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Copyright Page
For my family.
For my mom and Karen and
my dad and Jasper and Daisy.
And Charles Wallace.
And Quimby and Ramona.
Hold on, John.
John, hold on.
It’s gonna be all right.
—JOHN LENNON
NOTE TO READERS
This work is a memoir. It reflects the author’s present recollections of his experiences over a period of years. Certain names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed.
Dialogue and events have been re-created from memory and, in some cases, have been compressed to convey the substance of what was said or what occurred.
INTRODUCTION
2002
20 YEARS OLD
Akira lived in the basement apartment of his mom’s house.
Actually, I didn’t even know he’d be there, but I knocked a couple times, and then his voice came through—soft, always calming.
“Yeah?”
The bathroom window was still broken more than a year later. I could see the reflection, turned upside down, of the tall grass and the eucalyptus trees silhouetted against the darkening sky. The Presidio stretched out all the way to the beach behind me. Just forest and Army housing. Akira lived at the very edge of the city. I’d always loved that.
“Hey, Akira, man, it’s Nic.”
He became suddenly visible behind the dirty glass garden side door.
Long dreads all tied together behind his head. Eyes soft and lined and smudged with black underneath. Skinny, skinny like me.
“Holy shit, Nic, what the hell?”
He opened the door and I stepped forward, giving him a hug. He smelled like pot and incense and something else familiar.
“I always knew you’d show up like this,” he said, keeping an arm over my shoulder. “I just had a feelin’. So, what’s going on? How you been doin’?”
My eyes looked down beneath a shadow covering the base of the door and cobwebs and things.
“Great” was what I told him.
I followed him inside. I mean, I knew the goddamn way.
I’d been using again for about five months at that point. I was enrolled at Hampshire College, but I’d pretty much done nothing my last semester there except teach myself how to shoot drugs and finally make it through all of the original Legend of Zelda. No one knew I’d relapsed, though. Not even my girlfriend.
But coming home for summer break, back to San Francisco, well, I was pretty much ready to self-destruct good and proper. As much as I’d tried, I couldn’t find crystal meth in Western Massachusetts. Heroin, though, was everywhere, so I’d gotten pretty sick on that shit. Actually, when I went to see Akira, I was trying to wean myself off opiates with a whole bunch of Vicodin I’d stolen.
Opiates weren’t ever really my thing, though.
I mean, crystal was the drug I’d fallen in love with.
It was Akira who’d given it to me the first time. But, look, I was gonna find it one way or the other. I was searching. Akira just helped me find it. I woulda done the same for him. He’s one of the most incredible people I’ve ever known. I sensed that about him the first time we met.
So here I am, being led back to his room, where I see the same bed and couch and Björk poster and record player and, actually, a drawing of mine that I’d done more than a year ago and forgotten.
Since then I’d been in two rehabs. At one point, I’d been sober and going to meetings for over six months. As it was, it had been more than a year since I’d done crystal. I mean, I hadn’t done it since the last time I saw Akira.
We sat down on the bed together, and we talked and laughed and smoked a bowl.
Then I asked him, all casual-like. “You still talk to D ever?”
Akira looked at me, and then looked at me again.
“Ha-ha, man. What you thinkin’ ’bout?”
“You know, if the factory’s still on, or what?”
He lit a cigarette—a True.
He offered me one.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think it’s goin’. But D ain’t there no more. She went crazy, man, so Gavin’s running the place now.”
“Crazy?”
“Uh-huh, all paranoid ’n’ shit. You wanna see if Gavin’s around?”
“Sure,” I said, not wanting to sound too, uh, desperate or something.
So Akira called and, yeah, the factory was still operational.
We got in the car together—my dad’s car. We both lit cigarettes and drove listening to a mix tape I’d made. The afternoon light was turning dull and gray as the fog slowly stretched out across the bay. The Bay Bridge kept going on for way too long, spilling out onto the different East Bay freeways like veins running in every direction.
The cookie factory was a series of warehouses with trucks coming in and out. There was a smell of cooking dough always—hot butter and sugar. There was a code Akira had to enter to get in the big electronic gate, and then we drove around back, to the offices that’d been converted into a sort of live/work space. The work being selling drugs.
I always loved how the place just looked like straight outta some movie or something. It was like magic, exciting, full of possibilities. Of course, it also looked like the kinda place the cops would straight raid. I could see the helicopters circling, the flashing sirens, the guns being drawn. Really, the place was a perfect setup.
But not that night, I told myself. That night was protected—sacred—my night. I willed everything to be okay.
We climbed up the concrete-block stairs and then around to D’s, or, uh, Gavin’s door.
Akira knocked.
It was a good couple minutes before we finally heard something click. Then the door opened very slowly, and the arc of a crossbow was pushed out, the arrow sticking right over Akira’s head.
“Who’s with you?” asked Gavin.
Akira sort of crouched down lower. “What? No one. What’re you talking about?”
Gavin panned the crossbow slowly above our heads.
“All right,” he said. “Come in.”
We went quickly
