The Harem (18 page)

“I live with my sister.”

“Do you mind showing me where you live?”

“There’s not much to see. It’s a shitty little place in Aspen Hill next to a strip mall. No aspens and no hills.”

“I don’t care. Come on.”

On the way out, I stopped off at the cashier, who recognized me from my shopping spree with Eve two days ago. I put $1000 on an Express Gift Card and handed it to Cynthia, telling her to come back and buy herself a new wardrobe, when she gets down to the size she wanted. We drove over to her one bedroom apartment in Aspen Hill and made a salad from the fruits we picked up on the way.

After dinner we looked together at the photographs on her wall, capturing all of the most memorable moments in her life, birthdays, graduations, and vacations with her family growing up. Next to the photographs on the wall was a full length mirror. I stood behind Cynthia and took out the pins holding her red wig in place and removed it. She stared intently at her face in the reflection and touched her shoulder length auburn hair with her fingertips as if she had never seen her own hair before. In the mirror, I noticed dark circles under Cynthia’s eyes, as if she hadn’t been sleeping very well.

“Do you see? You are Cynthia. Say it for me.”

“I am Cynthia…”

I wrapped my arms around her tightly and whispered in her ear.

“That’s right. You’re Cynthia. When did you start dressing and acting like this other person?”

“I don’t remember. A long time ago… when I was a little girl, I think.”

“I want you to know I accept you, Cynthia, as well as this other person you have living inside you. You can come over to my house if you want to dress up and act like Sindee in private any time you want. But don’t show her to anyone else. Don’t let anyone else see her in public, especially at work. Don’t go to your job dressed as Sindee. People will be cruel to you and they won’t understand. You won’t be accepted. You have to keep Sindee hidden inside you. But I want you to know… I accept you... Both of you…”

“You do?”

“I do…”

Cynthia started crying, as she looked at herself in the mirror, tears dripping off her cheeks. I found a tissue in her bathroom to dry her eyes.

“Can you call me by my name, just once? My… other name…”

“Sure… Sindee.”

Cynthia smiled and kissed me. I made us both a cup of herbal tea I found in her kitchen cabinet and we retired to her bedroom for the night. We undressed, shut off the lights and cuddled up together in her bed. As we shut our eyes to rest, I fondled Cynthia/Sindee’s full beautiful breasts in the dark. The king-size bed was large enough to sleep all three of us quite comfortably…

Chapter Eighteen

Sapphire

So now that I’m feeling a little better, J suggested that I write down everything that happened to me last week, so I would remember how close I took myself to the edge…

After I got back from J’s mansion Friday night, I smoked a rock and lay back in my bed for my fifteen minutes of ecstasy, my brain firing on all cylinders. I know you probably think I’m a bad girl and I’m not denying that I am, but at least I’ve never used a needle, never shot coke or injected heroin. See my arms? No needle marks. I know some dope addicts who do it, and I would too, but there’s one thing that scares me: AIDS. I know addicts who’ve died of it. I’ve seen the horrible red sores on their skin, before they cashed it in. So I draw the line with needles and only smoke crack on the weekends, to keep my head right for school. But this weekend I thought, what the hell, I’m young, you only live once. I’d rather die in a romantic burst of flames in my youth than live to be a cranky toothless cancer-ridden old lady in a wheelchair. Wouldn’t you?

I kept picturing how obsessively J stared at my nipple rings and how he took me from behind, chained to the wall in that Pleasure Room of his. I played through my mind that slave girl scenario, the fantasy of being owned by him and sold to another man at a slave auction. It made me so wet I masturbated while I was high and the heightened sensations when I touched by clitoris made my heart race. I started sweating and trembling as I worked myself to an orgasm, fantasizing about my owner, Master J. If only I could get him to be my supplier, my big dominant sugar daddy, I would become one happy little crack whore. I’m sure I can get him to do it, once he takes another look at my nipple rings. If that doesn’t work, maybe a piercing on the lips of my vagina will do the trick.

When I got home Friday night I couldn’t sleep so I started writing my boring paper. All day Saturday I screwed around in my apartment, but miraculously I managed to finish my assignment. Jeremy texted me an invite to his house Wednesday night to “study” and have dinner with him. I left him hanging for several hours before I responded, texting him back twice later that night. I told him I would meet him at 6 on Wednesday and said, “Be ready to party.” Hopefully, he got the message. Did I need to spell it out for him again?

I slept until early Sunday afternoon. When I woke up I felt tired, irritated and depressed. I was hung over from too much partying, I guess. I tried to clean my apartment and catch up on some reading from my other classes. It’s amazing that even though I was high all weekend, I somehow managed to get more homework done than ever! Who said life can’t be enhanced through a mixture of cocaine, baking soda, ammonia?

The low feeling wasn’t going away and I craved getting high again. Three times in one weekend would be a personal record. There was nothing left in my pipe and my private stash was used up. I didn’t have much money left for the rest of the month, so I was hoping my dealer Tony, an old boyfriend I still occasionally had sex with, would give me a break. I drove over to his house and he was partying. Hard. As soon as he let me in, Tony handed me his pipe like he was expecting me.

Shit, he must’ve just lit one up. The glass was still hot. I love that cracking sound like Rice Crispies when you inhale, the numb feeling on your tongue when the smoke passes over it and the euphoria, like I can do anything, accomplish anything, and be anything. Tony and I leaned back on his couch and he put his arm around my shoulder.

“Freebasing, baby…”

That was the first thing Tony said to me. He was high as a kite.

We started talking non-stop, about all sorts of shit; just jabbering away about I don’t remember what. I don’t think we were even listening to each other.

I think we might have had sex or maybe I just imagined it. If we did, it wasn’t too memorable. Nothing like with my J. I wished I was alone so I could lie in bed and fantasize about him.

I blew off school Monday and Tuesday, hanging out with Tony. I don’t think either of us slept much. Tony just got in a large delivery from his supplier of some super pure chips and I stayed with him while rich white kids came by all day long, making buys. I watched them smoke, but it grossed me out sharing a pipe with guys I didn’t know. I just shared a hit on Tony’s pipe early in the morning and late at night, when I was completely crashed out and depressed. What a rush. The new shit was as pure as advertised.

I left late Tuesday night, spending the rest of November’s grocery money on crack. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept through the night, rather than just nodding off with the other junkies on Tony’s couch. I thought if I cuddled up in my own bed, I’d be able to sleep it off, but I just tossed and turned all night and all Wednesday morning. I missed my classes again.

In the afternoon I started having a headache. I took a few Tylenols, but it wasn’t going away. I thought if I smoked a bowl of the new shit, maybe my headache would go away. I took a hit, but rather than it putting me into a good head space, everything got all fucked up. I started having trouble breathing and my heart started racing. I felt these tremors in my arms and legs that wouldn’t go away. I walked around my apartment, feeling dizzy and nauseous.

Then, I really started freaking out. I felt these horrible bugs, like roaches, crawling around my skin, under my skin. I took my jeans and shirt off and I could see them, hundreds of them, little tiny lumps moving up and down my arms and legs, biting me. I fell on the floor and cuddled into a ball, frantically scratching myself all over my body. I thought if I took a hot shower and scrubbed my skin with soap it would kill the bugs inside me.

After the shower, I got out and caught a glance at what I looked like in the mirror and I didn’t recognize myself. I looked hideous. My hair was a tangled mess; I had dark circles under my eyes. My lips were cracked and blistered, probably from the goddamned hot glass pipe. I was bleeding from the scratch marks all over my body, streaks of blood dripping down my skin. I was sweating on my forehead and under my arms. I touched my forehead and I was burning up. I could feel my heart beating so hard and fast it hurt my chest. My body just kept trembling. I thought I was having a heart attack or a seizure or something. Maybe the shit Tony sold me had contaminants. Or was too pure for me, compared to the diluted shit I was used to.

I went into my living room and sat on my couch, trying not to freak out. The overhead lights were hurting my eyes so I turned them off and sat in the dark. The only light was from the sun streaming in through the curtain of my window. I tried to take a deep breath, but it was like my lungs were constricted and I couldn’t get any air. I thought I was going to die. Then I thought about J. Where did I leave his business card?

I frantically looked around my apartment for the card J gave me at Starbucks, but I lost it. When I saw a pair of jeans in a crumpled heap on the floor, I remembered J had slipped an extra card into my back pocket. They looked like the same jeans I’d worn to J’s place Friday night. The card was still in the back pocket, thank God.

I couldn’t find my fucking phone at first. I ran around my apartment in the shadows, knocking things off tables and chairs, until I realized it was in the other pocket of my jeans. With shaking hands, I called J and he picked up right away.

“Hello?”

“J?... J?”

“Who is it? Is that you, Sapphire? Sapphire, you sound awful. Are you OK? Sapphire?”

“J… I’m fucked up… Help me…”

Chapter Nineteen

Jeremy

Though she couldn’t remember it, I was able to get Sapphire to read her address off an envelope addressed to her. Running out to my car, I did a quick search on my phone, typing in, “How to treat a drug overdose?” Part of me wanted to call 911, but if there were illegal drugs in her house and drug paraphernalia, she might get arrested. I drove to her apartment near Montgomery Community College, stopping once to pick up a bottle of Ipecac Syrup, to induce vomiting. If she was unconscious when I arrived, I would call 911. I hoped I could get to her in time.

I found Sapphire lying naked on the floor in the darkness, in a fetal position, shivering and scratching herself. She kept repeating, “Let me out, let me out, the bugs are biting me, let me out.”

I turned on the light and it looked like a bomb had gone off in her apartment. There were broken objects scattered all over the floor. She shielded her eyes as if the brightness pained her, so I turned off the light. I picked her up off the floor and sat her on the couch. I touched her cheeks and forehead. Her skin felt like it was on fire.

I forced her to drink a glass of water and take a dose of Ipecac. I led her very unsteadily into the bathroom. Sapphire kneeled in front of the toilet. Holding her hair out of the way, she retched up a clear fluid along with brownish bile.

Next I put her into the shower and held her under cold water for several minutes. After shampooing her hair and cleaning her body, I dried her off on some relatively clean towels and wrapped her up in a blanket. I found some nail clippers in the cabinet above the bathroom sink and cut her nails and put some Vaseline on her dry blistered lips. She kept repeating, “Let me out, let me out, let me out.” I helped her back out to her living room couch and held her.

Sapphire finally looked into my eyes and recognized me. She embraced me tightly and wouldn’t let me go. She lay down on the couch while I tried to clean up her apartment as best I could. I threw two crack pipes and a water pipe in a garbage bag and took it out to a dumpster outside of her apartment, along with the rest of the trash I’d collected.

She told me where she kept her stash and she pointed to a jar on the kitchen counter. I took out a zip lock bag from a jar on the kitchen counter with several chips of cocaine inside and Sapphire flushed the drugs down the toilet, without argument. We went into her bedroom and I packed a suitcase full of clean clothes and put her school books and notebooks in her backpack. I helped her get dressed in some warm clothes and we left the apartment. She appeared to be calmer and her fever had gone down considerably, but she still appeared to have shortness of breath and her muscles were twitching.

I asked Sapphire where her supplier lived and what his name was. She gave me the address and I decided to drive over to pay him a visit.

Sapphire’s drug dealer lived in a quiet unassuming neighborhood in Randolph Hills. We went up on his front porch and rang the doorbell. As Tony opened the door, he gave Sapphire a kiss on the cheek, but blocked us from entering.

“Who’s he?” Tony asked.

“A friend,” Sapphire said.

“He’s looks like a cop. I told you not to bring anyone over here I don’t know, baby,” Tony said.

“He’s not a cop,” Sapphire said.

“He looks like a cop,” Tony said.

Tony made a move to close the door.

“Tony, right? I’m Jeremy,” I said.

I reached my palm out to greet him, but Tony didn’t take my hand. Through the open door, I saw a large poster of the Redskin’s new rookie quarterback Robert Griffith III plastered on one wall.

“Hey, RG3 is the real deal, bro.”

“Yeah. Are you a Skins fan?”

“Yeah, all my life. Do you know if they’re going to play him next week?” I asked.

Tony looked at me suspiciously.

“Shanahan hasn’t said. I think they might rest his knee against the Ravens. So what can I do for you, Jeremy?”

“I want to make a buy.”