Last night, I wrote a really long article about the problems that I’m having with my publisher and “editor.” But I ran it past a good writer friend of mine and she suggested that I not run it. The problem is that it might be used out of context to label me as a difficult writer — a difficult person. I’m not so much worried about that. I have so many editors and publishers to back me up. What’s more, the publisher is so well known for being a truly awful person, that it is unlikely to hurt me.

But there is another issue here: I like to take the high road. And the truth is that this publisher is a very sad person with almost nothing in her life. I don’t actually want to proclaim to the world just how horrible she is and why it is that she literally does not have a single friend in the world. It’s a funny thing when you think about it.

In the past, I’ve done a number of things that I feel very bad about. But I’m generally liked. I have the reputation of being very easy to get along with. Past misbehavior doesn’t much matter, because it is in the past. I used to think that there was something special about me. If a person is not actively annoying me, I have no problem with them. I find it almost impossible to hang onto anger. But what I’ve found is that I’m actually quite normal in this way.

Most people don’t want to be angry. If others turn their lives around, people are very forgiving. They care about what’s happening now. So the fact that this publisher is widely considered an awful person speaks not to past wrongs but to the fact that she continues to be an awful person — day in and day out. You can’t really have a conversation with her; you can only sit and listen to her lecture. This does not go over well with people who are her peers.

The current state of things is that the book will be published. She’s just going to hire an “editor” to do the things that I, as “writer,” will not do. That’s ironic, right? If an editor is doing the work, then how is it the work of a writer? The point of this is to hire this editor and then charge me for it. This shows the mentality of the publisher. I didn’t agree to re-publish this book for the money; I did it because she begged me to. I didn’t want the book published at all.

As it is, the advance for this 200 page, 60,000 word book is $750. And it isn’t even paid all at once. A third is paid on contract signing; a third is paid on book acceptance; and a third is paid on publication. For a first time writer, that makes a certain amount of sense. But for a writer who has already published two books with this publisher? And for a book that is already written? What can I say: this publisher hates books and writers and most other things as well.

But I feel free! I have submitted all the material for the book. She will steal money from me. Eventually, I will have to take her to arbitration, where she will lose badly. Meanwhile, I will have a life with friends and family, and she will be alone with nothing to keep her company but the melodious sounds of Michael Savage’s bigotry wafting through the air.

Well, this is it. Now I’m going to have to get back to work. This is a good place to end, because it really does end the first act. The stuff about the answering machine establishes that something bad has happened. As I recall, chapter 10 ended similarly with a cryptic note that leads to the denouement. If anyone is interested, I’ll tell you “what happened.” But it doesn’t much matter. What most comes across in my fiction is the fact that I really do find women deeply mysterious. The central plot element of both my first and second novels are abortions. That wasn’t intentional. I only realized it later.

Chapter 5: Too Many Pets

Lenny had cultivated, over years of what he considered abuse at the hands of the loves of his life, an outward emotional detachment that had worked well for him recently. Indeed, as fond as he was of Andrea, he felt he had maintained a proper aloofness to keep her always hungry for his presence. But that appeared not to be the case or perhaps it was imply too much to ask of an abandoned wife to forget her husband.

His life had changed so radically almost in an instant. He was living alone, then living with Andrea, and then alone again–in a day. Actually, he was more pissed off than hurt. How dare she? Bill was such a twit. Lenny had know him since they were kids in Junior High. They were already close when they played opposite each other in The Zoo Story. Lenny played Peter–the respectable middle class family man. Bill was Jerry–the alienated person desperate for any kind of human contact. Lenny was perhaps a better choice in terms of alienation, but Bill was bigger and looked the part. Junior high school casting.

Bill came from a good family–at least it was a lot more sedate than the explosions of rage that typified Lenny’s childhood home. Not that Lenny didn’t feel loved, and there was an austere aspect to Bill’s parents, like if he died it would have been a minor blip in their lives. But the trappings were all there–nice house, pleasant parties, concern for the children’s education. At Lenny’s trailer, parties often ended in drunken brawls, and at school–well, the police never showed up at the trailer.

In high school, Bill because an Intellectual. He started reading books he disliked and keeping notes: number of pages, how long it took him to read it, and anything noteworthy about the book. He read a lot of good books this way but it was hard to escape thinking that he was going through the motions. It looked like he shared in the plight of the family in “The Grapes of Wrath.” But he was aloof to real suffering around him as long as his father let him borrow the car and his mother had dinner prepared at six each night.

Their friendship had always been strained, the way boy’s relationships usually are. They had met halfway through the 7th grade when Lenny’s parents had moved to Greenboro. Bill was the nerdy tall kid with the wild strawberry blond hair. He was hard to miss, even without his blue Start Trek shirt–the one Spock wore. But what was most notable was his continual critique of all thoughts within earshot. Whales were not fish–they were mammals–warm-blooded. Electricity only moves at about two-thirds the speed of light inside copper wire–of course, it doesn’t move inside the write at all but on the surface and this is why wire need to be insulated. Monkeys with steel mothers grow up less well adjusted than those with terry-cloth mothers. He was the breathing version of Discover Magazine. You had to love him, Lenny thought, but you could help hating him too.

When they first met, Bill was using the library typewriter to type a script to A Charlie Brown Christmas which he had transcribed from a cassette recording he had made when it played on TV over the Christmas break. It was his plan to put on a play version of this masterpiece with funds to benefit blind people or something. Mostly though, it seemed like a way for him to get to perform Linus’ eloquent second act speech in front of a bunch of people. Lenny, easily excited about such projects, became intimately involved. He couldn’t be Charlie Brown–too scrawny. Snoopy, it was decided. This was not much of a part–but given Lenny would be responsible for almost every aspect of the play, it didn’t really matter.

Recruiting actors? Bill was collecting cardboard for set manufacture. Reserving theater space? Bill was collecting more cardboard. Rehearsing the half of the cast that managed to show up for rehearsal? More cardboard! The performance was six days away and they still had no sets. They were over-flowing in cardboard. Bill’s father had begun to complain. But today, Bill had accomplished something else: an interview with the Press Herald–publicity for the play. That was something, Lenny thought. But he was unprepared for Monday’s paper. It was not the smiling picture of Bill or even the incendiary caption: “Junior high producer, director, and actor Bill Edwards.” That bothered him, but who could control captions. The text, however, indicated a kind of hoax or “bait and switch” had been perpetrated on Lenny:

Greenboro Junior High Student Bill Edwards does it all! He has adapted, produced, directed, and starred in a theatrical version of A Charlie Brown Christmas, showing this Friday and Saturday at the junior high auditorium at 7:00 p.m. Also in the play are Dean Whitmore as Charlie Brown and Dennis Morris as Snoopy.

Lenny Morris as Snoop! Lenny was outraged, despite Bill’s assurance that he had told the reporter they were co-directing it. Co-directing! “Let’s see, I’m responsible for staging the play and you are responsible for cardboard,” was Lenny’s response though he never had the courage to say so to Bill. Dean pointed out that Lenny would be glad to be forgotten if the play was a flop. But one brief mention of the play in the Herald, Lenny knew, would not attract a single person–especially since it was just an ad for Bill. Publicity was Bill’s job and he hadn’t even managed fliers at school. The only people attending this opus would be parents of the cast members. So stardom was the newspaper article. This fact pissed off Lenny and it made him feel bad that he cared.

After the $12.50 proceeds from the two performances of the play had been properly donated to the Optimist Club (followed by another news ad for Bill: “Junior high super-kid makes $12.50 for local charity”), Bill and Lenny avoided one another until they were both thrown together for the official junior high play. With just the acting to deal with–and set parts–they got on well and remembered why they had liked each other in the first place. As the “star” of the play, with another long speech, Bill was inclined to be amiable. Even when the school newspaper called Lenny’s performance “subtle, complex” and Bill’s “over-blown, arrogant” it only served to sooth the wounds of the Christmas play.

When he thought about it, Lenny was glad that he had managed to bag Bill’s wife. He loved Andrea, but that was another issue. He liked being able to stick it to Bill. Of course, now that they were back together, she would tell Bill (would she tell Bill?) that he was a better lover than Lenny. Just what she had told Lenny about Bill. Women were so duplicitous when it came to sex. Lenny had never asked but every woman he’d slept with had told him he was the best and the biggest. He wondered if it was meant as encouragement–like he was inferior and inadequate. He couldn’t say about the quality issue, but he checked Masters and Johnson on the quantity issue: he was average–painfully average. That meant Bill was below average. Lenny smiled at that thought–hating the fact that it delighted him so.

He was dreading speaking to Andrea, but it was driving him crazy not doing so. This was not from lack of trying. He had called at many different times over the past two days but he hadn’t managed to hook up with her. Maybe she was screening her calls. Normally, if she wasn’t at home she was at work. He never did figure out exactly what her work schedule was. If she was avoid (ah, the guilt served her right!) he didn’t want to just show up and cause a scene. Nor did he want to drive to her apartment and find Bill’s truck.

Even if she didn’t want to speak to him, Andrea had a bunch of his stuff. In particular, she had his 27-inch Quasar Stereo TV–made by Panasonic for half the price–and his Sony Stereo VCR. Plus there was his collection of letterboxed videos: To Kill a Mockingbird, Chinatown, even Jaws. Lenny had engaged in bitter arguments with Bill over the issues of letterboxing and dubbing–Bill would not watch a dubbed film.

“And yet you will watch a non-letterboxed video which destroys the visual integrity of the film?”

“I’m not saying I like it–I would prefer letterboxed. But I can’t take their lips not sinking up to the words. And the actors always sound so stupid.”

“What about Italian films?” Lenny asked as Bill stared blankly. “Those are almost all dubbed.”

“They are not! I just watched Amacord and it had subtitles.”

“Felini! It’s all dubbed. All his films are shot silent and then they go back and dub in the Italian afterwards. And when they dub it into English, Felini uses the original actors.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Fine, but any film you watch is going to be at least 10% dubbed because they can’t control the sound that well on location.”

“It’s different when they dub in the same language. Anyway, I like hearing the other languages.”

“Then buy a language cassette. Film is a visual art form. I want to watch it, not read it.”

“I can’t believe an intellectual like you would make such a low-brow argument.”

“I’m not an intellectual. You’re the intellectual. I’m just smarter than you.”

“Dork.”

“Pud.”

Lenny decided to stop by Sabrina’s and ask a few questions. The tavern was on the first floor of a three story apartment building–the upper stories jutting out ten feet toward the street from Sabrina’s front door, acting as a canopy covering the sidewalk below. It would not be open for a half-hour when he drove by the front that was decorated with black outlines of large-breasted women on a red background. There wasn’t a car on the street. He pulled his Opel around the corner of the building and into the gravel parking lot in back. There were two cars in back, neither of which was Andrea’s: a Subaru Outback which he thought belonged to Mikhail–the new owner of Sabrian’s–and a late model burgundy Escort. He parked across from the two cars.

If you lived inside Sabrina’s, you would not know the time of day without a clock. Like most strip clubs, it hadn’t a single window. Lenny walked through the front door. When the tavern was open, most of the illumination came from the black-lights that colored the strippers smooth and tan and removed any hint of cellulite or stretch marks. But off-hours saw the house lights up so the bartender could stock the reefer and count the register. When he came around the corner into the bar area, Lenny saw a woman he didn’t recognize adjusting one of the beer keg taps. When she looked up, he saw she was in her mid-forties with long early gray hair.

“We’re not open yet. Another half-hour,” she said.

“I’m not a customer,” Lenny said a little defensively. “Have you seen Andrea?”

“Andrea?” She looked puzzled for a second. “I’m new here. I don’t know any of the dancers.”

“No. She’s a bartender.”

“Oh! That girl. I guess she’s sick or quit or something. That’s why Mikhail hired me. I’m Dana.”

Lenny hardly had time to consider this thought when the reefer door swung open and Mikhail backed out yelling syllable by syllable: “Mother fucker!” He slammed the door and began ranting. “That cock sucker Bud driver! We have one case of Bud! I kill that knobby-kneed son-of-a-bitch. I rip off his testicles and shove them up his nose. Mother fucker!” He stopped abruptly when he saw Lenny, and scowled.

“Where the fuck is Andrea?” he yelled.

“You haven’t seen her?”

“Sure I have! She’s in back! That’s why I ask where she is. She don’t come in Thursday night. I call. Nothing. Friday afternoon. She’s nowhere.”

“Her husband came back. Maybe she’s with him.”

“Husband? I thought you was her husband. How many husband she have?”

“I’m not her husband.” Lenny said sternly. “Look. Her husband…” He trailed off. He was not going to give Mikhail Andrea’s life story if she hadn’t given it to him already.

“Did she tell you anything?” Mikhail demanded.

The new bartender was slowly wiping down the bar several feet away. She was intent on her task but quiet so as not to miss a word Lenny said–Mikhail’s words were hard to miss. This was definitely the most interesting start to a job she’d ever had.

“I took her home Wednesday night,” Lenny answered.

“To her husband?” Mikhail smiled arrogantly at this jab.

“Her husband’s been gone. I mean. He left her. He just showed up Thursday morning. I know they met at least.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. To me. I haven’t talked to her since he got here.”

“What about him? Or you too guilty?”

“Hey, I’m worried. Why are you flicking all this shit at me?”

“I got one case of Bud. One! She always keeps that Bud guy–piece of shit–in line. I got one case. And I’m here all day Thursday, all day Friday. She’s never missed a day or even been late. Now she just disappears. Mother fucker!”

Dana smiled as Mikhail went ballistic again and kicked a barstool–sending it flying. “Easy there, big boy,” she said.

“I’ll let you know if I find her,” Lenny added hoping to calm the situation.

“It’s too late now. I hired another girl,” he said pointing down the bar. “I have no beer to sell!”

“I’ll let you know if I find her,” he repeated thinking there was real concern beneath his rage. As he walked out of the bar, he heard Mikhail yell, “Push the Pabst!”

Lenny decided to drive the several blocks to Andrea’s apartment. Her car wasn’t there, nor was Bills’ truck. He parked and walked up the front steps. Andrea lived in a converted Victorian. The downstairs was rented by Juanito, a gay man whose compulsive nature produced a gorgeous backyard garden but also much aggravation to Andrea. Lenny unlocked Andrea’s front door with his key. As soon as the door was cracked open, Psycho–Andrea’s orange tabby burst out onto the landing and around the side of the house.

Psycho was the best cat Lenny had ever known. A co-worker had brought him into her work at the State Building. Someone had thrown him into a dumpster and he was almost dead from any number of things when he was found. She brought him home even though she knew Bill would complain–he hated cats. It cost her $300 to get Psycho back to good health. After that, they made an agreement: she would have no little box and the cat would be free to come and go as he pleased. This had worked well in the suburbs but her new landlord had vetoed her cat door idea so she had to let Psycho in and out as necessary.

Andrea’s front door opened onto two staircases: one heading up to her apartment and one heading down into the shared basement. Lenny shut the door behind him and climbed up to the apartment. The place had not been kept up and there was a lot of dry rot. In the winter, it was incredibly drafty so Andrea had installed thick velvet curtains at almost every entry to cut down on the heating bill which could be sizable. He passed through her living room–past her Victorian sofa and his TV and into the dining room, which Andrea used primarily as a workroom. Everything looked fine–there was no disturbance. He walked into the bathroom. It looked fine except Psycho had apparently defecated a few times in the bathtub drain. This disturbed Lenny. He could imagine Andrea forgetting him–but Psycho? She was fanatical about that cat.

The answering machine was blinking. Even under the circumstances, he felt very strange as he pushed the play button. There were three messages.

“Andrea. Mikhail. I have you scheduled tonight. You forget? Call right away.”

“Mikhail. Where are you? I got no one to work. You get home come right over!”

“Where the fuck are you? You work this afternoon. You have to deal with this cocksucker Bud man! Get here!”

The machine beeped and stopped. Lenny took the cassette out of it and put it in Andrea’s boom box beside her bed. He pressed play and sat on the edge of the bed. No sound came from the player even though he could see the wheels of the cassette spinning. He turned the volume up to half maximum. Still nothing, or at least nothing discernible–just hiss and an occasional pop like someone had erased it and that wouldn’t be Andrea.

About a month earlier, they had spent the weekend in Oceanside. When they got back, there had been a power outage and her answering machine was all screwed up. They couldn’t find the messages they had played them on the boom box. It was like archaeology. There were messages from a year earlier–some quite amusing that Andrea had tried to save–others that just never got recorded over.

Lenny fast-forwarded a ways through the tape. Still silence. Forward some more. Silence. He checked the flip side with the same results. He rewound the tape and put it back into the answering machine. After looking around for a note, he headed downstairs and locked the front door behind him.

He walked down the front steps just as Psycho was trotting up. They stopped midway and Psycho rubbed against Lenny’s leg. He picked the cat up and held him as he purred.

“I’m getting too many pets,” he thought.

After so much implied drug use, the novel finally comes right out with it. These two character have been secondary in the first and third chapters. These two are also the primary characters in my follow-up unfinished novel. But in that one, I kill off Rachel on the first page. So the whole novel is about why that happened. That novel is totally different. It’s told in the first person by Jason. I have to admit that one of the problems with this novel was falling in love with these characters. They were so much fun to write for. Actually, writing this whole novel was fun. I learned a lot.

Chapter 4: Not Nearly Enough

On the 15th of each month, Rachel stood in line at the prescription counter of the Walgreen’s on 15th and Martin for their monthly supply of morphine. Today was the first, so it was Jason who stood in line, and at the Rite Aide on Division. It was all part of a little scan that David, the junkie doctor, had going. Jason and Rachel were supposedly AIDS patients of Dr. D who, along with some usual AIDS meds, received injectable morphine. So on the 1st and the 15th of each month, Rachel and Jason scored their legal opiates and went to David’s for a night, or two, of frivolity.

They previously had been living out of Jason’s Peugeot, 1989 505 DX. But times had gotten hard, or maybe they just got lazy. They had no money and they were going to be sick. Rachel’s skin had already begun to crawl and Jason had only ever kicked in jail, it was almost a point of honor with him. The beginning of a kick always makes a junkie more creative. Jason and Rachel hit upon a great idea: sell the car, buy a tent, and use the rest for dope. They only used the car to live in at the KOA anyway. Of course, the dope only lasted a week, but it was nice, like being on vacation. And then it was back to work.

This morning, waking from a fine night’s nod in their tent discreetly pitched behind a thicket of shrubs and a row of oaks in the field adjacent to the KOA, the couple found they had been robbed. Making matters worse, it was probably a “friend” who absconded with their cash, drugs, flashlight, and Jason’s unregistered Browning High Powered.

Truly, any other day they would have hustled, sold the tent maybe. But this was the 1st, vacation from their high pressure, busy life. So they walked to Ernie’s bar four blocks away because at the back next to the sagging plywood bathroom doors was a callback phone–a payphone that would accept incoming calls. They used it almost daily to contact Jorge and “the boys” but today it was to alert Dr. D to their medical emergency.

He was quick to call back, recognizing the number. Rachel answered. “What’s up” he queried, “is something wrong?”

“Broke, sick, didn’t think you’d want us to show up with the script that way.” They were both on the Oregon Health Plan so money wasn’t the issue.

“You two should plan better,” he sighed with exasperation.

“No!” Rachel protested. “We were ripped off, burgled you might say.”

Dr. D chucked. “Your tend?”

“Yeah. Last night while we were there.”

“Come over to my house and I’ll get you well. About twenty minutes? I don’t have much time.”

They practically sprinted and beat Dr. D by about five minutes. He was the best dealer around. First, he pretty much always gave drugs away. But also he was on time, neurotically so. Sometimes they’d wait an hour, or more, for a dealer in the freezing rain. He let them inside and went down to his basement refrigerator for a small ampule of morphine. Then he ripped open a new package of ten syringes, removed three, and returned upstairs.
He inserted a needle into the ampule and extracted a half cc into the syringe. “Here,” he said, handing it to Rachel. As he prepared the second syringe he added, “I’ll do Jason.”

“What?” Jason protested.

“You have trouble hitting your ass, Jason.”

“He’s right honey, let him hit you.”

David had been a junkie for ten years, shooting up at least twice a day but he had almost no tracks or scars and pretty much all of his veins were usable. He tied off Jason’s right forearm but nothing looked particularly promising. “Let’s try your hand, it doesn’t look that used.”

“No, I try it sometimes, looks like it would be easy, but they roll. I never manage.”

They moved the tie, a hollow yellow cord, to the middle of his forearm. Jason clinched his fist and the veins rose slowly. “There we are,” David said as he pressed various veins looking for the best.

Jason turned his head toward Rachel who was happily nodding on the couch, the empty syringe on the coffee table. She just had better veins. He’d always known he’d had bad veins. David decided upon the metacarpal that runs up the side of the thumb to the first finger. In a few seconds the needle was in, the tie removed, and morphine was coursing through his veins.

He immediately felt better. All the body aches, churning stomach, runny nose: gone. But he didn’t nod. He was high, a little. It felt good. Rachel, on the other hand, was Queen of the Nod. Jason sometimes thought she’d nod after injecting water.

“You kids better?” David asked. Rachel opened her eyes and smiled. “I’ve got to get back to work.” Clearly, David wanted to shoot up alone, the third syringe confirmed that. So they left to take care of their business and to let him take care of his.

Life is harder for the male junkie than the female. People just don’t think of women as junkies, not unless they’re prostitutes. And even for prostitutes, life is easier than the minute by minute existence of the male junkie, unless he’s a pimp.

As Jason approached the pharmacy trying to look gay or dying from ADIS, and not like a junkie, his heart sank. Rite Aide had such a high employee turnover! A new pharmacist and counter woman. It wasn’t that big a deal but they always asked questions, made phone calls.

Soon, Karen, Dr. D’s secretary would get a call. It was usually come pretense at a clarification, so as not to obviously insult the patient. “Did you want 50 mg/ml or 100?” Or the telling, “This is injectable?” The real reason was to check that the script was real and that this tall young man with his Jack Lord haircut was not a junkie. Karen was used to soothing the minds of concerned pharmacists. She was “on board” as David always said–a depressive who was addicted to 50 mg of Valium each day. “100 mg/ml, that’s right. Oh yes, injectable, his stomach is too sensitive for oral.”

But when Jason presented the script, the gray curly-haired woman just smiled and told him it would be about ten minutes if he wanted to have a seat. Rachel was in the parking lot, smoking. He was sure the cigarettes were going to kill her before the heroin. Him, it’d be the cocaine–at least that’s what Rachel was always saying. He could join her for a smoke but better to browse the store, maybe boost something, get a start on tomorrow’s work.

Jason had been to county three times. The first two just for holding after shoplifting. Once the charges were dropped. Next, it was court probation. That was nothing, but he was still on probation when he was picked up for a residential burglary. He got a year for that. But there was no easy way to support his, and Rachel’s habit. It’s not like he could work at Taco Bell, although he did once know a dealer who worked out of a McDonald’s.

Jason was surprised at the products Rite Aide had when he first checked it out. But they had a strict return policy, nothing without a receipt. But Jorge was a veritable clearing house for electronics, a separate business from junk distribution, to his fellow Latinos instead of the almost entirely white clientele for heroin.

He passed down the film aisle, past the photocopy machine and a young female clerk looking through processed film for an edgy mother with a small child. Peering intently at the CD players and boom boxes that lined the wall behind the counter, Jason took a quick look at the clerk, still engrossed. Without looking down, he shot his hand over and behind the counter, grabbing the first small box his hand touched. Still looking at the clerk, he shoved the box, some instant 35 mm camera, under his sweater and half way down his pants.

The clerk turned quickly toward him, but much too late.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” she said accusingly.

“No problem.” When she had gone back to searching, he went to the pharmacy to pick up his meds. They were ready, crammed into the tiny white Rite Aide bag.

“All I need now is a signature,” the old woman smiled and handed him a pen and an OHP form with the medications listed. As he bent down to sign, he heard a door open in back. He looked. It was the storeroom and standing in front of it were the photo clerk and a tall thin man with wire framed glasses, probably the store manager. They acknowledged Jason as he turned back to sign the form.

“Have a nice day,” the woman offered as Jason walked away toward the exit. The clerk must have spotted him. He walked down the automotive aisle and before they turned the corner, following him, he slipped the camera on a shelf next to the motor oil, all without losing his pace.

As he made his way to the exit, he could feel them closing in just before he hit the door.

“Excuse me, sir,” he heard the man say. Jason turned.

The man lowered his voice, “A customer reported seeing you stick something down your pants… and…” He trailed off. This was bullshit, of course. It was that teeny-bopper clerk standing by his side. “Would you mind following us back to the office?”

“I’m in a bit of a rush.”

“I’m sure,” he said pretentiously. “But it will only take a moment. Jason walked back with them–the clerk leading the way and the manager staring holes in his back. He was taken to what looked like a break room with a refrigerator and a couple of sagging shelves.

“Will you allow me to search you?”

Jason exhaled firmly. “Jesus,” he said, “Do I have a choice?”

“No, not really. We have a police officer coming, we can have him do it.”

“If you are going to do it anyway, go ahead.” The prospect seemed to concern the manager–certainly it did more than Jason who had been through this before. It helped that this time Jason know he was clean.

“Why don’t you raise your hands up?” The manager proposed. Jason did so and the manager started to pat his chest, very lightly. He moved down to his stomach, and then split his hands and worked down his legs. On finding nothing, he padded down Jason’s back. He wanted to check his groin–Jason wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t been certain they’d find something. But the manager was afraid. Sure, there was the potential lawsuit but more it was just one man’s hesitance to grab another man’s crotch, regardless of sexual orientation. He couldn’t do it. “Let’s just wait a minute for the officer.”

They sat around the table staring at one another. The clerk looked glum. The manager smiled meekly at Jason, thinking perhaps he’d been wrong. Jason’s face was unaltered: a scowl designed to communicate hostility. After a few minutes of this, there was a knock at the door and an underage cop entered, at least he seemed underage to Jason with his slick black hair and high school mustache. “What’s going on here?” he asked.

“We thought we had a shoplifter but I searched him and didn’t find anything.”

The cop looked at Jason contemptuously and then spotted the pharmacy bag. “What’s in the bag?”

“Medicine,” Jason said. “But I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“Do you mind if I look at it?” the officer asked as he searched through the bag.

“Yeah,” Jason sighed. “But it seems I have no choice.”

Officer Young, as Jason thought of him, poured the contents out onto the table. He looked briefly at the pill bottles as his attention was drawn to the three bags of syringes and the morphine. “You have a prescription for this?”

“Of course.”

He looked at the manager. “Would you check on that?”

The manager said sure and left the room.

“I think I better pat you down. Stand up and face the wall.”

Jason did so, putting his hands against the wall. The cop searched him thoroughly, showing no concern about invading his groin with gusto. Finding nothing, he removed Jason’s wallet. Looking at his driver’s license, the cop said, “Well, Mr. Thiel…”

“It’s not ‘theel’,” Jason interrupted. “It’s pronounced like the color: ‘teal’.”

“Well, Mr. Teal, if you don’t have a prescription for these drugs, we’re going to take a little ride.”

“Can I sit down?” Jason asked.

“Sure, I’m not an ogre.”

“All evidence to the contrary,” Jason said.

Just as Jason sat, the manager came in the door with a prescription. He said, “It’s to a Jason Thiel.”

The cop handed Jason his wallet and looked at the manager. “Let me talk to you outside.” They exited, leaving Jason alone with the clerk.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked her.

She blushed, “I’m sorry, I just thought I saw…”

“What do you care anyway?”

She just stared at the floor until the cop came back in. “You can go.”

Jason gather up his meds and put them back into the bag. As he strode out the three stood by the door watching him until he turned down the automotive row. He turned and looked over the row and saw them going back into the break room. When he came to the motor oil, he grabbed the camera and stuck it down his pants. Then he walked confidently out the front door.

Rachel was leaning against a light pole in the middle of the parking lot with half a pack of cigarette butts at her feet. Her eyes were focused on the front door and she smiled enormously upon seeing Jason.

“I thought they arrested you when I saw the cop pull up and you were in there so long.”

“I almost was arrested. Fucking teeny-bopper!”

“What?”

“I’ll explain, but let’s get out of here.”

The great thing about Dr. D’s scam was that it worked on so many levels. All the AIDS meds went to real patients without insurance at 10% the cost; $50 to Jason today. David didn’t care, he was just trying to help his patients and it was a little perk for Jason and Rachel which made their lives easier.
There was way too much time before meeting at David’s house at eight. So they caught Tri-Met back to Greenboro and their tent. Once there, they partook again and passed out in each other’s arms.

“Fuck,” Jason said as he covered his face with his hand to cut out the spot light flooding the tent. He had obviously been asleep a while. He looked at Rachel who was rubbing her eyes.

“I hope you haven’t used the whole bottle.” It was David.

“Turn off that fucking light, David!”

“Come on sleepyheads, I’ll drive you over to my place. Leanne is there and I scored some really good coke.”

“Coke?” Jason said eagerly as he sat up.

“He doesn’t need any coke,’ Rachel said drowsily. “Let’s just meet tomorrow night.”

“Come on, Rachel,” Jason said standing up. “You like a speedball as much as anyone, you’re just lazy.”

“All right, all right.”

Leanne was a piece of work but it was clear why Dr. D liked her: she was gorgeous, in a skinny kind of way, Rachel though. But Rachel was jealous, to some extent. Every time she got off smack, she put on thirty pounds and her face broke out in acne. In all other ways she was superior, she though, and so did most others. Leanne was a dancer at Sabrina’s, a strip club his friend Lenny had brought him to because he was dating, and living with, practically, the bartender. Lenny was pretty straight, so he didn’t notice but David knew immediately that Leanne was a junkie.

Of course, Leanne wasn’t just a body. She had traveled extensively, especially for being only thirty. In fact, it had been in Thailand where she had discovered opiates at the prime age of twenty. She met the bass player of some famous punk band at the time who took her to an opium den. They spent all night there smoking and nodding. She was instantly in love, with opium, not the musician.
When they entered the house, Leanne had a clear coke-filled syringe in her arm. “This is some great coke guys.”

“I told them,” David said watching her hand tremble. “How much have you done?”

“Not that much; not nearly enough.”