The Heroin Scene in Fort Myers

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  "Thank you sooo muuuch, Oliver."

  I shoulda kicked her in the vagina, but then I probably woulda lost my shoe. Just kidding.

  About 3 or 4 weeks later, Rachel moved in right next door from me. Riiiight... next... door! Jesus H Christ! What... the... Fuck?!? What kind of a crazy psycho does that? I guess she figured now that her daughter was going to be out of commission for a while, I was fair game, and she was probably planning to make a move on me again, like she had done last year, while Veronica was at the Salvation Army.

  LCJ SOAP OPERA

  “Life is like Friday on a soap opera. It gives you the illusion that everything is going to wrap up, and then the same old shit starts up on Monday.”

  Stephen King

  A few hours later, Veronica called me from jail: "I can't believe my mother did this to me. I HATE HER! I never want to talk to her again. I was just getting used to living at our condo, with you and Venus. I was looking forward to our life together. Honestly, while I was in jail last time, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to be sober and live up to your expectations. I felt like I was gonna let you down, and that I would be really uncomfortable. I thought I would feel like I'm under a microscope all the time. But I really liked living with you. I was comfortable. And happy. I fell in love with you all over again. I feel like my mother ripped me out of our life together. I will NEVER forgive her for this!"

  I felt the same way. While she was staying with me for those two days, I finally felt like things could actually work out. I felt like my sobriety would rub off on her. And because she was such a personality mirror, who always took her behavioral cues from the people around her, I thought that, while living with me, she would learn to be kind, lovable, humble, charitable, honest and loyal, because I'd like to think that those are my most dominant character traits.

  "I want to put that bitch in jail," Veronica said. "My mother is a junkie, just like me, but she's always on her high horse, like she's better than me, because she has never been arrested. I want to knock that halo off her head. I want her to go to jail and know what it's like! Let's think of a way to get her locked up! Maybe we can have her arrested for stealing Venus. She's my dog, and if you go get my paperwork from the vet, we can prove it."

  When Veronica called me back the next morning, she asked me what I was doing. She was worried that I would start hanging out with other girls again: "I know I have hurt you really bad, and I really have no right to ask you not to hang out with other girls while I'm in jail. But I just want you to know that I really love you, and it would hurt me a lot if you start seeing other girls."

  I promised her that I wouldn't. I had waited for her this long, a few more months wouldn't make much of a difference at this point, as long as she promised not to run off again next time she gets out, and not to cheat on me any more while she's in jail. No jailhouse romance, no "special friends," no sex with someone else, no love letters. I wanted her to be 100% faithful and loyal to me, just like I would be to her. I wanted to have a normal relationship with her. Love is a deep bond between 2 people. Not 3 or more.

  She swore she would be good this time: "Trust me, I have learned my lesson. I am never going to hurt you again. I am so sick of these grimey people in jail. I can't stand any of them. I have no interest in dating them, or even talking to them. I just want to come home to you, make love to you, and live with you. I want to have a baby with you. I'm not going to it fuck up again."

  Then she told me that she knew she couldn't ask me to sit home alone for months again. She said: "If you're going to hang out with anyone else, I'd be least hurt, if it was with Lucy. I don't want you hanging out with any other girls at all, but if you are gonna hang out with one, I'd rather it be with Lucy than someone else."

  I figured that was her way of saying: "I know you're going to want to have sex, and I can't expect you to be celibate for yet another year, just because I fucked things up between us again. I know this was all my fault. I owe you one. So go have sex with Lucy, you have my blessing." I don't know if that's really what she meant, but that's how I took it.

  Lucy called me a little while later. She was staying at the Suburban on Metro and Colonial, with her latest pimp, Wigger. He was a white nigger. He sagged his ghetto chic pants, spoke in incomprehensible ebonic gibberish, like he had been dropped on his head as a baby, and walked with a bounce in his step, because he thought he had swag. Man, I hated that little douchebag.

  It was the same deal as always: He pimped Lucy out, took her money for the hotel room, took her money if he drove her to outcalls, had sex with her, fed her drugs, and took whatever money she had left. She degraded herself on Backpage all day long, and then had not a penny to show for it at the end of each day. I hated all these fucking lowlives who took advantage of her. But she thought these guys were her "friends."

  I told Lucy that Veronica's mother had her arrested while she was staying with me. Lucy was glad that Veronica was out of the picture, and she had me all to herself. I told her that Veronica said that if I was going to hang out with any other girl, she wanted it to be Lucy. Lucy thought that was funny. "Does Veronica know we're having sex?" she asked.

  "Yeah, of course," I replied. "Well, she knows we used to hang out every day when she ran off after getting out of jail and getting Jasmine's name tattooed on her wrist. I haven't really told her yet that you and I are hanging out right now, or that we're still having sex."

  Veronica called me later that day, and I asked Lucy to be quiet, because I didn't want to rub things in Veronica's face and hurt her feelings. Lucy didn't listen. Instead, she tickled me, grabbed my phone and started laughing into it. She thought it was hilarious. Luckily Veronica didn't hear Lucy, because the Global Tel collect call message was still playing, and Lucy hadn't pressed zero to accept the call yet. I wrestled the phone away from her, gave her a dirty look, and walked out of the room, so I could talk to Veronica in private.

  Every time Veronica called, Lucy tried to make noise or grab the phone. She wanted Veronica to know that I was spending every day with her.

  I saw on her aunt Nicole's Facebook page, that Lucy's younger sister Summer was in Cape Coral Hospital with liver failure. She had a serious drinking problem. I told Lucy about her sister's condition. She asked me if I could drive her to the hospital to see her. I agreed. Then she asked me if we could go buy some little presents for Summer first. We went to the CVS on the corner of 41 and Edison Avenue and she bought some crayons and paper for Summer.

  It was getting later and later. Instead of going straight to the hospital, Lucy wanted to stop here and there, to meet up with different dope boys and get more drugs. Then she asked me to take her back to her room at the Suburban. She had cooked dinner for me, but we didn't get a chance to eat, because we were in a hurry to go see Summer before the visiting hours at the hospital were over. That was hours ago.

  She told me she wanted to do some more drugs in her room, before we headed to the hospital. She shot up and then started smoking crack. This was taking forever. She knew I was getting annoyed, because I had offered to take her to go see her sister in Cape Coral, and all she did was waste hour after hour with this drug bullshit.

  She said she wanted to have sex before we were going to go see Summer. She told me to take my clothes off and get my dick hard for her, so I'd be ready for her by the time she's done smoking crack. I masturbated for an hour, while she paced around the room smoking crack, or sat down on the bed next to me, occasionally rubbing my dick with one hand, while playing with the phone in her other hand, or sucking the head of my painfully hard dick for a few seconds with a little smirk on her face, because she knew she was teasing me and it was driving me crazy.

  Then Wigger called her and said that he needed the room. He was on his way up. Great. I was so frustrated.

  "I can tell him to wait in the hallway while we fuck," Lucy said.

  "Nah, thanks. I don't like having sex while people are waiting for me to finish on the other side of the door. Tha
t's fucking creepy," I replied.

  Lucy let Wigger and some other girl into the room. She asked me not to leave, because she still wanted to go see her sister. She said she just needed to talk to Wigger for a minute first. They disappeared in the bathroom together. They were in there for half an hour, while the other girl and I were sitting in the room, waiting. I was getting so disgusted.

  I really didn't want to think about Lucy fucking that douchebag in the bathroom, but a few days earlier, she and I had taken a shower together in her room at the Super 8, and when her pimp G-Force unexpectedly came back to the room, she gave me a blowjob in the shower, while G-Force was sitting on the bed, watching TV.

  I tried to convince myself that she wasn't doing the same damn thing with Wigger right now, and that they were probably just talking in the bathroom. Negotiating about drugs or something.

  Finally they came out of the bathroom. I asked Lucy if she was ready to go see her sister now. She said no, she wanted to smoke more crack now. I was so fed up, I left. It was midnight.

  Around 3 am, she called me and asked me if I would drive her to the hospital the next morning. I said yes. At 8 am she called me and told me that Wigger would drive her instead. I said: "Fine. Whatever," and went back to sleep.

  Later that day I was in the mall. Lucy called me, but there was a lot of noise, so I didn't answer. About half an hour later, after I left the mall, I called her back. Wigger answered her phone. He told me she had called me while getting arrested for drug possession, and she was on her way to jail now.

  It had barely been a week since Veronica had been arrested at my house, and now Lucy was in jail, too. And Haley had been in jail for months already. Haley and Lucy were in dorm 1, the trustee dorm. Trustees are inmates who work in the laundry room, or the kitchen. Or they clean. They get preferential treatment and double food rations. Veronica was in dorm 4.

  I hadn't talked to Haley in a few months, after I changed my number for Veronica, so other girls couldn't call me anymore. But after Veronica ran off, and I started seeing Lucy, I had sent a thank you note to some of the 14 girls who had warned me about Veronica. Snitching is frowned upon in jail, even though pretty much all of them have turned each other in at some point or another to collect the Crimestoppers reward.

  Anyway, I wanted them to know that they did the right thing, because telling a guy his girl is cheating on him and that she's only pretending to be pregnant is not snitching, but looking out for someone. It's a good thing. It's an act of kindness. It should be rewarded. So I felt the least I could do is write them a thank you note. I had also written Haley, and given her my new number.

  Now I had Haley, Veronica, and Lucy call me from jail every day. This was getting crazy. And all these Global Tel collect calls were getting expensive.

  Veronica really didn't like that I talked to Haley occasionally. But she hated that I was talking to Lucy now, too. She said it made her look bad in jail, that her man was talking to other girls in there.

  Yupp... I was dating a crackwhore who never passed up a chance to cheat on me, and then she told me I was making HER look bad. Alrighty then. Suffer from cognitive dissonance much?

  I told her that she shouldn't worry about their opinions. Who cares what the other inmates think? Their opinion was of no consequence. She was never going to see any of them again, once she got out and lived a sober life with me in Bonita Springs, far away from the cheap motels on 41 and Palm Beach.

  Veronica and Lucy ended up going to court on the same day, so they sat in the holding cell together for a few hours. They talked and got along. Afterwards Veronica told me she would like to be in a threeway relationship with me and Lucy. She said she'd still like to fuck her, and that way I could fuck both of them. I didn't like that idea at all at this point, because they were both in jail, and I was out here. So this would end up being Veronica and Lucy dating each other in jail, and having sex together, while I sat out here with my thumb up my ass. No thank you.

  When Lucy called me, I asked her about that whole threeway relationship business. She laughed and said: "Veronica is crazy. I don't want to date her. And I don't want to share you with her or anyone else. I love you and I want you all to myself."

  Inmates in Lee County Jail have to make a visitor list. They can put up to five people on their list, and then only these five people can visit them. But during their first week in jail, they are allowed to see visitors without making a list, because it takes the jail a while to process the paperwork. Lucy asked me to come see her for her first visit, and to set up the second visit for her aunt Nicole. She told me to put my own name down for the second visit as well, just in case Nicole didn't show up. She never did in the past, so Lucy figured she wouldn't show up this time either. She was right.

  When I told Veronica that Lucy wanted me to come see her, I figured she'd be ok with it, since she wanted all three of us to be in a relationship together anyway. But Veronica flipped out. She was very jealous and said it would really hurt her feelings, if I went to visit Lucy. Veronica said I was the only person who came to visit her, and I was not allowed to visit anyone else.

  So I didn't go to my viso with Lucy. She called me up afterwards and she was crying: "Why didn't you come see me? I thought you love me. I have nobody else."

  I felt terribly guilty. I didn't realize it would hurt her this much if I didn't show up. I told her I was sorry, and that I didn't expect Veronica to get so upset about me visiting Lucy. I told her I would come see her the next day, with her aunt Nicole.

  Later that night some latin lady called me from jail. She told me Lucy had asked her to call me, to convince me to come see her. The lady said Lucy was crying because I didn't come to the viso, and I was all she talked about. I promised the lady that I wouldn't let Lucy down again.

  Then Haley called me and asked me what all the fuss was about, and why Lucy was crying all the time. Haley and Lucy used to be friends when they had met each other in jail a year or two earlier. But now they didn't talk to each other anymore, because neither one of them wanted the other to call me. Haley and her friends hated Lucy, because they felt she was making a move on Haley's man: me.

  This was all getting way too complicated.

  Gossip travels fast in jail. Everyone knows everyone else's business. So it didn't take long until everyone in dorm 1 and dorm 4 knew that Haley, Lucy and Veronica were all calling me every day. Apparently the other inmates started to think I was the most eligible bachelor in LCJ or something. And more and more female inmates tried to contact me or pretended to know me, to make themselves sound important. Girls I had never even met, never even knew they existed, claimed to know me. They were telling elaborate stories about having sex with me, or getting arrested at my house, or whatever. It was bizarre. Suddenly I was a jailhouse celebrity. Everyone knew the name Oliver.

  Nicole and I made plans for me to pick her up the next day, but then she blew me off, just like Lucy had anticipated. Nicole said she might stop by at some point during the viso and say hello. She didn't. The only people I know, who are this unreliable, are addicts. So I had a feeling that Nicole had relapsed.

  Lucy was so happy to see me, she cried again. She was just the sweetest little thing. I loved her so much. She cried and smiled, cried and smiled, because I came to see her. It almost made me cry. I wanted to give her a hug so badly. I wanted her to know how much I cared about her. She told me she didn't want me to talk to Haley or Veronica anymore. She wanted me to be all hers.

  When I talked to Veronica later, I was honest and told her that I had visited Lucy, because she was so upset. Veronica got really angry and told me she wanted me to change my number again and not talk to Lucy, Haley or any other girl anymore.

  Then Lucy told me that everyone in jail knew that Veronica was cheating on me the whole time again. As soon as Veronica got back to jail, she started writing letters to Jasmine in dorm 3 and told her she loved her and wanted to have a future with her. And she was also writing love letters to Kathleen
, her pregnant roommate, who had been arrested by the U.S. Marshals.

  I couldn't believe it. Not after Veronica had told me all that stuff about how upset she was over being ripped out of our life together, and that she had fallen in love with me all over again, that she had learned her lesson, and she would never write love letters to someone else or cheat on me again.

  And Lucy told me there were rumors that Veronica was dating her bunkie Wendy. She used to be friends with Jasmine in dorm 3, but then she was moved to dorm 4 and was now sleeping in the bunk next to Veronica's. Wendy was an ugly, freckle-faced, red-haired little troll. Veronica had mentioned her to me on the phone a few times in the past few days, and asked me to make calls for Wendy, because she couldn't get in touch with her father, and her boyfriend wouldn't answer the phone or come to viso.

  In the past, when I was in New York, and Veronica was supposedly dating Jasmine while living on Brantley Road, but she had sex with a bunch of other people, I had written 2 or 3 postcards to Jasmine, to warn her about Veronica.