Wasted (14 page)

It wasn’t long before Justin fell into another drug-dealing crowd of people. But most of all, he found out how much money meth was bringing in Austin. Good money.

Justin Thomas returned to living a split life, good-boy fitness trainer by day, bad-boy bouncer and drug dealer by night. He made $20,000, maybe $30,000 in Austin over six months time. It was easy to sell drugs when you were a tall, good-looking, well-built bouncer at some of the fastest bars in town—Shakespeare’s, the Coppertank.

The day Kim LeBlanc smiled at Justin Thomas in World Gym, Thomas had been working there as a trainer for about six months. He checked his clients’ weights, took their measurements, set them up with their training programs. He was a popular guy; customers asked for him specifically.

He looked like he knew what he was doing—no more than ten percent body fat, a diet of protein drinks and egg whites, muscles that bulged.

Kim watched him as he walked up to the reception desk to check his appointment book.

“So, how do you use that machine?” she said as she pointed to an abductor, her thin arm just grazing Justin’s taut belly.

He looked at her as though she were stupid, but inside he was smiling. Justin Thomas was a womanizer, and Kim LeBlanc was just his type. Short. Small. Brunette. Beautiful. Like his wife, Dawn, in California, the mother of his two children. In fact, she looked like Dawn. Shockingly like Dawn.

And Kim was pursuing him. That was pure pleasure to Justin Thomas, who’d spent his months in Austin doing the pursuing. He thought of the way Dawn had pursued him in California, played him, kissed him on the neck. He touched his hand to his neck. Dawn had later cheated on him.

Justin Thomas had drug deals to do.

Kim LeBlanc rubbed up against him.

He reminded himself that he had let a woman and his emotions distract him from his work before, and now he had to sneak back into California to see his children. He hadn’t seen them since he’d last sneaked back in January, just after he’d been to Tennessee to meet someone, to assist in a . . . to help a friend, to make sure everything went the way it was supposed to go, without any funny business.

Justin Thomas went back to work. There were drug deals to do.

 

 

Another day Justin Thomas stood in the World Gym’s manager’s office. He and a few co-workers had just done a few lines of coke, and they were in the midst of their final sniffs to get the drug well into the sensitive membranes of their nostrils when Kim LeBlanc walked in.

She grinned, obviously savvy to the boys’ quick sniffs and snorts, and she rubbed her body against Justin. “We ought to get together sometime,” she said, and she rubbed her back against his front. “You know, call me sometime.”

Kim walked out the door.

“She’s hot for you, buddy,” said one of his friends.

Justin dismissed it. Nope, no way, no way was he going to let another female distract him from succeeding, from being king of an empire.

Kim LeBlanc made sure she got Justin Thomas’s pager number.

 

 

It was Wednesday, and Thomas was on his way back from a little drug deal in Marble Falls, a resort city on Lake Lyndon Baines Johnson, about forty-five minutes from Oak Hill and World Gym. Just before he reached Oak Hill, before turning north to head to the other side of Austin to meet a drug connection, Kim LeBlanc paged him.

Justin didn’t recognize her number on his pager, but he dialed it on his cell phone anyway. “Who’s this? What’s up?” he said.

“It’s me, Kim. What are you doing?”

“Why are you paging me so late?” It was about one in the morning.

“Well, you’re up and around, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what are you doing?”

“I’m on my way to North Austin.”

“Wanta get together?”

“Okay, that’s cool. I have a vehicle. Let me pick you up, and you can come with me.”

They met at the Stop-N-Go convenience store near LeBlanc’s South Austin apartment. They made Thomas’s drug run, but Thomas didn’t tell her why they were driving to North Austin. They returned to Kim’s apartment.

“You party?” said Kim.

“Yeah, I party.” Then Justin realized what he’d said. “But, well, what kind of party do you mean?” he backed off, wanting to play Mr. Innocent, Mr. Square.

Kim brought out a mirror that had a picture of Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails on its face. Trent was her favorite singer. Justin, who had a passion for music, liked Nine Inch Nails, too. On the face of Trent Reznor was a bit of cocaine.

Thomas laughed, again trying to play innocent, just like his dad had ten years before with the crystal meth in Oregon.

“Wanta do a line?” said LeBlanc.

He also laughed because he had a few tastes of drugs on him. “Yeah, sure,” answered Justin. A couple of ounces on him.

So they did a line, sat on her bed, chit-chatted, and listened to music. Kim touched Justin, she glanced over at the mirror as if she wanted another bump of cocaine, she caressed Justin’s thigh, played with his ears, then picked up the mirror as if she wanted another line. They talked and they got to know each other. Kim wiped her finger across the shiny surface to sweep up any excess grains of cocaine.

Damn
, thought Justin.
Either this coke’s no good, or she’s addicted to this stuff.

He looked at Kim. “You wanta try something?”

“If you wanta do something to me, that’s okay,” she said, her voice flippant.

He meant drugs.

She meant sex.

That caught him off guard.

“No,” he replied, “I’m talking about this right here.” He pulled some meth from his pocket. “You know what crystal meth is?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

He spread out a hefty boulder on the mirror. “This stuff is better than that stuff you’re doing there. All them little bumps you keep doing there, well, you do one little, good line of this, and you’ll be all right until tomorrow, know what I’m saying?”

LeBlanc didn’t quite seem to believe Thomas, so he did a little line to prove it. Then Kim did one. And the grin on her face proved to Justin Thomas that Kimberley Alex LeBlanc liked crystal meth, like sugar to a horse.

They talked a little more. He spoke with a sweet, soft slur. They got a little physical, kissing a bit, petting a bit. Then they got a lot physical. They had sex in the bedroom. They had sex in the bathroom. They had sex in the hallway. He stayed the night.

To Justin, they were making love. He was a young man with two emotions—extreme love, extreme anger. And for him, it was a firecracker number-ten evening on a scale of one to ten. Justin Heith Thomas was smitten.

 

 

So was Kimberley Alex LeBlanc. At least she seemed to be. Kim was a young woman who liked to have sex, a lot, all the time. She wanted Justin to go slowly with her and to be a gentle lover. She also wanted him to dominate her, tie her up, then make slow, soft love, and torture her with his tenderness. She phoned him the next day.

Thomas was carless. “I’ve gotta go see a friend,” he said.

LeBlanc chauffeured him in her Jeep that had the tires and stereo Regina Hartwell had bought for her. Justin directed from the passenger seat. He directed her to a house in South Austin. They wound around so LeBlanc didn’t really know where they were.

“You wait here,” he said and disappeared into the house.

A few minutes later, he was back in the car, and they drove off.

 

 

“I’ve met somebody I really like,” Kim whispered. She had that half-glazed-over, faraway look in her eyes. Most people couldn’t tell if it was sleepiness, drugs, conceit, bitchiness, or what. It was disassociation, safety, protection. “A guy,” she said.

Regina Hartwell shook inside. “Yeah,” she said, calmly, refusing to betray her anger and fear. “Who is he?”

“I want you to meet him. I want your approval.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“He’s a trainer at World Gym.”

Regina made a face of disapproval. “You can do better than that. You are better than that.”

Stay detached. Stay out of your body. It’s safer that way.
“I’d like to bring him over for you to meet,” said LeBlanc.

“Yeah, sure,” said Hartwell. She could get through this, she told herself. She could win this, she told herself.

 

 

“You’ll like her,” said Kim to Justin. “Y’all are a lot alike.” Kim didn’t realize just how much alike. “But you gotta understand, she pays my rent, she buys my food, she buys my clothes.”

Thomas nodded and thought back to how his dad always told him you have to work for what you get. Justin was out to impress. Hartwell was out to impress and protect.

Out to control,
thought Justin when he met her.
She has to be in control.

Regina took one look at Justin and knew he was a dealer. To an obvious user, he was an obvious dealer—with his pager and cell phone.

But Regina Hartwell was nice to Justin Thomas, just like she had been to all of Kim’s other friends, just like she had been with all her previous obsessions’ friends. She played as though she thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

A controller, yeah,
thought Justin,
but a real cool person.

Yep, they were a lot alike.

 

 

The phone rang at Kim LeBlanc’s apartment, the apartment Regina Hartwell paid for and furnished. “Come over,” said Regina.

“Uh,” replied Kim. She stared at Justin with frightened, wide eyes. Her body tingled and shivered. “Now?”

“Of course.” And Regina hung up.

“We can’t go over there,” said LeBlanc. She couldn’t stop the tingling and the shivering. “She’ll know.”

“Not if you stay calm, you know what I’m saying,” said Thomas. “She’ll know if you keep acting like a cat on speed.”

“Well, hell, I
am
on speed.”

He tapped his straw clean of crystal meth and stuffed it in his pocket. “Let’s go.” Justin opened the door.

 

 

Kim LeBlanc couldn’t sit down. She bounced from couch to floor to kitchen to bathroom to bedroom and back again.

Regina Hartwell stared at her.

LeBlanc tried to turn away. “Got a beer?” she said and lit a cigarette.

“What up?” said Hartwell. She looked from LeBlanc to Thomas and back again.

“I can’t lie to you, Regina. I just did some crystal meth. Right before you called.”

Regina looked again at Justin and back to Kim. “No big deal,” she said. She reached underneath her couch and pulled out a mirror. Streaks of cocaine residue clouded the glass. A small, brown vial balanced atop it. “I’ve got this.”

Kim gasped. She’d never seen Regina with cocaine.

The girl from Pasadena tapped out three fat lines.

There was just something bonding about doing drugs together.

 

 

Hartwell phoned Ynema Mangum. “Wanta get together for lunch?”

They met at Pappadeaux’s, a loud, popular, expensive (for Austin), seafood restaurant off of Interstate 35. They had an appetizer of oysters
Pappadeaux
, and they ate the fish special of the day.

It was the last time Mangum saw Hartwell.

“I love Kim so much,” said Regina. “But she’s involved with this psycho named Justin. I love Kim so much. But things are really weird with Kim and Justin. He’s crazy.”

 

 

Bonnie Thomas put the key into the lock of the apartment door she shared with her brother Jim Thomas and his son Justin. Jim had asked her to move in with them if he bought a house. The only problem was that the hunt for his dream home was taking a hell of a lot longer than he had expected, and he was damned depressed about it. He and Justin and Bonnie and her two Rottweilers were living on top of each other in the one-bedroom, South Austin apartment. And Bonnie’s son J. R., Justin’s “number-one cuz,” stayed with them on weekends.

On Friday, about 4:30 or five o’clock in the afternoon, they were dog-tired from work. They had cut fine, wood cabinets.

Bonnie, 5’2”, tanned, gray-haired with sapphire blue eyes and tattoos, pushed open the apartment door when, whoosh, two almost identical-looking brunette girls jumped up off the couch and started wrapping blankets around themselves. The girls scooted and maneuvered their arms under the blankets as if they were shoveling on their clothes.

“Where’s Justin?” said Bonnie, her drawl thick, her blue eyes wide.

“Oh, he went to the store,” one of the girls answered.

There was awkward silence as Kim LeBlanc and Regina Hartwell gathered their clothes and purses and ran into the bedroom to finish dressing.

Bonnie swore she knew what the two girls were doing naked under the blankets.

 

 

Regina Hartwell wouldn’t go for a threesome. “The thought of having a dick inside makes me sick,” she told Justin. Then she bragged about the size of her dildo.

It drove Justin Thomas nuts. He could only watch the two girls together for so long, then he had to leave. Either he got so excited that he had to go to another room to masturbate or he got so jealous that Kim was with Regina, and not him, that he plain had to leave.

 

 

Hartwell stood at the bar in Oil Can Harry’s. So did her former roommate Mike White. She turned around, and they saw each other. In fact, they stared at and studied each other. Mike had to because he didn’t recognize her.
God, she looks so different,
he thought. Weight loss. Regina was so much skinnier than in the past.

So was White. Prison had done that. The 6’5” man was down to less than 200 pounds.

But Hartwell seemed proud of her new body. She wore jeans and a tight cropped top, and her navel was pierced. Regina didn’t seem to Mike White to be the type to pierce her navel.

“This is stupid,” he said to Hartwell, the woman who had sent him to prison for drugs. “Why should we fight anymore? I didn’t do anything to you, even though I know you think I did.”

Regina sighed inside. God, she needed a friend. This thing with Kim hurt too much. “You’re right.” She needed someone she could talk to, someone she could confess to, someone who cared.