Futureproof (24 page)

“Fine, man, just…yeah, I'll call you if I get any computers.”

I finger the bills in my pocket on the way back to Splinter's. Already I feel warmer.

 

This is our last night in the Big Apple.

We try to ration the drugs because they have to last at least until we get back home. After that I can probably get Lou to loan me a little to help me through the rest of the week, though I know he's tired of always footing the bill for my habit because I never end up even with him. I'm always taking out of next week's check for this week's fix. And he has a habit at least twice as big as mine. He can't get rid of me, though, because he knows that when we're both soaring on the dope and firing on all cylinders, we can put down some mean flooring.

Splinter makes a special effort to be good to us. He makes me and Andie the best spaghetti I've eaten in forever, though none of us eat much because we're constipated from all the dope.

As we're leaving the next morning I hug Splinter and we hold the hug for a while before thump-thumping each other on the back. I recall the time we were tripping at his aunt/uncle's house. That night we made a blood pact to never do “needle drugs” because that's how his mom got AIDS and died. He never really knew her. We stayed up all night laughing at the absurd shit they'd play at three o'clock in the
morning on the Lifetime channel. There was a show on about gaptoothed women and their careers. Everything was simpler then. You got stoned and drunk and dropped a few hits of LSD, watched shows about gap-toothed women and it was all fun and games.

Now it's your life all the time, the sum total, this trying to rationalize your bruised inner elbows and bloodstained shirts, this fetid cycle of needle abuse, this grand attempt at normal behavior, like we chose this life over going to shows and dating nice girls.

 

Halfway through Virginia we finish off the last bags of dope. A few hours more and we'll be sick as plague victims, with hundreds of miles to go. It's unbearably cold and the heater went out in my car long ago. We're shivering as we pass through North and then South Carolina. But now it has nothing to do with the weather. We're dope-sick. This is going to be the longest six hours of our lives, the innumerable miles dragging by in slow motion. We're sucking the loose snot back into our noses and down our throats, feeling the ache in our legs that twenty aspirin can't make a dent in, the slackness in our bowels that signals the shit that's been impacting in our colons for the last five days is about to make an untidy appearance.

We're broke by the time we hit northern Georgia. Andie has $2.78 in change, I have slightly less. I decide to do the old “pump and run,” but with a twist. I fill the car up with gas, because there's no way we'll make it the last furlong without a full tank, and then go into the station and whip out the checkbook to write the check I know they won't accept because no gas station this side of goddam Brazil takes checks.

“But this is all I have,” I reply.

“Well, you have to come up with something else, darlin', 'cause I ain't allowed to take nothin' but cash and credit.”

“Look, I live in Atlanta and I'm coming back from my parents'
house up in New York where I stayed for Thanksgiving. I'm good for it. This is a good check.”

I dislike lying to this woman because she's one of those motherly types who still applies makeup like she thinks she knows what looks good, but everyone else knows it looks like hell, and she really seems to regret turning me down. I want to give the gas back.

At least, that's what I tell her.

She says she'll need some collateral so she can be sure I'll eventually make good on the debt, so I hand her the pure silver dollar I've been carrying around for years since my mom gave it to me long ago. She winks at me and says she'll let it slide.

Then we're off again, back to our stomping grounds, where the reeking mess of everything is home. It seems like I've been doing this forever and I'm tired, so fucking tired. But I'm a rock star in this world and nobody and nothing can stop me: not the cops, not the dealers on the street trying to sell me flex, not my mom trying to feed me her holier-than-thou sermons, the “God doesn't like it when we treat our bodies like garbage cans,” and “God has a plan for you and just let me lay hands on you,” because when did any of that help her? She's married to a con-artist loser and I'm supposed to look to her for guidance?

I'll take my way, thanks. I'll take the hard road because this is my medicine and these are my people. We know what it means to survive, to breathe in when all that's left of the air is smog and all that's left of the rest of you are soulless shells, cicadas rigidly clinging to the dead trees of a society rotting from the inside out.

You did this to yourselves and you don't even know it. You can't even smell the stench of your own rotting compost, the decay of your soul.

But not me.

Every time I push that needle in and see the red plume of blood bloom in my syringe, I know where my solace lies.

January

More people die in January than any other month. Famous January dead include James Joyce, Salvador Dali, Al Capone, and Henry VIII. My grandfather died in January. I guess it's as good a time to die as any if you've gotta do it anyway, because January doesn't have shit else going for it. The holidays are over, the weather is shitty and unbearably cold, and light only lingers for a few hours a day. Winter is a permanent psychic darkness that comes back around every year, and every year it feels like this time it's never going to go away. Plus, all you have to look forward to in January is fucking February.

So now I'm all paranoid, more so than usual anyway, because I've read this goddam article about people being more likely to die in January.

Pooky decided it would be a good idea to rip us off a few days
ago, gave us six bags of flex and one bag of good shit for seventy bucks. He tried to play magician by letting me taste the good bag, then did the old bait and switch. He was long gone before we realized that he'd ripped us off.

In a situation like that, when there's no other money to be had and no other alternative, the dedicated smackhead will take out his anger and frustration on the next best target—in this case, the target was Pooky's brother.

I got him in the car with us and told him we had to run to the ATM. He willingly handed us the bags first. So the plan was to drive to the Citgo on Howell Mill Road, the one with the ATM, have him go in with us and then run out the opposite door to our waiting vehicle, leaving him with his dick in his hand.

But he wasn't stupid
enough
, because he insisted on waiting in the car.

So Andie and I walked in the Citgo trying to come up with a Plan B, left the car running and everything so as to maintain the ruse that we were trustworthy. But when we got back outside he'd turned the car off and was holding the keys, saying he wasn't getting back in—wasn't giving back the keys—until he had the money. With no other options, I told him we just checked our (nonexistent) bank account and realized we didn't have the money. He didn't say anything, just took off running with the fucking car keys. So I chased him down this alley and was almost on top of him when he turned and flashed a big-ass hunting knife at me, said he was gonna kill me for trying to play him.

“I just want the keys,” I told him, palms up.

Pooky's brother lunged at me and we did the whole struggling-with-the-knife deal and then he had my hoodie pulled over my head and that's when I felt the cold blade graze my side. Then he just took off running again. So I chased after him again because he still had
the goddam keys but I was bleeding and didn't have a shirt on and it was like ten degrees outside.

It was a superficial wound, though. The bleeding stopped on its own after a short time, although I ruined my favorite Jane's Addiction t-shirt using it as a compress to staunch the flow.

But we got the dope for free, so there's that. And here's the kicker: Andie had the spare set of keys in her purse the whole time.

Andie thinks we should find somewhere else to go until this whole thing settles down a little because what if Pooky and his brother come back swinging now that we've ripped them off? These kinds of things don't just go away. These kinds of things get bigger and bigger until they explode.

 

We're waiting for Alex in this empty lot on the corner where Pooky's tenement used to stand. Habitat for Humanity has been making an effort to reconstruct the neighborhood, so all the old abandoned buildings are disappearing and are being replaced by pastel-colored houses that these bleeding-heart construction workers throw up during their weekends off. All kinds of low-income families with small children are now moving into one of the most drug-infested neighborhoods in all of Atlanta.

You can't grow up around that shit and not start doing it yourself. If you look out your door and see crackheads banging pipes on the sidewalks and then watch the guy that sold them the crack driving down the block in a supped-up Cadillac with gold rims, are you going to straight-up join the fucking workforce after you drop out of high school?

Yeah, me neither. I'd rather have a shack on a hill somewhere than a “nice” house in a ghetto. I don't give a fuck what shade of turquoise it is.

While we're sitting there waiting for Alex to come back, this
nigger I've never seen before strolls up with Pooky and his shithead brother in tow, looking like little kids who told on a sibling.

The fucking guy doesn't even say anything, he just taps on the window, smiling.

Now, I'm not too stupid most of the time, but for some reason, even though fucking Pooky and his brother are standing there, I think this smiley bastard is actually a nice guy. I mean, he's
smiling
.

Nobody smiles down here, even when they like you.

And when he taps on the window and smiles and everything, displays the gold and diamonds inlayed on his teeth, sets his forty-ounce on the roof of the T-Bird, I actually think he's some do-gooder dealer who's made Pooky and his fuckwad brother come out with him to apologize to one of his most consistent customers for ripping us off. Because any good businessman, drug dealer or not, knows that the way to maintain business is to always treat the customer with respect, never give him a shitty product, and he'll always come back for more. Of course, drug addicts come back for more anyway.

However, Pooky and his brother didn't tell this motherfucker about ripping me off. The way they told it, I took this nigger's dope and drove off without paying. There will be no apologies here. Violators will be prosecuted.

This fucking guy wants retribution.

I roll the window down before I realize this, though. Smiley stops smiling and leans in the window, quick and efficient, and puts his hand on the steering column. It immediately occurs to me that he's trying to get the keys, but the motherfucker didn't count on the fact that on a '68 Thunderbird, the ignition is under the dash. He'd have to practically climb in the car to reach the keys.

I put my hand across his face and shove as hard as I can. He stumbles back and the last thing I see before I can throw the car in Drive is Smiley reaching behind his back and I just know he's gonna
start shooting. I yell at Andie to get down and I'm tearing down the street, trying to drive by memory because there's no way I'm getting the back of my head blown off. There's a crash on the back window and I don't peek over the dash until I have to make the turn onto the main road, where we'll be safe and out of the line of fire. Then, as I'm turning right onto Northside, the car feels like it's shoved aside like a toy. I push the gas pedal to the floor and pray.

We go to our hideout behind the Lizard Lounge to evaluate the damage. The back window has
not
been shot out. The crashing sound was Smiley's forty as it fell off the roof and shattered on the back window. There are still shards of beer bottle on the trunk. The worst damage was inflicted when we turned the corner and felt the car get shoved. Since I'd been ducking down I underestimated how far I had to pull out before turning and I caught the right side on a telephone pole. The pole caught my car at the seam where the two doors meet. Neither passenger-side door will open. And now that I've pissed off this dealer I can't take the T-Bird back down to the Bluff for a while.

But I'm not too worried about it. We white kids can walk around with impunity. We might get our asses kicked once in a while but at least we know we're not going to die without somebody paying. We have divine providence. We have precedent.

We know not what we do.

April

Jonas recently picked up a .38 revolver from some crackhead for $40. He brings it along. Just in case.

We pull down Washington Street but my man Alex is nowhere to be seen. So we go to the next corner and I order twenty bags of coke from a nigger I've never seen before, thinking nothing of it because there is always some new guy you've never seen before out here. Plus there's the added confidence of carrying a firearm.

Driving around the block I feel the overwhelming need to take a shit but make myself hold it in. I can usually convince myself that all the stressful stuff will be over in moments if I just sweat it out.

The new guy hands us the bags and I hand him the money. I open a baggie to taste the coke just as Jonas starts to pull away and
it's pure. Pure baking soda. The motherfucker didn't even attempt cutting it or nothing.

“Fuck!”

“What is it?” Jonas says, the gun under his leg.

“That fucking guy just sold us twenty bags of flex.”

“I told you this was a bad idea. We should never have tried to buy this much shit at once. That's when they fuck you. I just lost two hundred goddam dollars!”

“Drive around again,” I say. “We're getting that fucking money back.”

Jonas turns the car around and tears up the block, the tires squealing. The nigger is still standing there on the corner, brazen fuck that he is.

“Give me the gun and pull up right in front of this piece a shit.”

Jonas skids to a halt and I've already got the window down and the new guy gives me this look like he doesn't have time for any of our bullshit.

“What you need, motherfucker?” he says with a jerk of the head.

“That shit you just gave me was fucking flex. I want my money back.” I try to sound pissed and intimidating but I know I don't. I know I sound scared. I
am
scared.

“You better back up off me, bitch. I don't have your fucking money,” he says.

I turn back to Jonas like, “Do you believe this?” But then Jonas gives me this look that makes it so much easier to go through with the plan.

I'm going to blow this piece of shit away.

As soon as he sees the heater the nigger puts his hands up and then he's not so tough. All of his friends take off as soon as the gun
comes out. I'm sure some of them are going to be coming back with pistols of their own.

“Not so tough now, are you, you sorry fuck. Give me my fucking money.” My breath looks like smoke in the cold morning air. I am on fire.

He doesn't say anything. He just stands there toad-faced.

“Give me my fucking money, motherfucker! I swear to God I'll kill you!” I cock the hammer for emphasis of this threat, just like in the movies. He starts rifling through his pants. Little baggies of coke and Heroin fall out of his pockets and hit the ground and then he's holding a wad of cash. He counts out two hundred dollars.

“Hand me the whole fucking thing! You tried to rip me off so now
I'm
gonna rip
you
.”

He hands me everything. It's gotta be like five or six hundred bucks.

“You're gonna die, white boy,” I hear him mutter.

“What did you say to me? You fuck! I come down here every fucking day and pay hard-earned fucking money to you assholes and all I ask in return is some real dope. I'm tired of this bullshit! You ever try some shit like that again with me and I'll kill you! Understand? Hand me those baggies!” I say, motioning to the pavement where the bags fell from his pockets.

“Let's go, man,” Jonas says.

“Wait,” I say. “This motherfucker's gonna give us
every
thing.”

He looks around like he doesn't see the twenty or so baggies on the sidewalk at his feet.

“On the fucking ground! Hand me those fucking baggies, you fuck!”

He forks over the dope and Jonas hits the gas and then there are ten or fifteen black guys chasing after us. One of them actually hits the back window with a shoe just as we turn the corner.

This is huge. Pooky and that shit was one thing, but this takes it to an entirely different level. We just walked with somebody else's money, somebody else's dope. But fuck 'em. They had it coming. And by my count, I've got about twelve bags of Heroin and ten bags of coke to show for our troubles.

I pull my syringe out from underneath the carpet and am fixed in less than three minutes. We head back to the job and shoot coke all afternoon. The floor goes down in record time.

I get home and Andie looks ready to explode with happiness when she sees all that money and all the little baggies besides. We have to get another car now, and disguises or something.