Authors: Elias Anderson
As Carmex drove Cherry finished crying quietly to herself
and tried not to look at the cold sore dominating the poor girl’s face, if that
was even what it was. She didn’t help matters by constantly dabbing at it with
a tube of Carmex...what had eventually become her namesake. She’d had that sore
or another one just like it the entire time Cherry had known her. Why didn’t
the girl go to a doctor or something? Cherry knew there was medication you
could take for that sort of thing.
It was easily the size of a quarter, maybe even larger,
bright red, a little white head in the middle of it that looked more like a
blister. It was not a normal thing. A regular cold sore was no big
deal...Cherry had them before, so she figured had just about everyone else. But
this...this thing was some kind of mutant cold sore brought on by bad nutrition
no sleep too many different kinds of drugs in too high a quantity, all that
plus whatever it was that normally gave you a cold sore. Cherry felt bad for
her. If it hadn’t been for that one massive imperfection shining in the middle
of her face Cherry judged Carmex would have been a beautiful girl, prettier
than her, easily.
And what a fucked up nickname, right? Like calling an amputee
Stumpy or something. It was impossible for Cherry to think of the girl driving
her home as anything other than Carmex, because she’d known her by that name
long before any other. But she never called her that, not to her face. Cherry
knew this didn’t put her in running for anthropologist of the year or a Nobel
Prize or anything, but it was something.
She’d never heard Jim call her that either, and this made
Cherry smile a little. She wished she could have gotten him to leave with her,
but she also understood. She shouldn’t have waited until right after he did a
line to ask him to leave with her. She wondered not for the first time if he
was completely himself around her, or if he changed himself a little, tweaked
things here and there to make himself come off in a better light.
“Turn here?” Jenny asked.
“Yeah. Thanks for the ride. And for...”
Jenny nodded. “No problem.”
“You wanna come up for a minute, smoke a joint or
something?” Cherry asked.
“God, I would love to, but I don’t think I’d be able to get back
off your couch. Besides,” Jennifer said, checking her watch. “I gotta get to
work in a couple hours.”
“Oh, brutal. You still working at that Italian place?”
“No, fuck that place. The owner was this total skeev, all
hands, you know, always looking at my tits when he talked to me. No, I’m just
doing telemarketer work right now. It sucks, but you know. It’s easy.”
“Well, thanks again for the ride, Jen.”
At the casual use of her given name Carmex visibly
brightened a little, like someone who has been given a small and unexpected
gift.
“Sure. Maybe we can get together some time? Have lunch?”
“I’d like that,” Cherry said, being honest but at the same
time wondering if she would be able to eat with that thing staring her in the
face. She got out of the car and bent again, waved through the window, and
watched as the tail lights receded in the early morning light that still held
more than a little of the darkness within it.
Cherry turned and looked up toward the second story of the
apartment complex. It looked like Everest from where she was standing. She
sighed deeply and walked toward the stairs, going up them quietly so as not to
wake anyone, wondering if the fucking elevator would ever be fixed.
She wanted more than anything to just plop on the couch and
smoke that joint she had waiting for her, but first she had to get washed up.
She never wore much makeup, but what she had on she now
washed off, dried her face, and looked back in, under the brutal halogen
honesty of the lights.
She still looked
okay
, she supposed. But she really
needed to slow down. This was just supposed to be a party, not her fucking
lifestyle. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot, the skin beneath them dark.
Bags, she thought. I have fucking bags under my eyes. Along the line of her jaw
on one side and also on her forehead were the beginnings of a break out,
nothing major, not yet, anyway...but it could become a real problem if she
wasn’t careful. Right now they were just faint red marks below the first layer
or so of skin, and could go either way. She could take care of herself and do
her best to get rid of them, or she could keep doing what she was and end up
with some charmingly demeaning nickname like Pizza-face, or something.
She could also see where lines were wanting to form...the corners
of her mouth, the corners of her eyes. Right now if someone passed her on the
street, they would probably think, hey, she don’t look half bad for a thirty
year old.
“But I’m only twenty-two,” Cherry said, softly, to no one.
Something had to change. She would go to the store tomorrow
and stock up on some fresh fruits, vegetables, that kind of thing, spend the
day just on her own, even if Jim did call. She’d stashed away enough for a
couple bumps tomorrow, mostly so she could get some cleaning done, but after
that she needed a break. She might just go ahead and save what she had for
later, anyway.
Instead of sitting on the couch like she normally would
Cherry drew herself a hot bath and smoked the joint in the tub. She soaped up a
sponge and washed and washed her neck where that hand had been, at the same
time imagining the vapors from the bath salts soaking into her skin, cleaning
her pores, washing her away. When she was a little girl, she and her mother had
gone on their one vacation. This had been the only time Cherry had ever left
the state of California. It was one of her earliest memories, so she had to
have been around four years old. They’d been in Mexico, where the waters of the
impossibly blue postcard ocean were clean and clear and warm. Cherry remembered
burying her legs in the sand on the beach and laying there as the ocean came up
and slowly lifted the warm weight off her.
“Careful,” her mother had said, acknowledging the biggest
wave to come up yet, soaking Cherry to the neck. “Or you’ll get pulled in.”
Her mother had meant to caution her with this, or maybe
scare her. Instead, that little girl in the pink bathing suit and oversized
purple sunglasses had fallen in love with the idea. Not with the idea of
drowning, she just thought of being chosen by the ocean, to be taken away and
brought out to the warm sea to live with the dolphins.
Cherry thought of this now, as she bathed. She thought of
waves lapping up out of the ocean and erasing her a little at a time, like a
sand castle shaped like a girl. She thought of fading away under the warmth of
the sun, and how even if you went to the exact same spot every year, you were
always standing on a different beach. Sand that had once been on the bottom of
the ocean or on the shores of Japan a thousand years ago would be beneath your
feet, and the sand you’d stood in the year before would now be miles and miles
away. This was what Cherry wanted, for the waves to take her back to that
cradle where all life began so she could have another chance and come back
ashore something new.
Two days had passed since Jim first walked through Sue’s
door, but he wasn’t sure how long it had been. All he knew was what he could
see, and looking around Jim saw in this one dirty room most of the people he knows
that are in the game that aren’t dealers. What he sees are other users.
Not me, though, Jim thinks. I’m not like these people.
Neither is Cherry. Nik is, and I think Two Step is getting close, Soup is
already beyond, but not me or Cherry.
Like Lance, for example, Jim thought. His face was covered
in acne but Jim saw this as a kind of camouflage Lance had developed because
when you see his face it’s hard not to look at one of the many huge whiteheads
or erupting boils, or the heavy pepper of blackheads covering his nose. You
don’t often look into Lance’s eyes, and this is the purpose of the acne because
when you look in his eyes you get the feeling that his face is a mask, that
he’s not even really human. Jim watched Lance, close, had never really stopped
watching him since he saw him go into the bathroom with Cherry. Lance was
unaware of it, as he was currently trying to put some game on Monster...not
that it would be difficult. Monster would fuck anybody, just so she could get
some dick. That was the rumor, at least. Jim had absolutely no desire to test
the theory, but Lance seemed to be well on the way to proving it.
Just the fact she was talking to him made Jim feel sick to
his stomach. He was rumored to have just about every STD in the book. Summer had,
in one unforgettable evening, gotten both crabs and the clap from him, she’d
once told Cherry, who of course had told Jim.
The more Jim studied Lance’s face the more it started to
look like a mask of some kind, like boil-covered latex stretched across the
hideous mug of some alien beast, or an insect.
A giant insect, Jim decided, was what Lance reminded him of
the most, and again, it was in the eyes. They are not dark, but black, like two
giant pupils with no color around them. At first glance it looked as though
there was life in those eyes, but if you looked a little longer you realized it
was just the light of the outside world reflecting off them. There was nothing
in them, no compassion, not even hate or rage. His eyes were holes covered in
glass, and all he did was take and take and take.
Lance lived too long, Lord, Jim thought. You should have
taken him sooner, but we are grateful you took him when you did. May you send
him to Hell, for an eternity there for him would be but a fraction of what he
visited upon those that were closest to him. We know you must have had a
purpose in creating a creature so fundamentally flawed in nearly every way that
separates man from beast, but Lord, next time, keep it to yourself.
Lance started to turn toward Jim, perhaps his internal
antenna picking up the fact that he was being studied and perhaps his cover had
been blown so Jim shifted his eyes away from Lance and back to Old School, who
had been talking for days it seemed like, and was talking now.
“So this little Goth-chick working the drive-thru, she gets
this attitude with me when I tell her my fucking food isn’t all in the bag,
right? And it’s like, look, bitch, I understand you think you’re hard core and
all because you don’t take out your nose ring before work and you’re always
fifteen minutes late coming back from lunch but I was shooting speed in the
parking lot before a Black Flag concert when you were still swimming around
inside your daddy’s ball sac. I met Jim fucking Carroll when you were begging
your mommy to hire Barney for your birthday party and I understand that you’re
not happy with your job but you know what? You get paid a previously agreed
upon hourly wage to put food in a fucking bag and hand it to me out the window.
If you can’t do that, and I’m not saying you have to love your work or be
identified as a person by it or even fucking like it, because I hate every job
I ever had, but when I did work, I did the absolute best job I could.” As he
talked the various rings and studs in Old School’s face bounced and twinkled in
the light...the occasional flash from the silver ball in his tongue, the
constant up and down of the two rings on either side of his lower lip, the
bobbing of the three rings on the outside end of his left eyebrow as he raised
and lowered it via facial expression. Old School wiped at his nose with the
back of his hand, upon which he wore many rings, and bracelets. No one really
knew how old Old School was, but in this game he was ancient, and had been at
it for a very long time. Jim studied the crow’s feet around his bloodshot eyes,
wondered what track a tear would take down his deeply lined face if Old School
were to cry. The lines between his eyes and at the corners of his mouth did not
look like wrinkles so much as cracks in his face, like he wasn’t a man of flesh
but one carved from a stone so old it was finally starting to crumble, and
still he talked. “Didn’t matter if it was washing dishes or pumping gas or
delivering newspapers or robbing houses, I did the best I could. Every dish was
spotless, the windshields were streak-free, the papers were on time and not a
single fucking valuable was left behind. So, if you can’t do this job with a
little efficiency or at least a modicum of competency, find a new job, or go
home and wrap your lips around a fucking shotgun, okay? Because at this point
if you can’t hand a
bag
of
food
out a
window
to someone
without
fucking it up
, what else can you really offer the world? You’ll
just get knocked up by the illiterate asshole running the fryer and have a
couple bastard kids and just be a fucking drain on the rest of us, so save the
oxygen and just fucking kill yourself. Time to check out, okay?”
“I think I know that chick,” said Paz, who was also
listening to Old School. “At the In N Out off Sepulveda?”
“Yeah, man. Her. You know her?”
“Well, no, I mean, I know who she is, she fucked up my order
once. I asked for chicken and got a burger or some shit, you know? Not even the
right fucking animal.”
This cracked Old School up and while he was laughing Jim
took the time to slip away, thinking what he would say about Old School if he
went to his funeral.
I may not have known Old School the longest, or the best,
but I counted him among my friends. One thing I learned from him is that you
are never too old. Sometimes there would be a look in his eyes when you knew he
was fucking with you and he would look about ten years old, like a little kid
that just pulled the best prank in the book. I never laughed so much as when I
was around him. May he rest in peace.
He walked past Lance, who now had a hand on one of Monster’s
back-rolls, and into the kitchen.
Here lies Monster. And here lies Monster...and here, and
here, and there...Jim shook his head a little and laughed. He was disgusted in
himself for thinking such a thing, but not enough to think it wasn’t funny.
“Chick makes me sick,” Tattoo Nik said when Jim joined him
in the kitchen. Jim followed his gaze and saw he too was watching Lance as he
courted the beast.
“What do you figure she weighs?” Jim asked. “Three-fifty?”
“Oh, hell no,” Tattoo Nik said. “That bitch wishes she was
three-fifty. She hasn’t seen three-fifty since she was a blushing school girl.
I’d put her close to five. The other side of five, too.”
“You think?” Jim took another look at her. She was easily
twice, maybe even three times his width.
“Easy,” Tattoo Nik said. “My brother used to be a real fat
ass, before the cancer. He was about two-fifty and I’d guess she’s at least
twice his size.”
“Cancer, huh?” Jim said. “Is he...?”
“Oh, he beat it. Almost got him, but he fought it off. Took
him five years, but he’s been cancer-free now since ‘97.”
“Nice. Good for him.”
“Yeah,” Tattoo Nik said. “Most effective diet plan out
there, man. Now her though, I’m really wondering if it actually is a gland
thing.”
“Yeah,” Jim said. “She can’t stop stuffing her fucking mouth
gland with Big Macs.”
“She does eat a lot. But she’s a fucking tweeker, bro. The
only fat fucking tweeker I ever met stayed fat once they got on. And she’s
smoking the shit now, what I heard. Explain that to me?”
They watched as Summer joined Monster and Lance. The thought
of the three of them in bed together made Jim feel sick again, but if anyone on
earth would fuck Monster and Lance at the same time, it would be Summer. Not
that she was hideous or anything, she was actually kind of cute, at least
compared to Monster, but she was a known nympho. She would fuck anybody, most
of the time for free, some of the time to get you to split your stash up with
her. Soup had fucked her, so had Two Step, so had Tattoo Nik. In fact, Jim was just
about the only guy in the room that hadn’t fucked her, and he was never more
glad to not have fucked someone than he was when he came to that realization.
“Why you think she hangs with Monster?” Tattoo Nik asked,
looking at Summer.
“Makes her look better.”
“That’s the truth. I ever tell you she gave me crabs?”
Jim laughed a little at this but it was a tired laugh. He
wasn’t sleepy, no, not after the bump he’d done with Old School a few minutes
ago. But he was tired, just the same. He didn’t know how long they’d been at it
this time.
He wasn’t even sure how long ago Cherry had left. An hour? A
day? Carmex had given her a ride, that was all he knew for sure. He should have
gone with her, would have, if she had just come and found him...probably.
He’d been in Sue’s bedroom trying a hit of meth off a glass
pipe with Two Step, the first time Jim had ever smoked it, and when he came out
Nik told him Cherry had gone.
Jim had been so fucking wired he could see everything...he
could see the walls of the world and the colors between them and every angle of
every shadow, he could see for miles and miles, he could see everything except
for that, that he had missed, that what he most really wanted to see had gone
right under his radar and was digging into him. At the time he hadn’t been
thinking of how he said he’d never smoke it, not ever, not once. It had been
the furthest thing from his mind, and now the thought came swooping down on him
like vulture every couple of minutes.
Yes, he should have left with her. An hour ago. A day ago.
Whenever it had been, it didn’t matter, the time was gone. If he hadn’t gone
back to smoke with Two Step he would have been around when Cherry decided to
leave and could have been at her house, popped some Valium, crashed with her in
his arms. As it was now, not even Valium would bring him down, and he didn’t
have any in any case. He’d have to wait for the Edge to fall off, and that was
always assuming he stopped at that last bump with Old School, which, let’s face
it sports fans, had been pale in comparison to that one single hit he’d taken,
that hit that had been so sweet and so bright and had made the time just fall
off the clock and he couldn’t even remember how long ago that had been.
So why am I still here? Jim asked himself. He didn’t know if
he kept snorting meth to get high, or if it was so he wouldn’t come down. An
hour ago, or maybe a day ago, Coming Down looked horrible to him, it looked
like a bed of coals and chunks of broken glass in which he’d be forced to
twist, and twist, and twist.
But looking around...if this was being up, maybe he didn’t
know what he was doing anymore. Maybe he should just walk out the door right
now...it was a long walk to his place from here but he was just high enough to
do it, he could make that fucking walk in record time. He could spin the rest
of the way out on his own couch, without the music blaring so fucking loud and
without having to look at people like Lance or Monster. He could change out of
these horrible fucking socks he was wearing; the feel of them inside his shoes
against his feet was becoming pretty fucking close to unbearable. He started
toward the door and Two Step fell in beside him and started rapping away in his
ear, pipe warm in his hand.
It was another eighteen hours before Jim left.