Satisfied that my Dilaudid was as fine a powder as I could get it, I used the razor to organize the powder into two neat lines. I rolled up a fifty-dollar bill and hunched over the coffee table. I closed one nostril with my left index finger, inserted the bill into my right nostril, and inhaled my two lines. Nothing to it. I leaned back on my couch and waited for the euphoria. Heroin never worked as quick as cocaine, so I figured Dilaudid would take a few minutes to kick in. Other than dizziness, I didn’t feel anything. But then, one by one, then in droves, the soldiers of joy came marching home. Calmness slayed the anxious beast growing inside me. Not even alcohol was this effective. I felt happiness that I hadn’t felt since living in Spanish Hills. The pain was receding.
And from where did this happiness derive? Atomized hydromorphone, true. But how did I get that? Money. Money bought the Dilaudid. Money made the Dilaudid. Money researched, synthesized, manufactured, and marketed Dilaudid. Money paid the doctor to prescribe it and the pharmacist to count it. Money had returned to save the day when all else failed. Money had bought my happiness, just like old times.
“Hey, this is Susie.”
“Hey Susie, this is Caish, how are ya?”
“Well hey there, how ya doin’?”
“Yeah, I’m good. Hey, I’m out of Lortab, ya have any?”
“Mmm, nope. Fresh out of those lil’ gems, but I could get you some Vikes.”
“What about Dillies?”
“Mmm...” I could hear Susie take a drag of her cigarette, “Haven’t had those in weeks. You’re the only one ‘round here with a Dilaudid prescription. When you’re out of those you’re on your own. I got plenty a Vikes for ya though, come get ‘em.”
“Ah, I gotta get Tabs or Dillies, I piss tomorrow morning.”
“Vicodin tests the same as Lortab, sweetie, you’ll be fine.”
“You sure?”
“Hun, you ain’t the only one takin’ piss tests. Come on over.”
“Alright, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
The Crown Vic made a clunking sound that I had been meaning to get looked at, but otherwise made the drive to Susie’s trailer without any incident. It had been nine months since my first prescription, and life had dramatically improved. I had settled into my new apartment and made some new friends. Through Alcoholics Anonymous I met Crack-Hand Jack, Shanice, Tobie, Simple Ed, and, of course, Susie. Although I would never associate with these types of people under regular circumstances, I made an exception. True, your friends say a lot about you. But these people were more “friends” than friends. It was a mutualistic relationship. We were as much friends as the shark and its pilot fish.
These anonymous alcoholics introduced me to the perfectly legitimate world of painkillers. I’ll be the first to admit that I used to look down my nose at users of heroin, morphine, oxycodone, and methadone. I only ever took opiates to help with my anxiety back when I lived in Spanish Hills. But I had been born again and seen the light. Doctors, judges, and law enforcement officers all approve. Not only that, they use, too. We all use these shortcuts to joy. There’s no shame in it. An entire class of drugs with society’s stamp of approval. Sure, some were arbitrarily outlawed (like heroin), but others, with a virtually identical chemical structure (like buprenorphine or hydrocodone) were legal enough to carry into a courtroom and swallow in front of a judge.
No longer did I spend my days in maximum boredom. I relaxed on clouds of euphoria and mingled with the fine folks of Missoula. They weren’t so bad after all.
A few months ago my Suburban was wrongfully repossessed, so until I could get it back I was driving a souped-up 2011 Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. It was completely murdered out and had a supercharger that could smoke the tires at any speed. Totally badass. With less than one hundred and fifty thousand miles on the clock, I basically stole it from the dealer for three thousand dollars. Now there was just that clunking that I needed to get around to fixing.
Susie lived in a double-wide at the Green Hill Estates Trailer Park in the south side of town. My Crown Vic crumpled a beer can as I shifted into park in front of her trailer. Part of me can’t believe that I’m standing in a trailer park. Just a few years ago I would have scoffed at the idea that I’d have any business among these pastel-painted heroin hovels. Susie peaked through her bent plastic blinds then stepped out to meet me on her splintery wooden stoop. She was wearing pink shorts and a beige bra. Her hair hadn’t been cared for in days and she was still wearing last week’s makeup.
“Doin’ alright, Susie?” I asked.
She spoke past the last of a cigarette, “Yeah, fuckin’ swamp cooler’s broke again though, so we all sweatin’ our asses off.” Susie lived with two of her five kids and a man named Tyler Ogden. Tyler’s full-time job was muling drugs across the Canadian border. He was a member of the Montana Mayhem Motorcycle Club and had the tattoos and scars to prove it.
“Ya holdin’ up alright?” Susie asked.
“Oh yeah, real good.”
“Outta tabs huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, “and my Dilaudid isn’t up for a refill for a week.”
“Why you ain’t got more than two scrips?”
“My probation.”
“Mmm...”
“Yeah. Couple more years a that then I’ll be able to get more.”
“Well ya look good, hun.” She sucked the last of the smoke out of her cigarette and flicked the butt into the gravel road. “I got your Vicodin, ya got my scratch?”
“How are the markets today?”
“Up, but that ain’t nothin’ for your rich ass. Eight dollars a pill, five hundred milligrams each.”
“Oh come on, Susie, eight dollars a pill? Tobie’s sellin’ Percs for five a pill.”
“Then go buy his pills! Shit. Actin’ like I ain’t doin’ you a favor scrapin’ these hydros together. I got twenty pills, ya want ‘em or not?” Susie’s sass was almost too much to bear. I gave her a hundred and sixty dollars and she handed me a plastic baggie with a handful of white pills stamped “VICODIN.” Susie scoffed at me when I counted the pills and let her screen door slam behind her when she stomped back into her trailer.
On my way home I stopped at the gas station and bought five lottery tickets: two Powerballs, two MegaMillions, and one Scratcher. I still hadn’t won anything more than a couple bucks since my five thousand dollar win a couple years ago. Which, just based on the odds and statistics, meant that a big win was coming.
Back at the apartment things had gotten away from me. I had fallen hopelessly behind on the laundry, dishes were piled high in the sink, and the carpet had so many crumbs in it that it was becoming more food than fiber. I cleared a spot on the couch in front of the coffee table and sat down in front of my twenty Vicodin. Since I was peeing tomorrow, I didn’t want to overdo it. So I pulled out four pills and ground them into fine powder, then inhaled them and let the bliss overcome me.
Jennifer gave me the usual scornful report the next morning: “Well, you peed mostly clean, other than boatloads of opioids.” It was her backhanded matriarchal way of saying that opioids were in some way dirty and that I should stop taking them. She didn’t understand the kind of pain I lived in.
“Yeah, my back was really bad yesterday. I could hardly get out of bed.” I had learned that the back was a much better reason to take opioids than migraines. Migraines worked the first few times, but nobody believed you if you said you had migraines every single day. My doctor would only prescribe small batches of Dilaudid for my head, but for my back I could get a healthy daily dosage of Lortab. Back pain is also less conspicuous. Everybody says they have back pain. Usually lower back pain. Doctors hardly even look at you when you complain of back pain, they just give you a ticket to paradise and go about their rounds.
“Caish, you gotta stop using opioids,” Miss Trunchbull said.
“I wish I could. I do. But I have so much pain. I can’t even function without something to help.”
She just sho
ok her head and gazed at me. I was sitting in the hallway on the shitty chairs in front of her office. She was looking at me over the top of a clipboard. She knew that no matter how strung out on opioids I got, it was not a violation of my probation to take prescription medication. She looked like she was going to say something else, but then just walked back into her office.
This became my new routine. Through Alcoholics Anonymous I met all sorts of new friends, like Demerol, Norco, Xodol, OxyContin, Sufenta, and Ryzolt. Susie and Tobie usually had endless supplies of most of these. Crack-Hand Jack knew a guy who knew a guy and got access to Embeda—essentially morphine, the queen of opioids (or so I thought at the time). And Shanice had access to Codeine. Simple Ed, bless his heart, could only get prescriptions to Reprexain, but had a prescription from every doctor in town. He had something like thirteen prescriptions to Reprexain.
For years I restrained myself to just my prescriptions. I needed to take more than what was prescribed, but had only taken the prescribed dosage. Then, at long last, my probation ended. I was free. There were some forms to fill out, some time in front of a judge, and then Jennifer Trunchbull just said, “See you soon,” and that was it. All done!
To celebrate I drained my bank account on two hundred grams of cocaine (which was easier to come by in Missoula than I would have expected), and a shopping cart full of alcohol. I invited the crew over to my apartment. My neighbors didn’t mind the noise, so we made some. We got the pizza delivery guy to do a couple lines with us. We lived that night to its fullest. Some of us had sex, but I can’t remember who. Or with whom. But I’m pretty sure we did. We passed out one by one.
Early the next morning we were woken by pounding on my front door.
19
Simple Ed shook my shoulders. “Caish, somebody bangin’ on tha door.”
I stumbled through my living room and looked through my peep hole. It was Caleb. I unbolted my deadlock and cracked the door.
“Caleb?”
“Can I come in, Caish?”
“Uhh... I wish you would’ve called first. I have a few guests that are still asleep.”
“It’s noon, Caish.”
“Mhm.”
“We need to talk.”
“‘Bout what?”
“About you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, Caish, you. Can I come in?” Caleb was looking over my head and into my apartment.
“No.”
“Okay, let me buy you lunch. It won’t be long, I only have a one-hour lunch break.”
“Umm... I’m pretty tired. I just woke up Caleb. I appreciate the offer, but I gotta shower and all that. Get dressed and stuff. Let me call you later, we’ll talk.” I had no intention at all of calling him later. Talk about me? What are we, children? I’m an adult living my life. Caleb should be worried about his own life.
“I’m going to bring you dinner tonight, Caish. With wine. Good wine. I’ll come by at seven. Will you be here?”
“Yeah, sure, seven. Wine.”
“Okay, see you then.” Caleb said, then turned and walked down the hall.
I closed my door, and leaned my back against it. The shades were closed but the stubborn sun found ways to spill into the room. I pulled a cigarette out of the pack sitting on my counter and surveyed the room. Liquor bottles were scattered throughout. Some empty. Clothes, cups, pizza boxes, pizza, pill bottles, plastic wrappers, and other random objects cluttered the floor. Tobie was asleep on the ground next to the coffee table. He was naked and had a rolled up ten-dollar bill in his right hand. It looked like he passed out before he could get to the last of the three lines of coke he had lined up. His upper lip was pasted with a smear of sweat and white powder. I stepped over him, plucked the bill out of his hand, and snorted the line.
Susie was lying face down on my couch with a blanket covering her legs. She was an ugly sleeper. My TV had a hole in it. Not a crack in the screen, a hole about the size of a ham sandwich straight through it. That was probably Simple Ed. I shuffled into my room and found Simple Ed fast asleep on my bed, hand wrapped in one of my white—now blood red—towels. Mystery solved. Shanice was also in my bed. Her naked body was knotted up in sheets, her leg dangled off the side of the bed. Crack-Hand Jack and a few new friends were in my guest room. They were sleeping like a ball of snakes. Crack-Hand Jack was cradling a bottle of Bacardi into his chest, like he was trying to breastfeed it in his sleep.
After finding some clean clothes, I went to the bathroom. There was another line of coke on the counter, so I inhaled it. I pulled the shower curtain back and almost stepped on a duck. Not a rubber duck, an actual feathered, breathing, quacking duck. We looked at each other in a confused silence. I tried to think of how a duck got here, but couldn’t come up with anything. Tobie or Shanice probably brought it over as a joke.
I had to shower, but I couldn’t with the bird standing there. I walked back into my room and nudged Shanice awake.
“Hey. Shanice. Shanice.” She was coming to. “Shanice, is that your duck in the bathtub?”
“Hm?” Shanice stretched and rolled over.
“Shanice. Hey, Shanice, wake up. Is that your duck in the bathtub?”
“Mmm... Georgia?” She asked.
“I don’t know its fuckin’ name, but I need to shower.”
“Mmm... then shower.”
“I can’t. There’s a fuckin’ duck in the bathtub.”
“Umm...” Shanice’s eyes were opening. She leaned up on an elbow and squinted at me. “Umm... then take her out of the bathtub.”
“I can’t. You do it. It’s your duck.”
“No, she’s Tobie’s duck. And her name is Georgia.”
“Shanice, will you please just come take this duck out of the bathtub? I need to shower.”
Grumbling, she wrapped herself in my sheet, walked into the bathroom, and walked out with Georgia under her arm. “Where should I put her?” she asked.
“Jesus. I don’t know. The kitchen sink?”
“K. What if it’s full though? I think there’s dishes in it.”
“Ugh, Shanice, I don’t care where you put the fucking duck.” I walked back into the bathroom and turned the shower on. I stepped in after the duck shit had washed down the drain.
By the time Caleb came over with dinner, the apartment was back in tip-top shape. After the others woke up and left, I called a house cleaning service to come take care of everything. I told them they could keep any alcohol they found. While I was at lunch and running errands they polished the place clean. I came home to a spotless apartment. They even did my laundry for me and brought it back later that night. They earned a huge tip.
Caleb brought takeout from Outback Steakhouse and a bottle of cheap wine.
“I know you like restaurant food, so I figured I’d bring some Outback.” He helped himself to my cupboards and set places for us on my table. “Had quite the night last night, huh?”
“Yeah. Just a little get together with some friends.”
“Sounds like a good time.” He filled two of my glasses with water from the tap and poured red wine into two of my wine glasses. “I think we’re ready to eat. Shall we?”
Caleb kept the conversation alive by asking about how I’d been in the last few years and informing me what he’d been up to. We had only spoken a few times since he and Toni had me over for dinner along with our other siblings. “What’s new?” he wanted to know. A lot was new. Especially now that probation no longer chained me to the iron ball of opioids. Not that opioids weren’t wonderful, they were. Oh God they were. But nothing could replace pure, white, glorious cocaine. And now that I could freely drink again the clouds were parting. Hopelessness was departing.
After dinner, as expected, Caleb began his intervention speech. He had been speaking with Jennifer and he was worried about me. Didn’t want me to “fall off the wagon.” He had heard that I was taking painkillers and “runnin’ around” with Crack-Hand Jack—a known pusher.
Then he
offered to pay my rent. The proposal came with a stipulation that I work for Toni’s uncle as a mechanic. Caleb told me that he thought a nine-to-five would help me get acclimatized to middle-class living and would help me stay responsible with my drinking. He seemed to know that I was almost out of money. Maybe he was just guessing. If so, his intuition was right. I had enough to pay my bills for three more months before I had to sell more stuff. If he covered my rent, I could cover my car payment and other bills. “Just until you’re back on your feet,” he said.
Humiliated, but relieved, I accepted his offer.
Toni’s uncle wanted to see me first thing Monday morning, Caleb told me. 9:00 a.m. sharp. Show up ready to work a full day. I gave Caleb a rent receipt on his way out.
Monday morning came quicker than expected. Still, I wasn’t too late. Toni’s uncle was called Malcolm Patchett. He bore an uncanny resemblance to Michael Clarke Duncan. As I would soon learn, everybody at the shop called him John Henry. We got off to a rocky start since he couldn’t get over the fact that I was a few minutes late. He was also treating me like I was some kid fresh out of high school. He obviously didn’t know that he was interacting with an emeritus millionaire. I had a house in Malibu worth more than the entire city, cars that cost more than Malcolm’s neighborhood, and servants I paid more than Malcolm makes in a year. And yet, he treated me like a child. Even after the first couple of weeks of working there, he micromanaged me. Hovered over me. Gave me orders then explained to me how to do every tiny task along the way. By the end of the first month I had a hard time hiding my contempt. Not just for Malcolm but for everybody at Courtright Automotive. Everybody disrespected me. Ordered me around. My paychecks were nothing. $748 every two weeks. I was working a labor-intensive humiliating job for $1500 a month. Hardly enough for ten grams of cocaine. But my bank account was down to $4,109.38. So I put up with Malcolm and the others at Courtright.
Malibu Motel Page 27