That was not the woman he saw
now. He looked into her eyes and saw her
want, not the same as his, but close.
While they’d grown to what passed for close, the two never fooled themselves
into thinking they cared. She belonged
to the next guy that could offer a taste of that special kind of
hyper-oblivion. That’s what she
chased. But then, in those days, so did
he.
So he spilled it.
“They had some crank too,” he
remarked casually.
She leaned closer, “How much?”
He reached into the inside pocket
of his leathers and pulled a baggie.
“An ounce. Maybe ounce and a half. Split it with Rat and that’s what’s left,” he
said and tossed a sparkling zip-lock onto the scarred coffee table.
She reached and grabbed the meth,
breaking contact with him. She stood and
held it to the dim light coming through the curtains.
“Son of a bitch! When were you gonna’ tell me?” she squealed.
Unsatisfied with her view of the
crystal powder she pulled the curtains across the back slider open and, for
just a moment, stood in perfect silhouette.
Despite the hard look she cultivated, she really was quite lovely.
She pulled the curtain closed and
turned.
“Got some new works, baby. Been savin’ em. ,” she told him as she walked around the
counter that separated kitchen from living room.
She tossed a bag of cotton balls, a
spoon and a sealed bag containing an insulin syringe at him in rapid
succession.
Coming back around the counter with
a shot glass of water she sat by him, much closer this time. Her thigh against his, she pulled a piece
loose from a cotton ball, kneaded it between her thumb and forefinger and
dropped it onto the slightly bent spoon.
She ripped open the syringe packet and set it carefully aside.
All business now, she dipped her
little finger into the bag of crystalline powder, withdrew a fingernail full
and dumped into the spoon. She hesitated
briefly and added another scoop. Then,
just for good measure, another scoop went up her nose.
He took one of the syringes, drew
some water from the glass and squirted it into the spoon, dissolving the powder
but leaving the all important rocks intact.
He picked up the spoon and began cooking the mixture with
his lighter. As the rocks melted he
withdrew the heat before the clear liquid began to bubble. Setting down the lighter and the spoon, he
took the syringe and, using the cotton as a filter, pulled the plunger back,
filling it half way. Fifty units of
crystal meth now awaited a vein.
On an
intellectual level, they each knew that the other had plenty of experience in
administering shots to other people.
Coke, crank, smack, whatever.
They’d both introduced people to the mainline. So while they knew that they could trust each
other, in their world trust was weakness.
“Ladies
first,” he said, offering her the works.
“Lemme know
when you find one,” she said as she slipped her belt from her waist and around
her arm. Looping it through the buckle,
she tightened the strap around her bicep and flexed her arm. It only took a moment for her scarred veins
to bulge in the crook of her arm.
He held the
syringe up, tapped it with a finger and pushed the plunger until the tiniest
squirt shot into the air. Air bubbles
cleared, he handed it to her.
She grabbed
the belt in her teeth to maintain pressure, took the needle and without
hesitation slid it into her visibly pulsing vein. Delicately she pulled the plunger back just
enough to see blood mix into the plastic tube.
Assured that she’d hit the vein, she nimbly moved her fingers to depress
the plunger, slowly and steadily forcing the drug into her bloodstream. She withdrew the needle, set it on the coffee
table and released the belt from her teeth.
He watched
her. On cue, she drew a sharp, shallow
breath. Her eyelids fluttered above
brown irises that drifted toward the ceiling.
Her skin went gooseflesh, the hair on her arms standing on end and her
nipples suddenly tight against the thin material of her top.
“Shit! Not bad.
Pretty fuckin’ good,” she muttered.
Her new smile seemed lazy, but her now sharply focused eyes darted and
her voice was taut.
“Yeah, I
thought it would be. Lots of rock, lots
of sparkle in there,” he said as he took the belt and wrapped it around his own
arm. Leaving it to dangle, he took the
lighter, reheated the spoon and drew the rest of the liquid through the
needle. Once again he purged any air
bubbles. He pulled the belt tight, held
it with his teeth and pumped a fist to raise the vein. He gently inserted the needle into flesh,
stopping only when he knew he’d pierced the flowing vein.
This was
it, always had been it. The moment was
his when the plunger was pulled back and crimson tendrils, delicate and
tentative, curled into the clear liquid in the syringe. For some it was the
poke, the moment when the needle made penetration. The insertion is an intimate, impaling,
piercing union. It is somehow both
sexual and not, this taking of something foreign into one’s body and allowing,
no urging it to spill its heat within.
For a
moment he watched spectral red fingers of blood wrap around the coming rush and
then pull it into his arm as he pushed the plunger. Bottomed it out.
Withdrawing
the needle, he set it on the coffee table and let the belt fall loose. And waited…one, two, three. He felt his breath catch and heat in the back
of his throat. He exhaled sharp and
short and felt his scalp and skin tingle.
She was right. The rush hit like
a rodeo bull and he rode like a cowboy.
“Seven seconds. Shit, I’d go for an hour if it lasted” he
said as words returned to me.
“What the fuck you talkin’ about?”
she looked at him through cigarette smoke.
“Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”
“Congratulation on the thinking
thing,” she remarked as she handed him a lit smoke.
“Holy shit, you’re right. This stuff is monster. Crankenstein lives!” he said, tuning into his
suddenly finely tuned powers of perception.
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