Studio City (cont'd)
When Joe looked back, the Honda was driving away and the kid was walking up to the house with a folded brown paper sandwich bag in his hand.
“He gave me a gram and a-half for the three-hundred,” he said. “Rigs were free. You can have the gram and I’ll take the half, if that’s cool.”
“Cool,” Joe said
“I just wanna get loaded here quick and then I’ll go.”
“Cool,” Joe, said again. “Totally cool.” They walked inside together. Joe locked the door and went directly over to the couch. The kid followed and they divvied up the heroin on the table. The kid gave Joe his two syringes and they both got busy.
Joe could hear the guys in AA rooms saying, “Serves him right, that prick -” as he hustled into the kitchen and got a teaspoon and sharp steak knife out of the drawer. It was a good one, a German made Wusthof, that his wife had bought him. He didn’t even reminisce on what year. He was well beyond reminiscing. He came back to the couch and sat down with purpose. He rested the spoon on his Big Book and opened the tar wrapped in cellophane, He cut off a big chunk, way more than half and put it in the spoon. The kid had already fixed his shot in his traveling bottle cap cooker and was drawing up the liquid in his syringe through the cotton he ripped out of his cigarette filter.
“Shit you’re quick,” Joe said as he drew up some water from the glass in one of his syringes and squirted it over his dope.
“That’s a big piece,” the kid said. “Be careful -”
“You be careful,” Joe said. “Looks like you put all of yours in there.”
“I can never afford a good shot,” the kid said. “I wanna really feel this one.”
“Okay, okay,” Joe said. “Sounds like we’re goin’ to the same place -”
He picked up the spoon, put the lighter under it and waited for the water to bubble. He glanced up and saw the kid, hunched in concentration, hitting his vein. As the blood seeped into the syringe, the kid pushed the plunger down. It made Joe wanna shit in his shorts - with what he was about to do - but he knew he had to concentrate on his own shot and not think. The water bubbled. He put the spoon back down on the Big Book. He saw the black burn marks on the book cover and figured that evidence would make for a nice story around the rooms.
“Let me have some of that cotton,” he said. He pulled a bit out of the kid’s cigarette filter, rolled it between his thumb and forefinger and placed it in the spoon.
“Oh fuck, this is really strong -” the kid said as he laid back on the couch, finishing his shot. “I don’t think I shoulda-”
But Joe was focused and not listening. He drew up half of the liquid in one syringe then half in the other. He was ready. He looked over at the kid. His head was collapsed into his chest and his plunger hand was limp on his lap with the syringe still dangling out of his vein.
“Nice party,” Joe said unaffected. “Guess we all had to be there.”
He took one of the syringes in his hand and kneeled down next to Carla. She was dreaming, flinching her legs in her sleep. Maybe she was just three years old in that dream, chasing after a rabbit in a big grassy field. Joe hoped so as he found her vein and gave the syringe a quick push. She fluttered her eyes with a brief little yelp from the pin-prick but Joe was there, patting her head until the drug took effect. After her last quiet convulsion he took the other syringe in his hand. He noticed he wasn’t even shaking. The calm had arrived. He slipped the needle in his vein and as he felt the sun rise stronger than it ever had, he recalled reading how Jung once said,
“Some cases are incurable, we can only sooth them until death -”
End