Crystal Clean (9 page)

The security guard let him in and I waited in the hallway, wringing my hands the way I do when I’m anxious. When I saw him, electricity raced up my spine and through my scalp. The way he looked at me, as he half walked, half jogged down the corridor, made me feel like the most important person in the world. I’ve always loved his smile, which is brightly mischievous. He was wearing his favorite worn, floppy Fedora, reminiscent of Indiana Jones. To me, he looked like home.

“Kim! Hey.”

“Hey, Allan.” He hugged me and I felt so safe in his arms
-
as if someone had built a strong, secure house around me
that
no wolf could ever blow down.

We didn’t go to dinner that night. Instead, we went to the bar where we met so many years earlier to shoot pool, drink and catch up with each other. I paid the bill.

Back at the hotel, I changed into my sweats and took off my makeup. “Do you still do crank?” he asked me.

“Well, not crank...but meth. You know, crystal.”

“Can we do some? I’ll buy some from you if you have enough.”

“You don’t have to buy it. I’m good.”

“Do you smoke it?”

“Well, yes. Why? Do you? Or do you still do lines?”

“Lines.”

I made a face. “Jesus, why? I hate the burn and the drip. I’ve never liked the taste of drugs.”

“I know. I remember,” he said smiling. When he smiled at me with that certain look in his eye, all I wanted to do was throw him on the bed and ride him into the sunset. “I love the burn. And the drip. If you don’t mind, I’ll do lines.”

“Not if you don’t mind if I smoke it.”

“Nope. I might take a hit or two later if that’s okay.”

I pulled out my pipe, a credit card for making lines and a straw. Then I took a bag of crystal meth from the hotel safe in the room.

“Holy shit, Kim! How much is that?”

I tossed the baggie on the table. “I don’t know. It’s my personal. Maybe a quarter ounce?”

He picked it up, looking at it like it was the Hope Diamond. “Fuck, this is good shit, huh?”

“Of course it’s good,” I said as I opened the bag and handed him a rock about the size of half a grape. “What are you,
new
? I always did have good drugs, remember?” We lay on the queen-sized bed cross ways, did drugs, smoked cigarettes and talked incessantly the way people do when they use meth or coke together. Both drugs have the effect of turning total strangers into best friends within almost instantly, but Allan and I were already friends so for me, it felt like serious bonding. He did most of the talking, as we lay there, he kept inching closer to me. I knew I could have had him if I wanted to, but I was too drunk. I lost count of the number of double Jager shots I’d had earlier, and I was seeing double.

I hit my pipe continuously, trying to counter the effects of the alcohol, but it wasn’t working. I closed my eyes and tried not to fall asleep as I listened to him go on about what it was like being on the road all the time. He kept moving closer until our bodies were smashed together and all I could do was lie there, drunk and desperately trying to get high enough to pull myself out of my double-vision stupor. I didn’t want him to know what was going on with me, so I just ignored his nudging and listened to him talk about the road.

“I’d love that,” I said. “It sounds like heaven to me. Just driving...always being somewhere different. It must be like the ultimate road trip.”

He touched my face. “I’d take you with me anytime.”

“Really? You would?” Hearing those words made me feel so connected to Allan. I felt like he was my knight in shining armor and that, with him, I would be safe because he would take care of me. He would take me away with him anytime I wanted to go.

It was close to noon the next day when he said he had to go. His son had a football game at 1:00, and he needed to go home, shower and change clothes. Suddenly I was pissed off. Everything was going so well and now he had to leave me. Asshole. I felt like such an idiot. I always did this:  got my hopes up, creating this image in my head of how everything would happen, only to be drop-kicked by reality. “Damn it,” I thought, “I know better. Why do I always do this?”

Whenever I meet a guy I like, which isn’t often, I envision us dating, married and with kids, the whole relationship worked out and already lived in my mind, before dessert. My mind would go, my thoughts racing, and I was powerless to stop them. Usually, by the time the date was over, I was already tired of the guy and didn’t really care if I ever saw him again. With Allan, I imagined the two of us living in the cab of his big truck, driving back and forth across
the country, just living in our own magic bubble away from the world.

The effects of the alcohol were gone by the time he was leaving for his son’s game, and I was in a strange floating place. Wired-tired, I called it. It was the feeling of being sleepy and high at the same time. So I just lay there on the bed trying to appear nonchalant and aloof.

“Do you mind if I come back when the game’s over?” Allan asked me. I got up.

“Really?”

“If it’s okay. I don’t have to leave until tomorrow night.”

I threw my arms around him. “Of course it’s okay. Thank you, thank you...”

“For what?” His arms were around me too, and I felt the same as when he had hugged me the night before. Safe.

“Nothing. I’m just happy. Call me before you come, though, okay?”

“No problem. Do you have any more of that stuff?”

Of course I did. I always did.

From that day forward, we were together whenever he was home, and he would call me from the road several times a day. Allan made me feel special. No man had ever showered me with so much attention.

Chapter 8

I rented an apartment using Allan as my job reference. “Why yes. Kim has worked as my bookkeeper for over two years now and she’s a fine employee. I know she’ll make a great tenant.”

I moved Andy in with me and began to feel whole again. I bought a car, a LaBaron convertible, again with Allan posing as my employer. We fell into a pattern. He was usually gone four or five days at a time, home at least two and sometimes three days in a row. We spent almost all of that time together. I hadn’t yet gone with him on one of his trips. I was so busy, I couldn’t find a good time to leave. Someone always needed drugs and, of course, Garnett always needed money. It was a vicious cycle:  keep working to keep paying, keep paying to keep buying in order to meet the never-ending demand for meth.

As much as I sometimes hated dealing with people and the feeling of being a gerbil on a wheel, the lifestyle afforded me the luxury of supporting my son and myself. We didn’t want for anything. I wasn’t rich by any means, but I never had to worry about having enough money for groceries or bills. I could afford to buy our clothes and didn’t have to worry about Andy’s school expenses. If his class was going on a field trip, I always had the money and would sometimes send extra in case one of his classmates couldn’t afford to go. I never had to worry about getting someone to watch Andy before or after school because I could always be there for him
-
usually in my bedroom getting high while he watched his
Star Wars
tapes in his room
-
to play Mario, cook dinner for him, give him his bath and tuck him in every night. It seemed like an ideal situation to me. To be able to have that much time with Andy in the legitimate world I would have to work part time, and I couldn’t support us working part time. I had the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom. And I didn’t need a husband to be able to do it.

Meanwhile, Garnett’s behavior was becoming increasingly erratic. It was obvious that he didn’t like me spending most of my time elsewhere. If Allan called when Garnett and I were together, he would make snorting noises under his breath and start pacing around the room. The mere mention of Allan’s name would send him into a passive-aggressive fit and he would withhold my drugs or
jack up my price. His strange disappearances were more frequent and he talked to himself under his breath when he thought I wasn’t paying attention.

He had also begun to collect guns. He traded meth for guns, and started carrying one everywhere he went. He had rifles and handguns, semi and automatic, and was starting to talk about “going out in style.” When I asked him what he meant by that, he explained that if the “pigs” ever stormed his house, he’d be waiting in his basement for them, and take out as many as he could before they killed him.
But that wasn’t the most disturbing thing.

Most meth heads, at one time or another,
h
allucinate. (For whatever reason, thankfully, I never did.) They see shadow people moving in the corners of their houses and outside in their yards. Shadow people particularly like to hide out in trees. Most meth heads are also paranoid to one degree or another. Garnett was paranoid to another degree.

He decided that there were people who had made it their goal in life to slap his house. At first, he said it was a group of kids who would take turns running up to the front of his house, slapping it and then running away. When I asked him why someone would want to do such a thing, he looked at me as if I was the stupidest person to have ever walked the earth and said, “Are you
kidding
?”

He began referring to the people as monkeys. Before long, his delusion consumed him. Not only were the monkeys slapping his house, but there were people from four different states who switched license plates every hour and followed him wherever he went. Again, I asked him why he thought this was happening. He said, “Kimbo, are you kidding? I’m probably the most interesting thing they’ve ever seen!”

He was serious.

Everywhere he went, he took long, elaborate routes, attempting to “shake his tails.” He started wearing crazy wigs to disguise himself from his imaginary followers. One night he took me with him so he could prove what was going on. As we stopped at a traffic light, he tilted his head toward the car idling next to him. It was a run of the mill, four-door sedan with a middle aged woman behind the wheel and what looked like it could have been her elderly mother sitting next to her in the passenger seat.

Garnett was giddy with excitement. “Watch this, watch this. When the light turns green, they’re going to turn left.”

“Garnett, it’s a turn only lane. Of course they’re going to
turn left.”

I don’t know if he didn’t hear me or was ignoring me, but when they turned left, he started a high-pitched giggle that made my skin crawl. “I knew it! I knew it!” His excitement was that of a hardcore sports fan whose team just won the biggest game of the year. “They always turn left!” Pounding on the dash. “Do you see now?” Looking at me for approval. “Do you see what I put up with every day, all day long?”

I nodded and suddenly felt cold. Because when I looked into his eyes, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he believed everything he was saying.

And even
that
wasn’t the most disturbing thing.

The thing that disturbed me the most was when I found the hole in the wall of the basement, underneath the front of his house. Actually, it really wasn’t a hole at all. It was a tunnel. It was only a foot and a half deep when I first saw it, but over the next couple of weeks, Garnett dug a tunnel that stretched almost five feet underneath the house. What was he doing? Why, he was going to dig a tunnel all the way under the street to the lawn on the other side so that he could crawl through one night and catch the monkeys in the act of slapping his house.

So when Garnett called me one night to tell me he was being arrested, all I felt was relief.

He’d been pulled over and the cop was back in his cruiser running the license.

“So, why do you think you’re going to be arrested?”

“I have a warrant.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. Probably my fucking ex-wife. You gotta do something, Kim. You gotta get me outta this.”

Huh
? “What? Do you have anything on you?”

“I already stashed that. I’m not driving my car, so I think it’ll be okay, but I have the Beretta on me. What should I do?”

I wanted to tell him to wave it out the window. I figured that would get him locked up for a while.

“Kim! Hurry up. He’s coming back. What should I do?”

“Shit, I don’t know! Um,” I was trying to think, “take the clip out and kick it under the seat. At least that way it’s not loaded.”

“Okay.”

He left his phone on while they arrested him, but all I could hear were muffled voices.

Garnett was charged with fourteen counts of malicious stalking and harassment of his ex-wife, which explained his strange disappearances.

Scanning the yellow pages of the phone book, I found a bail bond company owned by a woman I’d gone to high school with. Jill met me at the jail and I co-signed for his bond, accepting responsibility for Garnett showing up for all future court dates. It never occured to me that he wouldn’t.

Two days after his release, he told me he was going to run.

“What the hell, Garnett? You can’t run. I’m on the hook for twenty-five grand.”

“Sorry, Kimbo. I just can’t do it. I can’t take the risk of doing time.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Sorry. You’ll figure something out.”

And I did. I called Jill and asked her to revoke the bond.

“He told me flat out. He’s going to run. He doesn’t care about the money or me. I made a mistake. He shouldn’t be out.” After a brief discussion, she agreed. “He can’t know it was me, though,” I said.

“Don’t worry. We’ll come up with a reason. You just have to let me know exactly where he’ll be at a certain time, and I’ll have the guys bring him in.”

I arranged for them to pick him up at my house; the only place he felt comfortable other than his own. I didn’t want anyone to have to deal with a psychotic Garnett hiding in his basement with who knew how many guns.

They dragged him back to jail where he would remain until the court decided to let him out, or someone else co-signed for his bond. No one, not even his family, wanted him out.

His behavior was so odd during his two-month stay in the Ada county jail that they removed him from the regular population and placed in the medical unit under psychiatric watch.

When I was able to talk to him, he told me he was two months behind in his rent, and two weeks away from eviction. If that happened, he would lose everything he owned.

“Please, Kim, please. You’re the only one I trust to get things done. Can you deal with the landlord and get my stuff into storage so I don’t lose it?” He also wanted me to take care of his people
-
the ones he sold to
-
while he was away.

I’ll be honest, I was glad he was in jail. I was thrilled that I wouldn’t have to deal with his craziness, at least for a while. I’d been feeling trapped by his lunacy and it was getting more and more difficult to conduct business with him because of his paranoia and weird hallucinations. I put up with it because it was through him that I had access to meth. At the time, I thought of it as a business thing. I needed product and he was my supplier. The real reason, the one I never would have admitted at the time, was that I needed a constant supply of meth for
me
, and I was willing to do just about anything to get it.

Spending time with a crazy, paranoid person that I didn’t like was nothing compared to what other women have done for meth. I know women who allowed
themselves
to be traded among men
-
sometimes groups of them
-
like baseball cards. The woman went to the highest bidder, so to speak. Whoever could provide the current “keeper” the most bang for their buck became the new owner. And on and on it would go, because once a woman is in that situation...

And the thing is, none of those women wanted to be that way. None of them would ever have imagined, in their worst nightmare that something like that could happen, especially not to them.

No one wants to lose her humanity.

No one wants to be an addict.

When Garnett asked me to handle his affairs, I said yes with no hesitation, because the first thing I thought was that this was my opportunity to move up. I didn’t have a clue how that might come about, but something told me that I would somehow profit from the situation.

I knew where he kept his stash and I knew his regular customers, so I went to see each of them and explain the situation. I paid his landlord the back rent and arranged to pay for an additional two weeks so I could get all of Garnett’s things moved. I kept track of everything so he would know where every penny went. I paid a couple of his friends, in meth of course, to pack and move everything to my storage unit, which I was about to let go because I wasn’t using it anymore.

Then, just as I’d run out of Garnett’s stash and was dangerously low on my own, Kilo showed up.

Kilo was Garnett’s “guy.” His connection. I knew who he
was. Garnett sometimes brought him to my apartment during the day to do deals when his “monkeys” were especially active. Kilo and I had never spoken. So when he appeared on my doorstep one afternoon, I was stunned.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Of course. Come in.”

He and his constant sidekicks, Craig and Billy, sat on the sofa. I sat opposite them in the rocking chair. It was a bit unsettling having those men in my house without the buffer of Garnett.

I sat, trying to keep from wringing my hands, looking at the rainbow across from me. Kilo was Asian, tall, extremely handsome and soft-spoken. Craig was Hispanic, short and stocky and looks tough and hard. Billy, on the other hand, was even taller than Kilo: a long, gangly white boy who can’t quite seem to sit still. They were all in their early twenties.

Boise is a melting pot. There’s a large Hispanic population, especially in the surrounding areas, due to the agriculture. I’ve asked my Lao and Bosnian friends, “How on earth did you end up in Boise, Idaho, of all places? What did you do, throw a dart at a map?”

What they tell me is that church and civic groups sponsor refugees. I have no idea how common this is anywhere else. What I do know is that I currently reside in a low-income apartment complex, which in larger cities might be known as a housing project. There are twenty-three different languages spoken here, according to management. As a Caucasian, I’m definitely in the minority where I live. There are families from different countries in Africa, from Bosnia, Turkey, Russia, India, and Laos, to name a few. Most are refugees, sponsored by World Relief. It’s nice, really, especially on Sundays when the families stroll the commons visiting one another wearing the most beautiful colors and fabrics: Saris, Babushkas, Dashikis and head wraps.