I know it’s irrational, but I don’t want to die from M30 fumes.
It’s a straight shot home once I hit the 305 and I play Simon & Garfunkel to wash the Good Old Daze out of my brain but I drive too fast or too slow. I can’t stop checking the rearview. It’s really raining tonight, not drizzling, and Shortus is going home—You were luckier than I was tonight—and my wipers aren’t working quite right. It’s a two-lane road, always quiet and dark at night—it’s fucking Bainbridge—and I tell myself that the set of headlights a few car lengths back is nothing to worry about because this is the way to the ferry. I turn up the volume and focus on bridges over troubled waters but my heart is beating fast.
Can you catch fentanyl by touching a tainted plastic bag? Am I ill?
Home at last and sweaty as fuck—I shouldn’t have worn your favorite sweater—and I walk into my house and I call out to my cats but my cats aren’t dogs. They don’t come when called. I grab some paper towels and head back outside. I stare at my car, my car full of poison. I don’t want an accidental contact high and I sure as hell don’t want anything to happen to my cats. I pop my trunk and the paper towels aren’t plastic, but at least they’ll provide some boundary between my skin and the fentanyl.
I fold four paper towels and pick up the bag of death and my heart thumps faster—is fentanyl airborne?—and I walk back to my house. And then I hear the sound of my guitar. I clench the paper towels.
Oliver.
“In here,” he says.
I walk around the corner, down into my sunken living room, and there he is, on my couch, strumming my Gibson. Chills. Flashbacks. All of it. “Did you have a good night, my friend?”
“It was okay.”
He’s tuning the guitar again and he’s pure Angeleno. He’s not a great writer. And he’s not a great private detective and he probably put his detective hat on tonight because he hit a snag in the spec script he’s no doubt writing in his downtime.
He eyes the wad of paper towels. “What’s that, Goldberg?”
“What’s up, Oliver? Did my bid on the Frank Stella not go through?”
I dump the paper towels in the trash bin—I pray my cats don’t find a way in—and he tosses my guitar on the floor and man-spreads on my sofa in the spot where you sat.
“I saw you in Poulsbo,” he says. “And needless to say, I am not pleased, my friend.”
Of course he followed me. Of course tonight had to be the night that he threw himself into his work. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He just shakes his head. “Don’t mess with me, Goldberg. We had a deal. You stay outta trouble. And that means you stay clean. Away from trash like Ajax.”
In some fucked-up way I forgot that he is what he is, a private fucking detective, a dancer for money. But that’s not my fault. It’s easy to forget the origin of our relationship because most of the time he’s just on me about art. I flop into a chair. “Oliver, I’m telling you. It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, so I suppose you got the pills for a ‘friend’？”
Yes. “No. Look, I heard a rumor that bad stuff was going around… I just wanted to get it off the streets so some kid doesn’t OD again.”
“Saint Joe of the Stockyards.”
“I’m not calling myself a saint…”
But it’s true, Mary Kay. I did save a life tonight, maybe more than one. Oliver lectures me about the danger of drugs and people who deal in narcotics as if he’s my tenth-grade guidance counselor and he won’t let me keep my stash. He forces me to fish the bag out of the garbage and he reminds me that he’s watching. Always. And then he sends me a link to a fucking David LaChapelle photograph of Whitney Houston called Closed Eyes and this is the first item that doesn’t show the cost. Price upon request. And I should be buying this for you not for Minka but really I should be buying it for no one because no one needs to own this fucking photograph.
Riffic trots into the room and hisses at him. Good cat. “Sorry,” I say. “But Oliver, this is getting out of control. I buy you every little ‘antique’ you want and you break into my house because I go for a ride?”
It’s like a bolt of lightning hits and Oliver the artistic and Oliver the detective become one. “You seem to forget that I have video of you holding a dead body, my friend.”
I DID NOT KILL HER. “I didn’t forget. But you said we were in this together.”
“Joe,” he says. “I’m a little disappointed in you. I thought you were smarter than that…”
FUCK YOU, OLIVER. “I have you on a loose leash because when people feel free… when they feel relaxed… they fuck up. And now I know what you’re up to—and now you know that you can’t go out and cop a score. It’s not just about your health. We are in this together, my friend, and if you blow your money getting high… that’s no good for my art fund, is it?”
The pills weren’t for me and Oliver is never going to believe me and I contact the seller and request the fucking price of Closed Eyes and now I have to wait for an answer and Oliver is watching me, Mary Kay. He really is. More than I knew. The worst and most dangerous eyes in this world are the private ones and I could stand up and knock him out and end his life but then his brother would end my life.
“Well,” he says. “They hit you back yet? What’s Whitney gonna cost us?”
By us he means me and I dream of my sunken living room imploding, pulling him into a sinkhole, but like my plan of Phil testing the waters with M30s, it’s not gonna happen. I refresh the 1stdibs app and think of what Dr. Nicky would say right now. Something trite but true. Everything happens for a reason. I am a good guy and good guys find the bright side—it’s like that Stephen King quote on the sign by the gas station near （RIP） Beck Road—It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.
Maybe that’s true. Maybe the universe sent Oliver into my life to teach me a lesson. He picks up Licious and Licious doesn’t fight him and you were right, Mary Kay. Licious is a stupid fucking name. “Well?” he says. “Any word yet?”
“The guy says he’ll get back to me tomorrow.”
He takes a selfie with my cat and sends it to Minka. Ugh.
Oliver is an asshole, yes, but he’s trying to make his girlfriend happy by fixing up her home. My heart races in the good way. Not paranoid about fentanyl in the air. （I googled. I’m fine.） I have to be like Oliver.
When he leaves, I bring my kitten-cats into my bedroom and give them a loose roll of toilet paper. They play on my bed—so fucking cute—and I send a video to you with a simple, honest Guess I have to get more toilet paper. You like the video and send me a smile and now you’ve seen my bed. We need these moments because you maintain your distance at the library—I get it—but I won’t let you forget that you love me. I exist.
I hightail it down to my Whisper Room to watch you. You’re in bed next to your rat—he’s only taping his shit show three nights right now and he doesn’t go downstairs until Nomi is asleep—and you’re eating tortilla chips out of the bag—yes!—and he pokes you. “Do you have to be so loud, Emmy?”