Tweak

  After printing out about twenty copies of my resumé, I drive over to the different business districts. I drop the resumés off at all the coffee shops and restaurants I come across. No one seems real interested. A couple of places give me times to come back for interviews.

  I drive through the financial district as I make my way down to the wharves. I park my car and look out on the white, beaten-down lighthouse of Alcatraz. The sky is quickly fading orange as the sun sets behind the horizon and a strong wind whips in across the bay. I pull on a jacket and sit drawing in my car for a while, until the light is gone completely. I sleep, curled up on the front seat as best I can. I sleep until my phone rings and I hear Lauren’s voice.

  “Come over, the back gate is open.”

  I listen to music really loud as I drive to Sea Cliff, hiding my car several blocks away from her house ’cause I’m paranoid all of a sudden. Plus when I try to push open the tall wooden gate, there’s a brick holding it closed. I push harder and the thing gives, but the noise I figure probably wakes up the whole neighborhood. Still, I make it to the back door, which is unlocked, and into Lauren’s room without her parents finding me. We kiss for a long time and speak in whispers. She’s jonesing pretty bad, so I start cooking up a shot for us both.

  “You ever done heroin?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  “You wanna try some?”

  She nods. I add a good-size chunk of dope to the mix.

  Lauren watches me closely. I soak it all up with some cotton and then draw a little bit into both needles. I’m kinda worried about giving her too much ’cause it’s her first time and all. I pass her one of the loaded rigs and she digs around in her arm for a while with it, finally hitting.

  She draws some blood up into the mix and then pushes it all into her arm. I watch it sweep over her. She goes slack, kind of—her breath rushing out. She puts her small white hand against her small white forehead and leans back, almost falling. She catches herself, straightens up—then starts almost falling again. I laugh, watching her.

  I shoot myself up and we go over to the bed. There are pillows and comforters all over the place. The room is all dark, except for those Christmas lights, and I listen to Lauren’s breath coming through in short little gasps. Her pupils are like nothing—pinned out. The blue overwhelms them and I am high, high, high.

  “We gotta be quiet,” she says. Her voice comes out slurred and deep.

  I kiss her mouth and it’s like I’m pouring into her—or like I’m absorbing her into me. Her tongue is my tongue, her lips my lips, her breath mine. She moans and I whisper, “Shhhhhh.”

  We kiss like that and then I have her clothes off fast, and mine—taking her nipples in my mouth, kissing her breasts roughly. We start to make love and it’s, like, the most perfect, hard, pulsing, organic movement between us. We’re so there and not there—drifting on sensations of color and beating hearts and the sweat coming down, down, down.

  We go so long the bed is soaked through now with sweat—so much sweat. We’re kissing and locked together and it just goes on. We’re out of breath, but not. Every sensation is heightened. My hand holding hers is alive, sensual—hot. The bed is shaking and the walls are shaking and the ground and shelves and lamps and everything is shaking down around us and we just don’t care—we just don’t. I wanna stay like this forever—here with Lauren, high on meth and heroin. It seems like I’ve reached the pinnacle of my existence and I just don’t want it to stop.

  Three and a half hours go by. I pull out and see that there is blood all over me. My skin has been chafed away. Still, I can’t feel it or anything.

  Lauren lights a cigarette. We pass it back and forth between us. I wanna shoot up some more, so I stand and feel all light-headed, like I’m gonna pass out. I look down and I see my body and I’m amazed at how much weight I’ve already started to lose. My legs are starting to eat away at themselves, my hips are jutting out all dramatically. I teeter my way to the bathroom, piss, then hunt around for the rest of the dope and meth still in that cotton. That’s when I hear the knocking.

  Someone’s knocking at Lauren’s bedroom door and I feel this rush of panic. I lock myself in the bathroom and hold my breath. There are voices outside now and I figure, fuck, man, it’s over. I see the jar with the cotton in it and a dirty rig. Since we’re busted anyway I decide to suck up the rest of it and shoot it before getting thrown outta there—or thrown in jail. I sit on the toilet seat, as quietly as possible, hunting for a vein. I push off. There is a brief moment of, like, “Oh shit,” as I fall forward, crashing into the solid glass shower door. I bounce off that, hit the floor, and then it’s all black for some time.

  DAY 6

  Coming to, there’s light flooding the bathroom and I’m lying on the tile, shivering. I stand and then my stomach seizes and I vomit into the toilet. I do it again. I choke and my throat burns and the tears and snot are wrenched outta my body. There’s no noise outside the bathroom, so after drinking some water from the tap, I turn the lock and sort of crawl my way out into Lauren’s room. No one’s there. The lights are all out and the sun’s coming in.

  I put on my clothes and try to sneak out the same way I came in. I reach my hand in my pocket and there’s a note there. The writing is scrawled hurriedly—frantic little marks on yellow lined paper.

  Nic, if you’re fucking dead in there, I’m gonna kill you. Call me IMMEDIATELY when you wake up. My parents are leaving tomorrow around one, so you can move your stuff in after that. Fuck, I hope you’re not dead. CALL ME. Lauren.

  I wait till I’m well away from that house before dialing her number. Her voice is soft, like she’s not supposed to be using her phone or something. The sky is blue, blue, but that San Francisco wind whips the hair around in front of my eyes.

  “Nic?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jesus, what the hell happened to you last night?”

  “Nothing. You know, when I heard your dad knocking, I hid in the bathroom. I guess I shot too much dope or something, ’cause I passed out. Didn’t you guys hear me when I fell?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When your dad came downstairs.”

  “Nic, that never happened.”

  “But I heard it. I heard you talking to him.”

  “Uh, no, you didn’t.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Nic, you can’t do that again, okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry.”

  “Will you come over tonight?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you have any more of that…you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right, call me later.”

  I hang up.

  It’s around five thirty when Gack calls me. I spent most of the day just walking around the avenues, looking for ground scores—money, cigarettes, or whatever else might’ve been left on the ground. Once I found a black leather kit full of haircutting equipment that had five checks and almost two hundred dollars cash in it. I’ve found packs of cigarettes, bags of leftovers, even the occasional sack of weed, or coke, or something. Today, however, I find nothing but an Aiwa stereo system that I don’t need. Actually, I see a plastic bag tied at the top in front of someone’s doorway. I’m hungry and it looks like take-out maybe. I walk quickly past, circle back, then grab the bag and run off. When I round the corner I open it—hoping for some Chinese food, or Thai noodles, or anything really. The bag is full of dog shit—lots of dog shit. I drop the sack and my stomach convulses from the smell.

  But, like I said, Gack calls at five thirty and tells me he thinks he’s found a hookup for us. He says he can’t go into details on the phone, but we agree to meet in the TL around eight. He says to bring three hundred dollars.

  “Three hundred?” I say. “That’s all?”

  “For now, yeah.”

  I withdraw the money from my account. I’ve still got more than two thousand dollars, but just barely. My feet hurt from walking all day and I look down
at the soles of my Jack Purcell sneakers—the left one has a hole starting to eat its way through the bottom. Still, I keep walking and I know that as soon as I do another shot, I won’t feel the pain anymore. It’s the same with my throat. As I start to come down a little bit, I can feel that I’m sick. My throat is sore and my nose is filled with snot. I must’ve gotten a cold somewhere. But crystal will take it all away.

  The dark is settling in. The sky glows yellow—pale—anemic from the city lights. The Tenderloin at night is a real horror show. Every three feet someone is accosting you with a plea for a handout, or the offer of drugs or sex. The men and women wander the streets and alleys with a threatening, violent want. Takers looking to take, hustlers looking to hustle—all trying to satisfy a craving that is perpetually unsatisfiable. And tonight I’m one of them.

  Gack is smoking a cigarette in front of a Carl’s Jr. He’s listening to music through some headphones. He’s wearing the same clothes he always wears.

  “What’s up, man?” he says, doing some slap/snap handshake thing with me. His eyes are all over the place.

  “You tell me.”

  He starts walking fast and I follow.

  “All right, so there’s this guy, Joe, right? Joe just got outta jail and he’s movin’ away to somewhere in, like, the deep South—Georgia, or some shit. Joe knows everybody and he says he’s gonna hook us up with his connection, so we can start dealing directly from them. He’s, like, passing on the torch, right?”

  “Cool.”

  “So we’ll just try these hookups out. We’ll get three hundred dollars’ worth of really good shit. We’ll cut it and sell it—set aside maybe half for personal use.”

  “And you trust this guy?”

  “Hell, yeah. I’ve known him for fucking ever.”

  “All right, man, so I’m gonna leave it up to you then.”

  “Word.”

  I haven’t really been paying attention, but somehow we’ve ended up down this alley with nothing but one flickering light overhead. We stop at a rusted iron gate in front of an apartment complex. Gack pushes a button, says, “Yo, it’s Gack,” and we’re buzzed in.

  The hallway is cramped and smells of urine and mold. The carpet is bare, stained, burned. The walls are all uneven, giving the place the feeling of a rocking ship. I steady myself against the dirty brown banister.

  A door opens maybe ten yards away. A long-haired man who looks Persian or something—with black, thick eyebrows—steps out into the hall.

  “He’s in here,” he says.

  We follow him inside a room the size of a small kitchen. There’s a bed, a porno movie playing on the TV, and nothing else. A fat man—probably fifty-five, with a receding hairline—smokes speed from a long glass pipe. He exhales loudly and looks up at us. He shifts back to the far corner of the bed, settling in against the back wall.

  “Gack, it’s been a long time.”

  “Yeah, welcome back. This is Nic.”

  Joe reaches out and shakes my hand. His eyes are gray and glazed over. He has a scruffy beard covering his fleshy cheeks. His lips are wet and thick. He passes me the pipe and I take a hit without wiping it off or anything, even though I want to.

  “So, Nic,” he says, his voice trembling from the narcotics. “You wanna get into dealing this nasty shit, eh?”

  I nod, sitting down on the floor next to the Persian man. Gack leans back on the bed with Joe.

  “Gack and I are gonna work together,” I say.

  “All right, man, but I’d be careful. Anyway, let’s get this started. You gotta phone I could borrow?”

  I hand him my cell and he makes a few calls. I half listen to his conversation while Gack and I pass the pipe back and forth. The Persian man still says nothing. He doesn’t hit the pipe when I offer it to him.

  “So someone’ll be by within the half hour,” says Joe. “These are definitely some folks you wanna be down with. Gack, pay attention, man.”

  Gack is messing around with a portable CD player—taking it apart with some multi-tool key chain thing. He looks up briefly.

  “Let me lay this shit down for y’all. If I’m gonna give you kids my connects, you gotta understand a few things first. Gack, you’ve always been real straight ahead and Nic, well, if Gack vouches for you, then you’re all right with me.”

  He rambles on for maybe twenty minutes—talking about how you have to never let the other guy get up on you. Bottom line is it’s all about money. Never trust anyone. Never do anything out of goodwill. It’s all business. Never get sentimental. Never let anyone in. Start off selling small sacks, and as they get more dependent, keep making the sacks smaller. Always keep a weapon on you. The best is something discreet like a skateboard or a pair of drumsticks. Gack argues with him a little, stating that he’s always found that being honest gets you further in the long run. Joe dismisses this entirely. He expounds on the virtues of coldhearted bloodthirstiness. I listen and just try and make him like me by nodding every once in a while as though I really get it.

  The doorbell sounds and we buzz two large men into the building. One’s white, the other looks Latino. The room is so full of bodies now, I’m sweating. The introductions are brief. Joe presents Gack as his successor, they shake hands, pass over a phone number, and that’s it. I give them three hundred dollars for a rock of crystal about the size of a golf ball. It looks very pure. They leave and then it’s just me and Joe and Gack and the Persian guy, who still hasn’t said more than three and a half goddamn words.

  I hand the sack to Gack along with two clean rigs, asking him to make us shots to try it out. As Gack is preparing it, Joe starts asking me questions. I tell him my story, maybe being a little too open—saying I got all this money I’m looking to invest. He stares so directly into my eyes while I’m talking, I have to keep looking at the floor.

  He waits till Gack shoots me up before he says it. I cough so hard as the shit hits me. My ears just won’t stop ringing. I think maybe I’ll puke or something it’s so strong—but I revel in the intensity. My whole body is paralyzed for a moment. I breathe out for a long time, light a cigarette, laugh. Gack’s reaction is pretty much like mine. Shit’s very pure, like I thought.

  “You like that, huh?” asks Joe.

  I nod.

  “You know, I can get you some glass that’s a whole lot better.”

  “Really?”

  “Hell, yeah. I could do it tonight. How much money can you get?”

  “I don’t know. Two hundred’s my limit, I think.”

  “Well, that’ll be enough to start.”

  “Okay.”

  I look over at Gack, try to read his expression, but he’s not paying attention. He’s back with the damn CD player. The Persian man is leaning against the wall, asleep. Some guy is fucking some girl from behind on the small, grainy TV screen.

  “Let me use your phone again.”

  I hand it over and Joe gets up off the bed. He’s even fatter than he seemed sitting down. His stomach hangs way over his belt. He stomps outta the room, down the hall, and I wait. Gack says nothing. I take a notebook out of my bag and start to draw—faces coming out of faces with so many scratchy lines. Joe steps back through the door.

  “All set. Let’s go to an ATM.”

  “Cool.”

  “There’s one down the street.”

  We walk.

  Standing and moving after all the meth I’ve shot and smoked kicks everything screaming into hyperreality. As my blood starts to circulate more quickly, the drug crawls down the different pathways of my body. My nerves are shot. I can feel my toes moving compulsively in my shoes.

  The Tres Amigos liquor store has an ATM in the back next to the ninety-nine-cent bags of chips. As I take my card out, Joe leans over and looks at it closely.

  “Bank of America, huh? I used to work for them back in the day. They still use the same number sequence? Yup. I got a way with numbers.”

  “Not me,” I say. “I’m horrible at that stuff.” I inser
t the card and type my code in. Joe is standing almost on top of me and I can smell the sweat clinging to his black hooded sweatshirt. Two hundred dollars comes out.

  We make our way back to the apartment and Joe is talking a lot. He’s going on about the new life he’s gonna have in Georgia, or some place like that. He’s gonna leave all this behind him—thugging, meth—make a clean break, a fresh start.

  I’m encouraging. I nod a lot.

  He puts a hand on my shoulder. “You know, kid,” he says. “You’re all right. You’re gonna do fine. Just remember, in this game, you can’t trust anyone. You understand me?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Especially in the fucking TL.”

  We go inside and Joe asks to borrow my phone again. I pass it over.

  “This next connect is completely off the hook,” he says. “You aren’t gonna believe how good his shit is.”

  He tells me to get the money ready. “Put it on the dresser here.”

  I do.

  Gack looks up suddenly. The Persian guy is still asleep. “Joe, what the hell is going on?”

  “Nothing, G, I’m just settin’ yer boy up with some more crystal.”

  “From who?”

  “Dude, chill. Hold on a minute, I gotta make one more call.” He walks outta the room.

  “Something’s weird,” says Gack. “How much money you get?”

  “Two hundred.”

  “Where is it?”

  “There, on the dresser.”

  “Where?”

  I look over. Of course it’s gone.

  “Fuck, wait here,” yells Gack.

  He runs off.

  I’m just left staring. A sickness burrows into my insides. I wonder if I’ll ever see Gack again—if it was all a setup. My phone is gone—all that money. I’m not sure what to do. I start cooking up a huge chunk of black tar heroin. The Persian man jerks awake suddenly.

  “What’s going on?”

  “That guy Joe…”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know him well?”