Memoirs Aren't Fairytales (26 page)

“What are you doing in Sunshine's room?” I asked.

“I live here.”

I pressed my fingers against the door to stop them from shaking. “Since when?”

“I met her on the streets a couple weeks ago, she needed someone to cover half the rent,” she said. “How do you know Sunshine?”

“I moved in with her after you left me stranded in McDonald's.” The next time Sunshine dropped off her money, I'd have to warn her about Renee. If Sunshine was looking for a permanent roommate, Renee wasn't that person.

“Sunshine always talks about a Nicole,” she said. “But I had no idea it was you, girl.”

“Funny, she's never talked about you,” I said.

She smiled and then opened her mouth to say something but stopped and walked over to the coffee table. She took a bundle out of a red purse.

“You want some?” she asked. “It's real good.”

I walked into the room and handed her the rig from my pocket and took a seat on the couch.

For leaving me at McDonald's with no money or dope, she owed me this shot. And more.

“Who's your dealer?” I asked.

“Jose, Que's cousin.”

She told me Que and Raul had each gotten fifteen-year sentences, and since they'd been in jail, Jose had taken over their business.

“Where's your baby?” I asked.

There weren't any toys in the room and none of the clothes on the floor looked small enough to fit a kid.

“With my mom,” she said. “But hell, you probably guessed that would happen. I'm no mother.”

“No, I thought you'd give the baby to Mark.”

She laughed so hard, she almost dropped the spoon. “You should have seen Mark's face in the delivery room when Mason came out, looking just like Que.”

Poor kid. I didn't know what was worse, having Renee as your mom or having your dad in prison.

She gave me back the loaded rig and held hers up in the air, clinking it against mine.

“To old times,” she said.

And we both shot up.

Spending all my time in my hotel room talking to Claire wasn't helping me get over her death. It was turning me into a crazy. So when Renee stopped by and asked if I wanted to go for a walk, I said yes. And quickly, our walks turned into an everyday thing, like when she'd been pregnant. Mostly, she did all the talking. She'd tell me how Que and Raul were doing in jail and how she was going to marry Que in prison once the warden approved the ceremony. With good behavior, she said he'd be out in eight or nine years. She'd take Mason back from her mom, and they'd be a family.

“Does Que know you hook?” I asked one day while we were sitting in the park. We were on a bench, watching kids slide down what was left of the snow banks.

She'd been working the track with Sunshine every night. And Sunshine said Renee did overnighters with her clients too, staying in their hotel rooms, doing gangbangs, and S&M shit.

“I need to make money,” she said. “I don't have a Dustin to take care of me.”

Dustin had only met Renee once, but he liked that I had someone to hang out with. Once Renee and I had started going for walks, I showered every day, and in bed, I got on top and rode him like I had before the fire.

She got up from the bench, and we walked through the Back Bay. She turned down a street I'd never been on and climbed up the steps of one of the townhouses.

“What are you doing?” I asked as she knocked on the front door.

“I need to re-up.”

“Jose lives here?”

“He couldn't move into Que's old place,” she said.

Dominick, a friend of Que and Raul's, answered the door. Renee walked past him, and I stayed on the sidewalk.

He pointed at me. “Look who we have here, Raul's boo,” he said. “I was just talking to Jose about you.”

I wasn't Raul's anything.

And I really shouldn't be here. If Dustin found out I was at another dealer's house, he'd be pissed.

“Jose, come see who's here,” Dominick yelled.

Jose came to the door. His soul patch had grown since the last time I'd seen him and now hung to his chest in a braid. “Damn girl, never thought I'd see you again,” he said. “Aren't you gonna come in?”

A woman and her little white dog had been walking towards me on the sidewalk, but she turned around when Jose came out.

I'd stay for a just a couple minutes, and if Renee didn't want to go, I'd leave without her.

I followed Jose inside, and Renee was sitting on one of the couches with Federico, another cousin of Que and Raul's. Federico looked just like Raul with a teardrop tattoo under his eye, but he was much shorter and had a barbell pierced at the end of each eyebrow.

On the coffee table was a mound of little baggies with a pill in each of them. Federico opened five of the bags and chopped up the pills with a razor blade.

I sat on the other couch between Jose and Dominick.

“There's a rave in Worcester tomorrow night,” Dominick said to me. “You should come with us.”

“Renee's coming, aren't you, girl,” Federico said.

“You know I wouldn't miss it,” Renee said.

Federico separated the powder into lines and snorted one. Jose and Dominick each did a line too.

Dominick handed me the straw. “Roll with us,” he said.

I thought of Dustin.

“I can't, we've got to go, Renee just came for some dope,” I said.

“Nicole, we've got time to do some E,” Renee said.

The shot I'd done that morning was wearing off. Even if I shot up again, it would only get me straight. But ecstasy would get me high for at least four hours. And an E high was pretty damn good.

I took the straw from Dominick and snorted the line. When I was done, I handed it to Renee.

She shook her head. “Can't, my nose is all fucked up from snorting dope,” she said. “Federico, give me one of the pills.”

She brought the pill into the kitchen and I heard her run the faucet.

Jose rolled three blunts and we smoked them while we waited for the E to kick in. At first, I felt heaviness in my chest from the weed. Then slowly, I stepped out of my body like I was watching myself from the outside. That was the E coming on. And when I reentered, my skin craved to be touched. I ran my fingers up and down my neck and around my ears.

Renee turned up the music. The vibration of the base shook my muscles, tickled and rubbed my joints.

Jose blacked out the windows with sheets and shut off the lights. He cracked glow sticks and danced on top of the coffee table, tracing patterns in the air. Pink and green and blue rays, swirling like a kaleidoscope.

Dominick touched my arm. My skin was water and his fingers were fish.

I touched his arm. My fingers wriggled and glided across his silky skin and the roughness of his arm hair. My hands moved to his head and swept across his cornrows. The texture sent sparks through my body.

My feet slipped out of my sneakers. My toes spread and crossed.

My teeth needed to bite, and my tongue wanted to lick. My head bent down to Dominick's hand and I slid one of his fingers into my mouth. His skin was the best thing I'd ever tasted. My teeth grinded his finger, my tongue flicked his nail and circled around his cuticle. He rubbed and tugged my knuckle with his teeth.

The glow sticks darkened to red, navy, and forest green, and the CD was skipping.

I was coming down, swallowed in the corner cushions of the leather couch with my toes in Dominick's mouth and my fingers rubbing my own head.

Jose got off the table, turned off the stereo, and flipped on the light.

My gums were sore from Dominick's nails, and my jaw was tight from chewing his finger, but I wanted to roll again.

In the lit-up room, Dominick released my toes from his mouth, and Federico pulled his hand out of his pants.

The spot on the couch where Renee had been sitting was empty.

“Where's Renee?” I asked through clenched teeth.

“Bathroom,” Federico said.

The clock on the cable box showed it was just past four. What felt like only minutes were really several hours. Still, I had plenty of time before Dustin would be home.

“Let's do another pill,” I said.

Federico crushed four more pills and set a whole one aside for Renee. He bent his head to snort the line, but stopped when Jose said, “How long has Renee been in the bathroom?”

Federico shrugged his shoulders. “She said she wasn't feeling good.”

“I'll go check on her,” I said. “Where's the bathroom?”

Jose pointed towards the kitchen. “First door on the left.”

My toes were wet from Dominick's spit, and they slid on the wood floors.

I knocked on the bathroom door, and when Renee didn't answer, I jiggled the knob. The door swung open, but she wasn't inside.

I went back to the couch. “She's not in the bathroom.”

“When did you see her get up?” Jose asked Federico.

“Don't know, seemed like just a couple minutes ago,” Federico said.

The guys all looked at each other, and Federico said something in Spanish. Jose took off up the stairs to the second floor. When he came back, he was out of breath. “She's not in the bedrooms.” He walked into the kitchen and opened the back door to check the porch. “The pill's still here,” he said. “She never took it.”

The rest of us went in the kitchen too. Renee's water glass was in the sink. Full. And the pill was on the counter.

Jose pointed to the closed door next to the bathroom. “She wouldn't go down there,” he said. “So where'd she go?”

“What's down there?” I asked.

“If she did go down there, we would have heard the dogs,” Dominick said.

“The music was too loud to hear anything,” Federico said.

“What dogs?” I asked.

Jose opened the door and raced down the wooden steps. “Motherfucker.”

Dominick and Federico flew down the stairs, and I followed and stopped on the bottom step. Three pit bulls sat in the middle of the room, chomping on steak bones. Trash bags were placed in circles around the basement floor, and there were gaps where it looked like some of bags were missing.

Jose counted the bags in each circle. “We're missing two bags,” he said, standing by one of the gaps. “Two fucking bags and none of us saw her leave?” Spanish came pouring from his mouth so fast I only caught random words. Heroin. Set up. Kill.

Jose ran to the steps and his hands clamped my throat. “Where the fuck did she go?”

“I don't know.” And I didn't.

His shoulder jabbed into my stomach and he lifted me, folding me over his back.

“I don't know anything,” I shouted. He carried me up the stairs and threw me on the couch.

Dominick stood behind me, holding my shoulders. Federico sat beside me and cuffed my hands. And Jose stood between my legs, pointing a gun at my chest.

“I'll blow your fucking face off if you don't start talking,” Jose said.

“We went for a walk and she brought me here,” I said. “She told me she needed to re-up, that's all I know.”

“What was in her backpack?” Federico asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “She always carries one.”

The guys talked more in Spanish.

The steaks were in her backpack, I thought. That bitch had set me up. She had waited for all of us to start rolling, fed the dogs the meat so she could grab the bags, and slipped out the back door without anyone hearing her. She knew the guys would be bagging the pills for the rave tomorrow night.

“Whose idea was it to roll?” I asked.

“Renee's,” Federico said. “She asked me before any of you guys even sat down.”

“Don't you see, she had the whole thing planned out,” I said.

“And what about you?” Jose asked.

“Do you think I'd still be here if I was in on her plan?”

Jose straddled my legs and pressed the gun against my temple. “Tell me everything, where she lives, who she's working for, and I might let you get out of here alive.”

When Dustin came home, I was in the bathroom, squeezed between the shower and toilet. My eye was swollen from where Jose had hit me with the gun, and my nose wouldn't stop bleeding.

“Where's my girl,” Dustin yelled from the bedroom.

I buried my head between my knees and undid my ponytail so my hair covered the bruises on my neck.

“Are you sick?” He crouched in front of me and lifted my chin with his fingers. “What happened, baby?”

For the past hour, I'd come up with excuses for why my face was so swollen and bloody—I had gotten jumped in the street or Renee had beaten me for drugs. But none of those lies would get me out of the trouble I was in. Jose knew where I lived, and he knew Dustin ran drugs. And he had said if I didn't find Renee and have her return the bags, he was going to kill Dustin and me.

I took a deep breath, and the whole story came out. When I got to the part where Jose bashed the gun across my face, Dustin punched the wall by the shower.

“I'm going to fucking kill him,” he yelled. “No one touches you but me.”

It was a good thing I'd skipped the part where Dominick and I were sucking each other's fingers.

“I'm so sorry,” I said. “I shouldn't have even gone inside their house, this is all my fault.”

He paced between the bedroom and bathroom. “Do you remember where they live?”

I nodded.

He grabbed my arm and lifted me up.

“Where are we going?” I asked. He pulled me down the hallway and out the front of the hotel. His fingers were clamped so tightly my skin was bruising.

“You're going to show me their house,” he said. “And then I'm going to take you somewhere safe.”

The van Dustin used for his runs was at Richard's, so we took a taxi to Jose's neighborhood, and Dustin asked the driver to pull over at the corner of Jose's street. I pointed out the townhouse, and Dustin said to wait in the car while he checked it out. He came back after several minutes and gave the driver an address in Southie.

“Who lives in Southie?” I asked.

He dialed a number on his cell phone. “You home?” he asked the person on the other end. “I'll be there in fifteen.”

“Dustin, who lives in Southie?”

“Shut up,” he shouted. “I need to think.”

Dustin had said he was going to kill Jose, but I hoped he wasn't serious. Jose was a member of the same gang Raul and Que were in. Jose carried a gun, and his teardrop tattoo meant he'd killed someone.