The Spider Inside (7 page)

Though he could have hooked up through Gomez and his cousin,
Nik decided to pay a visit to Martin. Gomez was by the books, for him it was
like any other business, it had to be. He still had family in Mexico he was
trying to bring across the border, and still more down there he was supporting.
Everything with Gomez was in black and white, you have X amount of money, it
buys you X amount of crystal meth. It sometimes led Nik to wondering why Gomez
was missing the end of his pinkie finger….had it been an accident? Or…business?

But Martin was different, and this was why Nik was going to
him today. He had money to score, and score a lot, but he didn’t have enough to
score as much as he wanted. Martin was less of a business man. Nik wondered
what Xander would say if he knew Martin allowed himself to be accessible by
anyone, by even the dirtiest junky in the street. Someone from the very bottom
of the ladder could just walk up to his door and knock, and more often than not
Martin would just let them in. He still looked at dealing as a subversive act,
as something anti-establishment. He deserved to be taken advantage of, and was
almost begging to be ripped of completely, maybe get himself killed in the
process.

Though only thirty, Martin seemed to be a relic left over
from the hippie era, and Nik reminded himself to ask Martin what his parents
did, curious if he had inherited these traits from his folks or if he was just
a fuck-up on his own.

The thing was, Nik modeled his own dealings off Gomez. He
took the smallest amount of risk and went for the highest possible profit while
still providing quality product, thus guaranteeing a returning customer base.
And he never gave credit. Martin called everyone brother or sister and gave
credit and didn’t insulate himself from the streets. He was still naive enough
to take people at their word, to take
junkies
at their word, and Nik
thought this put Martin in the running for Biggest Sucker, worldwide.

But a sucker could be useful in so many ways, Nik thought
and smiled , the chills he’d gotten from that little senorita abating, blown
off his back with the force of the passing wind as he pushed the bike a little
faster. By the time he pulled up to Martin’s shitty little house he had all but
forgotten his visions of iron wings and demon babies.

Nik pounded on the door to be heard over the Phish CD being
blasted from inside. This was another thing he didn’t like about Martin, he had
a terrible taste in music. For the most part weed was his drug of choice, Nik
had never known him to tweek much, and he supposed that explained it. He
couldn’t really stand weed himself. Once in a while he’d smoke a joint to come
down a little but he almost never did the drug by itself.

The door opened and though he kept his expression from
changing, Nik’s stomach seemed to drop out a little. Instead of Martin, whom he
was expecting, he was now face to face with Lance, with his acne and yellow
teeth and dead, expressionless eyes. And didn’t his kind only come out at
night?

“Hey man,” Lance said. “Come on in.”

“Thanks. Howya doing?”

“I’m good,” Lance said and smiled. The smile did not touch
his eyes. Nothing did. Nik was glad now for the weapon he’d purchased this
morning, liked the comforting feel of it tucked against his rib cage beneath
his jacket.

Lance turned and walked back in and Nik thought of pulling
the piece and putting two in the back of his head. He’d be doing the world a
favor.

Martin, who had somehow stumbled his way up the ladder
through a once-in-a-lifetime combination of his own luck and the stupidity of
other people to dealing directly with Xander, should have known better than to
hang out with a fucking low-life like this. This was why Gomez was so much
better, and this was why Nik would be better. All he needed was a break, and
he’d be able to take a step up himself, and start moving the kind of quantities
that Gomez did, and make some real money.

Inside Martin was sitting on the couch and Paz was on a
chair.

Lance and Paz, Nik thought. Holy fuck it was a miracle the
cops weren’t camping outside. Nik could not think of a bigger pair of cop
magnets than these two fuck-ups. Paz had already been popped twice, once on a
drug charge, once on possession of an unregistered machine gun, and that third
time, which was really inevitable if you looked at him, would be Paz, locked up
for life. He needed to conduct his business and get the fuck out of here as
soon as humanly possible.

“What’s up Paz?” Nik asked. Paz didn’t say anything, was
intent on a system of dominoes he’d set up on the coffee table.

“Nik, hey brother, how goes it?” Martin asked. Nik saw
immediately that this had been one of the rare times Martin was tweeking. This
annoyed Nik; he was normally pretty accurate with his pigeonholing and didn’t
like surprises. This was even worse than a surprise, it was a complication. It
would be one thing if Lance and Paz had been here to score, because they could
then conceivably leave in the near future, but it looked now as if they were
dug in for the duration. Nik briefly considered leaving and coming back later,
when the others weren’t around and Martin was so stoned off bong hits he could
barely stand. When he was stoned he was notorious for selling heavy bags.

“I’m good, man.” Nik said. “Yourself?”

“I been up since like...yesterday, brother. I’m fucking
spun, man.”

“Wow, an all-nighter, huh?” Nik asked, acting as impressed
as Martin was obviously hoping he would be. Fucking idiot, Nik thought. Nik had
been up now for just over sixty hours. He could feel the crash coming like a
huge wall of black polluted water. He still had time, he wasn’t worried about
it, but he could sense it just the same.

“Yeah, man,” Martin was saying. “Let me tell you it’s been
awhile since I’ve been this high up. So what’s, uh, what’s going on, man?”

“I was hoping to--”

“Come on, sit down, brother. Commune with us.”

Jesus Christ, Nik thought. Even on speed he talks like a
fucking granola-eating nature fag. Nik thought for a moment of taking Martin
back to his house and handcuffing him to a chair and putting some headphones on
him, shoot him up with some high-end ice and play death metal non-stop while
beating the shit out of him for twenty-four hours straight, see if he could
just once and for all kick the fucking hippie out of him.

Nik sat down and lit a cigarette. Lance cut himself out a
heavy bump, one of the same size for Paz and one so small it was hard to see
from where Nik was now sitting. That third one would be for Martin. Nik didn’t
mind that no one had offered him any, he was still way jacked from shooting up
earlier, but did miss out on the pleasure he would have gotten from declining
the offer, had it been made.

Lance did his and passed the mirror to Paz who did his
without looking up and then handed the small mirror to Martin who carefully
wiped the end of the tooter off before putting it in his nose. He bent to the
mirror and breathed out, scattering his little pile.

“Fuck,” Martin said. Lance handed him a razor blade and
Martin took care to bring it back together into a neat little pile. It was a
whole fucking production with this nimrod. He took several deep breaths, head
turned at an extreme angle so it was as facing as far away from the mirror as
possible without him pulling an Exorcist move and spinning it around on his
neck. He finally put the tooter back up his nose and inhaled hugely, holding
the end of the tooter to the glass long after the little pile of drugs had
slammed into his nasal passages. Martin’s face turned red and he looked long
and hard at his reflection in the mirror, and Nik wondered what he saw in
there. Himself, he couldn’t stand to look at his own reflection when he was
spun out, thought it was bad luck.

“Didn’t you cut Nik out one?” Martin finally asked in a low
voice, holding the mirror out to Lance. Lance looked at him the way Nik imagined
a spider looked at a fly just when it tangles itself in the web.

Lance took the mirror and cut out another bump that was
marginally larger than the one Martin had done. Nik pretended not to notice any
of this exchange, and feigned interest in the intricate maze of dominoes being
constructed before him.

He could see Lance leaning forward across the coffee table,
holding out the mirror to him, and he ignored it.

“Hey, you want this or what?”

Nik looked up, acting a little surprised. “Huh? Oh, no
thanks, I’m good. I appreciate the offer though, Lance.” Nik smiled when he
said this and he could see a moment of confusion cross Lance’s face and it was
replaced by...nothing. Lance’s expression had become a void, and Nik wondered,
not for the first time, if Lance had ever killed anyone before. He seemed like
the type that would have gang of prostitutes or a Boy Scout troop buried under
his porch or something. It would not surprise Nik in the least if one day he
saw Lance being led away in chains on TV with some horrible charge emblazoned
on the screen. It wouldn’t really surprise anyone that knew Lance. The surprise
would be if it never happened.

“So you got a minute?” Nik asked, ignoring Lance and turning
to Martin.

“Oh sure, sure brother, what do you need?”

“I’d like to talk a little business with you,” Nik said,
nodding his head toward the back room. Thankfully Martin was a little more
intuitive on speed than he was on weed. Had he been smoking the green, he would
have needed this gesture explained to him, likely more than once.

“Oh, yeah, sure man. Sure. No problems. You dudes okay out
here?” Martin asked. Paz said nothing and Lance nodded his head, slowly. Maybe
he was wondering what intestines tasted like.

Martin as he normally was would never have picked the bag of
speed up off the coffee table but he did now, and Nik got an even bigger kick
out of this, as Lance turned red once more. Did it bother someone with no
conscience to not be trusted?

In the back room Nik explained what he needed and produced
the cash, also explaining why he was short, and how he would pay Martin back,
all the time growing less and less confident that this would work, that he
overplayed his hand and should have just come back another time.

“Absolutely, brother,” Martin said, and gave Nik a clap on
the back. He went to his closet and opened it and knelt to the safe that was
bolted to the floor. Nik shook his head, seeing that the door to the safe was
open just a crack. Martin stuck his hand inside and brought out his product and
a scale and some bags. He worked quickly, the meth coursing through him. What
would have normally taken forty-five chatty minutes now took only ten. Even
better, Martin was eyeballing the weight, even though he had a two-hundred
dollar digital scale sitting right in front of him. When Martin finally handed
the bag to Nik it was heavier than Nik had any reason to hope it would be.

Nik handed the money over. “So I can get that other grand to
you when I off this,” Nik asked.

“Hey man, it’s you. It’s you and me. We know each other man.
You’re like a brother, Nik.” Martin’s voice dropped low, to a conspirator
level. “I wouldn’t do this for just anyone, man, but for you? Pay me when you
can, dude. I know you’re good for it.”

Nik, though he hated to be touched when he wasn’t high and
could hardly stand it after he’d shot up, gave Martin a one-armed hug and
clapped him on the back, which was how Martin sealed a deal. How could he use
Martin to get next to Xander? Just ten minutes in a room with Xander and Nik
knew he could get the nod to move up.

“I appreciate it, bro,” Nik said. “I’ll flip this as soon as
possible, and get right back to you.”

“I know, brother. I know.”

Nik walked back into the living room. He didn’t say anything
to Paz but said “Later,” to Lance, who said the same. At the last second Nik
leaned forward to bump fists with Lance and purposefully knocked his knee
against the coffee table, toppling Paz’s growing domino metropolis.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry, man,” Nik said, doing his best not to
laugh at the crestfallen look on Paz’s face. He looked like he was going to
fucking cry, but then the little camper bucked up and cleared the table and
started over again.

Nik walked out into the sunshine, wondering if In & Out
was open or if it was too early to get a cheeseburger. He wasn’t really hungry,
but needed to refuel, just the same. He was still flying, he could still feel
his heart banging in his chest like a heavy metal drummer really working the
double foot pedal on the bass drum, like fucking Lars before he turned into a
whiny penny grubbing anti-Napster bitch, but it didn’t bother him. Nik knew
that somehow, things were going to come together and he would soon be making
more money than he knew what to do with. He kicked his bike to life and as he
pulled away, he popped up and rode down the street with his front wheel in the
air. The way he felt, he could have rode that fucking wheelie all the way up
the coast and back.

The first time Jim woke it had been about eight hours since
he’d fallen asleep, and the need to piss was overwhelming. He hadn’t realized
Cherry was already in the bathroom until he stopped just outside the closed
door, the sound of her pissing like a punch in his guts. It seemed to go on and
on and on and he knew she would be embarrassed if she came out and saw that
he’d been standing in the hall listening, so he walked into the living room and
wondered if the windows were opened and he looked outside and down. There was
nothing down there, not a busy street or anything, just an alley between
buildings. He could probably just piss out the window but that was kind of
nasty…however, if he didn’t piss soon he was going to burst. How about the
sink? Could he--no! Jim told himself. There is no way you are pissing in the
sink or out the window or any other fucking place.

He could still hear Cherry in the bathroom. There was a
dull, hot pain in his balls and behind his penis, which was half erect from him
holding the urine back. Finally the toilet flushed and he wondered for just a
moment if he was going to piss himself. He could hear Cherry washing her hands
and then finally, oh sweet baby Jesus
finally
she came out and he went
in right as she came out and she was laughing at him and he pulled his dick out
and at first it ached so bad he couldn’t go, he was standing there, holding it,
the vast porcelain heaven awaiting, and he could do no more than stand there.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath and opened his eyes and then started
to piss. What came out was a yellow so dark it was almost brown and stunk
vaguely of sulphur. Jim cringed. That had been inside him? For how long? When
was the last time he’d even taken a piss?

It seemed to go on and on, a single powerful jet that didn’t
waver. Jim started to wonder if he’d somehow liquefied his kidneys or something
and was just standing here pissing them out of his body. He was on the verge of
really freaking himself out when finally the stream dried up. There was
another, shorter burst, but that dried up and the ache inside him was gone and
with that went the fear and now that it was taken care of he felt the first
real pang of hunger that he’d felt in days.

On the edges of his vision something moved as Jim was
tucking himself back into his boxer shorts and he turned, but there was nothing.
The shadows seemed to pulse, to breathe. His eyes were still heavy and though
the bells had finally stopped ringing in his head he heard now a kind of vacuum
in their absence. The phrase, “hear the silence so loud” popped into his head.
It was like the first time he’d ever been camping when he was a kid. He’d grown
up not far from a highway and was used to the constant streaming sound of cars.
When they were up at Big Bear, it was so quiet he woke up in the middle of the
night wondering if he’d gone deaf and started to cry, which woke up his dad,
who explained what was happening once Jim told him what was wrong.

Something flickered again and he was helpless but to turn
and look. Nothing. He held his eyes closed tight and then washed his hands.

He walked back into the bedroom but Cherry was not in the
bed so he put his flannel pants back on and wandered out into the rest of the
apartment. She was leaning against the counter, watching a pan on the stove.

“You want something to eat?” Cherry asked. “I’m making
soup.”

“That’d be great,” Jim said. “Do you need any help?”

Cherry shrugged. “Wanna get a couple bowls down?”

Jim smiled. She always put her bowls on the top shelf of the
cabinet even though she had to use this little footstool to get up there and
there was plenty of room on the shelves below.

“That’s just where they go,” she’d explained once when he
asked why, and went on to tell him that she had, as close as possible, all her
dishes and silverware and general kitchen supplies put away the exact way they
had been at home when she had been a child.

“I tried doing it my own way,” she said. “But I kept opening
up the wrong drawer or the wrong cupboard and it was totally frustrating, for
like a month this went on, and finally I just caved.”

The soup smelled good and as it heated Cherry stirred in
parsley and a little pepper and some seasoned salt and when it was ready she
served it up and they ate, standing in the kitchen, slowly, and in
companionable silence. The soup went a long way toward making Jim feel better,
meaning of course that he would still need a minimum of another twelve hours
sleep to be worth a shit.

Jim finished his soup first, Cherry being a notoriously slow
eater, and he started washing up his bowl and spoon and the pan she’d cooked it
in. By the time he had them dried and put away she handed him her bowl and
spoon and as he washed them she stood behind him, leaned against his back,
hugging him.

All words caught in his throat. She had done this before of
course, but this time seemed different. They were so comfortable around one
another physical contact had never been an issue. She could sit on his lap or
hold his hand or they could lay in bed with his arms around her and they would
never feel any kind of sexual tension. Oddly enough, when there
was
sexual tension between them, it was usually when they were both fully clothed
and in public or around too many people for anything to be done about it.
Besides, Jim didn’t want their first time together, if there was to be one,
when they were on crank. He didn’t just want to mindlessly bang her until he
was raw and she was sore and they both covered in scratches and bites and
soaked with sweat that stank vaguely of gack.

Of course, there might be a time for that, and part of him
really hoped there would be. He’d masturbated on meth before and it had been
the best orgasm he’d ever had, and he heard it was even better for women so
certainly if they got together they might give it a shot.

But no, not the first time. The first time should be soft,
and slow, in a dark room where they could lay together afterward for as long as
they wished.

Besides, Jim thought. What if it’s just me reacting
differently and nothing has really changed?

He finished the dishes and turned and looked down into her
soft blue eyes.

“Sleepy?” she asked.

He nodded. “You?”

“Only completely. Come on. Let’s go back to bed.” she picked
up his hand and led him back into the bedroom. He kept his flannel pants on
this time when he got in bed and laid on his back. She curled up next to him with
her head on his chest and soon they were both asleep once more.

A few miles away Soup paced back and forth in his living
room, a dirty old blanket around his shoulders. He shouldn’t have scraped and
smoked that last hit off his pipe when he woke up to piss, he should have just
gone right back to bed. The hit had not produced anything more than a split
second of the euphoria he’d been hoping for, but it had jacked up his nerves
and even with two more Valium in him he wasn’t even remotely sleepy. He was fucking
wired, and all he could do was wait it out.

It had been maybe an hour ago that the pain in his bladder
had brought him from bed, and he thought now of the color and texture of his
piss. It had been like fucking pancake syrup coming out of his dick, and the
stink of it had almost been enough to make him puke. It had burned, just a
little, as if the piss itself was so close to being solid that it was literally
stretching out the eye of his penis.

Though he was sweating he shivered violently under the blanket
and lit a cigarette. He walked back and forth, occasionally exhaling clouds of
smoke, the blanket holey and flapping behind him. There was nothing on TV
except soap operas and Dr. Phil and he kept thinking he should put a movie in,
just to have something to take his mind off how he was feeling but he couldn’t
quite get motivated enough. When he moved his joints ached, all of them, like
he was an old man or something, but it was worse when he stopped. It was so
much worse. If he sat down now he would freeze that way, his knees would lock,
his hands would freeze in claws. His eyes seemed to throb, his spine was a thin
line of fire. His head was pounding, the bells, the bells, the bells, they were
still loud and clear. That one lousy fucking hit that he didn’t really even get
high off of had been enough to bring back the ringing of the bells.

Soup cast a baleful eye toward Two Step’s door. No,
Two
Step
wasn’t up, aching all over, in too much pain to even sit on the couch
and watch a movie. Soup listened hard, and heard nothing. That didn’t mean Two
Step was really asleep though, did it? Maybe he was up, too? Maybe he’d come
out and scraped a real hit, a good full hit out of Soup’s pipe before Soup
himself came and got the leftovers...Two Step was in there high as a fucking
kite and loving it since he never really smoked the stuff and here Soup was,
his body feeling like old newspaper wrapped around a pile of broken glass.

That was MY fucking hit
, he screamed in his mind, his
eyes and his fucking head throbbing with the beat of his heart, the toll of the
bells so loud and so clear in his ears.

He shouldn’t have done that, Soup thought. That was MY
fucking pipe and it was MY fucking shit that he scraped out of it. That fucking
hit should have been MINE, I KNOW there was more in there than what I got out
it was
MY fucking pipe
you
FUCK
and I—

Soup’s whole body began to twitch and he closed his eyes and
wondered if this was it; he’d heard you could have a fucking seizure off this
shit or fuck what if he was having some kind of a stroke? He’d either fall on
the ground and flop around while he swallowed his tongue and Two Step laughed
or something in his head would pop and his eyes would fill with blood and he’d
be half a fucking retard the rest of his life, his mouth a twisted hole like
his grampa’s had been before he died and the shakes went away and when Soup
looked up he could see a man standing in the hall, tucked back in the shadows,
just standing there staring at him, hands behind his back. He couldn’t make out
the face and his heart skipped in his chest.

“Two Step?” Soup asked. “That you, man? I don’t really think
you smoked my shit, man. I was just flipping out a little.”

Nothing. The man stood there and said nothing. Soup picked
the glass ashtray off the arm of the couch and in one fluid motion straightened
up, tossing the blanket from his shoulders even as he drew his arm back and he
brought it forward and let go and saw the sunlight that had crept in between
the curtains at the top making a rainbow in the glass and then it smashed into
the man’s face and instead of breaking like he expected, the ashtray just
clunked against the wall and then fell to the floor right where the shadow man
should be kneeling, trying to hold the blood inside his face but there was no
one, there was nothing, there was just the wall and Soup laughed a
high-pitched, giggling laugh and took the blanket and went in his room because with
the lights on there were no shadows and finally the bells stopped and the
shadows that were there stopped moving in the corners of his eyes, and finally
he was able to sit down without the fear of his joints locking up like the
fucking Tin Man before what’s-her-tits came along with her oilcan and that
asshole Scarecrow. Soup felt the hot wires inside him begin to cool and uncoil
and then he was able to lie down, and after a while, he fell into a nervous
sleep.

Two Step didn’t wake up to take a piss. He’d taken three
Valium to get to sleep and when he finally woke up sixteen hours after
crashing, he woke up in a stagnant pool of brownish urine and soaked, stinking
sheets. When he got over how disgusting it was that he’d piss himself like a
little kid it was actually kind of funny. He balled the blankets up and threw
them in his hamper, opened his window a crack and put the hamper beneath it,
then flipped the mattress and covered himself with the quilt his mother had
given him as a child because in the night before pissing himself he’d kicked it
onto the floor, and thus it had been spared a wetting. Once more Two Step
curled up and went to sleep. The breeze felt good and at the same time pulled
the faint stink of methpiss out into the nothing, out into the world.

Outside his window, and all their windows, the world moved
on. The sun crossing the sky, the traffic through town, the give and take of
the ocean, the violence, the hate and the love, the hands of the clock. All of
it meant nothing to any of them. They were in their own worlds, and in those
worlds, there was only them.