The Heroin Scene in Fort Myers

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  "What are you doing?" I asked.

  "Miriam is going on a date. But she's never done that sort of thing, so I'll go with her," she replied.

  "Bullshit! You're not going anywhere with Miriam to fuck some guy. What the hell is wrong with you?" I replied angrily.

  "I'm not gonna let her go alone. I'll just sit in the living room while she fucks him in the bedroom," Veronica said.

  Yeah, right. I didn't believe a word she said. I knew she was going to go on a "double" with Miriam and go fuck someone, and use the opportunity to have sex with Miriam.

  "You know what? Fuck this shit! I am so done with you. Go do whatever the fuck you want, you piece of shit! I'm outta here," I scoffed.

  Obviously she didn't just ask me into the bedroom earlier to make a baby, but because she figured it would shut me up, and I wouldn't say anything if she was going to go off with Miriam now.

  When she realized her plan didn't work, she frantically begged me not to leave: "Please don't go! PLEASE! PLEASE DON'T GO!!!"

  She was screaming at me with tears in her eyes. She didn't care how this looked in front of the others. For just a minute, she was unguarded, and let her true self shine through. She really did care about me. She was a totally selfish, inconsiderate, manipulative, fucked-up-in-the-head person, but she really did have feelings for me, and she really didn't want me to leave her. And for that short moment, I felt closer to her than I had ever felt.

  She told Nina to go instead.

  Over the next few days, Veronica and I had sex every day, and argued every day, because she kept acting like a psycho on all that crack she was smoking.

  Anita hated Miriam, because she knew she had been replaced, and she was no longer going to be part of our happy little threesome family. She started to dislike Veronica more and more as well, and whenever Veronica wasn't looking, Anita would be affectionate towards me, give me a kiss or hug me.

  At one point Veronica claimed her mother was going to come pick her up, and that I couldn't be there for that, for some strange reason. She told me I would have to leave, and come back at 10 pm, after her mother dropped her off again.

  When I got back at 10:30 pm, Veronica still wasn't home, despite her 10 pm curfew. I asked Anita if Veronica was really at her mother's house in Naples. Anita said "Uh, yeah," but she didn't sound very convincing. I told her I was so tired of not being able to trust Veronica at all, for even a second.

  Anita replied: "You know how Veronica is. She's never going to change. Why do you put up with it? Why are you wasting your time with her? I'm looking for a good man like you. I want to settle down and start a family."

  I had lost count how many times one of Veronica's so-called friends had tried to make a move on me by now. But Anita was right. Ever since I had known Veronica, all she had ever done was lie to me and make me miserable. Even in the very beginning, when her leg hurt and she told me I was the only one she wanted to have sex with, and then someone else's cum slowly dripped out of her pussy.

  Even after she had lost me for a few months, and then begged me in tears not to leave her again a few nights ago, she was still cheating on me now.

  "Let's have sex," I told Anita. We went in her bedroom, and she sucked my dick for a while, before I got on top of her. It was after midnight by now. Veronica still wasn't home, but I was kinda hoping she'd walk in on us. The thought actually turned me on.

  But she didn't come home in time. Anita and I didn't get caught in the act. It was past 1 am, when Veronica finally got home. She was so high, she couldn't even stand up straight or talk. She obviously had not been with her mother. She probably fucked that dope boy Urban and he gave her a bunch of drugs for it. I asked her where she was. She acted all snooty and said she didn't owe me any explanation. I got pissed, so I went home.

  The next day she called me and asked me to come back. I got there around noon. A couple of different people were there, smoking crack. Some of them left eventually, but a short latin girl stayed. She had just been released from jail and had nowhere else to go.

  Veronica told me that Kathleen used to have this sugar daddy Tim before she went to jail, and that Tim was still coming to the house. She claimed he was fucking Anita, and that when he showed up unexpectedly at the door this morning, Veronica didn't let him in and told him to leave, because Anita wasn't home.

  Coincidentally, Veronica suddenly had a bunch of new clothes from Victoria's Secret, and she had money and drugs. Hmmm.

  Then my prescription sunglasses went missing. I was sure the short latin girl had stolen them. She was totally fucked up from smoking so much crack. I kept telling her that the glasses won't do anyone any good, because of the prescription. She acted like she didn't have them. We all started to search the whole house for my glasses. And I ended up finding a freshly used condom in Veronica's nightstand. She obviously had fucked Tim earlier that day, and then quickly hid the condom in the drawer, before I got there. I was so disgusted with her.

  Later that day, she told me her friend Shelly was going to come over, and that she wanted to fuck her. I stuck around for a little while, and met Shelly. But once they kept whispering to each other in the bathroom together, I left. I couldn't bear to be around this psychotic shit any longer. Veronica really didn't give a fuck how her behavior affected me. She was too high, too brain-damaged, to consider anyone's feelings. I went home that night. Shelly messaged me on Facebook. She told me it was nice to meet me, and asked me why I left so suddenly. I told her I just couldn't take this shit with Veronica anymore.

  LUCY AND VERONICA

  "Jealousy is the fear of comparison."

  Max Frisch

  The next morning I got a call from Lucy. She had been released from jail a day or two earlier. Perfect timing!

  She was staying at the Super 8 on Colonial Boulevard, with her newest pimp, G-Force. He was a black kid with short dreadlocks. He had taken the place of Las Vegas. He pimped Lucy out, sold her drugs, had sex with her, and took all her money. These scumbags were the kinds of people Lucy thought were her "friends." It made me sick.

  She thought that as long as they didn't hit her, they weren't really her pimps. I guess she had never heard the saying "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." These lowlives knew they didn't have to hit her to convince her to sell her body. All they had to do was dangle some crack in front of her face. They were manipulating her with drugs, and she didn't even know it. Or maybe she just didn't care.

  I met up with her that afternoon. After all the crazy shit at Veronica's house, I had forgotten how pissed I was at Lucy for throwing me under the bus during those two threeway phonecalls with Cho a few weeks ago. And compared to the shit Veronica had been doing to me these past few days, Lucy's transgressions really didn't seem like such a big deal anymore.

  Veronica didn't know I was with Lucy, when she called me later that night. I didn't answer the phone. Veronica left a message and asked me to come back. She told me she asked Miriam to come back over and that she was going to fuck her. She said I shouldn't flip out about it.

  I was so sick of this crap with Veronica. Things had been bad when she was in jail. But now that she was out, things were much, much worse. I liked being around Lucy so much better. It seemed so peaceful, compared to the frantic insanity that surrounded Veronica every minute of every day.

  I had been with Veronica for almost 2 years now, but in the few short months since I had met Lucy, I had spent a lot more quality time with her, than with Veronica.

  George was right, Veronica was a toxic person. I was really just miserable the whole time I was with her. She had never gone out of her way to do even a single nice thing for me. She was the most selfish person I ever met. Nothing she ever did was a selfless act of kindness. Absolutely every moment of every day was about her, her wants and her needs, and how she could get them. And any time she appeared to do something nice for someone else, it was calculated, with an ulterior motive, to benefit herself somehow.

  For me,
the most important thing in a relationship is loyalty. But Veronica had no loyalty whatsoever, to me or anyone else. If my special someone ever ended up in a wheelchair, I would not abandon her. Even when there was a chance that Veronica might lose her leg to MRSA, I wouldn't have left her. But I knew that if I ever ended up in a wheelchair, Veronica would abandon me in a heartbeat.

  She simply was not the kind of person you can build a life with. The sad thing is that most of the fucked up things she did to me, she did while she was sober. She didn't even have the excuse of being high.

  Like I said, drug addicts remind me of actresses who all audition for the same role in a horror movie. They all start to think and act alike. So Lucy displayed a lot of the same bad qualities I hated about Veronica. But I knew that deep down she was not as rotten to the core as Veronica was.

  When Lucy had left her clothes at my house, she also left her diary. I was nosy, so I read it. These were her most intimate thoughts. And a lot of the things she wrote were prayers. She begged God to give her the strength to overcome her addiction. She begged him to take away her mental anguish. A lot of the things she wrote were brutally honest, and they showed how much pain she was hiding behind her beautiful smile.

  Although she and Veronica acted the same in a lot of ways, because they both had the same substance abuse problems, and the same mental and emotional issues, Lucy had a beautiful soul. Veronica didn't.

  Lucy and I spent the night together. We slept late the next morning, cuddled up in each other's arms. Veronica called me again. This time I answered the phone. She asked me why I hadn't come back yet. I told her I was spending time with Lucy. Veronica was PISSED!

  While I had been staying at her apartment, I told her that I had met Lucy and that I spent a lot of time with her before going to New York. I was always honest with Veronica about everything. I tried to lead by example. I wanted her to learn to stop lying and be honest with me, and I needed to practice what I preached.

  When Veronica tried to act like I had betrayed her, I reminded her of the fact that she had cheated on me every day since I had known her, and that the only reason I even met Lucy was because Veronica ran off with Kim, and then got tattoos with Jasmine's and Urban's names, instead of mine, like she had always promised. So she had no room whatsoever to act like I was the one who betrayed her.

  "Do you love Lucy?" Veronica asked me. She knew to me the word love carries a lot more weight than to Americans. German is a much more precise language than English. Americans throw the word love around for everything: I love my wife! I love all my friends! I love rock music! I love the rain! I love comic books! I love peanut butter!

  The word you use to describe your feelings for your wife should not be the same word you use to describe your feelings for peanut butter. In German, there are a dozen different words that describe varying degrees of liking something a lot. Germans almost never use the word love, unless they mean a deep romantic love. I have never told my parents I love them, because it would sound melodramatic, inappropriate, and almost incestuous. In German, you tell your mother that you hold her very dear, not that you are in love with her.

  "Yeah, I love her," I replied.

  "Did you ever TELL Lucy you love her?" Veronica asked.

  "Well, yeah, of course I did."

  I could tell that hurt Veronica's feelings. Then I asked her: "And how many times have you told Kim or Jasmine or all those other people you have cheated on me with, that you love them?"

  She didn't answer.

  Later that day, Veronica texted me: "You should bring Lucy here. We could all hang out together."

  That seemed like a trap. I couldn't see how anything good would come from that. I told Lucy what Veronica wrote.

  "Does she have drugs at her house?" Lucy asked.

  "Of course," I replied.

  "Ok, let's go! But will you take me home if I feel uncomfortable? I don't want to be stuck at her place."

  When we arrived at her apartment on Brantley Road, the three of us hung out on Veronica's bed. We chitchatted for a while. After they did some drugs together, Lucy whispered to me that she wanted to leave, so I took her back to the Super 8 on Colonial.

  "Well that was kinda awkward," Lucy said and laughed.

  Veronica had asked me to come right back to her apartment after I dropped Lucy off. On our way to the Super 8, Veronica texted me: "I want to fuck Lucy too."

  I just shook my head in disbelief. What the hell was wrong with that girl?

  When Lucy and I arrived at the motel, I parked the car and we talked for a while. She played around with her phone, checked her make-up, fidgeted around with her purse, and smoked a cigarette. But she wouldn't get out of the car. When you're on drugs, and you're stuck in your own head, time just flies by.

  "I'm not sure if you realize this," I said, "but we've been sitting here in the parking lot for about half an hour now. What do you wanna do? Do you want me to come up to your room? Or do you want to come home with me to Bonita Springs? Or what's going on?"

  Then Lucy gave me a mischievous look and asked me to take her to Yogurt Mountain at the Edison Mall.

  She showed me her favorite toppings and we had a little competition, to see who could conjure up the most delicious yogurt creation. Then she said she wanted to eat it outside, by the little fountain.

  While we sat on the bench, she spoonfed me some of her yogurt. We had a lot of fun, talked and laughed.

  Then Veronica called me: "Where the hell are you? You've been gone for over an hour. It doesn't take that long to drop Lucy off at the Super 8."

  I told her we were at Yogurt Mountain. Lucy was giggling in the background. Veronica got really upset and hung up on me.

  "I love our little date," Lucy said. "Do you think you could ever have a moment like this with Veronica?"

  "Probably not," I replied.

  She was satisfied, and asked me to take her back to the Super 8.

  When I got back to Veronica's apartment, she was livid: "What the FUCK were you doing with Lucy at Yogurt Mountain? This shit gotta STOP RIGHT NOW! I don't want you hanging out with her anymore! I'm putting a stop to this right NOW! You're MY man!"

  "Are you kidding me?" I yelled back. "All you have been doing these past few days is tell me you want to fuck this person and that person. You kept making out with some of them right in front of me, and left me messages that you were going to fuck them, and I shouldn't flip out about it. And you've been fucking all these other guys behind my back. And now you're gonna act like I'm doing something wrong when I hang out with Lucy? I wouldn't even know her at all, if you acted like a decent human being and not like such a total slut. You gotta make up your mind if we're boyfriend and girlfriend or not. I'm sick of this crazy shit with you. You can't have it both ways. You can't have your cake and eat it too."

  After a few minutes, she calmed down and told me some dope boy called Norbert was going to come over in a little while. She said she needed to talk to him about a business deal. He was going to front her some drugs, and she would sell them for a profit.

  When Norbert got there, she told me she'd have to talk to him in the bedroom.

  "No fucking way!" I said.

  "It's not what you think. I just gotta talk to him. Don't worry, I'll leave the bedroom door open."

  You couldn't really see the bedroom door from the living room couch, so I got up every few minutes and walked around the corner into the dining area, to peek through the open door. I pretended to do something at the dining room table for a minute, and then returned to the couch. I did that a few times. I felt like an idiot. Then suddenly I saw that the bedroom door was locked.

  "What the FUCK?" I yelled and rattled on the door knob. Veronica opened. "I fucking had it with this shit. I'm outta here. Have a nice life," I said angrily.

  "No, don't leave! Norbert is going right now," she said.

  After Norbert left, Veronica and I started fighting with each other. We were both yelling.

  "What the
fuck are you doing with some thug in your bedroom?"

  "I only called him to make you jealous, because I was so jealous about you spending all that time with Lucy. I just wanted to piss you off," she replied.

  "Well, you did a good job," I said and left.

  The next morning she texted me at 8 am: "I'm sorry. Will you please come back? I don't want to fight."

  I replied that I was gonna head over to her place right now. But she already fell back asleep and didn't see my response. When I got to her apartment, Anita opened the door.

  "Where's Veronica?"

  Anita just pointed at Veronica's closed bedroom door with a stoic look on her face. She didn't say anything.

  I opened the door, and found Veronica and Norbert naked in bed together. They were both sleeping. Obviously she had called him back after I left last night. They did drugs together, had sex, and then passed out.