Fiend Page 5

  I do what I need to, just so I can get up and do it again.

  TUESDAY

  1:11 AM

  Typewriter tells me to make a wish. His voice startles me, our drive nothing but silence after the gas station.

  Huh?

  He points to the clock. He says, All the same digits.

  How can he be making idle talk after what just happened? Make a wish, he says again. I look out of the car and it’s so dark and I think about a TV show I saw about what will happen to our world after man dies. How the shrines we’ve built to money and security and happiness and love will be reduced to rubble in the blink of a geological eye. I know I’m at the precipice of the most important moment of mankind’s history—fuck the invention of the wheel, the happy accident of penicillin, the fungus over Hiroshima, the Internet—because what’s happening right now, it’s biblical in scope, the end of fucking days.

  I glance at Typewriter. His lips are moving but I can’t hear him. Maybe he’s making a wish, or praying, same thing really. That the Albino is still alive? That this is all a dream? He mouths the words with a sincerity I haven’t seen in him before. And then I think of him as John, not Typewriter, a person, a son, and that’s probably it, he’s focused on his mother, because that was his moment, her passing, the moment he can’t recover from, the moment that puts his lips to glass stem.

  Pretty soon 1:11 is going to become 1:12 and it feels important that I make a wish because I’m pretty much out of other options. What comes to mind is KK—her being alive, holed up in a fortress, with enough food to last years and books to pass the days.

  The first time I ever saw her was in the psych ward in the Somali neighborhood of the South Minneapolis ghetto. I wound up in the ward because I’d dropped out of college to smoke scante and finally my parents came to the apartment they paid for after I’d quit answering their calls. They knocked and knocked while I sat in my room with all the shades drawn, trying not to breathe. They called the cops, who didn’t think an arrest was in order, just a nice trip to the nuthouse. So there I sat in my scrubs and socks with little treads. I doodled during arts and crafts. That’s when KK walked in. Just a wisp of a girl, nothing but sharp angles and a big nose and chopped blond hair, her arms pulled in tight across what little chest she had.

  I’m not sure if I believe in love at first sight or any of that shit. But I know that sitting there in a room with half-retarded motherfuckers drooling from their lithium and trazodone, whatever I felt, it was close. Like I had this need to hold her, protect her bones from her parents or drugs or whatever wouldn’t let her sleep at night, and I wanted her to think I was funny and sexy and smart and beautiful, just fucking beautiful. Sitting there while the tech introduced us to her, I wanted to be better than I was, not just to fuck this girl, but to be better for her. Guess that’s a good enough definition of love.

  Her waving really did me in. She kind of brought up her right hand all timid like. Her fingers didn’t even move. She looked around the room and then brought her face back down, her bangs shielding her from our predatory stares. But she still looked at me—two dots of topaz, not precious, but semiprecious.

  That night, I started doing pushups. I quit masturbating to visions of the sluts from my recent past. I wanted to be better and I would be for her.

  We hit it off, at least as well as any two people connecting in the psych ward can. We laughed sometimes. We rolled our eyes at stupid people. She told me she loved shooting speed and I felt like a fucking loser because I just smoked mine.

  Then one day, toward the end of my stay, we stood at the garbage can scraping off our untouched beef Stroganoff, and she told me to meet her in the janitor’s closet in ten minutes.

  I walked down the hall, excited because things were going to work out. I thought about rhyme and reason and about the universe putting me in the position to get to her, KK, my savior, the girl made of birdlike bones with swathes of gauze along her wrists.

  I knocked.

  She opened the door and there she was among the trash bags and wet mops and bottles of industrial cleaning supplies. She smiled a genuine smile, little kid and bashful. It was hard to do sober, bridge the gap between indecision and decision, but she met me halfway, our lips touching.

  I made love until she told me to fuck her.

  Afterward, she sat between my legs, her head resting on my raised knee. I was thinking about us working out in the long run. She could go into treatment and we could be sober and together. I was also thinking about my sperm finding a suitable home in her tiny tubes and about the different guys she’d fucked and I told myself to stop, that every dick she’d sucked was only to get her to me.

  I buried my face in her hair. It was grapefruit and sleep. My hand was around her arm and she moved it to her wrist. I felt the thick gauze. I wanted to protest, to tell her this made me feel weird inside. She wrapped her fingers around my index finger. My face was buried in her hair and I was huffing her, greedily wanting to remember this moment, and she guided my finger under her gauze bandage. It was the strangest feeling, how tender and moist her fresh wound still was, how much it was raised above the rest of her forearm, and I thought about telling her no, that I could get it dirty, infect it. Then she moaned a little, maybe a gasp, and the warmth and intimacy of touching her most vulnerable moment are what books are written about.

  I didn’t mean to tell her I loved her.

  My finger was still touching her gash when she said, I love you too.

  So with the digital clock still reading 1:11, I wish for KK to be safe. But that’s not all. I wish for her to be thinking of me, praying that I am safe, needing me, wanting me. I wish that KK and I can live the rest of our lives together, whatever that might mean, just together, to feel the tickle of her nose against my neck.

  1:38 AM

  We park at the end of the dirt drive. I rush out to open up the gate. There’s nothing but pine trees. I sprint back to the car and we drive into the Albino’s compound. The little log cabin is pitch black inside. This doesn’t necessarily mean anything. The Albino is a sort of minimalist, no phone, a woodstove, that kind of thing. But still, I’m not trying to fight his reanimated corpse.

  Just hope he cooked a big ol’ batch, Typewriter says.

  For real, I say.

  Neither of us cares if he’s dead or alive, just that our ounce is there, shrink-wrapped like a package of ground beef.

  We get out of the car and I already have my shotgun pumped and I hear Typewriter’s and it’s weird because it all feels so natural, the cocking of guns, the killing of shit that shouldn’t exist. We’re at the front door of his little shack, and I call out that it’s Chase and Typewriter.

  The house stays dark.

  I know there’s no way to get through the door—reinforced steel, double base rods (also steel)—and after we call out a few more times we say fuck it and head toward the prefab Lowe’s shack farther down the trail.

  I see the faintest light coming from the baseboard of the shack, and I ask Typewriter if he thinks the Albino’s in there cooking.

  Who the fuck he cooking for?

  Himself?

  Typewriter shrugs and puts his gun to his shoulder. We’re outside of the gray shed and there definitely is a band of light at the base of the door. Typewriter looks over. I nod. I knock.

  It creaks open a few inches. This isn’t normal because the Albino is nothing but paranoia, both because he traffics in life sentences and he shoots shit on a four-hour rotation, and I squeeze the gun, using the barrel to open the door.

  I’m about to step inside when a blast of noise fills my ears. I drop to the ground, crawling on my stomach to the side of the shed. Another blast and I realize it’s a gun and I’m screaming that it’s me, Chase, Albino, it’s Chase here. This is met by another shot.

  I’m covered in sweat, or maybe that’s piss, and I don’t know if I should run into the woods or fire back or just keep calling out my name. I go with shouting. I say, It’s me,
Albino, Chase from the Twin Cities. You know us. We’re cool.

  Then I think that maybe it’s not the Albino in there. Maybe he’s dead, and this is some tweaked motherfucker who had the same thought as us. Maybe it’s somebody who just stumbled across the shack and a gun. Maybe it’s one of them, maybe they know how to use weapons.

  Type’s to my right and he’s on his stomach too. The light from the shed lets me see his back. I notice the scratches from Svetlana. They look healed, just like the gouge on that trucker’s face.

  I don’t know any Chase, the Albino’s voice calls out.

  Typewriter smirks at me.

  I roll my eyes. I tell him it’s Crooked Cock—the name he’s dubbed me so he doesn’t have to know my real name.

  Crooked Cock, that really you?

  Yeah, and Typewriter.

  You one of them?

  No, man, we’re all good.

  Bullshit.

  You hear any giggling? I say.

  Here to steal my shit? Figured I’d be dead?

  Just had to get out of the cities.

  Figured the Albino be a walking dead piece of shit, huh? Cuz I already lookin’ like one of them. That it?

  Nowhere else to go, Typewriter says.

  Figured the Albino was ready for this end-of-days shit, huh?

  Maybe, I say.

  I hear his laugh, followed by his cough, both unmistakable, both somehow reminding me of cement mixers.

  Fucking Albino livin’ alone in the woods, he’ll know what to do, he says from inside.

  Can we come in? I ask.

  Fuck no, he says.

  His laugh, his cough.

  Is that a yes? I say.

  I hear the pumping of a shotgun.

  You been shooting your profits? Typewriter asks.

  I kick him.

  Fucking old Albino, all alone in them woods, cookin’ and ready for the apocalypse. That’s what you was thinking, huh?

  Just didn’t know where else to—

  Come here to rob me, that it?

  No, we thought that maybe you—

  Was either dead or would protect you. Either way, don’t look too good.

  Maybe this is a giant waste of fucking time. The Albino is nearly impossible to deal with on a good day, one where he’d been cooking and shooting, but with this, the world completely fucked, it’s pointless. I decide to switch tactics. I say, We brought guns for you, to trade.

  Sure as shit you did, Crooked Cock. Don’t come to the Rapture with a knife fight.

  This doesn’t really make sense but I get where he’s going with it.

  Rifles, shotguns, and pistols. Can take your pick.

  Type, your faggot friend tellin’ the truth?

  Yup.

  Y’all fucking with me?

  No, straight up, got guns, go ahead and take your pick. Just a simple trade.

  Didn’t care if I was dead, huh?

  What? Typewriter says.

  Just here to get shit. That’s all I am to you.

  I think about chiming in about him only wanting that role, our whole relationship predicated on us giving him money for crystal, that’s the way he wanted it.

  Can we just come in? Typewriter says.

  If you want a shell through the chest.

  I whisper to Type that the Albino is so far past the point of spun that he’d probably see us with decaying flesh, hallucinate our giggles, and blast us full of shotgun BBs. Maybe we should just wait him out, go back to the car, lock the weapons up, take turns trying to sleep. Typewriter isn’t feeling this. I know his reasoning—he wants to get high.

  Albino, Typewriter says.

  The, he calls back.

  The Albino, Typewriter says, we will trade you a shotgun and—

  Got one of those.

  Then a rifle and a pistol.

  Got one of those too.

  Then a pistol with a shit ton of ammo.

  For what? To watch you suck Crooked Cock’s crooked cock?

  He thinks this is funny.

  Just to let us in, I say.

  We wait in the darkness on our stomachs and I know we’re talking more to a drug than to a person. It was always hard to tell the difference with the Albino, but it’s worse now, everything heightened. Methamphetamines can be a nasty old cunt, greedy in their possessiveness over reality. I tell Type no sudden movements, and I call out, Sliding in a pistol now, okay?

  We’ll see, the Albino says.

  I’m not sure what this means. I inch forward and push open the shredded door and I’m trying to keep my head out of his sights. I take the nine out of my pants. I say, Here it is. I put it on the linoleum floor of the shed. Pushing it toward you, I say, giving it a little shove. I roll back to the side of the building.

  Now where’s those shotguns? he yells.

  Thought you didn’t want any, Typewriter says.

  Oh, yeah, sure do. Can’t never have too many friends.

  So we give you one, then you let us in? I ask.

  Silence.

  I motion for Typewriter to crawl forward on his fat stomach. He shakes his head. I kick him. He does it, shoving his gun into the shed. We can hear the Albino sweet-talking something, and it’s probably closer to porn talk, the suck-that-shit-you-filthy-fucking-whore monologue, and I can hear movement in there, then the sturdy sound of oiled metal, the loading and unloading of a clip.

  We all good? I say.

  Your cock crooked?

  The answer is no, not really, but the Albino thinks it is, so I’m taking his comment as a yes.

  So we’re coming in, I say.

  With your motherfucking hands ticklin’ God’s feet.

  I crouch on my knees. I tell myself that the Albino’s just a little jumpy. I stand, bracing myself against the shed’s corrugated siding. I’m trying not to remember the moments in my life when I knew I was dealing with people completely swallowed by chemicals, moments when I looked at friends or acquaintances and they stared back without a single morsel of recognition, not just of me but of anything or even their own fucking hands, themselves. At those times it wasn’t Typewriter or KK or whoever sitting by my side, but shit, pure fucking shit coursing through capillaries, clogging overworked synapses with come-shots of dopamine.

  Coming in, I say.

  I give a tentative push on the door. I’m expecting a shotgun blast to the face. The Albino is talking, guttural whispers followed by squeals, and I hope he’s lost in the promise of the new guns, forgetting about us and the threat he thinks we pose. I peer inside and see the skeleton that is the Albino—all elbows and kneecaps, his skin dirty-snow white, baby blue contrails of veins swirling down his neck, a supernova of bruised veins exploding from the crook of his left arm, his balding head and ratty ponytail, his chapped lips, his red eyes—and he’s cradling two shotguns, petting the one Type just handed over. I glance around his lab. It’s still immaculate, the burners and Erlenmeyer flasks and beakers and the five-hundred-milliliter round bottom and burets and funnels and evaporation dishes, and this makes me almost as happy as not being shot dead.

  Hey, man, how you doing? I say.

  Old Albino, just minding his own business. Been waiting for this since I was born.

  For us to show up? Type says. He smiles, looking down at our cook.

  They always do, he says.

  So where you hiding the—

  It’s good to see you, I say, interrupting Typewriter.

  The Albino looks up at me. He points the shotgun right at my dick. I’m trying to laugh and move out of the way, but really I’m thinking about getting buckshot in the pecker. The Albino says, Crooked Cock, tell me why you’re here.

  See how you’re holding up.

  I know you’ve been eyein’ my dick for long as I know you.

  Just here because we didn’t know where else to go. Less people.

  Less them walking dead, the Albino says.

  You’ve seen ’em? Typewriter says.

  The Albino points the gu
n at Typewriter. He jams the barrel into his pooch. He says, Killed one.

  So they’re out here, the Chucks, like in the woods and shit?

  In town. Headed that way when none of y’all bitches showed up. Figured somebody got popped, rolled. That’s what you’d think, huh?

  Nobody got pop—

  No shit, Crooked Cock. Saw what’s out there. Killed one woman with no face. Run her over in the Jimmy.

  The Albino starts laughing and ends up coughing.

  So what’s up with the trade? Trying to get some of that Albino shit, Typewriter says.

  Ain’t shit left, the Albino says.

  You’re fucking me?

  Want me to?

  Bro, come on.

  Got this here, he says. He holds up a fistful of needles, none of them packaged.

  Typewriter walks over to the main cooking station. He lifts a few beakers, a baking tray.

  Touch my shit again, gonna get your fucking spine blasted, the Albino says.

  Stop, I whisper to Typewriter. But it doesn’t matter, I can tell he’s about to freak the fuck out. One of his meaty hands pulls at his greasy Italian hair. He’s shaking his head, scratching the pink film of congealed ephedrine from the inside of a beaker. I worry that he’ll smash something. Even in the best of times, the Albino would kill you for fucking with his equipment. I tell Typewriter it’s cool. He’s not hearing me. He’s at that point of expected payoff. Like he’s killed a soccer team’s worth of walking dead; driven away from Travis the trucker, sealing his fate with the acceleration of his shitty Civic; he’s nearly been blown to bits by a tweaked cook and sacrificed his shotgun—and now he expects to get high in return. I get it. There’s no task too big, as long as the trade-off is crystalline Tina’s plump lips wrapped around your cock. It’s the only way we’re able to do what we do, the thank-you, the love, the smoke telling us she understands, motherfuckers just don’t get it, it’s all good, you’re okay.