Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [110]
I produce the plastic bag. “How do I do this?” I ask.
She stands, smiling. “Whatchu got there?” she says, suddenly very sweet.
“I just got it,” I say. “But I don’t know how to smoke it on my own. I need somebody to show me.”
“That looks fine,” she says. And when she says “fine” she makes the word glow.
Because I am so drunk, time becomes elastic. I don’t know how long we are standing there before the black car pulls up to the curb. There are three young black men in the car and somehow, I find myself sitting in the car, on the backseat. The hooker is on my left. An older man I hadn’t seen before is on my right. The bag with the rocks is up front with somebody else.
I see the lights of the boats on the water as we cross over a bridge.
The car is so dusty inside that I think, They’ve never cleaned it. This fact makes me feel safe, as though I can go unnoticed.
I fall asleep.
The sun spilled into the room. The windows were open and the breeze was caught in the madras bedspread hung at the window. It billowed into the room and reminded me of stained glass, the way it glowed. I remember there were plants everywhere, their leaves green and shiny. Somebody watered them and dusted their leaves. Maybe it was Serena.
When I woke up, the car had stopped in front of a building and we all climbed out. We went into a building. The men talked, the hooker spoke out loud, a list of things she wanted. Tissues, some beer, a comb.
One of the men stopped on the steps and turned around. He said he’d be back in a while. He was going to go to the store.
The rest of us went into an apartment. We sat. I sat on the sofa. The hooker busied herself, opening drawers, locating a lighter, a pipe.
One man sat at the small table below the window, another sat next to me on the sofa.
I was the subject of some amusement and interest. “What the hell you doin’?” somebody said.
“I am crazy,” I said. “And bored.”
“Man, you don’t know what the fuck you doing.”
But I did not feel threatened, in the least.
These people knew each other well and they began to talk around me, resume a conversation they had begun maybe days before. They were catching up. “No, man. I gotta go to work today. I can’t party all night. I got to be at the train.”
Later, they were talking about somebody else who worked in a garage. Somebody who repaired cars.
The hooker told me her name. I do not remember asking. I do not remember her telling me her name. I only know that somehow, she became Serena.
The man who had gone to the store returned. Had I given him twenty dollars? I remembered, then, that I had given him money. He carried a bag of groceries. SOS pads. Essentials.
He started talking about his uncle.
Somebody lit the pipe and the smell made me drool. It was passed to me second, after the person who lit it. After the man who sat at the table lit it, took the first deep drag. Serena took it from his fingers and gave it to me. Which struck me as very kind and unselfish.
I inhaled. And tried to keep the chemical smoke in my lungs for as long as I could, like I was swimming underwater.
The pipe was passed around the room and what surprised me was that nothing happened. The men, now three of them, continued talking about their daily lives. Uncle somebody who was fixing up his house in Queens. Some guy who worked in a garage. Somebody else who had to go to work soon. We could have been having coffee.
I faded into the sofa. Perhaps I slept.
In the morning, I was alone with Serena.
I watched her tuck the sheet in between the box spring and mattress, smoothing it with her hand. She fluffed the pillows, dented them with the spine of her hand, just so. Sometimes, she would turn to me and smile. She offered me coffee, boiled in a pot on the stove.
The ceiling fan turned slowly, not because it was on, but because the breeze pushed its blades. A pigeon landed on the windowsill and then took off.
The apartment had no door. I rose from the couch to find the bathroom in the hallway. None of the apartments