I stood outside my new apartment building, one of the most luxurious in Chicago, and breathed in the cool air. Around me, people bustled down the sidewalks, dressed in light jackets, some wearing hats to shield their hair from the clutches of the Windy City. Fall, my favorite season, was on its way, and I was going to live to see it.
I was still alive.
It had been about two months since Gabe, Fuchsia and I boarded Harrison’s private jet back in Weed, California, certain our lives as we knew them were over. I could still remember the extreme sense of fear washing over me as Harrison exited the cockpit, sat down, and began discussing our “futures” with us. He had said a lot, but really the only sentence I can remember exactly is, “I should kill you for what you’ve done, but I’m a businessman, and my business-mind tells me I should utilize you to your full potential.”
I mean, seriously, what do you say to that? How do you respond to someone who is only going to let you live because he thinks you’re a good drug-dealer?
The three of us said nothing, but the look on Gabe’s face told me he wasn’t buying Harrison’s campaign for a second. When the entire situation was boiled down, we had fled with a lot of Harrison’s money, and had eluded him for over a year. The only logical choice was for him to murder us, probably slowly, but as we careened through the sky that morning, he explained to us otherwise. He explained to us how he was in the market to expand his business, and Gabe and I were just the two people he thought he could use to get things off the ground. Fuchsia, of course, was now involved, but owed Harrison no real debt. She was just along for the ride.
At one point, Gabe had spoken up and demanded Harrison explain himself and stop playing games with us. So he did. He told us he and his “people” (whatever that meant) had developed a new type of drug, something unlike anything the world had ever witnessed, and he needed the two best dealers to help him sell it. The arrangement would be for us to work off our debt and then keep any money we made thereafter, if we chose to continue working for him, and he was sure we would after seeing the amount of profit we would be raking in.
He called it Manic, and said it would bring in fifteen times the price of anything he had ever sold. I couldn’t be sure, but I found it easy to imagine Harrison had sold pretty much anything and everything at some point in his career.
Gabe and I told Harrison we needed to think it over. We told him we didn’t like the idea of working for someone who had seriously been considering killing us.
He told us our choices were work for him or die, pretty much sealing the deal for us: It looked as if we’d found a new job.
We made the obvious choice, and about an hour after landing in Chicago, the three of us were set up in two apartments; Gabe and I shared, while Fuchsia got her own across the hall. They were the nicest living arrangements I had ever seen, yet alone dreamed of living in.
And now here I was, walking down the street in my new clothes, compliments of Harrison, as everything Gabe and I owned had either been burned or left at Fuchsia’s house the night of our abduction. I looked like a young businessman on his way to the first day at his first job. I carried a white envelope in my left hand, my first letter to Kip since the frantic “you’re not safe” note I had sent the day the world blew up.
It read:
Kip,
I’m sorry my last letter was so dire. I just had to make sure you knew to stay safe in case something happened to me. As you can probably guess, I’m fine now. Gabe and I had a close call, but it looks like things are getting back to normal... Whatever normal is anyway. That’s why it took me so long to write; I wanted to make sure everything was definitely going to be okay before I took the risk.
I can’t tell you exactly where I am, but it’s not California. The surf shop is gone, along with the entire life Gabe and I built around it. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d seen something about it on the news in Indiana.
Speaking of, everything you’ve probably heard is a giant lie. The last I saw, the news had labeled me as a murderer and described me as “armed and dangerous.” None of that stuff is true. Bad things happened… again, but I was more of a victim than anything.
I understand if at this point you don’t take a word I say seriously. I’m actually beginning to wonder if I’ve been lying to myself this whole time. Maybe I am just as guilty as the news and police say.
Anyway, as you’ve probably noticed, there is no return address on this letter. From here on out you won’t be able to write me back. It’s probably safer for both of us that way.
I’ll continue to write, even though you won’t be able to respond. I hope that’s okay.
I love you,
Jamie
I breathed a heavy sigh of relief as I dropped the letter into the mailbox at the corner of LaSalle and Huron streets. Though things had only changed slightly for me, this time I knew I wasn’t in as much danger. I would still be in big trouble if I was caught communicating with Kip, but no one was looking for me anymore. I had been found. There was no more running, which meant dropping a letter into a mailbox was a lot less likely to get me murdered than it once had been. It also meant I could drop the letter in the closest mailbox to my home, without the need to walk several miles out of fear of being discovered. It may have been strange, but I considered this one of life’s little celebrations.
Was I one hundred percent in the clear? Of course not, but at least I was a little bit in the clear.
After nonchalantly leaving the letter to be mailed to Indiana, I continued my walk west on Huron where I would I turn south on North Orleans Street, taking it all the way to the Franklin-Orleans Bridge where I would meet with my first customer since relocating to Chicago. I wasn’t completely familiar with the area, but I had visited Chicago multiple times in my life. This part of town was not where I had been expecting to make my deals, even if Harrison had claimed Manic’s clientele were of a “higher standard.” I was smack in the middle of downtown Chicago, on my way to sell the latest and apparently most impressive club drug on the market since Molly.
I slid my right hand into the breast pocket of my jacket, just to make sure the small plastic bag containing the single blue tablet was still there. Of course it was, just as snuggly tucked into the corner of the pocket as it had been when I had placed it before leaving mine and Gabe’s apartment fifteen minutes earlier. The bag hadn’t moved. It hadn’t slid through an undetected hole in my perfectly tailored blazer. And I was glad.
I was glad to be back doing what I, quite frankly, did best. The past two months of getting settled, learning what little Harrison was willing to tell us about Manic, and continuing to go over what Geet affectionately called “salesman protocol” had been driving me crazy. I wanted to be back out on the streets, selling drugs and making money, and now that I was, my head seemed clear. My senses were heightened. I was alive again.
I stopped at the edge of the Franklin Street Bridge and took it in for a second. I had seen it before, but I wanted this place to be remembered as the location of my first new transaction. My days of selling weed in the high school bathroom were over. Manic was the new drug on the menu, so this moment was going to be one for my mental scrapbook.
The bridge was an elegantly designed 1920s style bascule, built to allow boat traffic up and down the Chicago River. The leaves were currently lowered, allowing car and pedestrian traffic to cross, but a couple hundred yards down river, I could see a small tour-yacht making its way towards the bridge, meaning the leaves would soon be lifting to let it pass through. Before this happened, I pulled the prepaid phone from my pocket a snapped a quick photo, letting my mind be amazed for a moment at how far prepaid phones had come since the time I got my first cell phone when I got my driver’s license back in Hastings.
Before sliding the phone back into my pants pocket, I read the most recent text message from the number I had marked as Harrison in the contacts. I was pretty certain he wasn’t the one sending information about new clients, but I had no id
ea who was on the other end of the phone, so Harrison was my closest guess when it came to a name to be assigned to the number. The message read: B. Bradley. Franklin-Orleans Bridge. 6PM. It wasn’t exactly a lot of information, but it reminded me of old times, of the nearly useless messages Gabe would send me when we first started selling pot.
I stood at the edge of the bridge, leaning against the metal guard rail there to keep me from tumbling into the river below and waited. There wasn’t a lot I could do with the information given to me in the text, so I had to hope the person I was looking for, B. Bradley, would be able to find me. The last thing I wanted to do was advertise myself, so I simply waited, acting as if I was taking in the crisp air and enjoying my evening walk through the city.
“Are you Jamie?” the voice asked me as my eyes momentarily widened. I hadn’t expected the client to know my name.
“Maybe,” I responded. “Who’s asking?”
“I’m Ben. I was told to meet you here at six. Sorry I’m a few minutes late.” The guy couldn’t have been much older than eighteen, not a complete shocker to me, but gave off an air of being much older. His long blonde hair was pushed back behind his ears, and he wore a light scarf wrapped around his neck, tucked into his gray jacket. The temperature was cool, but Ben seemed a little overdressed for the weather.
I hesitated for a moment before continuing our conversation. “Yeah, I’m Jamie,” I said casually.
Ben smiled, revealing two rows of perfectly straight, white teeth. Putting together his styled hair, expensive clothes, obvious dental hygiene, and even his oddly-cheerful-yet-still-scowling expression, I couldn’t help but notice how much he looked like a model, or maybe a mannequin. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a non-surprisingly expensive looking leather wallet. “So, you just brought the one tablet, right? That’s six, right?”
I thought for a second about how I hadn’t been told how much Ben owed me before being sent on this sale, but I had been told this new drug would be bringing in exponentially more money than the high-grade pot I’d been selling before. Six dollars for a tablet wasn’t even worth my walk and the coffee I was planning to buy on my way back home.
“Are you serious? That’s it?” I asked, dumbfounded.
Ben stammered through his next sentence. “I- I’m a college student. I-I-I know it’s a little less than what you all normally charge. I made a negotiation with Garrett since I’m a f-first-time customer. He said six hundred would be enough this time. I might be able to get more, but it might take me a few hours…”
Six. Hundred. Dollars. For one, tiny blue tablet. DONE.
“No, no,” I stated, trying to sound professional. “I forgot Garrett told me he’d made a deal for you. Six hundred for the first-timer.”
Ben counted the bills out from his wallet and handed them to me as if he was handing a homeless man a five dollar bill on a street corner. I looked around nervously, hoping no one had taken notice to what was going on, and more so hoping no police were nearby. I was only slightly shocked to see not one single person giving either of us a single look as the drug deal went down. No one could care less about what was happening right next to them.
I stuck the money into the same breast pocket in which I kept the tablet, sliding it out in the money’s place and handing it to Ben, who only inspected it momentarily before stuffing it into his own pocket. He nodded at me, not sure what else to do, and started to turn to walk away.
“So this is your first time?” I asked.
He nodded cautiously, turning back to face me as if being recognized by someone he really didn’t want to speak to.
“Mine, too.” His gaze shifted away from me. He definitely thought I was crazy, but I decided to keep going with our conversation. “Can I ask you a little about this stuff? I’m kind of in this business arrangement to sell it, but I don’t know much about what I’m selling… and my boss isn’t exactly the type of guy I can ask questions to.”
Ben opened his mouth, but words didn’t come at first. After a second, he said, “I don’t know a lot about it. I’ve heard some things. I know some people who’ve tried it. That’s about all.” He was being courteous, but obviously wanted to get moving as quickly as possible. Fraternizing with his drug dealer wasn’t at the top of his to-do list.
“Excuse me for being so forward, but why the hell would you just drop six hundred dollars on a drug you’ve only heard a few good things about? I get you’re probably rich, but even this seems a little excessive to me.” My brain considered stopping me from saying anything at all out of fear of possibly losing the sale, but part of me simply needed to know. Maybe this Ben kid could give me the answers I hadn’t been given from my business associates and, for lack of a better word, boss.
Ben smiled shyly, though there was honestly nothing shy about him. He took a few steps towards me as if to say he knew he wasn’t going to be able to go anywhere until he’d answered my questions. He leaned against the rail of the bridge, stuffed his hands into his pants pockets, and shrugged. “I’m eighteen. I’m rich. I live in Chicago.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“Well, we rich kids, we’re under a closer microscope than other people our age, but that doesn’t stop us from having fun. Generally speaking, we live a little more than most people,” he began. “Our parents, they’re CEOs, senators, other various powerful and closely examined men and women. They’re in the news on an almost daily basis, usually for their faults, not their good sides. Is this making sense?”
I mulled the idea over in my head for a minute. “Some of them are probably in the news because their kids get into trouble.”
“Exactly,” he said with another smirk. “I spent sixth through twelfth grade at a boarding school in Connecticut; I just got back a few months ago. Rich kids know how to have fun, but they have to be careful about it.”
He continued to discuss the many different types of parties he had been to since age thirteen and the pharmacy of different drugs he had experimented with in the same amount of time. Simply put, rich kids like Ben got into more trouble (and got their parents into more trouble) because they had the money to blow on creative, expensive, and in my case, new drugs. He explained to me how three of his friends had been sent to rehab in the past year, and all of their names had showed up in the news, causing their parents to drop large amounts of money on cover ups, or at the very least, charity events to earn back their good names.
“We’re expected to spend six hundred dollars on the most talked about new drugs, basically, because we can,” he said to me. Whether he was trying to or not, Ben sounded smug.
“I guess it’s out of the question to spend that money on something like college?” I asked, thinking back to my own ruined reasons of getting into the drug business.
Ben laughed. “Are you kidding? I’m on a full ride to Bierce.”
My blood boiled momentarily as I thought about the fact Ben was attending my dream college for free and squandering away his parents’ hard-earned money on hallucinogenic drugs while I had blown any ounce of a chance at attending Bierce by actually trying to earn my own money to pay for the school itself.
He must have noticed my frustrated expression, saying next, “Don’t worry about it though. I’ve heard Manic is the best of the best. It’s not addiction-forming. The high, supposedly, is incredible. It was made for people like me… wealthy people with too much time and money to waste. I mean, my roommate at my old boarding school got his hands on one of the first formulations, before it was even perfect; he wouldn’t come out of our dorm for a week because he thought gravity stopped existing and everything in the world had turned orange.”
I was lost. “And that’s a good time for you?”
“In certain situations, yes. Parties, raves, those are ideal times for stuff like Manic,” Ben stated. “Jamie, I’ve done almost everything there is to do in my short time on Earth. I’ve seen all seven wonders, climbed mounta
ins, met presidents, dated a few celebrities, and practiced nearly every religion in its country of origin for a short time. This is just the next level for me. This is what I’m going to try since I’ve done everything else, and when something new comes along, I’ll move on to that.”
My stomach lurched at this sudden shift in attitude. Ben was bordering on narcissistic, though almost rightfully so. Manic was a goal for him to conquer, an Everest for him to climb (since he had probably already reached the summit of the real thing). I was annoyed by his circumstances, mostly because I was jealous of them.
“So, when I was a kid, all I ever wanted was to do something impossible, like be a dinosaur when I grew up. Manic is your dinosaur, then?” I asked.
“No, Manic is the thing that comes after the dinosaur.”
I nodded half-heartedly.
“Look,” he said, taking out his cell phone. “You seem like a cool guy, but you seem less than convinced. Give me your number and I’ll text you the address of the party I’ll be at this weekend. You can see how all this works for yourself.”
Shaking my head, I answered, “This phone is really only for business use. I could get killed if I start using it for personal reasons.” I wasn’t sure if he knew how literal I was being.
“This is for business. There will be dozens, maybe hundreds of people at this party with money to spend on psychedelic helpers. You could easily make a couple grand in one night. Trust me.”
I held my phone in my hand as if I was actually considering exchanging numbers with Ben, but only stared at it incoherently as he waited. “I really can’t,” I said.
With a look of triumph, Ben snatched the phone from my hand and began programming his number into it. Handing it back to me, he said, “If you change your mind, text me, and I can let you know where to meet me. It’ll be a good time, and it could really help you with your business. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a politician’s son, it’s that you have to mix business and fun sometimes… or in my case, all the time.”
I stood speechless, not sure what to say, or if I should say anything at all. Ben seemed like someone I could get along with as a friend, and he had a very good point that if I did attend the party, I could likely gain several new customers from the experience. However, my mind could only travel to two places: Airic and Ford. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t in the market to make any new friends out of fear they might end up dead.
As Ben turned to leave, he smirked at me one more time and said in a voice full of confidence, “I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”
(A Familiar Face)