dissolve a bit better.. .”
Thorne reached across for the plastic lemon on the floor. “Making pancakes later?”
Spike put down the syringe and picked up the lighter. “Taste well strange if we did, mate.” He held the flame beneath the spoon, nodded toward the lemon in Thorne’s hand. “It’s not fucking lemon juice in there.”
“Anyone tries it on, they get a face full,” Caroline said.
Thorne took the cap off, sniffed, then drew his face sharply away from the pungent kick of the ammonia.
Spike laughed. “I’ve got my weapon, she’s got her’s, like…”
Then Thorne became aware of another smell: the syrupy kick of the heroin as it began to bubble on the spoon; the vinegar slight, but noticeably sharp, beneath. He realized that this was the smell he’d noticed earlier. He held his breath…
Caroline reached over for the needle. She tore it from the plastic sleeve, and after pulling off the orange cap, she attached it to the syringe.
“Come on, we’re there,” Spike said.
There were a number of cigarette butts, of varying sizes, scattered across the bar towel. Caroline took one from the bobbly, maroon material and used the knife to cut a thin slice from the filter, then dropped it into the liquid. Thorne thought it looked like those inedible slivers of something or other you got in spicy Thai soup…
While Spike held the spoon steady, Caroline placed the tip of the needle flat against the section of filter and drew the liquid through it, up into the syringe. Again, she expunged some of it back into the spoon to be sure she had exactly half.
“For fuck’s sake, Caz, get a shift on…”
“This is for your benefit, mate, to make sure you get your share.” She lifted the spoon and placed it on the floor, out of harm’s way. The handle had been bent in such a way that the bowl rested flat on the concrete.
Spike had already rolled up the sleeve of his faded, red hoody. As Caroline put the needle to his skin he twisted the material that was gathered above his elbow and made a fist.
Caroline grunted as she dug around for a vein…
Spike moaned as she found one; as she drew blood back into the syringe; as the red billowed into the brown, like wax in a Lava lamp; as she pushed the plunger.
“Flush it… flush the fucker…”
Twice, three times, she drew the blood back into the syringe and pressed it back into the vein. By the third time, Spike was nodding; each bounce of his head taking it lower. He raised it slowly, one last time to smile at Thorne, to beam like a baby at Caroline. “ ‘Time for bed,’ said Zebedee…”
Caroline had already begun to clean out the syringe, drawing water in from the bottle and squirting it away onto the floor. She leaned across to kiss Spike, then gave him a push. “Into your box, you silly bastard…”
Spike half fell, half crawled into the cardboard box, until all Thorne could see were the soles of his trainers. After only a few seconds, they stopped moving. Then Thorne watched as Caroline flushed the syringe again. She cursed, announced that the thing was “juddery,” and rooted among her collection of sachets for a pat of butter to smear around the plunger. Her movements were practiced and precise, and she bit off the ends of her words as she talked, like they were bitter on her lips.
“Aren’t you worried about sharing needles?” Thorne asked.
She shrugged. “It’s only him and me…”
“But they’re easy enough to get.” He pointed at the bar towel. “You’ve got new ones.”
“Everyone thinks we’ve got AIDS anyway, don’t they?”
Thorne stretched out his legs and opened his mouth, but before he could speak she was shouting at him to be careful, and moving quickly to avert any risk of the spoon being knocked over; of losing the precious liquid pooled in its bowl.
“Who’s Robbie?” Thorne asked.
She dipped the syringe back into the spoon, put the needle to the filter, and drew up the remainder of the heroin. “My kid. From before I met Spike. He’ll be ten now.” She held the syringe up to the light. “I lost him.”
Thorne watched as she pushed down a sock and flexed her foot. “I’m sorry…”
She looked up briefly from what she was doing. “See what I mean about luck, though?” A smile that seemed to hurt appeared for just a moment. “Mind you, my luck might have been shit, but at least Robbie’s hasn’t been too bad. It was his good luck to get taken away from me, right?”
Thorne couldn’t think of anything to say. He could only imagine how badly she needed what the needle she was holding could give her.
For another few seconds she tried to get the needle into the right position, but it was tricky. She was right- handed and the vein she was after was above her left ankle. She looked up at Thorne, sweat falling off her. “Could you give me a hand with this?”
“I’m a bit shit with needles…”
“Please…?”
Thorne had known there might be such moments; he hadn’t signed on to go undercover thinking it would be easy. That he would never need to make tough choices. It took him only a second or two to realize that, as choices went, this was actually one of the easier ones.
It was the least he could do…
He could feel something shift-in himself as well as in Caroline-as he pushed the drug into her. He swung round when it was finished, so that he was sitting next to her against the wall. He let her head fall onto him as she began to nod. “I was thinking about this money thing,” he said. “I know Spike doesn’t like to ask, but couldn’t his sister help? Just to get you two started, maybe?”
“Sister…”
“I know he’s funny about it, but it sounds like she wants to help him.”
Now the words dribbled from her, falling in thick, sloppy threads without emphasis or cadence. “His sister’s dead; died fucking ages ago. Years. When he was still at home…”
“Caroline…?”
It was maybe half a minute before she continued. “When he was still at home, his dad used to mess with ’em, you know? With both of ’em. Used to hurt him and his sister and he couldn’t stand it, so he got out.
“Got the fuck out…
“He was older than she was, you see? A couple of years. Older. So he left her there, and then a bit later on… six months or something, you’d have to ask him, was when she took a load of pills. Chucked ’em down like Smarties…
“Spike was… you know? He was very fucked up. There was a nasty scene when they buried her… That was the last time he saw anyone in the family. That was it for good then.”
“He knows it wasn’t his fault, doesn’t he?” Thorne asked.
“Like Smarties…”
Thorne could hear someone singing in one of the adjoining subways. He was stroking Caroline’s hair. “I don’t think it’s hurting anyone that Spike pretends…”
Caroline groaned.
“Everybody does it to some extent or other,” Thorne said. “When they lose someone. People bang on and on about letting go, like it’s the healthy thing to do, like we don’t all need a bit of fucking comfort. We all keep our loved ones alive somewhere…”
But she couldn’t hear him anymore.
At some point during the night, Thorne was woken by something. He reached out to touch the cardboard on every side of him. He was hot and stinking inside his sleeping bag.
From a few feet away, he could hear Spike and Caroline making love. The noises they made, their cries, and the movement of their bodies inside the box seemed urgent and desperate. His hand moved to his groin, but did not stay there for very long. He was touched rather than excited by what he could hear: there was a reassurance in their passion, in the simple desire of each to please the other.
Thorne eventually drifted back to sleep, soothed by the rhythm of it and comforted by the affirmation of need. By an honest moment of human contact; by an act of love that had more meaning on cardboard than it might have had on silk.
