I’ve made up with KK. It wasn’t hard. Just as I figured, she’d blasted a little of the Albino Tina and our loose tongues rationalized and apologized—the stress, I know, God, so fucking scared, feel you, yo, we’re safe, just want this shit to stop—and then we’d hugged and I pretended to be into her warm breath that smelled like yeast infections.
We’re sitting around the table playing poker. It’s all of us but Derrick, who’s still working on a cook.
I’m holding on to a pair of jacks.
Typewriter’s smiling his fat Italian grin, so I know he’s got something. Randy fingers his disgusting ear nub. Maddie folds. KK’s a little harder to figure out, the way she’s staring at the name
CODY
scratched into the table. The pot is Monopoly money. I raise a hundred. Everybody checks.
The flop doesn’t help me—a seven and a two and a king.
Type’s grin widens and he’s a little boy and simple and he tries to cough to cover up his tell. He raises a hundred.
Randy says, Bet anything this smirking bloke has three kings. He throws his cards into the middle.
I check.
KK does the same.
The turn is a jack of spades. I tell myself to show no emotion and to be medieval stoic and for some reason a memory
of my father comes back. This was two years ago and I’d been smoking speed for maybe three weeks but it wasn’t horrible yet, KK and I still keeping it to an every other day schedule. My parents invited me to a hockey game. I knew that not accepting would be a red flag and I wasn’t trying to make them worried. I showed up a few minutes late. I saw my father all little and old standing there in front of the arena on Seventh. The tail of his jersey poked out from underneath his Columbia parka. I told myself to be calm and to make eye contact and he saw me and waved and smiled and this was pride—not for himself, but for me, his son coming up on six months clean, his son holding a job and a girlfriend and his son not dead—and I let myself believe that it was all real. I was a few feet away, ready for a fatherly embrace. Then everything about him changed. His mouth straightened. His cheeks loosened. His eyes became hooded. It was the crushing of his soul or psyche or hope or his vision of a future where phone calls didn’t cause a sickening feeling in his chest. He said, Jesus Christ, son.
Typewriter gives a little frown. He checks. I put in my one golden five-hundred-dollar bill. KK does the same. Type leans back, stretches. He counts his money. He says, All in.
Oh, snap, Maddie says.
I have the feeling Type’s got three kings but I’m not about to let him buy the pot and what does it matter anyway? I throw my money on the table. Everyone turns toward KK. She runs her finger over the etched name in the table. She says, Bet my morning booster.
We think she’s joking and are all like
yeah right, good one
.
Wait, you’re serious? Randy asks.
As pregnancy.
No, can’t have you doing that, he says. Let’s just be reasonable here.
Type looks uncomfortable, trying to figure out if KK’s joking.
I make eyes with KK. Hers are flat and blue and remind me of the freezing tile of the psych ward floor. She’s serious. She’s willing to bet her survival on her cards, on a game. Randy keeps saying things about that not being allowed, about nobody knowing how long a person can survive without meth. Type folds. He says, Not getting in a pissing match with two conniving fucks like you.
I ask what that’s supposed to mean.
Typewriter just shakes his head.
I block out the cautious pleas from Randy and the nervous shifts by Maddie. I stare at my pocket pair of jacks plus the one on the table. I’m trying to figure out what she has. With the two spades showing, it’s probably a flush.
KK says, Shit’s for keeps, yo. My shot against yours. And I’m not giving you a taste tomorrow. Swear to God I’m not.
I believe her.
Stop, both of you, this is ludicrous, Randy says.
In or out? KK says.
My father saying, Jesus Christ, son. The same deadpan face. Nothing more left to lose.
Crazy-ass bitch, I say. I fold. I lean over to kiss KK’s cheek and she lets me. She talks shit, collecting the money. I pretend to gather the cards to start shuffling. I sneak a look at her hand—a ten of hearts, an ace of diamonds, a five of clubs. She
had nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even a hope for something.
Just then, Derrick’s yell fills the entire common area: Who the fuck stole the dope?
He strides through the entrance with his bare chest leading the way, his orange jumpsuit tied around his waist. He holds the cookie sheet of scante. I wonder who would be that fucking selfish to steal our medicine. I realize it was me. I’m thinking he’s going to bash my trachea into my spine and that it’s not going to be the drugs or the Chucks that kill me, but a human, this skinhead motherfucker who can’t take a joke.
Which one of you pieces of shit stole it?
My hands are up and I’m shaking my head, scanning the table.
Derrick, mate, just calm—
He drops the tray onto the middle of the table. Its whitish surface grows a hundred fissures. A few shards bounce out and land on top of KK’s bluffed hand.
One of you did, know it. Stole a corner piece.
Now he’s staring at me.
It’s the same look Typewriter gave me at the Rockwell shrine, the same as KK’s when she just called my hand, Maddie in the hallway, my father in front of the hockey arena—all of them like
you’re a lying piece of shit. I’m onto you. You can’t run forever. It’s over
.
Don’t know why you’re staring at me, man, I say.
Bud, I don’t think anybody would be that stupid, Randy says. He’s standing, one hand stretched toward Derrick.
These three motherfuckers show up, and then we’re short.
I feel KK’s stare but I can’t look because she’ll see through me. I think about Typewriter maybe having seen me on the video feed. I thank God it can’t be rewound. I stand. Derrick’s a foot away, coming closer. I yell that it wasn’t me. He doesn’t care. I’m about to reach for my pistol in my left side pocket but I don’t have time because Derrick’s got his hand around my collar and his fist cocked and I’m yelling to check my pockets and his nostrils flare and I know he’ll kill me because he’s in charge of this fucked-up world and he’s about to hit my face and I yell the first thing that comes to mind: I saw Maddie walking around alone.
Derrick holds back from crushing my face.
Yeah, man. Like I was here with KK and then with Type and then you, man, remember? Doing that experiment shit? But Maddie was walking around in the halls, the only one who wasn’t accounted for.
Fuck you, Maddie says.
Derrick lets go of my jumpsuit.
Everybody turns toward Maddie. He’s standing now, his finger pulling at a scab. He says, That’s bullshit. You fucking know it.
Everybody stay calm, Randy says.
Where were you? Derrick asks.
Down by block A. This dude’s lying. Framing me. Saw
him
down there with his sleeve rolled up.
And then Derrick’s on my shit again and I think about putting a slug straight through the hands tattooed on his neck and then we’d be fucked, him being the cook, him being God, our limited survival dependant upon his ability to breathe.
I know Maddie still has the crystal I gave him. I know all I have to do is mention this fact. Derrick cocks his arm. I say, Check his pockets.
Fuck you, Maddie screams. He’s crying. Snot starts down his face. He yells, You gave me this.
You
gave it to me. Said you had more of your own.
Type’s face goes slack and he’s staring at me and then at KK and he knows, he’s got to fucking know I stole it, his eyes saying
how the fuck can you do this?
Maddie’s walking backward. He holds the shard of scante like it’s some sort of shield. Derrick walks in gigantic steps. Maddie keeps saying, I didn’t do anything, Chase gave it to me, I didn’t fucking do anything.
We watch Derrick grab hold of Maddie and fists plummet down and we hear the yelp of a stepped-on tail and then it’s bright red on white linoleum, Maddie’s legs fighting to gain traction, smearing his blood like finger paint.
Derrick stands over the lump that is Maddie. His voice is even and low: If that ever happens again, I’ll kill you. That’s a promise.
KK’s gone to Maddie’s cell. I told her not to, saying he’ll just want to be alone, that he was probably ashamed and embarrassed. She’s been in there for five minutes. I can see her clean his face with toilet paper, gentle motherly dabs. I know he’s telling her lies about me giving him that piece of scante. But
why the fuck would she believe him? Type disappeared down the hall, probably to the monitor room. Randy and I clean up. I’m collecting the spilled bits of crystal. I pretend to tie my shoe, slipping two slivers into my sock.
We need to talk
—words any guy knows are trouble. KK stands over me. I’m sitting on the toilet in my cell, pants on, not shitting or anything, just don’t want to see or be seen by anybody else.
I’m only going to ask you this once, KK says.
I know what’s coming. It’s her taking Maddie’s side and her not believing me and I just want people to cut me a break because who the fuck wouldn’t take a teener of glass?
Look at me, she says.
I do.
Her face is all angles. She says, Did you steal the shit?
I laugh and shake my head and am like, Jesus Christ, I’m not doing this again. I stand. I say, I understand it from that Nazi motherfucker, but from you? Fucking hurts.
Yes or no?
I think about having to find Typewriter, having a come-to-Jesus talk, his loose fucking lips my greatest danger.
I say, I have done everything, fucking
everything
, for you. Risked my life to come back and get you, to save your prick boyfriend, to get you here, and it’s still not good enough.
Yes. Or. No?
No. No. Fucking Christ. I didn’t take anything. And fuck you for not believing me.
She starts nodding her head and it’s subtle at first, her cheek growing a dimple, not her good kind, but the ones from biting the inside of her cheek, and then it’s more, her nodding, her eyes the color of shitty crank, tears that she won’t let herself shed drowning the blue of her irises. I take her hands. They feel like death. I squeeze because I want her to believe me and I want to believe myself. I say, Swear to fucking God, to our ability to find a cure, to get through this shit alive, to make it all end, that I didn’t steal any tweak.
She’s crying, coming into my arms, soft sobs, my arms around her, her shaking violent.
Swear on my life, I whisper. I kiss the line where her flat bangs meet her forehead. Then the ridge of her Germanic nose. I swear on everything.
I’m in the booking station alone. I’m loading the test rig with some of my recently stolen dope. Randy told me it’d be pointless, any more experiments. Maybe he’s right. He’d looked tired as fuck after Maddie’s beating, like maybe he was seeing his safe haven crumbling like all dope houses eventually do.
The Chuck that reminds me of Frank laughs from the other side of the door.
I’m wondering if Frank is really Frank and if I’m coming undone and if Maddie’s nose is broken and if KK believed me.
I unlock the door. The smell is like this one time I found a dead deer in the woods behind our house. It was so big, its stomach like a balloon. I put my shirt over my face and found a stick and poked its side. It was both firm and bouncy. Then I jammed the stick as hard as I could into the deer’s white undercarriage. It made the softest of pops and sunk a few inches. A jet stream of warm air gushed across my ankles and the smell was so pungent I stumbled backward, dry heaving, wondering if my death would cause the same stink.
Chuck Frank stares at me. Frank’s eyes seeing everything I’ve ever done. Frank’s eyes knowing I left him for dead.
I jam the rig into his thigh. He snaps at my throat. I hold my breath. I watch his eyes for dilation. I pray for giggles to become words. Then it happens. Frank’s pupils become saucers. He quits pulling against the handcuffs. He blinks.
I count in my head—One one thousand, two one thousand …
Frank’s eyes lose their knowingness. Now they’re just the eyes of a drug addict.
Seventeen one thousand, eighteen …
I pull out the chair opposite of Frank. I sit. It feels intimate, me studying him, us closed off from the rest of the world. It reminds me of a Fifth Step I did during my year of sobriety. I sat with my sponsor—some old sculptor with a Jesus beard—and I told him every single resentment I had, the cause, what part of me it affected, and what my role in the whole thing was. Then I shared my sexual inventory. Then my fears. The whole thing took close to four hours.
Afterward, we knelt on the concrete floor of his clay
studio. A single fan circled above us. We said a prayer that started, God, I am now willing that you should have all of me.
At thirty-one seconds, Frank starts to laugh.
Fuck you, Frank, I say.
I load another shot and tell him it isn’t nice to laugh at other people. I think about Typewriter lying on the warming hut floor, how I blasted him until seizures came and he’d been right there at the cusp of death and I’d saved my best friend, just like I’m going to save the world.
In you go, I say.
Frank’s quiet is the perfect high, the one that lets you feel like nothing you’ve ever done has hurt a soul.
He’ll either die or he won’t.
It’s the same fate as every motherfucker.
I start loading one for myself with my own needle, taking a pocketed scrap out of my sock.
I watch Frank seize. I tell him to not make this about himself. I start with an impromptu Fifth Step. I tell him that I resent him. That he was my boy and he had to go off and shoot too much fucking dope and die on me. I say, How the fuck do you think that made me feel? My best friend in sobriety dying? And just leaving you like that? That shit did a number on me, man. Guilt like you wouldn’t believe.