The Story of Junk (24 page)

“I'll get it,” says Kit. The doorbell.

“What's going on?” I say, bewildered. My God, the dope is lying open in its bag beside me. What
is
this?

“You've been kind of out of it,” Honey says. “Maybe you should think about taking time off.” When did she get here? I can't remember. What about the others? Why can't I remember?

I hear Kit walk someone into the office. She comes back in the bedroom for the dope. “You swallowed all my Valium,” she says. “A whole bottle. You didn't even leave me one.”

Valium? I never take Valium. I hate pills. These drugs—there's no getting away from these goddam miraculous drugs.

Kit puts a newspaper in my lap. Three days have come and gone since that night at the studio, and all the while I've been weighing packages, counting money, giving out advice. That's what they tell me. Three
days?

“Why don't you get dressed?” Magna says, gesturing with her elbow in a peculiar fashion, like a piston, or an upset chicken. “I'll take you shopping,” she offers. “You can use a new sweater, right? EVERYONE needs a sweater. How about a jacket? Or some shoes?”

Honey has another idea. Her business has been pretty good of late, lots of visiting Europeans. She's subletting her apartment for the summer and renting a villa on the Amalfi Coast. It's just a few hours south of Rome, easy to find. Why don't Kit and I come and stay? It's really great, she says. She adores it. There's a guy there she met on a vacation the summer before and she's been thinking about him, just thinking, but a lot. Prescott will be there, and Davey Boxer—maybe Ginger too. All kinds of people. Lots of room.

How can I get away? I can't even get out of bed.

Later on, in the evening, alone with Kit, I'm still trying to remember what happened. She's sitting in the chair opposite the bed, her eyes soft, her face open, placating, contrite.

“I know I was sick a long time,” she says. “I know it's been a strain on you. I know I can be demanding and possessive and jealous, and I'm sorry.” At this, we both reach for a cat.

“When I was in the hospital,” she goes on, “I really felt close to dying. I thought I didn't care and I'm still confused. I don't know the answers to life. But I want to live and I want to live with you.” She stops talking a moment. I can't return her gaze. “I don't know how you feel about any of this,” she says, her voice husky. “I hope you feel the same.”

How do I feel? I don't know. How should I feel? I don't feel
good
. I know she loves me, but she's always saying that. What's it supposed to mean?

“I wrote a song for you,” she says.

I pull myself up. “You wrote a song? Actually wrote? For me?”

“Want to hear it?”

I almost say no. Whatever it is, it represents a kindness and to my mind, kindness always kills. Right now I'm glad I didn't die. Listening could be dangerous.

“When did you write this?” I try to look expectant.

“Oh,” she says with a sheepish grin, “I've been working on it for a while.” Kit has never composed without her band before. A song for me—I can't believe it.

She puts down the cat and picks up her guitar and I listen, reaching back in my mind for three days. I don't know how I could have taken those pills, what was going through my head. I should never do cocaine.

“I love it, Kit,” I say when she's done. “It's a hit.”

“It needs words,” she says. We feel fine, and then I know: there isn't anything wrong with Kit or me. The trouble isn't us.

I call Daniel.

“What do you think of this dope?” I ask when I have him alone in the office. “Doesn't it seem a little off?” I think he's going to punch me out. His face is red and I see his teeth, but not because he's smiling.

“Are you saying I cheat you? You can't get away with that again.”

There was another day, a few months before, when I was convinced there was something wrong with his stuff. Some of what I had when I went to sleep wasn't there when I woke up. I told Daniel I'd left the bag open on my desk overnight and that some of the dope had evaporated. The big pussycat, he bought it that time.

“This stuff is really no good,” I say now, hesitant but calm. “I think you should replace it.”

I've never seen Daniel so mad. “You must be the most stupid woman alive,” he says, spitting out the words. “How can anyone do business with a person like you? I front you every time you ask, I let you owe me money. I know what you're trying to do—you forget how well I know you.”

My head feels hot, my eyes are clouding. “Ssh,” I say, embarrassed. Kit's only in the next room. She still needs quiet. She needs a lot of rest. “I'm not trying to take advantage,” I say, my voice beginning to crack. “I know I've been a little messed up, but this stuff really made me sick.”

For a moment, he doesn't respond. I can see his mind working away. “You cut this last batch, didn't you, Daniel? Tell me the truth.” I still think he's attractive.

“Your problem is you smoke everything you do, you waste it. You don't even know how
much
you do, sitting here all night with your aluminum foil—it's stupid!” He shakes his head. It doesn't matter what he thinks of me; he can't afford to lose my business.

Finally, he admits this is not the usual stuff—there isn't much profit in argument. His supply is low and he's been scraping. He'll let me slide on this one, but I won't get away with it again. He's leaving for France in a couple of days—he has to meet his mother in Marseilles. Meanwhile, I should give Massimo a call. He has something.

Instead, I call Vance, I don't know why. Maybe I don't want a cocaine haircut. “You'll never get ahead this way,” he says, when he's sitting in the chair by my desk. “You really should go to Thailand—you could make some real money as a mule. I know a guy who can hook you up over there. Put away some cash, you won't need a lot. You should go.”

“I will never do that,” I say. I would never take that chance, not for him, not for anyone. I'd rather pay more and stay here.

But I do save some cash and I don't stay here. Magna has a private doctor in Queens who has a license to dispense methadone. Kit and I take a cab there every morning through the middle of summer. We drink his juice and take his vitamins, skim the dope only late at night, when the meth is wearing off.

In July, I turn my business over to Bebe and Daniel over to her; Kit sublets the apartment. We get on a plane and fly to Rome.

We get out.

ITALY

In our rented Fiat, the four-hour drive from Rome to Positano stretches on for eight. We get lost in Naples. When we finally reach the Amalfi Coast, it's at the opposite end from our destination. Traffic inches along a narrow road, the Mediterranean to one side, mountains to the other, curling up toward Ravello and down through the white flats of Amalfi, twisting through tiny resort towns that emerge every few miles from limestone hills. It's beautiful but it goes on too long. We can't enjoy it. The methadone isn't holding, at least not for Kit. She's cranky. First she wants to drive, then she doesn't know the way. She wants to stop and swim, then she can't be bothered. She wants to stop and eat; then she won't. She wants to look at scenery, then she looks away.

It's dusk when we pull in to Positano. People spill from café's, hotels, and shops, flooding the single road that loops through the town around two steep hills dotted with villas and pensiones. I don't see Honey on our first pass. “We're
easy
to find,” she'd said on the phone the night before, when I called from our hotel in Rome. “Ask anyone.”

I drive through the town once, twice, a third time. Traffic moves at a snail's pace. There's no place to park. It's hot. At last I pull into a space reserved for some official and get out to look for Honey on foot. Kit stays with the car.

On the phone, Honey had given me directions to her villa. Now I walk back and forth along a narrow stone path in the upper part of town. It's flowing with bougainvillea. This seems to be the street she'd described, but I find nothing resembling the doorway she'd said was hers—a weathered green wood without a number. A mother and her six children stare as I go by their house. A dog barks, but Honey doesn't show her face. On my third trip down the alley, a man steps out of the kitchen of a modest pensione. He's wearing a bright red shirt open wide at the collar, a friendly smile above it. In halting Italian I've picked up from Massimo, I ask if he happens to know an American named Honey. The man's face lights up at the sound of her name. “
Si si!
” he says, with a grin, and then in English, “Every-body know Honey!”

“She's my friend,” I say. “I came from New York to visit.”

“Ameri-
cane
!” he says, emphasizing the last syllables, the word for dogs.

“Do you know where she is?”

He calls a young boy out of the kitchen, his son, I suppose. Out comes his wife, joined by several other women. Together they discuss the matter, and me, while I stand there and sweat. Darkness falls. Then the man points in the direction I've just come from. I make a sign that Honey isn't there. He takes my arm and draws me to a door I've already decided is wrong. It has a faded number and a tile embedded in the doorpost reading
CAVE CANEM
, Beware of the Dog.

“Oh,” I say. “This is it?”

He knocks to prove it is. No answer. “Not there!” he says, the smile taking over his face. If Honey's not home, he says, she must be at a cafe down the hill. It's where she goes to use the phone.

“Can I drive there?” I ask.

“You have a parking place?”

“Not a legal one,” I answer.

“No problem,” he tells me. “You … New York!”

I start walking down the road in the direction he points me, picturing Kit sitting sick and alone in the car at the top, having a fit. I've been gone nearly an hour. I turn round a bend and there's Honey walking toward me, barefoot, in a black skirt and black leather vest, her dog scampering on ahead.

“
Veni qua!
” she's saying to the dog. “Glory,
va via! Va via!
”

“Your Italian sounds pretty good,” I say, relieved at the sound of her laugh.

“Yeah, but I don't think Glory knows it.”

“I can't believe I'm finally here!” I say.

“What took you so long? Where's Kit?”

I tell her we have the car parked illegally at the top of the hill and that I've been looking for her house for an hour.

“Gee, all you had to do was come to the bar,” she says. “Grigorio's there now with Prescott.”

“Can't wait to meet him,” I say.

“Maybe we should go rescue Kit.”

I'm not sure what she means by “rescue,” not till we reach the car, where a smiling Kit is surrounded by three gorgeous boys fawning over her platinum hair.

“I didn't know you could speak Italian,” Honey tells her.

“I didn't say a word,” Kit says. “They don't want me to talk.”

“Let's get your stuff,” Honey says, flashing teeth at the boys. “We can have a few drinks and get ready for dinner. Dinner's at ten here. Plenty of time to relax.”

“Where were you?” Kit asks as we shoulder our bags. We have trouble balancing their weight on the steps. Positano is all about walking and climbing. It was settled in 800 A.D. and the streets are the same as they were then—broad steps that take you up or down the mountain on either side of the road.

“This was Vittorio De Sica's summer house,” Honey says as we approach the door. “Not really his house. We have the upstairs apartment, the servant quarters. But we can at least use the garden, the garden's great. You'll love it.”

It's a beauty, all right, two levels of fragrance, herbs and vegetables below, a columned breezeway above, facing the sea, its pergola roof wound with grapevines, its lawn full of flowers. The apartment, on the other hand, is just a corridor leading to a small, narrow kitchen, three bathrooms and three bedrooms, all occupied. “We're a little crowded here this week,” Honey says. “You'll have to sleep in Mike's bed till Prescott leaves. Davey Boxer's here too. That's okay, isn't it? Mike can sleep with us or over at his girlfriend's.” Her son had met an American girl who was here with her mother. “Two queer friends of hers pay for her school in Switzerland—you know the types. They're here too. So's Zeffirelli, you know, the director? They say Frank Sinatra is his house guest for the weekend. It's that kind of town. Fabulous. Everyone comes here. I just wish we had the space downstairs. That's what I thought we were getting when I rented this place, but the woman who bought the house keeps it for herself. She's an Austrian but she's never here. We think she might have been a Nazi. Want a beer? They're in the fridge. Why don't you get unpacked and I'll go find Grigorio.”

“Can't wait to meet him,” I say again.

She leaves us alone on Mike's small bed. His clothes are lying scattered on the floor. There isn't anyplace to put our things.

“Wasn't she expecting us?” Kit says.

I don't have an answer.

“I've never wanted to get high so bad in my life.”

“Let's not think about it,” I say.

“I'm out of meth,” she says.

I can't believe it. A month's supply of five-milligram pills, the doctor had given us. I give her a tab and take another for myself. Before I put the vial away, I count four remaining.

Grigorio arrives with a bottle of tequila, Prescott close behind.

“Girls! Girls!” Prescott shouts and throws himself on the bed on top of us. He's drunk. I want to kill him. “
Buona sera!
” he shrieks.

“Prescott,” Kit says. “Get off.”