The venom and bile I held turns on his
words, I am devoured by my own hatred. Sitting in the silence, I had believed
that we were so different; he saw that we were the same. He is right. I hadn’t wanted to see it, I hadn’t wanted to know.
But there it was the whole of my deceit unraveling, we are the same. To our friends we were anything but, we
manipulated and deceived, we used twisted words as shallow truths, we lied, we
poisoned; I poisoned. My friends were
addicts and easy, I used them to feed my own addiction. When they were out of
money I left them; I was too busy looking for people who were better funded. I am evil. In this moment I see it. The
silence drags on, Mark keeps talking but I’m not listening anymore, even in the
driver’s seat I’m somewhere else. In one sentence he tore my whole world apart,
he doesn’t even realize it. But now, part of me is dying and my world is collapsing;
I’m trying to figure out where the pieces are going to fall. Through the haze
his words echo like a gunshot, they amplify how much I hate him; by showing me
how much I hated myself.
Of all the people that had said it,
only Mark had that affect. There’s something deeply personal about that kind of
hatred. Almost like seeing a long lost friend from the gutters of addiction,
there’s a glance of the person you were and the person you’ve become. Mark was
the sleazy peddler of ill gotten gains, poisoner of my friends, manipulator of
the innocent, violence prone, thief, a cheat, meth dealer, in a word: evil. He
liked to hype people; he wanted everyone think they were his best friend.
The first time I met him was several
months earlier, we were in lockup. Sitting in an orange jumpsuit and oversized
rubber slippers, I had never been to Blaylock or any prison for that matter, I
had no idea what to expect. In the narrow six by ten holding cell were three
other people, waiting to be taken to our respective blocks.
Staring at the concrete you can’t help
but talk to the people around you. An old hick with a knack for writing bad
checks, John had been passed around the state from municipality to
municipality, his family following him in a pickup truck paying his warrants at
each stop along the way, Blaylock was second from the last on his three week tour.
A ghetto gang banger headed for isolation, Little B had been this way before.
He was ready for C-block and a cigarette and didn’t say much that wasn’t
cursing the cops for catching him. I shared the sentiment, we all did.
Then there was Mark, I knew his name
before he said it, he knew mine without asking. Introductions aren’t needed in
a world of reputations and drugs. He sat there with the goofy grin of a person
who knew he had done something horrible, but also knew there wasn’t enough
proof to make it more painful than a restraining order. I hated that grin, I had
hated him then, I’ve always hated him, even before I knew him I knew I would
hate him; his reputation explained it in advance. Mark sold shards and crystal meth was among the
few drugs that I refused. The short list of chemical imbibes that I declined
was populated with things that I despised. The list held the worst of the
worst, the life stealers as I saw them. We were shipped to different pens and seventeen
hours later an overnight stay didn’t seem like a big deal. I forgot about Mark,
I never intended to meet him again.
It had been Melinda’s fault that we had
been reunited. Mel was a bombshell blonde with a body that could melt cold steel;
she was the apple of my eye, or better: the pill in my pocket, for more than a
moment. Ecstasy was the worm, we were
the birds. Loitering in abandoned malls or overlooking the Flint River on a
Sunday afternoon, I was happy there with her, but for her it was always about
the drug. In the end she was attracted to the life and I was a sheep in wolves
clothing. When she saw me for what I was she was over it before the engine
stalled. She ran from our affair to Mark’s arms and onto his drugs. The only
thing that had irked me more than seeing them together was seeing her on meth.
Foolishly I had followed her; she moved
like a glow stick in a dark room, I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. I was
still in shock and the dust of our affair was settling. I had been crushed, but
it was not enough to keep me away. I had hopes of winning her back, of saving
her from this wretched life. Mark didn’t mind, he liked having me around. I was
a heavy set guy that looked like he could do damage, I was the illusion of a
body guard. It was also a good idea to keep a parallel product around for the
heavy users. In the circles we ran in drug stacking was almost a necessity. We
all kept a good supply of marijuana, cocaine was common place, but when it came
to getting off for the night, it was e or
meth; most of our clientele did both.
For a month we occupied a flop house in
the middle of The County, a cluster of users flowing in and out. I sold my
stock nightly. Ten pills became a hundred and fifty dollars, enough to get
twelve more and have fifty dollars to spare. I never considered Mark and me of
a similar cloth. He sold people a poison, I sold them a party. My clients had a
good time and, though many paid for it daily, it wasn’t forced on them. Shard-tards had a different view, they
needed it. It was the proverbial monkey on their back screaming for more. They
needed that next hit and so every day they’d come back with cash, often stolen
or conned off of some less suspecting user. I tried not to ask. They just
bought mine when they could. And I conveniently forgot the condition of their
cash when they did. I had spent years pretending I wasn’t paid in blood money,
I wanted to ignore that people bled so I could turn a profit. I never guessed
that e was as bad as meth, that I was making them pay for a
poison, that I was leading them to their deaths.
The flop house had fallen; it happens a
lot in a drug clique. People tend to notice when more than a dozen young people
spend all of their time in one place and dozens more pass through daily. Mark
and Mel had fled to her family, I had returned to my former friends, the people
I thought my drug racket was a service to.
Tonight had been different, she wanted
me here, I had been so certain. She had called me. It had taken me a few hours
to realize it was his idea. He needed a ride and she could still get me to do
anything, they had me bested. We had driven a loop, going by my friends’
houses, staying for a few minutes leaving again after some shady conversations.
Eventually, we made it to some exotic location. Some place I had never been.
The situation was familiar, the picture was beginning to fit. Was this a drug deal? It wasn’t until my
car refused to start that all the pieces clicked.
We were inside a house. Mark had spent
half an hour in a back bedroom with the door locked. I couldn’t get a straight
answer from anyone and Mel wouldn’t even look at me. Not only was I bored, but
the one person I was interested in seeing was giving me the cold shoulder.
Mark enters from a hallway, “it’s time
to go,” he’s addressing me as if I were his chauffer.
“Go where? We haven’t been here thirty
minutes,” I say.
“Mel has to go home, curfew, ya know,”
he says back to me.
I frowned at her, “ok.”
We all walk back to the car, five of us
pile in, I insert the key, and I feel it, something’s different. I turn it
over. The whole car goes blank, click. Nothing
productive happens, I release it. The clock comes back and reads 12:00. I stare
intently at it for a moment, expecting it to flash, then turn the key over and
hold it. Click. Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.
The car drones, I watch the 12:00 flicker like a spastic alarm clock. Then let
the key go and pop the hood.
“What is it?” Mel exclaims, with a hint
of rage in her voice, like I sabotaged the car just to make her talk.
“It’s just the battery wire, give me a
minute and it’ll be fine.”
“I’ve got to be home now, my dad’ll
kill me if I’m late,” she screams.
I get out, open the hood, and start on
the arduous tinkering to repair the battery circuit and start the car. Mark
follows me.
“So, ahh, how long till we’re moving
again?” He asks.
“Look man, she’ll get home as soon as I
can get her there,” the measured words cross my lips.
“Oh, yeah, that’s fine, I need to get
back to Brandi’s house,” he says with a bizarre sense of urgency. I see the
look in his eye. I feel like a fish, having swallowed the bait, must feel when
it notices the hook in its lip.
“Won’t take long, just gotta make sure
the connection holds,” I tell him. It’s true, my car has a loose terminal wire,
all it takes is some wiggling and creative soft drink usage and it should be running
in no time. Tonight it’s making a fuss. Twenty minutes of wiggling, nudging,
and dousing the connection and finally the car started. I sit back down, the
passengers had bailed. Mark and Mel remained, she needs a quick ride home, and I
hope that they would both get off so I wouldn’t have to deal with what comes
next.
It settled in my mind now. I know what
the score is and I know my part in it. He was running meth, I was trafficking
it. They both knew how I felt about that, her shame and his urgency are
obvious, she doesn’t want me to know and he wants to unload his product. Inside,
my blood boils at every passing car, my nerves cut deeper by every
intersection. I will call him on this,
I think, but not with her in the car. Let her out before I break. She doesn’t need
to hear what I say to him; she didn’t do this, it isn’t her fault. I fool
myself into believing it. I counted the
seconds.
The minutes pass and she’s home.
Patiently I wait, there are only a handful of miles between here and our
destination. I plot my words, I want this confrontation to be the last note in
our brief affiliation. I’m ready and he’s climbing back in the car with that
same dumb grin. I let my emotions settle a little bit, I wanted composure for
this. I could feel the anger welling up in me. It was as if this one person
represented all the injustice and wrong within the world and as if calling him
in this simple act of manipulation would set that right. I could feel the sweat
on my neck, I was nervous.
Miles passed in silence, an
intersection, a bypass, an exit fast approaching, I’m running out of time. It’s
time to pull the trigger.
“I know you’ve got that shit in my
car,” the statement eased off my lips.
His dumbstruck glance, “Nah man, you
know I wouldn’t-”
“No,
I know Mark. I’m not dense, I know it’s here and I know who you’re selling it
to.”
“Chris, I didn’t mean to disrespect-” my
bitter glance catches him and he stutters for a moment, his eyes searching for
something to say. The hateful words and degrading comments begin to boil in my
veins, I feel control. I’m ready for this.
“It’s just my hustle,” he says, “it’s
just like you selling rolls.”
If someone else had said it, it would
have gone unnoticed. But here I’m facing the mirror and realizing who’s holding
the gun, the shattered glass or the crumbling thug. The exit ramp comes. I
decelerate.
