So what I do is, I light a cigarette and nod my head.
I follow her through the dirty, sweltering streets—oil, thick and glossy, coats the buildings and parked cars and makeshift basketball hoops made of hollowed-out milk crates nailed to trees on opposite sides of the street. A group of scrawny boys pass the ball back and forth, yelling at the drivers who try to interrupt their game.
“Man,” I say, laughing at the kids getting all angry and everything. “It really is like another world down here.”
Carmine seems oblivious to anything goin’ on around us, but she tells me she “knows,” probably just to be polite.
She leads me down a couple more blocks, and I talk pretty incessantly the whole time, even though my mind is somewhere else entirely. I mean, basically I’m just going over why this is all okay—over and fucking over again.
’Cause, see, the thing is, the reason I got addicted in the first place was because the drugs took my terror and depression away. But now I’ve finally learned how to love and value myself. I’ve grown and changed. So there’s no reason why drinking or smoking pot should be a problem. And I’m sure Sue Ellen will agree. I mean, she’s never been an addict, so she doesn’t understand this shit anyway. If I tell her it’s all right, she’ll believe me. She needs me too much to, like, kick me out or anything. I’m not trying to be a dick about it, but that’s the truth. Besides, it’ll be good for her. It’ll be good for us both. We’ll finally be able to chill the fuck out a little, you know? Not be so uptight all the time.
So I follow Carmine into her dark, dank, tiny backroom apartment with these kind of creepy but awesome puppets she designed hanging from the walls and the mantel of the boarded-up fireplace. The dolls are kind of a rip-off of Japanimation monster drawings—with tentacles and too many eyes and long, accentuated bodies that I guess remind me of Carmine’s. I mean, I’m sure that’s the point.
Anyway, she puts on a Tom Waits record and packs her glass pipe with some of the shittiest weed I’ve ever seen in my life—brown, with tons of stems and whatever. I’ve always been curious what shwag like this would be like, considering that in San Francisco it was, as far as I knew, literally impossible to find pot that wasn’t of the highest dense, white crystallized quality. So, cool, another reason why smoking herb here shouldn’t be a problem: The stuff they’ve got sucks.
But it does get me high.
I take a hit and hold the dirty-tasting smoke in my lungs and exhale, and immediately my brain is coated with a gentle, caressing haze.
“Wow,” I say, my voice sounding very out of body or something. “Thank you so much. I really needed that. Do, uh, do you have enough to sell me an eighth?”
She smiles. “Of course, my dear.”
Something moves on the bed, a dark shape displacing the light.
Carmine reaches over to grab it, placing it wriggling on her bony, protruding shoulder.
It’s a rat.
“This is Franky,” she tells me, getting out her scale and doing the whole eighth-weighing thing.
I pet the rat’s ragged, coarse hair. It moves suddenly and I flinch. Carmine totally laughs at me.
“So, hey,” I say. “Um, I’m gonna try ’n’ go write a little now, but, uh, let’s hang out later this week, huh? Maybe we can watch a movie or something. I just bought Barbarella yesterday for two bucks at Home Run Video.”
She doesn’t really look like she knows what I’m talking about, but she nods just the same and passes over the ugly sack.
I give her forty bucks. That’s half my first paycheck and half of all the money I have in this world.
But fuck it, right?
Walking home, I see the city is transformed, vibrant—everything heightened and rhythmic and alive. Even the heat doesn’t seem so bad.
And when I get back to our apartment, I blast music as loud as it’ll go and smoke cigarettes and set down to writing again. It’s weird, man, but for the first time in almost a year, I actually feel excited about working on my book. The pages come easily, and I’m focused and motivated, and I’m actually not tired for once. It seems like a miracle. I mean, I’m so grateful.
This is what I’ve been missing, you know?
It’s like medicine to me and, well, what the hell is wrong with that, anyway?
A lot of people take medicine.
Mine just happens to be illegal.
And it probably won’t be for long.
So I sit writing.
For hours.
Content.
Finally.
Ch.21
I can’t remember where I heard it. Some joke about a man jumping off a tall building, repeating to himself as he falls, “So far, so good. So far, so good. So far, so good.”
Well, here I am.
Falling.
And so far, so good.
I guess.
It’s been about a week now that I’ve been using—or, well, smoking pot and drinking a little. At first, I mean, yeah, Sue Ellen was definitely freaking out. When I told her I’d bought that eighth, she pretty well lost it. Screaming at me, saying all these fucked-up things about what a weak, nothing person I am. Screaming at me till I’m balled up in a corner somewhere, catatonic, my mind playin’ over and over about how the world would be better off without me. ’Cause that’s the truth, you know?
