Old Habits

  (William Sporleder)

  The next few days went by like any other, but both Gabe’s and Fuchsia’s words had stuck with me and were driving me crazy. Gabe wanted to kill Harrison, and he wanted to save up enough money to flee Chicago afterwards by stealing from Harrison. Each of these ideas on their own could get us killed; combining them together pretty much guaranteed it.

  Fuchsia, on the other hand, wanted me to ignore Gabe’s plan and… what? She hadn’t had much of a plan of her own, but she had made it clear I shouldn’t be trusting Gabe, at least not as much as I had been.

  And, to no one’s surprise, least of all my own, I had no idea what to do.

  I paced back and forth through the apartment, quickly realizing my own home was beginning to feel like a prison. Despite the open view of the city, knowing Geet Malvado was almost always just outside the door, waiting to question me any time I wished to leave, made me uneasy. And even if I did wish to leave, I had no other reason than to sell Manic and find new clients to sell Manic to. I had no social life. Gabe and Fuchsia were my only friends, and even being around each of them made me nervous at times, but for completely different reasons.

  I paced the length of the apartment two more times before it dawned on me I had to get out of the apartment, or I’d likely go insane before the day was over.

  I grabbed my coat and walked to the door, not surprised at all when Geet was standing on the other side. Since I had run into Riley at Bierce, and since Gabe’s beating, he or another thug had been stationed outside the door pretty much 24/7.

  “Where are you headed to?” he asked. His black hair was pulled into a ponytail, like always, and he wore a crisp, expensive suit, like always.

  “Out,” I said, trying to rush past him.

  He put his gigantic hand against my shoulder to stop me. “You know that’s not an applicable answer. We wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt because we can’t tell the truth, do we?”

  I curled my lip in disgust at him and took a step backwards so his hand was no longer touching me. “If you don’t want anyone getting hurt, then you might want to stop beating the shit out of them,” I said.

  Geet smiled. “Just tell me where you’re going, Small Fry, and then we don’t have to talk to each other anymore, because believe me, I really don’t like talking to you.”

  “I have a lunch meeting,” I said casually. I did not have a lunch meeting.

  “With who?”

  “His name is Ben Bradley. He’s a customer who might have some potentially useful contacts for finding some new clients.” I said. Ben’s name was the first to come to my mind, as I had not sold much Manic since getting to Chicago, and had really only liked speaking with Ben anyway.

  Geet thought about my answer before speaking again. “You’ve sold to this guy before? How did he feel about the product?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him since, but he seemed pretty eager to hook me up with some other people his age with enough money to blow on Manic. I can ask him how he liked it when we talk… If you let me leave.”

  Geet stepped aside and gave me another smile. “Have a nice day at work, Mr. Brewer,” he said, adding, “Try not to get yourself into any trouble while you’re out today.”

  “Believe me,” I said. “I’ve learned my lesson. I wouldn’t want anyone else to get playing cards shoved under their fingernails because of me.”

  I walked away from Geet before he had the chance to speak again, deciding to take the stairs at the end of the hallway instead of waiting for the elevator. Once outside the apartment building, I welcomed the bustling, loud city street.

  I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and opened the contacts folder. There was only one name: Benjamin Bradley. I hit he call button and waited to see if he would answer.

  “Hello?” he said, sounding a lot groggier than I had anticipated.

  “Hey, Ben, it’s Jamie.” Ben didn’t answer. “Uhm, you know, from the bridge…”

  “Oh, hey, Jamie. Sorry, you woke me up. I had to think about who you were for a minute,” Ben said. I could hear him rustling around as if he had just rolled out of bed.

  I checked my watch. “It’s past one in the afternoon,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  I didn’t know what to say, but assumed, based on our previous conversation, that Ben had stayed up all night partying, drinking, and taking drugs he probably didn’t even know the name of. For all I knew, he had been jetsetting from country to country since the last time we spoke. Such was the life of someone with more money than he knew what to do with.

  “I was thinking about some of the things you said when we met. You said you might be able to introduce Gabe and I to some more people who might be interested in buying Manic?” I wasn’t sure how to phrase and ask the question, plus I sucked at small talk, so I decided to just jump right into it.

  The rustling sound on the other end of the phone continued. “Yeah, definitely. In fact, there’s a party on campus tonight. You and Gabe should come, we can meet up, and I can let you talk to some kids who are itching to blow some of their parents’ money. What do you say?”

  I paused. The party was at Bierce, and so was Riley. But, what were the chances I would run into her again? She had never been the partying type back home, so why would she even be there? On the other hand, I hadn’t expected to run into her when I visited the campus the first time.

  “Great. We’ll be there!” I blurted without thinking.

  “Good!” Ben said excitedly. “Be sure to bring plenty of Manic. I have a feeling you’ll be making a lot of dough tonight.”

  I smiled nervously, glad we would possibly be bringing in some cash, but scared about where and how we would be doing it. The last thing Gabe or I needed was more drama and trouble from Harrison.

  “Where should I meet you, and what time?” I asked.

  Ben gave me the address of a house on campus where I assumed the party would be happening, and said to meet him there at ten o’clock. I committed the place and time to my memory and hung up the phone and immediately sent a text to Gabe telling him our plan for the night, assuming he would be happy.

  Eight hours later, after finding numerous reasons not to go back to the apartment and face Geet, I was meeting up with Gabe to talk about Bierce. He, while happy about the money we would likely be making, had his reservations about going back to the location where we had already experienced enough trouble for a lifetime.

  “You’re sure this is the best idea?” he asked.

  I wasn’t used to Gabe asking my opinion, but welcomed the change with open arms.

  “Yeah, I think it should be fine,” I said. “Geet doesn’t know exactly where we are, and I’m not worried about running into Riley at the party. We just go in, meet up with Ben, sell some drugs, and leave. We won’t even be there more than a couple of hours.”

  Gabe nodded, but didn’t speak.

  “You’re not convinced,” I said.

  We continued walking down the street towards Bierce.

  “I didn’t say that,” Gabe finally answered. “I just want to avoid any more ominous run-ins with my brother. The last one didn’t end up so nice for me.”

  “I get it,” I said. “But we have nothing to worry about.”

  “You don’t know much about this Ben guy.”

  “I know he’s rich, and I know he seems to want to help us out. That should be enough, right?”

  “Actually, no, but I’m going to trust you on this one.”

  “That’s all I ask,” I said while smiling.

  A few minutes later we were standing in front of a large, three story house on the Bierce campus. Giant, wooden Greek letters hung over the front door, and dozens of college-age kids were already scattered around the front yard, talking, drinking, smoking, and laughing. Instantly, I spotted Ben sitting on the stone railing of the porch, smoking a cigarette and wearing a tacky, crushed blue velvet blazer. I wasn’t sure i
f he was trying to be ironic or if this was how rich kids really dressed. Either way, I waved to him and jogged up the steps to the porch to talk to him.

  “Well, look who made it!” he yelled over the blaring music coming from within the house.

  “We made it,” I said as Gabe walked up behind me. I motioned over my shoulder to him and added, “This is Gabe.”

  It’s nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard your name around campus. You’re quite the popular drug-dealer,” Ben said, stretching out his hand for Gabe to shake.

  Gabe ignored it and gestured towards the house. “This seems like a pretty huge party.”

  Ben mistook Gabe’s comment as a compliment. “Yeah! I’m guessing there are about two or three hundred people here. By midnight, there will probably be double that many.” Finally, Ben understood the look on Gabe’s face. “But parties aren’t really your thing, are they?” he asked.

  “No,” Gabe answered simply.

  I turned to Gabe and whispered angrily, “Be nice, please.”

  “It’s okay. It’s okay,” Ben said. “I promise you’ll be happy you came.”

  He turned to lead us into the house. All around us, drunk and high college students were dancing and laughing. I suddenly wondered if this is how I would have been spending my nights had I ended up attending Bierce. Maybe, had things gone differently in Hastings, I would be at this exact party for an entirely different reason.

  Ben looked over his shoulder at us as he stopped at the bottom of the large staircase, decorated with balloons and streamers. “I told three people who were interested in Manic to meet you upstairs in the last room on the left. Their names are Heather, Nolan, and William. Each one has more money than most people will ever see in their lives, so they should be good to go as far as payment goes.”

  Gabe mounted the stairs without another word, but I turned to Ben casually. “You didn’t say how Manic worked out for you. Were you pleased?”

  Ben’s jaw dropped open in amazement. “Jamie, my friend, that little blue pill you gave me changed my life. It resulted in the single highest high I have ever experienced in my life, and that includes climbing Mount Everest.”

  I smiled at him, but had to ask, “What’s it like? You know, what was your experience?”

  “You’ve never had tried it?”

  “I don’t sample the product,” I said coolly.

  Ben laughed loudly, causing several party-goers to stop and stare for only a moment. “Well, you should start,” he said.

  I was surprised when Ben followed me and Gabe up the stairs and into the bedroom at the end of the hall where the three potential clients were waiting, and Gabe’s quick glance from Ben to me told me he was both surprised and didn’t approve.

  I opened my mouth to say something to Ben to get him to leave, but before I could speak, he was already talking.

  He gestured to each of them, saying their names, and then said, “I have promised you the single most amazing drug that ever has and ever will be created, and these two gentlemen are the ones who are going to give it to you.”

  The three college students, all sitting on the edge of the bed as if they were waiting for us to read a story to them, smiled eagerly, looking at each other excitedly. The girl, Heather, had long black hair and wore thick, yet tasteful makeup. The two guys- I didn’t know which was Nolan and which was William –were about as opposite as I could imagine them. One had such short hair he might as well have been bald and wore a blazer similar to Ben’s, while the other had scraggly long hair that looked as if it hadn’t been washed and wore a faded t-shirt. The second one reminded me more of Gabe than he did the other students at the party.

  Ben gestured towards me and I realized he was running this deal like some kind of game show. He was the host, William, Nolan, and Heather were the contestants, and Gabe and I held the prize: Manic.

  I looked to Gabe, who held up his hands as if to say, ‘This is all yours.’

  “Well, thank you for coming tonight and taking Ben’s word on how great Manic is. I think you’ll all be very pleased with the effects,” I began. “Each tablet costs seven hundred fifty dollars, but I’m sure you’ll find the price matches the product.” I remembered selling Ben his tablet for six hundred, but decided to up the price for these three clients, hoping he wouldn’t spill the beans. When I had sold to Ben, I hadn’t known the price, and he had been promised a discount.

  Heather raised her hand like she was in class and said, “That’s a pretty penny for something none of us have tried before. Don’t we get a sample or something?”

  I nodded. “I understand your concern, but because of the price, we don’t have the ability to give out freebies.”

  Ben stepped in eagerly. “But I can assure all three of you… this drug is spectacular! I’ve done everything out there, and I’ve never experienced anything like this.”

  I wasn’t exactly happy about Ben assigning himself the role as salesman, but I decided to go with it. “Ben, in fact, just got done telling me about how the high he got from Manic was better than the time he climbed Everest,” I said, trying to use his words as a type of sales pitch.

  Gabe continued not to speak, but I decided to ignore him. If he wasn’t going to be useful, then I could easily pretend like he wasn’t there.

  One of the guys spoke up. “What can you tell us about it, then?”

  “I’m glad you asked, Nolan,” Ben said. I made a mental note that Nolan was the one who looked like he shared a stylist with Ben. That meant William was the burnout Gabe lookalike. “I tried Manic the night Jamie sold it to me, and at first, I was wondering if it was going to kick in at all. I thought I’d been cheated, but after about thirty minutes, everything started to slow down. I literally watched the hands on my clock slow down and finally stop. Then- this sounds completely idiotic –but everything turned different shades of blue. My skin was sapphire, my hair was cobalt, the walls were… I can’t even think of a blue to describe them. They were like something you’d see at Mardi Gras. “And then, even though time had slowed down, I was still moving at normal speed. So, nothing was moving the way it was supposed to except for me. It was terrifying at first, but after a minute, I realized I could do pretty much anything. I had to have scared the shit out of my roommate.”

  Ben continued describing how Manic had affected him as Nolan, Heather, and William stared at him in awe. Hell, even I was staring at him in awe. Gabe, though trying to act nonchalant, was also visibly interested in Ben’s explanation.

  “Then what?” Nolan asked.

  Ben smiled. “You have to try it for yourself to find out the rest.” He turned away from them and gave me a subtle wink as if to tell me to seal the deal.

  I stepped forward. “Is anyone not convinced?”

  No one spoke, but Heather immediately pulled a wad of cash from her pocket. I smiled, took her cash, and pilled one of the small plastic bags from my pocket holding a single blue Manic tablet. She took it from me, slid it into her own pocket and immediately left the room without another word. Nolan soon followed her actions, and Gabe and I were immediately fifteen hundred dollars richer, not counting what belonged to Harrison, which was technically all of it.

  “What about you, William?” I asked.

  He stood from the bed and stepped toward me, and for a small moment, I was intimidated by him in the same way I was normally intimidated by Gabe.

  William stared me in the eye, and without showing a bit of emotion said, “I’ll take two.”

  Trying not to seem surprised, I fished two plastic bags from my pocket and took the cash William had handed me. He slid one of the plastic bags into his own pocket, opened the second, and tossed the pill into his mouth without as much as looking at it. For all he knew, I had just sold him two Tylenol at a one million percent increase in price.

  William turned to walk towards the door, stopped, turned to us and said, “If anyone needs me, I’ll be hopefully tripping balls outside.?
??

  Gabe stifled a laugh, and my jaw dropped in amazement. Seconds later, William was gone.

  The three of us left in the room stood silently for a moment, not sure what to say to one another. Ben, of course, spoke up first.

  “Well, gentlemen, I hope I was helpful to you tonight. With any luck, not that you need it, I’ll be seeing a lot more of you around here. There are at least four parties like this each week at Bierce. Rich kids like their house parties.”

  “Thanks,” Gabe said, finally speaking up. “Are you wanting some kind of commission or something?”

  I was only slightly shocked by Gabe’s words. I could tell from the start he was uncomfortable with Ben helping us out, but never once had he mentioned wanting any kind of payment for introducing us to new Manic clients.

  “No, no,” Ben said. “You’ve got it all wrong. I just liked the product and wanted to help you guys out. I’ve got enough money to last me the rest of my life.”

  “Good,” Gabe said.

  I decided to try to ease the tension as much as possible. “Thanks, Ben. We probably wouldn’t have been nearly as successful tonight without your help.”

  Gabe rolled his eyes.

  Ben started to walk towards the door, stopping just before walking out. “Jamie, if you decide you want to keep in touch, I’m sure I can hook you up with more buyers.” He glanced to Gabe with a smile that could have easily been mistaken as a smirk, and opened the door.

  William came busting into the room, nearly knocking Ben to the floor.

  “Cops!” he said in a panicked whisper.

  “Excuse me?” Gabe asked, a look of shock on his face.

  William was almost out of breath, as if he had just finished running a long distance, though in the time that had passed, he couldn’t have even been outside before he had to turn around and come back. “Four police cars just pulled up. They’re grabbing anyone and everyone they can. Handcuffs first, questions later,” he said.

  “Shit,” I said, closing the door and noticing it didn’t have a lock.

  “What do we do?” Gabe asked.

  Ben was surprisingly calm. “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he said. “Police break up parties like this all the time around here. Nothing ever comes of it.”

  “We can’t get arrested,” I said, my eyes widening. “We don’t have millionaire parents to buy our way out of going to court and getting prison time.”

  Ben shrugged. “Then we’ll have to create a diversion.”

  Gabe looked to me with fury and panic in his eyes. “If we get arrest, it’s all over. The cops figure out who we are, and we go down, maybe for life.”

  “Life?” Ben laughed. “At the most, you’ll get a couple of months and some community service. You can’t even be twenty-years-old yet.”

  I swallowed and tried to hold back the panicked tears fighting to spill from my eyes. “No, he’s right. If we get caught, we’re not getting out of prison. We have… complicated pasts.”

  William scuttled around the room, looking for some kind of escape route that didn’t exist. He quickly pulled the second Manic tablet from his pocket and swallowed it. The first tablet hadn’t even set in, and here was throwing back another one. What was this guy thinking?

  “Well, then it looks like we’re back to the diversion idea,” Ben said. “You two wait here. When you hear me outside the door, go out the window. It’s a bit of a drop, but we’re only on the second floor, so you should be able to recover pretty quickly and run off. Now, if there are cops outside, then you’re on your own, but I can distract the ones inside long enough for you, and probably some other people to get away.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said. “You’ll go to jail.”

  “Remember my rich parents. They’ll figure something out,” Ben said, still smiling. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like he was getting off on this.

  “Let’s go,” Gabe sad, jerking on my arm as he made his way to the window. He opened it and looked down, whistling at the drop. “He’s right; it’s a drop, but I think we’ll be okay.”

  I hesitated. “I’m just getting over my last leg injury. The last thing I need is to break something after jumping out a second story window.”

  “We don’t really have any other options!”

  While Gabe and I bickered, William rushed to the window, climbed into the frame, stuck his legs through, and let his body slide out. A second later, he was letting out a pained groan as his body connected with the ground. I peered down at him, seeing a crumpled mass rolling around, but he seemed like he would be okay.

  I turned back to Ben to thank him for offering to distract the police and subsequently get himself arrested for us and was shocked to see him standing next to the closed door, completely naked. His hand rested on the brass knob, and he had a gigantic smile on his face.

  “What the hell?” I asked.

  “If I’m going to get arrested, I’m going to do it style this time,” Ben answered.

  “This time?”

  He didn’t say anything to us, but instead flung the door open and ran into the hallway, completely naked and screaming, “Come get me, you pig motherfuckers!” Three police officers immediately came rushing down the hallway and went right past the bedroom we were housed in as Ben ran down the stairs, still screaming.

  I looked to Gabe and couldn’t help but smile as I said, “The things we get ourselves into.”

  He shook his head at me, trying not to smile as well, and glanced back to the window. “After you.”

  I climbed into the window, just as I had seen William do moments before, let my legs dangle for only a moment, and without thinking too much about it, let my body drop, trying to tuck and roll as I hit the ground. The pain in my back and shoulder was intense, but I successfully rolled across the lawn and was able to climb to my feet without too much trouble. Gabe fell from the window next, gracefully rolling onto the lawn and standing with much more ease than I had.

  “You’ve done this before?” I asked, but he merely shrugged.

  As the two of us ran towards the street, partygoers flew past in every direction. I glanced in every direction, trying to get a good look at where the police were at, but the only two I could see were preoccupied; one was chasing a still very naked Ben, and the other was in the process of placing handcuffs on William, who looked less than pleased at how his jump from the window had turned out.

  Gabe and I ran until we were well away from the Bierce campus, and then decided once we knew the police were not after us, to stop to catch our breath. And as we stood at the corner of Wells and Division, Gabe bent over with his hands on his knees, I felt something very strange come over me. I tried to hide it as much as possible, knowing Gabe wouldn’t approve at all, but it was admittedly difficult.

  The feeling that had come over me, surprisingly enough, was satisfaction.

  (Just Like Brothers)