Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [34]
Two days after the pot ran out, Jude woke up to an empty house, put on his headphones and his hooded sweatshirt, and skated unsteadily back to Hippie’s apartment. No one answered his knock. He looked around for something to open the door with, found a plastic ice scraper stabbed in the snow, and for several minutes rattled its edge in the keyhole uselessly before giving up and hunting for a spare key—under the mat, in the mailbox, on the window ledge, and finally in the wooden birdhouse, where it was entombed in snow.
Inside, the place was dead still. He opened cupboards, closets, drawers, rattled around the contents of the kitchen trash. In the bedroom, a mangy dog lounged across the bed, eyeing Jude with a restless boredom. When Jude approached, the dog didn’t move. Jude whispered, “You’re not a very good guard dog, are you?” The dog—was it a girl dog?—raised her eyebrows. Were they eyebrows? “Or are you a good dog?” he asked her, his voice strangely high. “You know I’m good?” He placed a tentative hand on her head. He could feel the grit of dirt in her fur, the bony shape of her skull. He worked his hand into the mass of her neck, her long, tight belly, smooth as the curve of a guitar. For a few minutes he lay down on the bed beside her, his arm looped around her warm body, feeling her breathe, feeling his own body tingle and pulse.
In the closet were overalls and lumberjack flannels, Birkenstocks and boots. Under the bed he found sleeping bags, a hiking pack; on the dresser was an envelope of photographs. “Where does he keep it, girl? Huh?” Most of the pictures were of Hippie and his family at Christmas, Hippie in his Santa hat, people pulling ribbons off of gifts, but the last few in the roll were of a different party—a group of stoners raising peace signs. It was Tory Ventura’s house. With a start Jude recognized an overexposed sliver of Teddy—eyes closed, midstride, his mouth forming a silent, careless word.
Jude folded the picture and put it in his wallet. Turning to go, as though it was what he had come for, he almost missed the bathroom. He ducked back in, opened the medicine cabinet, the shower curtain, and in a sealed bucket under the bathroom sink, found four gallon-size freezer bags, each packed full of pot. Jude pressed the cool plastic of one of them to his face. It smelled like a miracle. It was as big as a loaf of bread, probably half a pound. Hippie wouldn’t miss one of them. He would miss it, but it was better than taking all of them. Jude skated home with the bag tucked in the pocket of his sweatshirt. He looked pregnant.
He was halfway inside his room, one leg on each side of the open window, the skateboard tossed in on the floor, when he saw that his mother was sitting on the bottom bunk of his bed. She had an issue of Thrasher open on her lap.
“Where were you?”
Jude sat straddling the windowsill, looking down into the alley, three stories below. His room had begun to secrete its own body odor. He closed his eyes, exhausted and weak. For a moment he thought he might throw up.
He felt himself sway, slip. When he opened his eyes, his mother had caught him by the hood. She helped him swing his leg over the sill and slide down to the floor.
“What happened to you? Where’d you go?” She closed the window against the cold. “I’m glad you’re getting out.” She gathered her skirt and squatted down beside him. The handkerchief in her hair and the moccasins on her feet made her look as though she were foraging for food in the wilderness, or coaxing an animal out of hiding. “But you’re not strong enough to climb up and down that fire escape. What is that?” She came closer, knelt in front of him, and raised a hand toward Jude’s belly. With a force that surprised them both, he smacked her hand away. She fell back on her heels and sat staring at him for a few seconds, wide-eyed with shock. Then she stood up