'Are you going to…'
'I'm going to be right here. Downstairs on the couch. All right?'
He nodded, getting to his feet, moving like he was carrying too much weight.
I didn't know enough. That's where the real risk is— that's why the hardest currency in the world is information. I knew people who had killed themselves— suicide isn't a rare thing in jail. I knew some who did it on the installment plan too— there's hustlers who turn street tricks, use the money to buy dope to make themselves forget. I remember asking one about it once. I was looking for a runaway— he was looking for some cash, so we made a deal.
'Spell 'needle,'' he told me, like it was a secret code.
I played it straight. 'N–e–e–d— '
'Stop right there,' he said, looking through my face.
I got it then.
But it didn't add up. Rich kids get bored enough, they might do damn near anything, but you don't snuff yourself because there's nothing else to do that day.
And there were too many of them doing it.
Maybe an hour passed. I smoked a couple of cigarettes, watched the occasional car flit past the front window. I took the pencil flash, found my way upstairs. The kid was asleep, face down on his own bed, still dressed.
A light rain started to fall. I lay on my back on the living room couch listening to it tap against the windows.
A burring noise, soft, like an expensive phone. I picked up the nearest receiver…dial tone. The sound kept repeating, so faint it barely registered. I got up, closed my eyes so my ears would work better. Maybe it was some fancy alarm clock. The wall phone in the kitchen had two lines. I switched between them…dial tones on both. The sound kept coming. I stood dead–still, trying to sonar it out. A narrow closet was built into the archway between the kitchen and the living room…there! I opened the door— the sound was louder. I went through the stuff in the closet and found it. In the side pocket of a black leather coat— a cellular phone, as thin as a paperback book. I pulled up the antenna, flipped it open.
'What?' I said into the speaker.
'Where's Charm?' A man's voice, suspicious.
'You got the wrong number, pal,' I told him, growling like I'd been interrupted.
He hung up. I put the phone back where I got it, sat down and lit a smoke. Before I was finished with it, I heard the phone again.
I let it ring until it stopped.
Charm? Another player…or just another name Cherry used?
Two more hours, three more cigarettes, the phone in the closet stayed quiet. Maybe it was a wrong number for real.
I was up with the first light, wondering what day it was. Hard to tell out there— people who don't work a regular nine–to–five don't have a good sense of weekends. I looked out the front window. At the head of the driveway there were two mailboxes. I walked out there. Turned out one of the mailboxes was for the local newspaper. It was empty. The regular mailbox only had some bills…no personal letters. I brought everything inside, left it on the kitchen table.
I wanted a shower, but I checked on the kid first. He was in the same position. I moved close, some little flicker warning me he might be gone. But he was okay, breathing deep, his mouth hanging open, slack.
The garage door was standing open, the cars untouched. The keys were in the kid's Miata— maybe he was expecting valet parking.
I walked through the apartment, watching close this time. Nobody had been there.
I showered and shaved, thinking about kids killing themselves. About the kid I'd killed.
I was at the kitchen table by the time the kid came downstairs. His face was blotchy from sleep, eyes wary from his dreams.
'You stayed here last night?' he asked.
'On the couch, in the living room.'
'I'm sorry…I didn't mean for you to— '
'That's okay. You want some coffee or something?'
'I'll get it,' he said, turning his face away from me.
He put a couple of Pop–Tarts in the toaster, hit the switch on the coffeemaker, took a long pull at a wax carton of orange juice. I found a box of rye crackers, poured myself a big glass of water from the bottle in the refrigerator.
'What's those?' he asked me, nodding his head in the direction of the pills I had taken out of my pocket.
'Vitamin C, beta–carotene, vitamin E.'
'You take them every day?'
'Sure.'
'How come?'
