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1st draft: 28 October 2005
published in Thirst For Fire
Massachusetts was dry, as were Providence and Newport. This was a pain because I’d been relying on a redneck named Cob in Newport during dry season for about two years—an eternity in our culture.
But I knew a guy who knew a shady Asian in New Jersey named Yao. I paid the guy a hundred-fifty bucks to put me in touch with Yao.
“This is the Pumish one,” I told him on demand.
“I have what you need.”
“Ten-pack, twenty-pack, what?”
“Fifty, no less.”
I was stunned. I’d never picked up fifty pounds before, never nearly that much from a new connect.
“How much?”
“Thirty-five per Z,” he said. He must have thought I could do that kind of math on the spot.
I said, “I’ll call you back.”
After a mad search for my calculator, I did the math: thirty grand.
I talked it over with Corey and he brought up the obvious: it would be crazy for us to go to New Jersey with that kind of cash. According to him neither of us had ever been there; he didn’t know about the time I went to Newark to drop off three white kilos and had a bullet graze my neck in the process.
He was right; New Jersey definitely wasn’t safe for guys like us. And this is basically what I said to Yao, adding that the price was truly unbeatable. But before I’d even finished my sentence, he said, “We will bring. Two days. You wait for call.” Then he hung up.
I couldn’t even calculate the profit. It being dry season we could sell skimpy bags for higher prices. We wouldn’t lose a single customer. I figured the first eight pounds would be gone in a couple days. I contemplated cocaine to stay awake; contemplated hiring help—but where was I going to go for that, the classifieds?
Rats were everywhere, and there were days when I even wondered about Corey. If given the chance and the right conditions, would he roll on me? I wasn’t stupid enough to ask—all I could do was watch.
“This is fuckin’ nuts,” I said to him later that day. We were waiting on some girls, finishing off a bottle of Vodka.
“Yeah this Absolut hits pretty hard.” He was looking out the window, not paying me any attention.
“Not that,” I said. “This deal.
“We’re gonna make around seven-hundred percent, Corey. We could retire after this shit’s gone.”
“But we won’t,” he said and smiled. We blinded ourselves with the inherent mental darkness of alcohol.
I woke up at about four the next morning. I pulled a book out of my hiding place and picked up where I’d left off two weeks before. It was A Walk On The Wildside by Nelson Algren.
“Stranger on a strange-lit stair, you have come to a strange frontier,” I read, and my heart moved. Rarely do things affect me emotionally. I wondered if they’d be the last words I’d think if I got hit in Newark or Hackensack or wherever.
I heard Corey stir in the next room; as he flushed the toilet I hid my book again. Spent the next hour oiling an AR-15 I’d never used.
At about seven I woke Corey up and directed him to get me high. I knew for a fact he still had some stash of Canadian hash from a queer dealer I wouldn’t go near. Soon we were both overcome with a powerful hunger. In our cabinets there were some Ramen noodles, some stale saltines, and some instant potatoes.