“I don’t do drugs,” I say, unable to keep the judgment from my voice. My dad’s “friends” used to come to our apartment to take drugs, like our home was a sketchy prop in their drug experience. I hate drugs.
“Oh, my God! Look at you judging me! Too funny!” Her voice is so loud, it echoes under the freeway, where we are sleeping, when this is our town.
“Hey!” We both look behind me to where Michael’s head has popped out of his tent. His chest is bare. His hair is a tangle of white-boy dreads. “Hey, come over here.” Michael is handsome, but not in a safe way. His nose is slightly crooked. His lips are always chapped. He has thick lashes but they dip down perilously, the black tears of Cleopatra.
The woman looks at me like she expects my input. I am close enough to what she is—the right age, more organized than Michael, less wild—that she has decided I am her ally in her adventure. She steps forward, but not too close.
“I can sell you a bead,” Michael says. “But it’s my last one.” There is no way in hell it’s his last one, but the jealous part of me hopes he takes her for everything she’s worth. “Scarcity and all that.”
Her coat brushes my arm as she takes another step. It feels like plucked feathers.
“How much?” she says. “Be reasonable.” I shift because her coat is on my lap. I’m furniture to her.
“Fifty?” Michael says, like that is the highest number he can think of.
“I don’t have change; I’ll give you sixty.” She is okay being unreasonable as long as she’s in control. She pulls a wad of cash out of her pocket and separates three twenty-dollar bills. Her coat brushes me again as she reaches toward him, from too far away. She hands him the cash; he hands her the heroin, wrapped in a tiny swallowable bead.
She stands up straight, smiles, but it slips; her face pales. She wobbles again. “I think I’m gonna throw up,” she says. “Heroin always does that to me. Even just thinking about it.” I remember this part. My dad’s friends used to vomit and vomit—but blissfully—into the sink or the trash can or the broken toilet.
Then she throws up, right there on the edge of the sidewalk. It splatters on my shoes and my jeans. It smells sweetly of expensive cocktails and champagne bubbles. She brushes her coat but there is not even a speck of vomit on her, like she is protected. She doesn’t apologize. Her vomit is a gift. She has blessed us.
It makes me think of that night and that woman, the one who broke our toilet, how she vomited right in our closet and just left it there, not thinking about who would clean it up. Not caring.
“Hey!” Michael snaps. I think he is going to yell at her, and I’m a little thrilled. “You want me to walk you home?” he says instead, unzipping his door, preparing to step out.
“No, I’m good.” She wobbles again. Her eyes are red. Her drunk is catching up with her. “This’ll help.” She slips it in her pocket.
Michael steps out of his tent, all six feet three of him. People like their poor small and nonthreatening, easy to ignore. Michael is none of those things. Fear washes her face, stiffens her spine.
“You shouldn’t walk alone,” he says. “It’s dangerous.” Like he is not the thing she’s afraid of. He wants to go with her. Probably thinks she will invite him in for a drink, share the heroin he sold her. They will spend the night smoking cigarettes and talking about fate, like good junkies do. Why not? In Michael’s mind, he’s worth just as much as she is. “Let me—”
“I’ll go.” I stand up, put myself between them. I feel guilt immediately, like I’m protecting her from him, like he is the bad thing in this scenario. But the truth is, I want to see her house. I have never seen a rich person’s house up close.
“Aww, thanks. You’re so sweet.” She immediately loops her arm in mine, presses her body close, leans on me like we’re girlfriends after a long night out. And I’m embarrassed to say it, but it feels good. It makes me feel valuable all the way down to my toes.
DEMI
We start up the street, toward the houses in the hills. She swings wide at my side, drunker than I thought. “The booze is hitting me now—woo!” she says as we pause at the light on Franklin. And I wonder if it’s drugs, too, if she’s taken something already: Vicodin, Adderall, Oxy? “Woo!” she says again when the walk sign comes on and we start to cross.
The streets are deserted. We are the only two crossing onto the narrow one-way streets that crisscross the hills.