The Tar Pit (9 of 9)

The reason I frowned earlier, when I’d seen it was B&E Brad who had pulled into my driveway, was because he didn’t need me to cop from this connection. So, I wasn’t ‘ethically’ able to pinch a sliver from his bag. It was Brad who had introduced me to this guy were driving to, and Brad had other guys he knew. He didn’t need me for anything. The friends I had that came to me to cop were all new-to-the-game and didn’t know where else to cop on their own. Hence, the reason I kept my connections to myself… because I could, and because they were often the only thin membrane between a comfortable night’s mattress, and an eternal dopesick night cheek-down on the dirtiest carpet in the city, in a pool of my own drool, staring at the glowing red numbers of the alarm clock until the sun rose. Brad was only stopping by to check on me, to see if I needed a ride to the spot. He knew my car was broken down. That’s just the type of guy Brad was. He would split his last bag with me if I was sick. He’d split his scripts and give them to me for free while I tried, unsuccessfully, for months, to kick heroin alone without medication.  

He was the kind of dude that would say, don’t worry about it, if we get caught, I’ll take all the rap. Just drive. I’ll split the shit fifty/fifty with you…  I just need a ride. And he would, even if he did all the ‘heavy-lifting,’ as it were. He was a real cat. A standup dude. Ten years younger than I, B&E brad was a friend of mine. He was just as bad an influence on me as I was on myself, and we both shared the same underlying desire to get and stay clean… but that was such a long, hard road to be standing at the beginning of, watching it stretch on for miles like an unconquerable straight-line, impossible to walk.  

“Go ‘head,” Brad said, as he drove slowly down the side-street we pulled down the same way every time we copped. He handed me his money. “You go, I’ll circle back around and pick you up.”

He let me out at the mouth of a gravel path that led to an overgrown baseball field on the outskirts of a housing project that’s long since been torn down. I walked along a grassy field, then through a thicket of trees behind a parking lot so I wouldn’t be seen, and I came out of the woods along the back of the projects, where the brick building stretched a row of back doors, all of them numbered, toward another distant parking lot.

I walked up to door number 666, (true story) every time I copped here, and rapped a knuckle on the door. The poor devil squatting inside the vacant unit would only open the door for faces he recognized through the peephole. He sold me three bags of junk measured out into tiny white folds of paper, one for me and two for Brad, and shut the door. The next unit over was vacant too. The back door was ripped off the hinges, and the dirt and leaves had blown in across the floor. I walked passed it, straight back to where Brad had dropped me off … back through the same thinly-wooded plane, and the grassy field, and the gravel path to where Brad had, with perfect timing, just pulled up and slowed down.

I opened the passenger door and handed Brad his two bags. “I’m taking the bus, yo.”

“Get in,” he said, laughing and shaking his head. “Don’t be like that.”

“No, it’s cool. I have no problem taking the bus. 20 minutes, I’ll be home. I’ll get high in the bushes on the way or something.”

“Get in the car, don’t be a douche.” He laughed again. “I promise I’ll drive right. I was just kidding around. Come on, I want to do this.” He held up his drugs.

I got in and closed the door. “Alright, but don’t…”

He slammed his foot to the floor, shouting a few fake laughs as the car lurched forward. “Naw,” he said, letting off the pedal and raising his chin at me. “I’m just fuckin’ with you.”

 “Let me get my sick off at least,” I growled through my sweaty teeth. We drove a few streets to the east, and I said. “Just pull over on the side of the road somewhere… over by those trees, maybe.” I pointed with a nod as I pulled a small vial of water from my pocket and removed the syringe from my sock.

Brad parked underneath the shade of a tree, at the end of a street, in front of several abandoned homes in a row, so nobody would look out of their house with suspicions aroused. We both got high in silence. I had to hit in a vein in my hand because all the other veins in my arms were collapsed and abscessed.

We sat with the engine off, smoking a cigarette with the windows down, and the peaceful sounds of birds chirping as the melodies swam in our ears. The rush was upon us. I watched the sun throw shadows through the shapes of the trees onto the boarded up, vacant shells of the dilapidated homes we sat in front of, and in that moment, I only saw beauty.  

Brad drove like a responsible adult the rest of the way home, and I was grateful for that. I told him my plans to try and quit again. “I’m going to buy some cans of spaghetti and kick tomorrow.” I said, climbing out of the stolen blazer and wiping my fingerprints from underneath the passenger door handle. “I think I can do it this time.” I walked around the front of the vehicle to where he was holding his hand out the window. He had a folded up ten-dollar bill between his fingers. “Here… Get enough food that you won’t be making excuses to leave your house.”

“Thanks, brother.” I said, taking the money from him.

“So, I won’t come around for a few days then. I don’t want to fuck you up. I’ll check on you in a week or so. Good luck,” said Brad, and he drove off, leaving me climbing the steps back to the servant’s quarters I rented, a slave to everything around me.

When I got to my room, I locked the door, and stopped, looking down at the money Brad had given me. “I can make my escape with this,” I thought, just before walking up to the shoebox, and dropping the bill inside. I watched it lie there breathing, waiting alone on the bottom of the box, to become either my first resort or my last hope, morsels of food, or money for dope, or one last grab at the life rope out of the tar pits… it really was all up to me.