drug tales

Angel
Mike Baxter

Sitting on a dull green 60's era couch, miraculously unstained, she erratically painted her nails neon orange. She was topless, with her skin tight ripped jeans unbuttoned and unzipped revealing a leopard print thong. Her skin was red with lacerations from constant scratching and fidgeting. Her hair was tied back in a bun, completely removed from her "workspace," which was an antique coffee table with a glass top that had seen better days. As she leaned closer and closer to her fingers resting on the surface of the table, her glasses (which were very chic mind you) slipped all the way down to the tip of her nose. Annoyingly, she nudged them back into place with the back of her wrist, gave the tip of her nose a scratch with an unpainted nail, and then feverishly continued working. Her work was sloppy and ungraceful, with nail polish smeared around her cuticles and splattered on the glass top of the table. Strewn across the table top was a bevy of lighters, empty pen barrels, a near empty pack of cheap cigarettes and a homemade aluminum foil ashtray along with a frightening array of nicknacks and doodads. As to the functionality of these devices, anyone's guess is as good as the next.
A young man named Harley walks into the apartment through the front door. "Angel, babe, you here?" Harley says, wrestling with the keys in his hand and the slightly used stereo under his arm. "Yeah babe, I'm in here." shouts Angel. "Look what I found, some dumbass just left this sitting by their car." Harley said making his way into the living room. Angel noticed how his jaw was moving about seemingly with a mind of it's own. He must be tweaking Angel thinks. She doesn't mind though, she has a habit of her own. Besides, he fucks her like a bull on steroids when he's on that shit. "That's great babe, hey listen," Angel was not at all interested in Harley's find. "I need to borrow the car, Poncho's gonna break me off a half for givin him a ride." "Whatever, as long as all your doin is given him a ride," Harley says glaring at her. "Jesus fuckin Christ, it's not like I'm gonna suck his smelly unwashed cock!" Angel snags the keys and heads straight for the door. "You gonna put a shirt on first?" Harley shouts after her. "Shit!" mutters Angel as she zips into the bedroom. She emerges within seconds and finally makes it to the door. "Love you" Harley says almost sarcastically. "Yeah, yeah you love me, I get it." Angel says while beaming a smile at Harley.
Barreling down the freeway Angel was paying the upmost attention to the road and her speedometer as she was constantly on the lookout for The Man. She was normally relaxed and carefree but with Poncho in the passenger seat drinking a 211 Steel Reserve tall can, her nerves were caught in a vice. If pulled over, one might wonder what a twenty-something-year-old white girl from the suburbs was doing in the car with a half drunk, mid 50’s homeless Mexican convict. The answer was simple really, “oh him? He’s just my heroin dealer, don’t mind him.” This thought constantly raced through her mind as she drove steadily with the flow of traffic trying her hardest to "act natural" and damned if she wasn't pulling it off too. She just prayed that he be done with that tall can before they made the drive back home. “Well, at least he can’t talk and drink at the same time,” she thought.
Poncho broke his incessant rambling only to wave her over to the exit. Angel was in no mood for his small talk bullshit, for she was concentrating way to hard on driving and on top of that, The Sickness was already kicking in. He had to direct her at every turn; she was unfamiliar with the city, even though she grew up just ten minutes drive down the freeway. They finally arrived at a rundown mini market parking lot where Poncho directed her to park. In that same parking lot Poncho’s empty Steel Reserve can found its way out the window.
It’s there they waited, too anxious to talk, too anxious to do anything but stare at the clock on the car dashboard. After the longest seven minutes of Angel and Poncho’s lives, a beat to shit dark grey pick-up pulled into the lot bearing expired tags. She had seen this truck before, as well as the short and plump Mexican man who drove it, this was the man they came to meet. This was the man she drove Poncho to come see every day. This was the man who supplied him with his heroin. Only something was different this time, in the passenger seat was a little boy who couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve. Usually Poncho livens up when Berto pulls up, but this time he was overcome with a quiet sadness. He tried to hide it but it wouldn’t have mattered either way because Angel was not paying the slightest attention to Poncho. He slowly leaned in close to Angel to tell her something. She could tell he was about to speak, but she knew what he was about to say was not like the usual pointless drivel, so she listened. He said, “You see that boy in that truck,” “yeah I do,” replied Angel, speaking softly wondering where this was going, and also why he hasn’t gotten his ass out of the car to go get the shit. “That’s my grandson…only he doesn’t know it.” Poncho hesitated for a moment and continued, “He thinks Berto is his grandfather, a long time ago, while I was in prison, Berto stole my wife and family from me. When I got out, there was nothing or nobody left for me.” Angel didn't know what to say, so she said nothing. Berto got out of the truck, leaving the boy behind. He made his way into the store and Poncho followed him in. While they were in the store Angel started thinking about her father. She hadn't seen him in years, since he kicked her out of the house as a matter of fact. She didn't think too much about her father these days, she just buried the pain under a needle.
Poncho returned to the car and Berto his. "Wait till he leaves to start going." said Poncho. "Aren't you going to talk to him? Your grandson I mean." asked Angel. She almost sounded like she cared. "Nah, it's too late for that, my family is gone now, moved on. I chose drugs over them a long time ago, now I have to live with that. Besides it'd turn the poor little dude's world upside down, ya know?" For the first time Angel felt something for this man. She couldn't help but to relate to Poncho's situation. After her mother died, Angel turned to drugs to deal with the pain of her loss, thus abandoning her father when he needed her most. She still didn't understand why it was so easy for her father to throw her out, why it was necessary to choose one or the other. Why couldn't her father accept his daughter's habit and still have her in his life? But Poncho continued speaking before she could get a word in edge wise, "But hey fuck it, we're in for a treat, we got the real shit, not that black tar garbage. We got some gunpowder. Here's a half for you, be careful with this shit its way stronger then the black." All of Angel's confliction about her own family crisis disappeared the second she wrapped her fingers around that small brown chunk of bathtub manufactured bliss.
Off they went back into town, not mentioning a word about Poncho's grandson, and Angel didn't feel like sharing her own story of similar premise. In fact she wanted to bury those thoughts as deep into her gut as they could go. She dropped Poncho off at the towns central park where he hangs out with all the other local homeless, and promptly returned home. She had beads of sweat dripping out of seemingly every pore in her body and felt like she was burning up. It was a little after three and she hadn't had a shot since last night. She returned home to an empty apartment, Harley's bike was missing, she figured he was out delivering bags of cocaine to help pay the rent. The only thoughts on her mind at this point concerned turning brown powder into brown liquid then sending it off into her bloodstream.
She was already feeling the rush by the time the plunger was only three quarters of the way pushed down. Her pupils immediately pinned and she felt the warm pulsating feeling of escape take her body over as she fell back into the couch. The heroin was good, really good in fact, it put her into a state of nodding, where she is not fully asleep and not fully awake. She began to have visions of her as a young girl at her family home. It was her birthday party and no one was there except for Harley, who appeared the same age he is now. He was rudely demanding paper because he had to write some stupid story for class and that he should have stayed home instead. She became sad in her dream, not because of Harley, but because the one person she wanted there couldn't make it…her father. She began to sob, both in her dream and in real life. She awoke, but found herself paralyzed by tears. Not even in her dreams could she see her father, or even hear his voice. Heroin was no longer an escape from her rotten circumstance, it had become an extension of it.
She found herself fully awake on the couch, with dried up tears on her cheek. Harley was nowhere to be found, that was fine she preferred to be alone right now anyways. She stared at the dope for a good long while, and decided to jump in the shower to clear her head. She liked to just sit under the hot water for at least twenty minutes, and just relax. No one or no thing could get to her in the shower, she felt completely safe. She had never seen the movie "Psycho."
Not to long after she jumped in, Harley came bursting through the door. "Angel, babe, you here?" Harley shouted walking through the entrance. There was no answer but he soon heard the running water coming from the bathroom. He was coming down unusually hard from the speed, and was becoming unbearably depressed. He saw Angel's bag sitting on the coffee table. He had always been curious what it felt like to send the brown substance coursing through his veins. He'd seen Angel do it hundreds of times and thought of the expression of pure relief that came over her whole body when she did it. He decided to fix up, and do the shot in bed, after all he could use a nap.
Angel finally emerged from the shower. She felt rejuvenated, and came to terms once again with the situation between her and her father. She dried off and headed into the bedroom. When she entered she dropped her towel and was standing naked, exposed, staring at a blue Harley curled in bed laying in a puddle of his drool. His lips, fingers and toes had taken on a deep blue hue, his veins were popping out of his skin as if they were screaming for air. She knew immediately what had happened. He was still breathing although his breaths were shallow and few and far between. There was no time for tears as she propped him up and began trying to slap him awake. "Harley, Harley, wake up!" she pleaded at the top of her lungs. This went on for a few minutes but Harley was not responding. Her mind raced trying to remember all the tricks of the trade she had picked up from fellow junkies on how to revive a fallen soldier. She thought of an ice cold shower and tried to drag two hundred pounds of dead weight into the bathroom. Her weak body couldn't budge him, not even with the overwhelming adrenaline pumping through her skull. She franticly slapped him repeatedly in the face screaming out his name hoping for some sign of consciousness, but to no avail. She remembered a story, she thought too over the top to be true but she was desperate, Harley was on his way out. She raced into the kitchen yanking open the freezer spilling the ice tray, sending cubes darting across the unwashed tile. Her body tensed in frustration as she screamed aloud, “FUCK!” She felt something cold against her little tiny toes and picked it up. She cupped the cube in her hand to shrink its size, and made it more aerodynamic. She pulled off Harley's loose fit jeans and baggy boxers. There was no time for shame and awkwardness as she worked the ice cube into Harley's rectum. She pulled his pants back up as if she were covering up a crime scene. The shock of the cube and another mighty slap brought a flicker of life to his eyes and hope to her heart. Harley was slowly coming around as Angel repeatedly slapped him across the face screaming, "Stay with me, stay with me!"
"Why are you yelling at me." Harley could barely speak, and his words came across weak, and whiney. "Come on baby, you need to stand up, your going to throw up." Harley could barely walk, his body was feeble and he had to lean on Angel as he stumbled into the bathroom. He couldn't even make it down to the toilet before he started violently puking in the sink. "I'm so sorry, babe, I'm so sorry." Harley said with tears in his eyes and puke on his lips. "What are you sorry for baby? It's ok, your going to be fine, ok?" Angel said in a quiet soft voice with a gentle tear of relief sliding down her face.
Angel and Harley made their way back to bed. She made him lay on his side on top of towels and next to a trash can in case he had to puke again. She was sitting beside him, not letting him go to sleep. Then she started scurrying about the apartment, cleaning up the mess trying to keep her mind occupied all the while shouting at Harley demanding a response to keep him awake. After a few hours she laid down in bed next to Harley, she told him it was ok to pass out and he was asleep in seconds. Angel lay in bed, the gravity of the events that had just unfolded began to hit her. She thought of her father, what if that had been her lying there all blue with her eyes rolled into the back of her head. For the first time she saw things from her father’s perspective. A man, after losing his wife to cancer, could not bear to watch his daughter kill herself. She drifted to sleep, making a promise to herself that she would never be the one laying in bed turning blue.
"Where are you going." asked Harley as a fully dressed Angel was slipping out the bedroom door. Angel, with a nervous smile, looked him straight in the eyes with for what felt like an eternity and replied, "Home." Harley looked at her with a puzzled face and did not say a word as he watched her leave.
A taxi is waiting for her in the apartment complex parking lot and she tells the driver her home address. The driver immediately picks up on Angels need for silence and quietly heads toward their destination. Angel stares out the window as the cab rolls through her old neighborhood, she had not been to this part of town since the last time she saw her father. All the houses were the same, nothing was new except a few paintjobs and newer SUVs. The cab pulled up in front of her house. It was the second nicest house on the block, one of only two two-story homes. The house was exactly how she remembered it, nothing had changed, it was still the same dull grey color with a light blue-green trim. Angel sits in the backseat of the cab, for a moment ignoring the drivers request for the fare. She stares out at her lonely house, strong but empty, just like her father. "Ma'm, please." She finally pays the driver and leaves him a handsome tip. She lights up a cigarette as her knees begin to shake and her gut tightens as she makes her way up the concrete walkway to the front door. She takes a deep breath and slowly exhales a cloud of smoke as she rings the door bell. A tall man in his early sixties, who looks damned good for his age answers the door. The pair lock eyes and are equally surprised at who's souls they are staring into. Angel is staring at her father, begging with her eyes for him to say something, anything, she just needs to hear his voice. She just needs to hear his voice and it will all be ok.
"You look like hell…" the man says with a discerning smile spreading across his once solemn face.
"I'm ready to come home."