Gavin locked everything and then let the crossbow hang down. He still hadn’t dropped it, though.
“Akira, Nic, it’s been forever, right?”
His eyes were very wide. He had a dirty trucker hat covering a bald spot, with long hair still trying to hang down in back. He had on loose shorts and a T-shirt and big ol’ construction boots. His hand was bandaged, which he quickly pointed out.
“Nearly cut it off with a hacksaw. Good thing I jerk off with my left hand, huh?”
What I did was, uh, laugh awkwardly. That’s what I can give myself credit for.
The factory was set up like this, right? A waiting room with a big-screen TV and couches. Gavin’s office is in the back, and normally you wait in the waiting room while they fill your orders. But that night Gavin led us back to the office.
Basically, the office was a bed and four computer screens all playing different porns. There was a swivel chair, where Gavin sat. There was also a table in the corner with a woman sitting at it—hunched over, her cheap-looking, stringy, overgrown black weave hanging long down her sharply protruding backbone. She said absolutely nothing to us as we entered the room, and Gavin didn’t acknowledge her. She was too busy with a big pile of cocaine on the table. She was like a precision machine, the way she was going about cutting and doin’ those lines.
Cut a line.
Do a line.
Cut a line.
Do a line.
It was fucking crazy.
But, anyway, Gavin asked us the question that made me love the cookie factory more than any place in the whole world.
“So, y’all wanna line of coke, or, no, meth, right?”
“Awesome,” we both say together.
“Meth?”
“Yeah.” I answered that one.
I’ll tell you what, when he handed over that plate with the two generous lines of crystal cut there, man, it was like they almost looked evil to me. I could see it right there, in the color and smell and texture. It was sinister. It was like being in the presence of death.
But, fuck, I did the goddamn line, now, didn’t I?
Akira did his line.
I counted.
It wasn’t very long before the rush of it exploded in me like thousands of Cupid’s arrows shot up and down my whole body.
I breathed out long, long, and slow.
There was no turning back, right?
Motherfucker.
And then that girl cutting lines sat up and spoke suddenly. Her eyes were crazy open, and her words were hard to understand. Her accent sounded Jamaican maybe.
“Earthquake,” she said.
We all looked at each other.
“What?” asked Gavin.
“Earthquake,” she said again.
And then it hit.
The whole place, like, lurched on its foundation and then just started shaking, shaking, shaking. The sound of metal and concrete grinding came through deafening.
Growing up in San Francisco, I’d been in the big ’89 earthquake, when part of the Bay Bridge collapsed, but I’d never felt the world shaking around me like that night at the cookie factory.
Akira and I got in the doorway—force of habit from countless earthquake drills at school.
The shaking went on.
And then it stopped.
“Holy shit,” Gavin almost yelled. “What the fuck?”
“Man, a fucking earthquake” was my brilliant observation.
“Yeah, and she sensed it, man,” said Gavin, pointing at the girl. “That bitch sensed it—like a goddamn animal.”
The woman didn’t respond. She went back to her whole line cutting/doing thing.
In my stomach I knew.
There was a tightness there, a knotting and twisting.
That earthquake was the start.
It always worked out that way.
I start using, and the whole world just closes down on me. There are never new opportunities, no callbacks ever come. My car gets towed, and I end up losing everything all over again.
The world shuts.
I always know it’s gonna come, but I try to tell myself it’ll be better next time.
And maybe the earthquake wasn’t a sign, didn’t mean anything.
But a week later I’d been kicked outta my house and would eventually find myself living in the park behind Fort Mason.
So you tell me.
’Cause it goes the other way, too.
The longer I stay clean, the more the world just opens up with possibilities and hope.
But it’s so hard to remember that shit.
And I guess that’s the problem.
So today I wanna remember.
Let me tell you what happens:
It
all
falls
down.
Just like that.
Every fucking time.
Ch.1
2005
23 YEARS OLD
She hasn’t called.
I mean, I haven’t called her either, but still—she hasn’t called and I know it’s over.
I know she’s not gonna wait for me.
I know it.
She hasn’t called.
The only reason I can figure is that she’s afraid of telling me—afraid of what I’ll do.
But I haven’t called her either.
At least this way I can still pretend it’s my choice.
Besides, I know leaving her is the only option I have. Practically all the therapists in this whole goddamn place have made it their personal mission to convince me she’s nothing but poison for me—that what we have together isn’t really love—that she’s been using me—that I’ve been using her.
I fought it at first.
I fought it real hard.
But I can’t deny it anymore.
I know the truth.
Even if I still can’t give her up.
Even if I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to.
Being with her is the only thing that’s ever made me feel good about myself.
The fact that she chose me. I mean, Christ, she could’ve had anybody—fucking anybody.
And who am I?
Nothing.
Nobody.
She’s everything that I’m not—everything I’ve always wanted to be.
She’s just so cool, you know?
So fucking cool.
The way she talks, dresses, carries herself—her experiences—her beauty—how much older she is than me—how goddamn funny she is.
I admire everything that she is. Her famous ex-husband. Her famous family. Her charisma. The way every goddamn head turns when she walks into a room.
The first time I saw her—that first moment—I had to go talk to her.
I never do that.
Especially at a fucking twelve-step meeting in West Hollywood.
Being with her, I felt important—beautiful, for the first time ever.
She
