Wrath James White presents Poisoning Eros I & II (6 page)

“Oh, but I do. I do own you. I know everything about
you, Gloria.
Everything.
”

They stared at one another, a bizarre showdown in a
dark alley, two urban gunfighters.

It unnerved her that he wouldn’t look away, that he
held his gaze far longer than she ever could, and she averted her
eyes, studied the mound of dogshit smeared across a discarded sheet
of newspaper. Her cheeks burned, and she glanced up again. He was
still staring.

“You’re like a goddamned serpent. They don’t blink
either.”

Vlad’s mouth curled into a smile.

Then she realized he’d somehow gained the upper
hand, that she had leaned forward almost in supplication and was
looking up at him from that position. Almost as if she were bowing
before him. Or cowering, like a whipped puppy.

“What do you want from me?” she whispered, afraid of
his answer.

“I want you to stop with the drugs, first of all. I
want you fresh, clear-headed.” He held out his hand. “This isn’t a
good neighborhood. Let’s go.”

Stop with the drugs? Who’s he kidding?
Just a
moment’s hesitation before she gave her hand again, let him pull
her down the alley.

*

He brought her home, made sure she was inside the
building before disappearing into the night. He hadn’t wanted
anything after all, she guessed. Just for her not to be with anyone
else.

When she was sure Vlad was gone, Gloria left her
building, intending to score. There was the money from the two dead
freaks, but it wouldn’t get her far. She knew she’d end up doing
whatever Vlad wanted. That goddamned addiction was strong than any
repugnance she might have felt.

The geeks were dead—there went her X connection. Pot
did nothing for her. The only thing she could really afford was
crack, but she hated messing with that shit. It wasn’t even that
effective anymore.

Even at that hour, Times Square was lit up with neon
signs and harsh streetlamps. Even cleaned up—Disney-fied—it still
was a shitty area. She stepped inside the headshop on the corner of
Forty-first and Eighth Avenue. The tiny store was adorned with
magazine racks filled with porn, bootleg videos and DVDs in piles
near the floor, and a glass-covered counter sporting the latest in
drug paraphernalia.

“I’m looking for Manny,” she said, leaning over the
counter.

“Busted,” the man working the store told her.
“Earlier tonight.”

“Fuck.” Gloria rubbed her hands over her face.
“Who’s around?”

“No one. They all got busted.”

“What do you mean, ‘all’? How can that be?” She knew
these guys didn’t hang out together. There was no way the cops
could have rounded them all up, not on the same night.

He shrugged, looked around. “Just go home, Gloria.
Things are weird right now.”

She tried the liquor store next door, the deli, the
bodega. They all said the same thing: the dealers were gone.
Busted.

This was bad. So bad … and she had the feeling that
no matter where she went, it would be more of the same. Her head
pounded, vision blurred. She managed to make it to the curb before
throwing up into the gutter, spewing remnants of a dinner that had
consisted of cheap booze, expensive drugs, and pig semen.

God! What had she done with her life? She stared at
the vile mixture draining away in the street and began to sob,
hanging on to the back end of a parked taxi. When did she become
this
? When had this become her life?

The vomit was burning her chin, and she wiped it
away with her palm. Even the front of her jacket was coated with
it.

She once had a life
… Had someone who loved
her, someone who knew who she was, what she did for a living but
was willing to love her anyway. Ryan.

When she’d first met him at the Adult Film Awards in
Vegas she’d thought he was just another sleazy producer. One of the
hordes ogling the talent, trying to get sucked off beneath the
table by a few of the more impressionable young actresses, in
exchange for the promise of a starring role. It turned out he was
just the old college friend of a porn producer who’d dragged him to
the awards ceremony to show off for him.

She remembered taking an almost instant dislike to
the fat, overdressed producer in the sharkskin suit and snakeskin
cowboy boots, who sat wobbling around in the chair next to the
handsome young man like some Irish-mafia version of Humpty-Dumpty.
The producer’s breath had smelled like cigar smoke and rotting pork
and he had greeted her with a familiarity that suggested they had
done business before, snaking one of his chubby ham-hands around
her waist and pulling her close. Planting a clammy kiss on her
cheek and a pat on her ass. Gloria had been so enamored by his
companion that she’d endured the awful man’s sophomoric groping and
allowed herself to be dragged over to his table.

“Gloria! You look absolutely delicious, as always. I
have a friend I want to introduce you to. Gloria, this is Ryan.
He’s flown all the way from New York just to meet you. He’s a big
fan of your movies. I tell you, Ryan, this little gal has got the
best head in the business, and I’ve seen them all. No one sucks a
cock like her. She won Best Oral scene two years in a row.”

The overly gregarious butt broker had practically
shoved Gloria into the chair next to Ryan, who looked just as
flabbergasted as she felt. Ryan had risen as she sat and then
settled back into his chair like a man is supposed to do when a
lady joins the table, but it had been so long since anyone had
treated Gloria like a lady.

Gloria was touched by Ryan’s almost charming
shyness. He tipped his hat to her and even called her ma’am like
some type of southern gentleman. His friend the producer made sure
to whisper in her ear that Ryan had just sold a computer game for
1.5 million dollars, as if this news was supposed to make her drop
to her knees instantly. Gloria was impressed again when Ryan
appeared to be even more annoyed by his friend’s brazenness than
she had been.

“Gloria? Do you think you’d like to go out with me
sometime?”

Something in his eyes had seemed so afraid of
rejection that there was no way she could have turned him down.
That night he’d flown her to New York on a chartered plane and
there she’d stayed for the next ten years. Six of those years
living with Ryan, sharing his wealth and his bed while still
maintaining her career in porn.

If what she did for a living had bothered him at
all, he never once gave indication of it. It had all seemed too
perfect. She’d even been close to marrying him until he’d asked her
to give up the drugs. She’d have rather he’d asked her to stop
sucking cocks and licking pussy on camera.

“I just can’t stand to see you destroying yourself
like this. You’re killing yourself with that junk”

“You’ve got it wrong. This is how I celebrate life.
I don’t want to die without experiencing the highest highs life can
offer.”

And so she had. The highest highs and now the lowest
lows. Ryan had loved her and she’d thrown it all away in order to
keep the party going. She’d thrown away all hope she’d ever had of
having a normal family. It was after leaving Ryan that the drugs
had really begun to take control and her career had nose-dived.

Sometimes Gloria would visit that old
neighborhood—upper Manhattan, a decent neighborhood, certainly
better than the one she lived in. A neighborhood where she once
belonged. And where he still lived. She wondered if he would even
recognize her. Or worse, if he did, would he shun her, treat her
like shit, pretend to not know her? That terrified her, so she
never sought that answer. The chance of it was too painful to
imagine.

She began walking. North. And east. She knew where
she was headed, even if she didn’t understand why. Sometimes she
just had to be there, pretend she still belonged. Pretend the
fantasy was still her life.

Central Park didn’t scare her, even in the middle of
the night. There wasn’t much she hadn’t been through, not much left
anyone could do to her short of murder that would make much of an
impact. So she cut through the Park, crossed fields of grass just
starting to sprout, past bronze statues of horses and dogs and
heroic men riddled with graffiti, past a carousel long in need of a
face-lift, until she reached the Seventy-second Street entrance.
Fifth Avenue. She could barely remember having lived here, among
the elite. In clean buildings with large apartments and no rats or
roaches. Greeted by doormen who knew her name and handed her mail
and dry cleaning. Waited on by maids who did the laundry and
cleaned the dishes and made the beds.

She glanced at the cheap watch she had bought in
Chinatown for five bucks. Almost seven a.m. She’d been wandering
the streets for hours. Wooden benches lined the shoulder-high stone
wall surrounding the park, and she sat, watching the building
across the street, waiting for the flurry of commuters, an exodus
of tenants heading for work.

She knew his routine better than he did, even though
it had been months since her last trip uptown. Every day at
seven-thirty, like clockwork, he left the building. So many times
she’d wanted to follow him, get up the nerve to approach, but the
idea of rejection terrified her. Better to watch from a
distance.

He was late this morning, but only by ten minutes.
God, he looked good! So handsome … so
normal
. That’s all she
wanted. Normal.

And there she was, across the street, holding his
hand. Looking adoringly at him as he wrapped his arm around her
shoulders.

Gloria leaned forward, unsure of what she was
seeing. What the hell was
she
doing here? Gloria tried to
swallow but her mouth and throat had gone dry, tried to seize up.
The cobblestoned ground rushed at Gloria as she stumbled to her
knees, climbed back up to her feet and moved toward the street. She
crouched behind a car and stared at them across the avenue.

She looked so beautiful … her long blonde hair tied
behind her head in a ponytail. More like a photograph. Too perfect
to be real.

Just like her mother, once upon a time.

“Why isn’t she at school?” Gloria muttered, covering
her mouth with a hand that still smelled faintly of vomit. Angela
had been in one of the country’s finest boarding school since she
was six years old—right before Gloria left her family—ten years
earlier. And as far as she knew, that’s where Angela had stayed. In
the years she had been coming back to watch Ryan’s daily
activities, she hadn’t seen Angela, except during summer vacations
or holidays. It was April now—Easter break had ended weeks earlier,
and school wouldn’t let out for the year until mid-June. Maybe
someone had died, maybe that’s why the girl was back. Maybe it was
a special vacation she and her father had planned. Maybe Gloria was
hallucinating and Angela wasn’t there at all. What the hell did it
matter? It wasn’t so much that it mattered … it was the shock of
unexpectedly seeing the girl, being unprepared for it. Feeling that
aching want return, that incredible need to be with her daughter,
her only child.

And knowing it would never happen.

She drifted away, sneaking back into the park before
they spotted her, and made her way home.

*

Vlad had gotten his way yet again. She’d been unable
to score anything at all, not even a goddamned Vicodin. She spent
the morning vomiting, fighting fever and chills and a massive
headache, all thanks to her addiction trying not to flee her body.
Just one hit, Gloria … that’s all we need. You’ll feel good
again. Trust us!

Too weak now to even crawl to the toilet to puke, so
she used a bucket at the side of her bed. Not much left to throw up
anyway. Her stomach was empty, and all that was coming up was
yellowish bile. This didn’t worry her—if she started spewing blood,
then she’d worry.

With fever-swollen eyes she stared across the room,
looked at Vlad sitting in a chair by the window. She was about to
yell at him and realized she had to be imagining it, he couldn’t
have gotten into her apartment. The building was old, the doors
constructed of steel back when builders knew how to make things
that last. Several locks and a deadbolt made break-ins
impossible.

“You’re not hallucinating,” he said, snapping his
newspaper as if gearing up to turn the page.

“How’d you get in here?” she mumbled, still not sure
she was talking to the actual Vlad or to his apparition.

“You look awful. How long before you get over this
withdrawal? I’m a patient man, but my customer isn’t.”

She groaned and fell back onto the pillow. “Get out
of my apartment.”

“Get up, Gloria. I have something for you.”

She couldn’t get up if she wanted to—and she didn’t
want to. Oh, here was something new for her personal enjoyment: the
headache had intensified to such a degree that she could see auras
surrounding the objects in the room. She squeezed her eyes shut
until it hurt, until she thought blood vessels would rupture.

“I’ll come over there then.”

She heard him approach, heard his feet padding
across the worn, filthy carpeting. Seconds later he had crossed the
tiny bedroom and sat beside her on the bed.

“Look at me.”

Slowly she opened her eyes, fighting against the
pain, against the burning blur that had overtaken her vision,
blinking back tears that had formed because of the heat and pain
and nothing else.

He offered her a glass of water—and two pills. She
licked her lips, almost started to salivate at the sight of those
pills, accepted them eagerly and dry-swallowed, not caring what the
hell they might be. He could have slipped her cyanide and it
wouldn’t have mattered.

“Get up, Gloria.”

She was about to protest—to complain about her pain
and suffering when she realized that this was no longer true. No
more pain. No more headache and burning eyes and shivering body and
crawling flesh.