Down and Out on Murder Mile by Tony O'Neill Page A

That’s where I’m at right now.”
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    â€œAnyway,” Susan interjected, “how is any of this your business? What, you sublet a flat to us and suddenly you’re monitoring our recovery? Where do you get off, Michael?”
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    â€œLook, love,” Michael shot back, “for all intents and purposes, I’m your fucking landlord, okay? And there’s some shit I can’t tolerate in my flat these days.”
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    â€œOh, so we can’t live here unless we start showing up to more meetings and being good little patients? So you’re the king of recovery now? What? If I don’t get a sponsor are you going to revoke my ex-junkie license?”
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    He ignored me. He looked at his hands for a long time. Then he looked up.
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    Michael said: “You’re still using. The pair of you.”
    â€œBullshit,” I hissed. “I might not buy into all of this fucking twelve-step stuff, but you can’t just accuse us of…”
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    Jack had his moment of triumph. He reached down to the floor and picked up the evidence. One of my empty, brown medicine bottles labeled “Methadone linctus. 80 mls.”
    â€œYou wanna tell me just what the fuck you were doing snooping around in my fucking room, cunt?” I spat.
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    â€œFuck off! I was looking for that book you borrowed off me!”
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    Ah, the book. About a week before Jack had been telling me about a book he had just read, A Sense of Freedom by Jimmy Boyle. Apparently he was Scotland’s most dangerous prisoner, and then he became a sculptor. It sounded quite mindless, but I had made the mistake of feigning interest. Jack had insisted that I borrow it. I declined. “But I’m done with it! You can hang on to it for as long as you’d like.” For a quiet life I had taken the tattered paperback, put it on the desk in my room, and promptly forgotten all about it.
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    I sat there, quiet for a moment. I didn’t like sitting in front of the pair of them like a naughty schoolboy anymore. I stood up, so I was now looking down on them.
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    â€œLook. I relapsed. I’m a junkie. Michael, you know what I’m talking about…”
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    Jack went to chip in, but I dismissed him with my hand.
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    â€œListen, between you and me, Michael, the boy wonder here doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. You know this. He’s a moron! You know. How many times did you fuck up before you got clean this time? And how long has it been, huh? Less than a year, right? So you don’t know what’s around the corner any more than I did. I fucked up! I got a habit again. I got on a methadone program. Are you seriously telling me that you are shocked that a fucking heroin addict relapsed? Is this news to you?”
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    â€œYou lied to me. You lied to the fellowship. You stood up there and took key chains for being clean for thirty days, sixty days, six months—”
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    â€œWho did I hurt, Michael?”
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    â€œYou led us on! You lied .”
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    â€œAnd you’ve never lied when you’ve been using?”
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    â€œBut he isn’t using now!” Jack piped up.
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    â€œShut up, cunt!” I screamed at him. He kept his ass on the chair. I looked back to Michael.
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    â€œSo what are you saying?”
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    â€œI want you both out of here.”
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    â€œYou fucking serious?”
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    â€œYeah.”
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    I ran my fingers through my hair. I looked down at Susan. We had separately, and together, been evicted so many times, from apartments, from motel rooms, from other people’s homes, that she just shrugged and looked at me as if to say “c’est la vie.”
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    â€œFine. We’ll be out by the end of the week.”
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    â€œI want you out tonight.”
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    â€œNo way.”
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    Now it was Michael’s turn to stand. He had a few inches on me, and meat on his