I sit up. I’m pretty sure I see KK’s silhouette slip out the door.
Shit, she’s bolting.
She’s had enough, seeing her future as one of five people trapped in a one-room cabin and the rapid descent into a full-on shooting gallery, the walls splattered with the last squirt of our used rigs, us covered in scabs, grinding our molars down to nothing.
I get up, grab my pistol, and head outside. KK turns. Her face is a tired shade of fuck-my-life. She’s sitting on the one wooden step. I motion with my head and she nods. The wood is wet, slippery almost.
Probably shouldn’t be out here alone, middle of the night, you know?
Yeah.
She stares straight ahead. She wears an oversized University of Kentucky shirt pulled over her bunched-up knees. I tell her she’s got some big old titties.
She looks down at her kneecaps bulging against her shirt and laughs and it’s nice, the softness of it, genuine. Wind blows. The air is the mixture of pine and damp earth and ammonia from the Albino’s cooking. I tell her it smells good.
For reals.
I look at my wrist like I’m wearing a watch. I say, Should be done in about an hour.
He a good cook?
I cock my head. You for real? Guarantee you’ve had it. Clear as ice, shards bigger than golf balls.
Talking shit now.
Bigger than … I don’t know, pretty big though.
Word.
Yeah.
It’s fucked up talking about dope with KK. It feels like some violation, the colliding of two worlds that were never supposed to intersect, us and drugs, us together using, and that’s what had fucked us up, us trying to make them merge, us trying to have it all.
Maybe she senses this because she says, How you been?
I laugh. I say, Other than everyone who isn’t a junkie being dead, nearly dying myself, and now being stuck here?
Fucked up, right?
So fucked up. Like for the longest time, thought I was done for. Dead. That this was some sort of fucked-up trip that wouldn’t end. Like that shit people talk about when you die and your brain floods with chemicals.
Have no idea what you’re talking about.
You know, like white light?
I guess.
She hands me a butt. I light it. I think about the Chucks seeing two floating cherries.
Pretty shitty, I say.
What is?
Me. How I’ve been.
Word.
You a gangster now?
Sho’ nuff.
Just the same old shit. Selling and smoking. Selling and smoking. Day after day, I say.
The life and times of Chase Daniels.
Pretty exciting, huh?
Beats the alternative, KK says, sometimes, at least.
You really believe that?
Not even a little bit.
Then what the hell happened? I mean, Jesus, thought you were all about sobriety.
Don’t have to be a dick.
No, no, I say. I put my hand on her knee. This feels weird because it’s kind of like her boob. I put my hand back in my lap. I tell her I just meant how serious she was about it.
I know.
I’m waiting for more but it doesn’t come. Finally, she says, The same thing that always happens. You know how shit goes.
Yeah.
Life. You’re going about your day, maybe six months into the
new
you, and then one day you look around and you’re stocking shelves at Target, wearing that stupid fucking outfit of khakis and red polo, and people are just walking by, you know, like you’re invisible? Just some girl working for fifty cents over minimum wage. And all you’re thinking about is getting off work, but then you think about what you’ll do, like really, and you know you’ll drive home, cook macaroni and cheese, go to a seven o’clock meeting, listen to the same bitches complain about the same shit—I’m fat, my dad abused me, my job sucks, resentments are the number-one offender—and then you’ll go home and watch
Laguna Beach
and a rerun of
Everybody Loves Raymond
before going to bed by ten thirty. All to get up and do it again.
Suicide, I say.
That’s what I’m saying. But that shit always comes. Always. You know?
Don’t have to tell me.
KK says, And the thing I get to thinking is that maybe it’s not
Shit, she’s bolting.
She’s had enough, seeing her future as one of five people trapped in a one-room cabin and the rapid descent into a full-on shooting gallery, the walls splattered with the last squirt of our used rigs, us covered in scabs, grinding our molars down to nothing.
I get up, grab my pistol, and head outside. KK turns. Her face is a tired shade of fuck-my-life. She’s sitting on the one wooden step. I motion with my head and she nods. The wood is wet, slippery almost.
Probably shouldn’t be out here alone, middle of the night, you know?
Yeah.
She stares straight ahead. She wears an oversized University of Kentucky shirt pulled over her bunched-up knees. I tell her she’s got some big old titties.
She looks down at her kneecaps bulging against her shirt and laughs and it’s nice, the softness of it, genuine. Wind blows. The air is the mixture of pine and damp earth and ammonia from the Albino’s cooking. I tell her it smells good.
For reals.
I look at my wrist like I’m wearing a watch. I say, Should be done in about an hour.
He a good cook?
I cock my head. You for real? Guarantee you’ve had it. Clear as ice, shards bigger than golf balls.
Talking shit now.
Bigger than … I don’t know, pretty big though.
Word.
Yeah.
It’s fucked up talking about dope with KK. It feels like some violation, the colliding of two worlds that were never supposed to intersect, us and drugs, us together using, and that’s what had fucked us up, us trying to make them merge, us trying to have it all.
Maybe she senses this because she says, How you been?
I laugh. I say, Other than everyone who isn’t a junkie being dead, nearly dying myself, and now being stuck here?
Fucked up, right?
So fucked up. Like for the longest time, thought I was done for. Dead. That this was some sort of fucked-up trip that wouldn’t end. Like that shit people talk about when you die and your brain floods with chemicals.
Have no idea what you’re talking about.
You know, like white light?
I guess.
She hands me a butt. I light it. I think about the Chucks seeing two floating cherries.
Pretty shitty, I say.
What is?
Me. How I’ve been.
Word.
You a gangster now?
Sho’ nuff.
Just the same old shit. Selling and smoking. Selling and smoking. Day after day, I say.
The life and times of Chase Daniels.
Pretty exciting, huh?
Beats the alternative, KK says, sometimes, at least.
You really believe that?
Not even a little bit.
Then what the hell happened? I mean, Jesus, thought you were all about sobriety.
Don’t have to be a dick.
No, no, I say. I put my hand on her knee. This feels weird because it’s kind of like her boob. I put my hand back in my lap. I tell her I just meant how serious she was about it.
I know.
I’m waiting for more but it doesn’t come. Finally, she says, The same thing that always happens. You know how shit goes.
Yeah.
Life. You’re going about your day, maybe six months into the
new
you, and then one day you look around and you’re stocking shelves at Target, wearing that stupid fucking outfit of khakis and red polo, and people are just walking by, you know, like you’re invisible? Just some girl working for fifty cents over minimum wage. And all you’re thinking about is getting off work, but then you think about what you’ll do, like really, and you know you’ll drive home, cook macaroni and cheese, go to a seven o’clock meeting, listen to the same bitches complain about the same shit—I’m fat, my dad abused me, my job sucks, resentments are the number-one offender—and then you’ll go home and watch
Laguna Beach
and a rerun of
Everybody Loves Raymond
before going to bed by ten thirty. All to get up and do it again.
Suicide, I say.
That’s what I’m saying. But that shit always comes. Always. You know?
Don’t have to tell me.
KK says, And the thing I get to thinking is that maybe it’s not
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