful I was finally home. I realized I was still a little messed up and that Raphael was right, I should have waited. Being overly self-confident is one of the side effects of meth.

  I didn’t bother to put Papy Volant away. It could wait until later. Frank’s car was parked in the driveway, and I wanted to get into my house. Exhaustion was starting to take over now that the extreme energy was wearing off.

  As I came around the corner of the barn, Max came out the door and jogged over to me. He took me in his arms and squeezed me tight. I was so happy to be home, to feel him against me again.

  “Let me see,” he said and lifted my face, tilting it to the side so he could see where the tweaker hit me. His brows furrowed and his jaw clenched.

  He scooped me up, like I weighed nothing. I was too tired to protest as he carried me into the house. He set me on the couch, gave me a kiss, and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Frank sat on the coffee table in front of me with a grim look.

  “Hey, Ellie. You doing okay?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Your money’s in the plane.”

  “I don’t care about the money,” he answered.

  Max came back and handed me a cup of tea. Kneeling next to me, he washed the dried blood off my face with a cloth then swabbed the cut with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball. It stung enough to make my eyes water, but I didn’t move. He gave me a bag of frozen peas to press against my head.

  “Is it bad?” I asked.

  “No. Raphael called and told me it was, but he’s a bit squeamish about those kinds of things. You don’t even need stitches.”

  “Which one of them did it? The little short guy with the spiky blond hair?” Frank looked as if he could barely contain his anger.

  “Yeah. It was him.”

  Frank nodded and patted my knee. “Don’t worry. You won’t have to deal with him again.” He looked at Max. “Can I talk to you a minute?” They got up and went out to the porch. I could hear their muffled voices through the door.

  “Why didn’t you go with her?” Frank snapped. “I know you don’t like to fly, but --“

  “Wait a minute,” Max replied, his voice raised in anger. “If she’d asked me, I would’ve gone with her. I didn’t know you sent her to deal with some fucked-up tweaker.”

  “Didn’t she tell you it was a new client?”

  “No. We don’t talk about business.”

  “You two need to trust each other a little more,” Frank said. “You’re both so Goddamn secretive.” He added something else that was too low to hear, and the rest of the conversation was lost.

  I sipped my tea and, while I waited for them to come back, I realized Frank was right. I had been annoyed with Max for not telling me what he was up to every time he started a Game, but I never told him what I was up to either. I couldn’t expect that he would trust me with information like that if I didn’t trust him.

  Max came back a few minutes later and sat next to me on the couch.

  “Where’s Frank?” I asked.

  “He needed to take care of something,” he said and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. He kissed the top of my head. “It’ll be alright.”

  A few nights later, we were sitting on the couch, watching the Canadian news. I was about to get up and read when a picture of the tweaker flashed on the screen. I stopped in my tracks and leaned forward, suddenly more interested in the news than I had been in a long time.

  “The body of Derrick Milky was found early this morning in Parc Mont-Royal in the city of Montreal,” the news anchor read off the TelePrompTer. “It appears that he was shot in the head execution style. Milky is a known drug dealer. Police suspect this may be related to a drug war between two rival gangs.” He went on to the next story without pause.

  I looked over at Max. He had a half smile and a funny light to his eyes as he watched it.

  “Did you do t
hat?” I asked.

  “I didn’t pull the trigger,” he said, being evasive. He may not have pulled the trigger, but I was sure he and Frank had something to do with it.

  “But indirectly . . .?” I pried.

  “Ellie, we can’t let someone do that to you. We needed to send a message.” Max looked at me, as if deciding to take a plunge into something he would rather not discuss, and said, “Yes, I arranged it. I would've killed the guy myself if I didn’t have to ask you to fly me up to Canada to do it.”

  I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

  He looked surprised at my reaction then laughed. He wrapped his arms around me as I snuggled into his chest. I felt safe and protected with him. That was the last time any crazy drug dealer fucked with me.

  13.

  “Do you want to play a Game?” Max shifted to get a better look at my face, that familiar spark of mischief lighting his eyes.

  I was instantly wide-awake. “A Game, huh? What do you have in mind?”

  As he explained his plan, I rested my head against his chest and let my fingers trace the outline of his body, listening intently to his latest endeavor.

  When he finished, I sat up in bed and pushed the blankets aside. I needed cooler air despite the chill I felt. The wood stove was pumping heat throughout the farmhouse to ward off the nippy October night, but the cozy atmosphere it created before had evaporated. At the moment, the air just felt stuffy.

  I raked my fingers through my hair and shook my head, letting the sable curls bounce loose as I freed them from their elastic prison. An uneasy feeling had crawled into the pit of my stomach and settled in. Normally, when Max asked me to “play a Game,” I jumped on board without a second glance. This, however, was something altogether different.

  I rested my forehead in my hands and squeezed my eyes shut. “Are you insane?”

  He laughed, brightening his handsome features. “No, it’s perfect.”

  “Perfect? Hardly,” I retorted. “More like suicidal.”

  “Come on, the plan is airtight.”

  I took a deep breath. “Can you go over it again?”

  His sea glass green eyes searched mine, as if he could read something behind my dark irises. He nervously played with his hair, winding his finger in the forelock and yanking outward. “What don’t you get?”

  “It’s not that I don’t get it; I just need to hear the whole thing again.”

  He flopped back against his pillow and flung his arm across his face. “You’re going to say no.”

  “If I were going to say no, I already would have. I just need to be sure of this one.” My instincts were blaring red alarms, but I was willing to hear him out.

  Max rolled onto his side and propped his head in his hand, placing his other hand on my thigh.

  “Okay. It’s like this,” he said and started from the beginning, giving me the details once more, laying out all the steps from A to Z.

  I still wasn’t convinced. “Isn’t this a little too big for us?”

  “That’s why it’s perfect. We’re so small, we’re under the radar. Besides, we need something big now, eh?”

  He did have a point. Winter was coming and our money was running out.

  I didn’t know what to say and let my silence fill the room. Every sound seemed magnified, the clock ticking by the minutes, the droplets of water falling from the sink in the bathroom, the creak of the old house settling.

  I reached over to my night table for the slim cigarette case sitting next to the alarm clock. The case was antique, silver plated with the initials SLC engraved in fancy lettering on the outside and red velvet lining the interior. It had been a birthday gift from Max. He never forgot special occasions and always gave me something expensive, probably stolen, and almost always completely useless. The cigarette case was my favorite and the only one I found to be handy.

  Inside the case, packed in neat little rows, were ten fastidiously crafted joints. I sparked the doobie, inhaled the fragrant smoke, and tried to evaluate the plan. This was something big, something I needed to take my time to consider.

  Max waited for me to answer, his fingers tugging ever more furiously on his hair. Finally, he couldn’t hold back any longer and prompted me. “Ellie?”

  I turned toward him, ready to tell him I needed to think about it more.

  “Please say yes,” he said and gave me that irresistible smile, his teeth white against the dark stubble on his chin. It took only a second to crack my resolve.

  “Okay,” I relented. “I’m in.” I could never hold out against that smile. Besides, I had an itch for a little excitement.

  The worried lines in his face eased, transforming his expression into elation. He grabbed me and kissed me, letting his lips connect with mine, his tongue teasing lightly. Suddenly, he pulled away. His eyes sparkled like emeralds, glowing with the anticipation of a new job.

  “You won’t regret it,” he whispered. “I promise.”

  Max never broke a promise to me.

  At least not on purpose.

  14.

  The late autumn air held a midnight blue sky, crisp, cloudless and clean, a half moon lighting the landscape with a silver brush. It was perfect flying weather.

  Nearing our destination, I looked over at Max and winked. He smiled back at me, his easy-going attitude shining through despite his flying phobia. Even if he wasn’t having fun, he was good at faking it, that perpetual smile always lingering on his lips.

  I eased the plane onto the grassy runway, bumped it across the field, and came to a stop near a small crest of trees. Max was holding onto the crossbar, his knuckles white. As soon as I cut the engine, he unbuckled his seatbelt and threw the door open, exploding out of the cockpit like a jack-in-the-box. He stretched then bounced on his toes, happy to feel the solid ground under his feet again.

  “Nice flying, Orville!”

  Spotting Frank’s car at the edge of the field, Max hefted his belongings over his shoulder and ambled toward the vehicle, waving a greeting. The old Chrysler LeBaron was cream colored with orange rust spots, giving it the appearance of an ancient appaloosa put to pasture. Frank sat on the hood smoking a cigarette.

  I started the post-flight check, stowing the GPS and making sure I had enough fuel for the return. When I was done, I chucked the wheels and locked the doors, then made my way over to where Max and Frank were deep in discussion.

  “Max, I’m getting too old to be doing this much longer,” Frank said, then took a drag on his cigarette. His long legs braced himself on the bumper, arms folded onto his knees. His pose was casual, but there was something tight in his voice.

  “This is the last time,” Max said, always the optimist. “You can retire in style.”

  Frank shook his head and grinned. “You always say that.” He noticed my approach and stubbed out his cigarette.

  “Ellie! How are you?” Smiling warmly, he stood and kissed my cheek.

  “I’m great, Frank. How are you?”

  “Can’t complain.” He grinned, crinkling up his pale blue eyes. The wrinkles and folds of his aged skin framed his face in timelines, yet he managed to radiate youth through his seasoned visage.

  Frank opened his car door. “Shall we get going?”

  Frank drove up from Burlington earlier that day and picked us up at Laurent’s hayfield. Unlike Max, Frank had a clean record and was legally documented, therefore able to drive across the border legitimately. As he drove us to Laurent’s house, I sat in the back and watched the farms roll by.

  We often met at Laurent’s place before going on to whatever job we had planned. It was a good location to get organized and have the team gather. Even if he didn’t join us, we always gave him a cut for letting us use his field as a landing strip and his house as a rendezvous point.

  We knocked on the door and Laurent greeted us with a handshake. The old French Canadian looked his usual self, belly protruding over his waistband like a basketball shoved under his yellow striped p
olo shirt, white hair neatly combed back from his high forehead, feet clad in flannel slippers.

  “Entrez.” He waved his hands toward the kitchen table. “Asseyez-vous.”

  Max and Frank each took a chair and sat as directed. I took Frank’s overnight bag from him, as well as the two bags Max carried, his backpack and a garment bag, plus my own, and lugged them to the bedrooms. I left Frank’s on the bed in the room he usually slept in and continued down the hall to our room. Laurent didn’t like it that Max and I shared a bed. His Catholic upbringing looked down upon our unmarried state. He never said anything about it, but I could tell by the way he looked at me, like I was some kind of whore. Of course, he didn’t look at Max like that. In his mind, Max was a man and needed sex as much as the next guy. Nice double standard there. Who did he think unmarried men slept with?

  When I came out, they were seated around the kitchen table, dealing out a hand of poker. Max is going to lose everything he’s got in his pockets, I thought.

  All four dining chairs were taken up, the last one by a twitchy little man I didn’t know. No one bothered to introduce me, and he didn’t say hello, so I did the rude thing as well and ignored him. Max gestured to his own chair, asking if I wanted it, but I shook my head no and settled into the rocker in the corner.

  Laurent looked at me as he dealt the cards, as if he were deciding whether or not to include me in the game. When the hand came around to my end, he passed me by without making eye contact. That was fine by me. I had no interest in playing.

  What did interest me was the new addition. I kept sneaking peeks at him while he was peeking at his cards. His bad toupee of reddish blond hair looked like a dead rat perched on his head. His own hair stuck out in gray whips from underneath, giving him the appearance of a baby bird with half grown feathers. Bushy dark eyebrows, contrasting with the wig, popped up from behind his dark framed glasses. He was chewing on his fingers, the nails all bitten down to crescent stumps. He had gnawed one cuticle between his yellowed teeth so much that it was bleeding.