Honest Addict, Chapter Five

5

Peter knocked on the door and waited. After what felt like approximately two minutes, he knocked again. Violet’s car was in the driveway, which meant that she was probably home.

This was completely outside the realm of his usual behavior. In the past he had called her a thousand times, of course, at all hours of the day and night. The scenario was almost always the same: one too many drinks leading inescapably toward the urge to take it to the next level. Sometimes she answered but usually she did not, which was in fact an act of mercy. The one thing he had never done, however, was just show up in the middle of the night and knock on the door. That was beyond the pale of good manners and his personal code of conduct. But there was a first time for everything, he thought, the cold night air making his breath clearly visible in front of him: fairly rare for San Rafael, even during winter.

After knocking a final time he turned to leave. She was probably asleep, he thought, though a part of him believed this simply couldn’t be true. Or maybe she was out and somebody else drove. He was almost to the street when he heard her call after him.

“Oh it’s you, honey. Get back here right this instant.” Her voice was unmistakable: forged by a lifetime of cigarettes, it sounded somewhat like that of an exhausted singer at the end of a long and grueling tour, as if it might go out at any minute. But despite the gravelly, scratchy tone, it was for him a pleasant, reassuring sound, full of compassion, suffering and genuine love.
“I am so sorry to do this to you,” he said as he embraced her warmly.
“What are you talking about?” she exclaimed.
“Just showing up like this.”
“Oh honey, everybody just shows up here.”
“Yeah.” One thing he had never wanted to be like was “everybody.” But the longer he lived the more he felt he was becoming so.

They went inside her home, a comfortable, well decorated three bedroom ranch style located in a nice area of town known as Peacock Gap. Her ex-husband had purchased it years before they married as an investment. After the divorce, the home became part of the settlement, in addition to an undisclosed sum. Violet hadn’t worked in over a decade.

“I was rocking out in the kitchen,” she said as they entered. “I almost didn’t hear you because of the stereo.”

Tobacco smoke filled the room, more than a single person should be responsible for. It hung in thin strata and was mysteriously layered. A song by the Velvet Underground could be heard almost imperceptibly in the background, coming from the abutting family room. On the cooking island were two round objects: one a gigantic ashtray – probably a good twelve inches in diameter – filled to the brim with ashes and butts, the other a mirror covered with a pile of cocaine, straw and razorblade. Peter experienced a sickly sweet sensation reverberate through his body at the vision. But he felt satisfaction in knowing that he would be able to obtain what he had come for.

“You want a line?” she asked.
“Desperately,” he replied, immediately grabbing the straw and inhaling a pre-cut portion of the cocaine. Right away he felt better, refreshed, ready for anything the world was going to throw at him. He knew instinctively that this feeling was only going to last maybe fifteen minutes and he would spend the rest of the night chasing it in vain. Still, he was grateful for the reprieve. The drug cut through his drunkenness, sharpening his vision and focus. He looked at Violet, really for the first time that evening.

She was still a good looking woman, though her lifestyle had added artificial time to her forty-five years. She was too thin and her face was gaunt, but imbued with a dignity and beauty that had been handed down through her Anglo-Saxon forebears. Her lips were thin, her nose narrow and eyes a light, ethereal blue. When she looked at you it was as if she was looking through you, Peter had often thought. Her medium length light brown hair was delicate and threadlike, and fell in her eyes often.

Peter pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up. He offered Violet one as well but she refused, preferring her 100’s to his standard size. She dipped the tip of her smoke in the cocaine and twisted it, then held it at an upright angle as she lit it, so as not to lose any of the precious powder. The end burst into a tiny blue flame as the chemicals reacted with the fire.

She poured him a glass of red wine and they toasted. He tried to drink as slowly as he could, knowing he had a long night in front of him.
“So what brings you by, other than the…” she cut herself off.
“The obvious? It’s okay, you can say it. I’m no better than any of the other degenerates that you shelter.”
“Oh honey, that’s so untrue and you know it. You are one of my very favorites. You always show respect. Your mother raised you right. If she were still alive, I’d give her a big hug right now.”
“It’s nice of you to say. And you know that I love you too. But I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t here to get high. Better to just tell it like it is. I’ve had a bad couple of months since I saw you last. And tonight, well, tonight was dramatic to say the least.”
“Fill me in.”

He told her of the last month of Carol Rutherford’s life, her death, the funeral service and the month that followed. Then he went through the saga of that very night, including the rash decision to quit his job. He went on for a long while, and didn’t know for how long he had been talking when he finally came to the end of it all. But when it was finished he felt relieved, like he had just laid down a heavy and cumbersome piece of luggage.

She offered him the mirror and he inhaled another line, this one twice as large as the first. He slugged down the rest of the wine and refilled his glass to the brim. He could almost perceive the rush of dopamine that was flooding the pleasure receptors inside his brain. He lit another cigarette and smoked it greedily, never feeling like he was getting a complete hit. He removed the filter and tried again. This time, it did the trick.

“So tell me what’s been going on around here in my absence?” he inquired. “Catch me up on all the action.”

He knew Violet had been waiting for her chance to talk. You could always tell when she sat on the edge of her seat that she was anticipating her opportunity to interject. Who could blame her? It was the hallmark of the social-cocaine experience: fast paced, long winded conversation. And once her levee was opened, there was no turning back the torrent that came down the valley.

“Johnny and Rebecca are on the outs again. Apparently he was fucking some other girl on the side and she found out. He must have been really secretive about the whole thing because even I didn’t know about it. At first, she was devastated and came over crying like three days in a row. But then, she found some new guy, a banker in the city who she went head over heels for. Now Johnny’s the one who is devastated. He called her a bunch and begged her to come back to him but she’s having none of it. Part of me feels bad for him: he really is a sweet guy at heart. But the other part of me says hey: he fucked this thing up on his own, so fuck him, you know?”

There being a natural break in the narrative, she snorted a line and lit another cigarette – silence for ten seconds.

“Benny got busted for doing dope and ended up in jail. He was on house arrest after his third DUI, but his dealer was still coming over to make deliveries. So the probation department decided to give him a pee test a couple of weeks ago and it came up positive for coke, pot and morphine: apparently he was popping pain pills as well. Now he has to finish his time in the can – ninety days. Which is a real bummer for him. Who wants to spend Christmas in jail?”

She took a quick drag off the smoke, which was beginning to sport a very long ash that hung precariously from the burning end.

“Oh, and then there’s Stephen and Juliet. That’s a really fucked up situation. They were up for eight days straight doing meth. At first, I think they were having a pretty good time. I saw them on what was, I guess, like their third straight day. They were pretty wild but still with it mentally, you know? But they just kept on truckin’, getting no sleep, hardly eating, just smoking dope and partying day in, day out. So on the seventh day they both started to get real paranoid, each thinking that the other was trying to kill them. Apparently, she shut herself up in their bedroom with a butcher knife and a baseball bat and he was holed up under the house with a shotgun – just him and a family of raccoons. After a while, he started taking pot shot at the raccoons. The story goes that one of them had got up on his hind legs and started hissing at Stephen. So he shot the damn thing and started going after the others. At this point, the neighbors called the cops who showed up and arrested him for discharging a firearm in public. But as they are putting him into the back seat of the cruiser, he tells them that Juliet is in the house and that she was trying to kill him. So they go inside and find her curled up in the corner of the bedroom, knife in her hand, bat across her lap and a bunch of speed in a baggie on the dresser. So they arrest her for possession. Both of them are in jail right now. Gene came over yesterday. He was taking up a collection for their bail money. I pitched in five hundred – doubt if I’ll see that money ever again.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Peter. “That’s a bad drug to get into.”
“No doubt.”
He laughed. “I guess there’s gotta be somebody worse off than us. Huh?”
“Honey,” she said with all seriousness, “there are a lot of people worse off. But we’re bad enough.”

They continued in this same manner for a while. It felt to him like they were under glass, contained in their own pleasant universe from which there was no escape. They talked incessantly, hardly catching their breath for anything that didn’t involve adding more fuel to the fire. It seemed as if about forty-five minutes went by. But the next thing Peter knew, he looked at the clock on the microwave and saw that it was three o’clock in the morning. The time had come to leave.

“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I didn’t realize how much time had passed.”
“It’s always like that when we get together,” she replied. “You know you can stay if you want to.”
“I know. But I really do have to go. I can’t be in the Bay Area any longer.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Should you really be driving?”
“No.”
She looked at him seriously.
“I know,” he said, reading her gaze. “But I can’t wake up so close to home tomorrow. It just won’t work.”
“Honey, you’re not going to sleep tonight anyway.”
“That reminds me. I really hate to ask…”

She smiled. “Wait here.” In a moment she returned with two plastic bags: one empty and another filled with what must have been an ounce of cocaine. He had known dealers that carried that kind of weight, but for someone who only used it was a gigantic amount. “Take what you need,” she told him.

Peter removed two large rocks and put them in the empty bag. It was a couple of grams, at least, and would carry him as far as he needed it to. He pulled out a hundred and fifty dollars and offered it to Violet.
“Don’t insult me,” she said.

He then removed the cell phone from his pocket and turned it off. He handed it to her. “Will you hold on to this for me while I’m gone?” he asked.
She said she would. There was a time when that phone and the numbers it contained were beyond value. Now it was nothing but unnecessary baggage.