I said all the things you say: Emmy will turn up, she’s no fool. But had a bad feeling. Whatever Fast Forward had been to me, I could see he was bad medicine for Emmy.
“Don’t be so sure,” was Maggot’s opinion. “I bet she’s got him eating out of her hand.”
This was around three in the morning, which seemed a safe hour to go on about our lives. We were sitting on the floor of Dori’s bedroom. “Eating what?” Dori wanted to know.
“It’s just a saying,” I told her. Sometimes she would trip up on the smallest things.
“Eating vajayjay,” Maggot clarified.
“Out of her hand?” Dori often got a little giddy at these times. Maggot put the 80 on the aluminum foil and Dori flicked the lighter underneath. The brown blob bubbled and melted and gave off its happy little smell of metal and burnt tires, sliding around on the shiny foil. I went first, then handed the metal straw to Dori and took over handling the foil. I might have been crap from the knee down, but still had my reflexes. You have to tip it this way and that, to keep it swimming around. Chasing the dragon, breathing its fire. We sucked smoke until nothing was left but a snail trail of melted rubber. And all I could think was: Eighty dollars.
Not a productive mindset, I know. But that pill was two days’ work at the farm store, a week at Mr. Golly’s. And I was doing neither. I had some money saved back, but it was going fast. I relied on Turp and my other guys for tips on who I could buy from that wouldn’t take the car and leave me in some ditch bleeding from the ears. Dori argued in favor of the heroin that was all over the place now, just bam, overnight, it’s smackland. Pretty cheap. We were buying our own now, not filling Vester’s prescriptions on Vester’s Medicare, so Dori was like, Why not get the best, baby? And I’m trying to keep us on the straight and narrow, pointing out what a beautiful thing it is to have no fear of the cops. They’d not bother you over oxy. You could have a hundred pills on you, no problem. If you had a prescription, they couldn’t touch you.
Also, there was the problem of me and needles. Dori was so sweet and tolerant with me. Chasing the dragon was our happy medium.
Mostly it fell to me to call around, make a plan and execute. Dori tried to help, she’d stayed friends with one of the home-care nurses named Thelma that had morphine patches to tide us over. Those were common as litter. Dori would shoot the gel, but it’s mixed in there, with the drug not totally dissolved in the jello part. Thelma warned her about that. It’s easy to OD. She and Dori cut and dyed each other’s hair. Thelma being this older lady, divorced, big talker, with nobody to go home to so she would outstay her welcome, but what can you do. We owed her. Procurement is wearying, you’re running circles to get where you started. I did think of going back to school in the fall, getting my head and body back in the game. Some part of me believed that would happen. September would come around, my knee would feel better. I would quit the dope. But for now we needed our own prescriptions. We had to go deal with the pain clinic.
Due to it being Dr. Watts, we agreed on me not going in. I waited in the car. Dori went nowhere without Jip, so he was sitting on the spot she’d just left, giving me a nasty eye. Gray whiskers around his mouth all yellowed, like an old man that chews tobacco. This was going to be a day. Heat waves over the pavement. It was the end of the month, so not a long line, but some. With the windows down I was getting that whiff of three days, no showers, too many cigarettes. Mostly men. I hated Dori going in there alone, in her little shorts.
She flew back out the glass doors looking slapped. Got in the car and fell to pieces. “Baby, baby,” I said, trying to hold her and not panic while Jip growled. She had her hands pressed up to her face hard, like she’s trying to hide lost teeth. “I miss Daddy,” she said, which killed me. I wanted to be man enough. I pulled her hands away and kissed her wet cheeks and wide, scared eyes. She looked like she’d seen the dead. Told me that man in there was a piece of shit.
“I know he is, baby. We’re just here to get a job done. Did he write you?”
She shook her head, holding Jip, not looking at me. “That motherfucker is gaming this whole county.” Said Dori, that until last year probably put out the cookies for Santa.
An office visit was two hundred and fifty. Plus another hundred and fifty for so-called staff fees, to reduce waiting time. Dori said he spent thirty seconds explaining this to her, then thumped his pen on his prescription pad and stared at her tits, waiting for her to pay up or get out.