Chapter 1: The Gun Show Loophole pt. 1

Gun Show Loophole
I felt her eyes on me before I opened my own. My mother always had a sense of when my nights had gotten out of hand. A headache pounded at my temples. Somehow I needed to make it from this bed to the front door . I rolled onto my side and opened my eyes to pillars of sunlight forcing their way through gaps in my blinds. Why people insisted on being awake during the day was beyond me. Mom was peeking apprehensively through a crack in the door.

"Can I help you?" I grunted. She pushed the door open another few inches so her face was visible.

"Miles is here." she said, timidly. What was he doing at my house? I thought to myself.

"Alright. I'll be down in a second"

She hesitated as if there was something else she wanted to say then walked back downstairs. It was getting old waking up to her staring at me. I knew she was just checking to make sure I was still breathing but nothing made me more uncomfortable than when she watched me sleep. I sat up and waited for the room to stop spinning. I realized I had slept in my clothes from the day before, sneakers included. My father’s voice traveled up from the first floor. I wondered why he was home from work this early in the afternoon before I realized that it was Saturday. Whatever happened last night, I better not have driven. My stomach lurched and I fought back the urge to vomit. All I had to do was get down the stairs and out of the door. I struggled to force myself to my feet. Whoever claimed that drug addicts didn't have any willpower had never tried to wake up on a morning like this.
My laundry sat unwashed in a heap by my closet door. There was no point in changing into a different set of dirty clothes. Since I had been wearing the same few t-shirts and pairs of jeans for a few weeks now, there was no guarantee that what I picked up was any cleaner than what I had on already. I didn’t have anybody to impress with hygiene anyway. I patted my pockets. Phone? check. Wallet? check. Keys? check. It was time to face the day.
I steadied myself on the banister and stumbled down the stairs. My coordination was still impaired from the previous night. I was dizzier than usual and my limbs were like lead weights. The buzz felt like some kind of muscle relaxer or maybe a benzo but I couldn’t be sure. When I was able to put the living room into focus, I saw both of my parents making cordial conversation with my closest friend, Miles. He took his eyes from my father just long enough to shoot me a quick smile. Chances are he knew more about my night than I did.

"It's thoughtful of you to come pick Jamie up." my mother said.

"You know how he likes to oversleep." my father added.

"The cook out wouldn't be the same without him." Miles said.

"You boys won't be doing any drinking will you?" my mother asked.

"No ma'am." Miles said "We just wanted to have a little send off for Jamie and the other people heading off to college."

"What school did you decide on?” my father asked. "You'll be going in the fall as well, right?"

"No sir. I'll be working with my uncle. I plan to take a semester or two off to save up some money."

" That's exactly what I did after high school. It never hurts to have some extra time to prepare." my mother said, looking at me as if to say "See! This is how a young man is supposed to behave!"

"You ready to go, Miles?" I asked

"I'm ready when you are." he said "Thank you for the tea Mrs. Gibson."

"You're welcome, Miles. You boys enjoy yourself."

My parents stood to walk us out. When the front door was safely shut behind us and we were out of earshot, I turned to Miles. "A cookout? Really?"

"What was I supposed to tell them?" he said, defensively.

"If you stopped showing up before I was out of bed you wouldn't have to tell them anything." I said, hopping in the passenger seat of Miles' truck. "Do you know were my car is?"

"It's where you left it last night. You remember, don’t you?"

"Funny. Seriously, where’s my car?"

"You don't remember last night at all?" Miles asked.

"Was it really that memorable?"

“Fair enough.” Miles crinkled his nose and cracked the windows. "You stink, dude."

"Sorry, my ride showed up before I had the chance to shower."

"Whoever it was should have known you’d be sleeping. What kind of maniac is awake at this hour?" Miles said sarcastically, pointing at the digital cock on his dash board. It read 3:36 P.M. He started the car and pulled around to leave the cul-de-sac. "You've got the money right?"

"Shit! We're missing the gun show!" I exclaimed, reaching for my wallet and leafing through it to make sure I woke up with the cash. Thankfully, it was still there. This wouldn't have been the first time I woke up with an empty wallet after a blackout.

"That's where we're going. Why else would I come scoop you?" He said.

"To enjoy my company?"

Miles chuckled. A few minutes later we were pulling up in front of Newt's house. My car was parked on the street out front and appeared to be in one piece. Our buddy Todd sat on the curb shouting into his phone, aggressively pointing his finger at the ground and scowling. He gave a wave when he saw us pull in. Miles parked the truck on the street opposite my Civic and we hopped out.

"I'll drive" I said, taking the keys from my pocket.

"You sure you're good to drive?"

I ignored him. Gun shows at the Richmond showplace were a rare treat. Though I had no interest in guns themselves, they were a profitable means to an end. Whenever gun shows came to our city, Miles, Toddler and I were always sure to make a pit stop.
Reaching into my back pocket, I took out a fold of cash and handed it to Miles in the back seat of my Honda. Under normal circumstances, handing money over to anyone without drugs for sale was against my code of ethics. It just didn't make sense wasting hard earned cash on something I could just as easily steal. Handing money over to Miles was an exception. For a junky, he maintained a shockingly clean-cut appearance. His consistent haircut, collared shirt and polite manor made it hard to believe he had a drug problem. He would have looked more at home with a briefcase instead of a needle in his hand. These qualities made him ideal for handling the purchase. Years spent at the shooting range with his father and seasons on his high school rifle team had given him the ability to set the NRA-worshiping gun dealers at ease. As much as I hated letting my money out of sight, right now there was no better place for it than Miles' pocket. Toddler hung his phone up and climbed in the back seat.
    “God damn coke heads. I hate fucking coke heads.” he said, pocketing his phone.

    “Everything alright?” I asked.

    “I should be asking you, buddy.” he said with a grin. “I’m surprised you made it home last night.”

    “Yeah does anybody know who gave me a ride?”

    “You walked.”
    I wasn’t sure whether to take him seriously or not. It sounded like something I might do but Toddler made a game of fucking with me after a blackout. He thought it was fun to see what kind of stuff he could get me to believe.
    After a short drive we made it to the gun show parking lot. Miles exited the car being careful not to scratch the paint on the fire engine red F150 in the spot next to us. He strode off towards the entrance leaving Toddler and I feeling decidedly out of place. It hurt my heart to see that money walk away. Then again, even if something were to go wrong, the cash had come relatively easily. My scruffy appearance and habit of waking up in the late afternoon made it difficult for any respectable employer to justify hiring me. Instead of working, I sold small amounts of drugs to fund my habit. There was no room in my heart or wallet for anything other than opiates and booze but high school provided an insatiable market for pot, ecstasy, mushrooms, pills and every other soft drug I could source. The cash I had passed off to Miles had been earned breaking down a few sheets of acid into strips and single hits. An afternoon's pushing would bring in the same amount of money as a 2 week paycheck at any place that hired 18-year-olds without work experience.
    Since his 21st birthday, Miles had made 3 trips to purchase handguns with Toddler and I. He wouldn't admit it but I think he liked buying the guns more than the money they provided. His motivations didn't mean much to me as long as he played his part. I wondered how viable a resource he would be a year from now when the heroin has taken it's toll on his appearance. The politicians would shore up the gun show loophole by then anyway. No lawmaking body in it’s right mind could keep regulation this lax for very long. We weren't the only customers here to abuse Virginia's gun laws (or lack thereof). The founding fathers would be rolling in their graves if they were aware of the ways we were putting the second amendment to shame. This scam was Toddler's brainchild. You could look down on him all you wanted but, in my opinion, he earned a certain degree of respect for his creativity.
    Todd “Toddler” Lerner had recently turned 18 though you wouldn't know it by looking at him. His small stature and boyish appearance made him look half his age, earning him his moniker. Unlike Miles, Toddler was clearly a drug addict. He was gaunt and pale with an unhealthy look about him. His hazel eyes twitched around deep purple pits in his skull, darting from place to place as if searching for something. Toddler was simultaneously the most likely of my friends to steal my wallet and the best hustling partner I knew. He was fiercely opportunistic and devoid of any semblance of moral compass. As long as you understood his ethical retardation, he was predictable and not unpleasant to be around. Out of all of us, Toddler had to be the biggest disappointment to his family and that was saying something. His father was in the scrap metal business and had worked his way up from a single pickup truck to owning several scrap yards that sold mass quantities of assorted metals to cooperate buyers overseas. Toddler had inherited his father's business acumen and used it liberally in the worst possible ways. He had worked for his father weighing metal and cutting checks for a number of years before he was caught writing out checks to friends for metal they didn’t bring in. No amount of private schooling could reign in his innate tendency to break rules. He once told me an expensive shrink his parents made him see had decided he was an "operational defiant." He took pride in the label. Any authority figure regardless of setting was received with scorn and misbehavior. Had he applied himself in a productive way, there was no doubt in my mind that he would have been a self-reliant adult. As things stood, he was a high school dropout who hadn't worked a legitimate job a day in his life.
    “What do you think he'll pick up this time?” Toddler asked. I shrugged. Mile's knew enough about about firearms to make a decent choice and since I couldn't tell a Glock from a Luger, speculation was pointless.
    `“As long he doesn't get arrested, I could care less.” I replied. Toddler rolled his eyes.
    “He'll be fine man. We've done this before. Besides, everything he's doing is completely legal.” Toddler acted as if Miles had run to the store to get some milk, not to go in to spend dirty money on a handgun. I was less comfortable. Nervousness surrounding drug deals was, for the most part, a thing of the past but I wasn't a gun runner and still felt antsy when we made this kind of move. I played along because I wanted to get high, not because I had any real faith that what we were doing was safe.
    I looked out of the car window at the flow of customers moving to and from the parking lot. Most wore holsters or slings and carried one or more firearms. It seemed like every redneck and Tea Party member in the central Virginia area had all converged on this spot. Toddler and I stuck out like streakers in church. Everything from our unkempt haircuts to our clothing belonged somewhere else. Even my Civic sedan was painfully out of place in the packed dirt lot of lifted trucks and muddy SUV's. There was more camouflage and full lips of chewing tobacco than I cared to count. These 21st century cowboys walked chest out, staring each other down through polarized Oakley lenses. We may have been scumbag dope fiends but at least we weren't these people. I would rather have every junky in America armed instead of these neanderthals. Then again, without their precious gun show I wouldn't be doubling my money today. I supposed they had their purpose.
Toddler had come up with the idea of flipping guns shortly after Miles started shooting up. Normally, when somebody turned 21, purchasing alcohol was the main concern. Toddler's mind worked differently. He used Miles' age to do things like rent seedy hotel rooms and buy the occasional handgun. Convicted felons weren't legally allowed to purchase firearms and most of the dope dealers we bought from had at least one felony charge. Aside from minor misdemeanors, our records were collectively clean so we provided an essential service to the corner boys. Toddler claimed that as long as we didn't know for a fact that our buyer was a convicted felon, the sale was legal. In Virginia, private sales didn't need the same degree of documentation as commercial purchases. Something made me doubt that his logic would hold up in a court of law. That was beside the point, however. If I had been concerned with legality, I wouldn't use drugs in the first place. Knowing what laws did or didn’t apply was more information than I needed. Fuck the details, I wanted to get faded.
    Somehow, Toddler always seemed to arrange these schemes with little to no work set aside for himself. I had bankrolled today and was using my car to get us around. Miles was using his ID to get the gun. Toddler was, for the most part, a bystander. I wished my mind worked the way his did so I could run the show. I wasn't a fan of playing the pawn. In spite of this, he kept me consistently high so I didn't have much room to complain. So long as you did what Toddler suggested, you would end up high more often than you would on your own. It was a law as sure as gravity.
    The car was beginning to get hot and the anxiety that came with the onset of dope sickness made the minutes tick by slowly. After a half hour or so, sitting in the car was more uncomfortable than going out to mingle with the flannel-clad inbreds. Though Toddler and I were as far from fitting in as possible, we decided to take a walk around. After we had made it half way to the entrance, I noticed the line at the door in front of a booth selling tickets. My cash was with Miles and I knew better than to ask a fellow junky to spot money on something that wouldn't shrink our pupils. I was close to turning back to the car when Toddler pointed at a yellow plastic sign hanging on a door off to the right of the main entrance. The black lettering read “Flea Market” and there didn't seem to be anybody checking tickets there.
    “Let's see if we can get in that way.” Toddler suggested, probably because he was as broke as I was. We changed course and headed for the smaller entrance. Once inside, the whoosh of giant metal fans hanging below white fluorescent lights replaced the summer sky. The dull murmur of salesmen at booths and potential customers haggling over prices filled the air. The entire area was a maze of tables loaded with pocket knives, blackjacks, pepper spray and other nonlethal weapons.  It was hard to believe that there were people out there that made their living schlepping this stuff from town to town.
I looked around, overwhelmed by the chaotic scene before me and realized I had lost Toddler somewhere in the shifting sea of gun nuts. I looked around and spotted him drooling over a packed table of spring assisted switchblades and small electronic tasers. Behind the table stood an overweight, red-faced man who could have used a shave. The salesman stood at his post beading with sweat in spite of the industrial ceiling fans overhead. He demonstrated a button operated switchblade to a boy roughly our age. Speaking enthusiastically, he sprayed flecks of spittle over his range of products. His faded denim overalls fought to contain his gut. The boy that was the target of his manic sales pitch moved from the table, apathetic to the sputtering man. Without reacting, the man turned to survey the crowd and choose another customer to focus on.
    His eyes settled on Toddler who was looking at the tasers with interest.