I’d seen Danny high more times than I could remember, more often than I was willing to admit. I’d just never seen him do it, do
this
before. It terrified me, plain and simple. The whole, cheap ritual. The sudden efficiency of his small, careful movements, as if he were threading needles, after sitting beside him while he could barely drive. The hiss of the heroin as it percolated in the spoon, the heavy odor of incense that filled the car. The way he flicked the body of the needle like a soap opera doctor, the way he held it before his face like a priest raising the chalice at Mass.
When he rested his arm on his thigh I saw the ragged black scabs, pink with infection around the edges, dotting the inside of his elbow. Danny slid the needle into a vein. He pushed down the plunger, sucked in his breath through his teeth. I turned away and I drew on my cigarette, watching our blurry reflections in the filthy window of the car.
Danny shuddered once and released a long sigh, packing up his works and stashing them under his seat. He reached for the brown bag at my feet. He uncapped the bottle of tea, lifted it to his mouth and drank it down. Sighing again, he went still. Then he rolled down his window and vomited the entire bottle of tea all over the outside of his car. He cranked the window back up and dragged the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Damn,” he said. “That really shouldn’t still happen as often as it does.” He reached for another bottle but didn’t open it. “Shit dehydrates me. You mind driving for a while?”
We switched places. Danny waved to the caterers as we drove past. In the rearview mirror I watched them watch us as we crested the hill. It was only then that other fears, fears I should’ve felt back on the shoulder, came to mind. Cops. Jail. Explaining to my department chair what I was doing in a car full of narcotics, with a brother full of narcotics, in the island’s most exclusive neighborhood.
I could see myself in his office, trying to tell him with a straight face, “Well, Dean Whitestone, sir, I was the designated driver.” I laughed at that as Danny scanned through stations on the radio. It was funny because it was true. I was the designated driver. That was why Danny had called me in the first place. So he could still get around when he got too high to drive.
When Danny switched off the radio and told me he had an appointment, one he had to keep before we got that beer, I laughed again. Errands and appointments. I was the chauffeur all right. Happy fucking birthday. At the foot of Todt Hill we headed south.
Right before the intersection of Amboy and Richmond, Danny directed us into the Waldbaum’s parking lot. More tea, I figured. Or maybe, hopefully, something for his breath. I turned to park in front of the store but Danny pointed off to the side.
Half a dozen teenaged boys, all sporting buzz cuts and baggy clothes, milled around by the train tracks behind the store. One of them eased out of the pack, walked over, and leaned against Danny’s side of the car. He waited, staring at me while Danny rolled the window down.
“Who’s he?” the boy asked. A bejeweled watch, way too large for his skinny arm, dangled from his wrist.
“My brother,” Danny said. “He’s good.”
I stared straight ahead, my hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, like a cop and not a drug dealer was leaning in the window. The other boys shuffled their feet and watched the car. I wanted to say something cool and cynical, but I kept my mouth shut. I wanted a cigarette but I didn’t want to reach inside my jacket. I seethed at being frozen by the stare of a kid too young to enroll at the college where I teach.
“Dust,” Danny said, holding a hundred-dollar bill between his fingers.
The boy took the bill and dropped something into the car.
“All I got right now, I’ll bring more to the party,” the boy said. “Word’s out.” He smiled. Perfect teeth. “Every motherfucker in the city’s been through here for this shit.”
Danny nodded. “Best shit in the city. By far. No doubt.”
Best shit in the city. Sold by fourteen-year-olds stalking a busy parking lot in my parents’ neighborhood. The same parents nagging me to move out of the “bad neighborhood” I lived in. I wasn’t offended or frightened. None of these kids was gonna mug my mother when she went grocery shopping. It was beneath them. Shit, she was probably safer with them around. I just felt stupid. Stupid because when we turned into the parking lot I figured they were sneaking cigarettes before sneaking into the R-rated movie across the street. Stupid because they had me pegged for lost and afraid the instant they saw me behind the wheel. Stupid because I was still trying not to believe they were what they were—miniature drug dealers wearing five-hundred-dollar watches who had no interest in merit badges, camping trips, or baseball teams.
Another boy, a carbon copy of the first, approached the car. Danny slipped out of his seat and the new boy climbed without a word into the back of the car.
“See ya at Al’s house,” Danny said, returning to the passenger seat.
The first boy nodded and backed away, snapping his gum, pulling the brim of his ball cap low over his eyes. When he raised his hands to his cap, his watch slid halfway to his elbow.
Danny turned to me. “You should come to this party, Kev. Al would bust his ass seeing you there.”
“Al who?”
“Fucking Al Bruno, bro,” Danny said. “From high school.”
“You still hang with him?” I asked. “I thought he went to jail.”
“Now and then,” Danny said, shrugging. He laughed. “Now and then we hang out. Now and then he goes to jail. Anyways, he’s out right now. His folks moved to Florida, left him in that big house by himself. Still throws good parties. He likes the company.” Danny turned around. “Tommy, this is my brother, Kevin.”
Tommy leaned forward. “You know Al, Mr. Driver-Man?”
“I did,” I said. I started the car. “Long time ago.”
“That’s funny,” Tommy said, settling again into the backseat. “You don’t seem like the type.”
Danny chuckled. “Like the man said, it was a long time ago.” He slapped my shoulder with the back of his hand. “Whadda you say we roll?”
I cut a tight U-turn and pulled back onto Amboy Road, heading north at Danny’s suggestion. In the rearview, I watched Tommy roll a joint in his lap. Danny handed back the package and Tommy sprinkled the joint with angel dust. He finished his roll with a lick and flourish and passed the joint forward. Danny took it and tucked it behind his ear.
“I could use a beer,” I said.
Danny rolled his eyes at the backseat. When I shrugged, he did it again. I finally got it. Our passenger was too young to get into the bar.
“Tommy lives by you, on the way to the Red Lion,” Danny said. “Mind givin’ him a ride home?”
I almost laughed. My apartment was twice as far away as the bar. “No problem.”
“Get on the expressway, it’s quicker,” Tommy said, leaning forward between us, his hands between his knees. “My mom goes apeshit if I’m not there when she gets home from work. We gonna smoke that shit?” he asked Danny, “or you just gonna wear it all night?”
Danny pulled the joint from behind his ear and stuck it in his mouth. He lit up and took a deep drag, cracking open the window as he held the smoke. He released a long, slow exhale. We left a thin trail of smoke rising behind us into the glow of the streetlights as we ascended the entrance ramp.
Leaning heavy on the gas pedal, I forced the car up to sixty-five, a shade over the limit. We still moved slower than the three lanes of traffic zipping by on our left. Danny handed the joint over his shoulder. Tommy pinched it between his forefinger and his thumb but instead of smoking it, he reached it over my right shoulder.
“G’head, Wheelman,” he said, “it’s all you.”
I shook my head. “No thanks, I gotta drive. I need to make it an early night, anyway.” Like I needed a full set of excuses to not smoke angel dust with this kid. Tommy snorted in disbelief and reached the joint farther forward.
Danny snatched the joint with a giggle, drew on it again and passed it back to Tommy.
“Dude here is a responsible ah-dhult,” Danny said, the streetlights strobing his grinning face as he spoke. “Got a real job and everything.”
I glanced at Danny, praying he wasn’t going to tell this kid what I did for a living. He patted my shoulder and nodded at me, as if to tell me he knew what I was thinking and that my dirty little secret was safe with him.
“You still seeing that girl?” Danny asked me.
“Kelsey? I never was.”
“Was that her name? The one you met at the Dock?”
“Andrea?” I said. “Shit, I told you, I haven’t talked to her in months.”
“What happened, man? I thought she was into you.”
“I thought so, too,” I said. “But she disappeared. Stood me up once, stopped returning my calls.”
“Shame,” Danny said. “She was pretty fucking hot.”
“You tap it, at least?” Tommy asked.
“ ’Scuse me?” I said.
Tommy leaned forward. “You know, tap it, hit it, bang it, nail it?”
Danny laughed into his fist.
“No, I didn’t,” I said, immediately hating myself for even answering.
Tommy laughed. “And you wonder why she bailed on you.” He laughed again. “You got her number?”
I snapped around in my seat, surprised to find Tommy’s face only inches from mine. “Somebody know you, Slick?”
“What’s this guy’s problem?” Tommy asked, talking to Danny but looking at me. “I’m just asking a question here.” He turned to Danny. “Where’d you pick up this jerk-off?”
Danny twisted in his seat until he was nose to nose with Tommy. “I fucking told you, he’s my brother. Lay the fuck off.” He held the joint under Tommy’s eye. “You want this or not?”
Tommy took the joint and settled into the backseat.
Danny rolled his head, cracking his neck. “Wait a minute. Then who’s fuckin’ Kelsey?”
“Prob’ly not Wheelman,” Tommy chirped.
I ignored the joke. “Kelsey’s that girl from work.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Danny said. “You’re dating her?”
“No, but I know I told you about her,” I said. “She’s the new early European teacher.”
“What’s wrong with American girls?” Tommy asked.
Danny laughed again. “Jesus Christ. Just smoke your shit, tough guy.”
I decided to drop the subject. I had no real point to make. Kelsey was just a coworker; we weren’t dating. And even if we were, Danny wouldn’t remember it anyway.
In the rearview, I saw Tommy gazing out the window, the joint burning in one hand, shadowy smoke curling slowly from his nostrils. I wondered where the hell Danny had picked him up. He put the joint to his lips again. He had already forgotten all about me. A pair of headlights grew large in the rearview and I watched an old yellow Camaro whip around us to the left and thunder away, its taillights a pair of red eyes fading into the darkness. Silently, Tommy passed the joint forward again. When Danny didn’t take it, Tommy nudged his shoulder. One at a time Danny’s eyelids popped open. He studied the joint for a long moment, as if trying to remember what it was. He took it and held it to his lips. The ember brightened and lit his face. I glanced down at the speedometer. I could hear the crackle of the burning paper as Danny inhaled again.
It was then that the unmistakable ruby red flash of a police cruiser filled the car. My palms went wet on the wheel. My mouth filled with the taste of pennies. We were a mile from my house. One more exit. In the mirrors, the lights were blinding. Blinking at the spots dancing before my eyes, I lifted my foot off the pedal and tried to refocus on the road. The cop hit his sirens, swung out to our left and blew past us. I coughed out more air than I thought my lungs could hold. The Camaro.
“Good Christ!” Danny screamed, lurching forward in his seat. “I love this country!” He pounded the dashboard with his fist. “God bless America! Everyone in this car is guilty of at least one drug-related felony and he’s nailing someone for fucking
speeding
. I love this FUCKING country.”
He laughed like the Mad Hatter, leaning out the window as we passed the cop car pulled over on the shoulder with the Camaro sitting in front of him. Danny fell back in his seat, his hair wild from the wind. “That pig just missed the biggest bust of his career. So much for detective.” He fell forward. “Where’s my fuckin’ tea?”
I lit a cigarette. I asked Danny for a bottle of tea. I needed something, anything, to wash the taste of fear from my mouth. I felt like I’d been puking bleach. Danny was right. The moment that cop landed on our bumper, badged, armed, and full of justice, we were transformed from three bored guys in a shitty blue Escort into a carful of felons. Under those awful misery lights, a blank, empty Tuesday night became ten years in jail—hard penance for the common sin of boredom. I knew my future was what I had felt burn up and flush through my stomach, flush through my seat and pour out along the highway, a trail of ashes blowing over the asphalt. But as quickly as we had been incinerated in those lights, maybe even before the panic had finished fully gutting me, harmless anonymity washed over us and the empty night again unfolded its wings.
When Danny had yelled out the window at the cop, part of me wanted to put my foot in his ass and push him the rest of the way out. But another part of me hummed with the same thrill, the charge of having gotten away with it all, of narrow escape, of having the end of everything pass me by, even if it was never after me to begin with. But like the panic, the thrill didn’t last.
We eased off the expressway at the Richmond Terrace exit, my exit, the last one. My eyes burned from the pot smoke and from the exhausting, post-adrenaline crash. Tommy suddenly remembered our destination and spouted out directions. We dropped him in front of his house, a small, gray-shingled place with a long front walk. A dog barked inside the house when he swung open the front gate.
Danny said something to me about playing darts, about the party at Al’s. I ignored him, just piloting the car through the narrow streets of my neighborhood. Danny eventually went silent, scratching his fingernails at the inside of his elbows. It was only when we settled to a stop in front of my house that Danny realized where I was taking us. He looked at me as I unfastened my seat belt.