Kobe (4 page)

              When you're addicted to smack all you think about is your next fix. You're never really sad, just temporarily sober. Skaggs snaps out of it and makes his way to Billy's front door.

              "You know what's real cheap and gets you goin' pretty good?" Billy stands and stretches, leaving his pistol in Skagg's peripheral vision. "Bath salts. They sell 'em at the Manor."

              "Don't that shit make you go crazy?" Skaggs asks.

              "Doesn't everything? I mean, if it's too strong, just mix it with a couple pills. Maybe a few xanax. I got purple footballs and full bars."

              "Gimmee two bars too, I guess."

              Billy smiles. A drug dealer doing what temporarily boosts America's economy, his civic duty.

          
 
Chapter V

Sunday Morning Blues

             
Skaggs stands at the counter of the Manor Carryout, the little ghetto convenience store in the heart of Bayside Commons. He stares at a yellow box of bath salts with the label 'Speed Racer' on the front.

              "These fuck me up?" Skaggs asks Akmed, the dark skinned clerk behind the counter.

              "They are not for human consumption. You want to buy them?" Akmed looks past Skaggs, watching customers peruse his products. Thievery is common in this part of town, some business proprietors let it slide, but Skaggs knows the clerk's reputation for pulling a shotgun on shoplifters.

              "You ever try 'em?" Skaggs asks as the line behind him grows.

              "I don't do drugs," Akmed says in a thick African accent.

              "Then why do you sell 'em?"

              "Same reason I sell tampons."

              "What?" Skaggs stares at the agitated clerk, puzzled, of course in his given state of expanded equilibrium everything is puzzling.

              "I don't want to argue my station in life. Either buy them or get out."

              "You can't talk to me like that, I'm the customer!" Skaggs pounds his hand on the counter.

              "I've poured my heart and soul into this business to keep it running," Akmed says, "The day a doped up scab shuts me down, I'll pack my bags and move back to Africa." Akmed slides his hand underneath the counter.

              "I'll buy them, ok?" Skaggs nervously throws a ten spot on the counter.

              Akmed hands him the box of bath salts, smiling, "thank you for shopping at Manor Carryout, come again."

* * * * *

              Quinn's skinny legs slap overgrown weeds as he walks through the Bayside apartment complex, the morning dew sticks to his baggy jeans. A cell phone firmly presses against his ear. "Yeah Rob, I can give you an eighth for forty-five. I'm gonna finish my math homework and I'll swing by. Don't tell anyone else I'm dropping the price for you, it'll hurt business."

              Quinn crosses into a mulched area around a hazardous playground. Beer and liquor bottles litter the area. Condoms are tossed haphazardly underneath a plastic slide with forgotten children floating around inside.

              He walks by a group of gangsters passing around a blunt. They stare at him for a moment. He puts his head down and picks up the pace. Once in the clear, he continues his conversation.

              "Naw I got it from Jaybird. I don't buy shit from Skaggs anymore he's been acting sketchy as fuck. Did you hear his theory on your dad killing Leroy?" Quinn crosses a parking lot. "Twisted, right? He's been doing all kinds of drugs lately. Like not weed and pills, but fucking heroin, meth. Shit like that."

              Quinn strolls past an elderly couple and waves.

              "My mom's gonna kick him out soon. I don't know if he's got anywhere to go, no one in the Bay wants to take care of him." Quinn climbs a set of stairs into building F. The smell of dollar store carpet cleaner fills the air.

              "I don't even want to look at him, let alone have him sleep in my house. Did I tell you he stole half my script of Adderall? Fuckin' prick. Anyway, I'll call when I get done with my homework dude, see ya."

              Quinn unlocks the door to see his mom still asleep on the couch with half a beer next to her. Sunday morning blues. He eases the door shut and sneaks down the hallway to his room.

              The smell of weed permeates the air as Quinn pulls out a twenty-eight-gram treasure from his pocket. He puts it up to his nose and inhales the exotic aroma.

              Quinn removes a digital scale from a cigar box and sits it on the dresser. He presses the power button and places a plastic cup on the scale. Quinn presses tare and the weight goes from fifteen grams to zero. Crystals fall like snow from the bright green nuggets when Quinn drops them into the cup.

              Twenty-eight point six, a little over an ounce.

              Smoking for free is the code of most pot dealers. The most important rule by far is don't carry a zip without a weapon. Bullets don't fly often, but those pistols in everyone's backpacks aren't for target practice. It's the Wild West in Bayside. 

              Quinn carries a taser.

              He used it once on the way home from school. A couple guys started pushing him. When one of the goons tried to take his book bag, Quinn hit him with some electroshock therapy. The electricity surged through the thug, and the asshole shit his pants. The other guy ran like a little bitch.

              That's Bayside, the gated ghetto. Thugs lurk around the corners to harass helpless teenagers, scumbags, and addicts alike. A mom with two jobs generally gets a pass, mostly because they're the strongest people in the neighborhood. Afraid to lose their hard earned money or pride.

              Quinn worked his way up from the bottom of the drug dealing food chain, paying twenty bucks for a gram. Once he got in good with some of the stoners around the building he started buying it from Billy.

              Jaybird used to stop by Billy's place from time to time, collecting money. Whenever he came around he was always friendly to Quinn, and anyone else that was there. He'd usually spark up a blunt and let it pass around the room before he left. A very generous man, not pushy, he'd just come, get his money and leave.

              One day, Jaybird pulled Quinn aside and gave him an offer he couldn't refuse; two hundred bucks an ounce.

              Jaybird grows the majority of his weed and has different pay scales for each. The strain he sells Quinn is his pride and joy, Kobe Kush. No other member of the drug dealing community can get it for less than three, not even Roc or Billy.

              Quinn keeps his lips sealed tight about the bargain. He just tells everyone it costs four hundred an ounce, well everyone except Rob and Austin.

              It isn't a mystery Quinn has a shitty life. A junkie for a brother, a drunk for a mother, and a ghost for a father, but he can make it out as long as a few dollars slide into his hands. Jaybird's main buisness is real estate and he says as soon as Quinn can move six pounds he'll get him set up with a home.

              Not just a trap house, but an honest to goodness home outside of the Bay, with no piss stains on the carpets or bums in the courtyard.

* * * * *

              Music pulses through the beige apartment wall. Skaggs sniffs a line off a small square mirror, the last in a four lane drive. He backs away, tilts his head north, and snorts back the drain letting the mixture drip down his throat.

              His cheeks clench.

              His teeth grind.

              His abdominal muscles tighten.

              After his body begins to let loose, Skaggs dumps bath salts into a mortar and pestle. The white crystals bounce around inside the bowl. He squishes the speed into dust relatively quickly. He adds five Adderall tablets, five Ambien pills, a Xanax bar, and two Percocet twenties in with the store bought Methylone. He crushes the ingredients until they blend into one heavenly powder.

* * * * *

              Tina wakes up on her worn out sofa. Music from her idiot son's room pounds in her brain. Skaggs, the boy who broke her heart, the child who doesn't care that she works fourteen hour shifts to pay for his thievery. The son she carried in her womb for nine months and ten days.

              "Turn that shit down!" Tina rolls off the couch and sort of spins to the bathroom, it's not a walk, but she isn't really falling either. It's the hung-over shimmy.

              Inside the bathroom, she turns on the shower in preparation for another day.

* * * * *

              Skaggs drops and does twenty pushups.

              He jumps up and shadow boxes, dancing violently with his reflection, to 'Killing in the Name Of' by Rage Against the Machine.

              "I'm gonna fuck you up, Judd!" he screams.

              We've all done this move, the angry yell at the fake man in the mirror. Flexing our muscles at ghosts.

              The heroin is all gone. The Adderall and Percocet mingle like two strangers in a bar before their first drink. The bath salts, a legal substance, have already taken hold. The Xanax makes him lose control of his inhibitions. He can only think of revenge. A sheriff's shield buried below six feet of dirt.

              Skaggs picks up a hatchet. His smile is sinister in the reflecting glass. A box-cutter catches his eye, and the wheels in his brain excel with manic thoughts.

* * * * *

              Quinn fills a backpack with clothes, an electronic tablet, a couple chargers. The essentials.

              "Yeah I'm comin' over now, Rob. It's gettin' too crazy here for me. Skaggs is high as fuck, stomping around the room, and making all kinds of noise. My mom's in the shower so I'm gonna wait and tell her goodbye. She ain't gonna be home until six in the morning.

              "Poor lady's pulling graveyard again. I slipped an extra twenty in her purse while she was drinking last night, enough to get her gas and food."

              He tosses his bag over his shoulder and makes his way to the door.

* * * * *

              Tina massages her sore arms with a pink loofa. The water washes over the wrinkles on her face.

              "I'm going over to Rob's ma," Quinn yells from outside the bathroom door.

              "If you wanna wait a few minutes, I'll drive ya."

              "You sure?"

              "Of course babe." Tina hears his footsteps wander away, leaving her with nothing but the rhythm of tap water and incessant bass oozing through the wall.

              Skaggs, her other son. The one she sometimes wishes was never born, but only for a moment. She comes back to reality and remembers him as a little league baseball player, a kid that took piano lessons. The bass thumps and Tina cries.

* * * * *

              Skaggs pulls apart the box cutter. He meticulously picks up a razor blade out of the plastic casing. Careful not to drop the stainless steel sliver onto the dirty carpet, he digs it into his yellowish fingernail until secure. The maniac picks up a hatchet, and with the flat of the blade, whacks the razor hard enough to split through his index finger.

             
His neurons play laser tag with each other, bouncing around his mind, riding each brainwave like a Tsunami.

              Skaggs puts down the hatchet and takes another razor blade out of the box cutter. He digs it through his middle fingernail, once he gets to the pink flesh, he leaves it be, watching intently to make sure it's positioned perfectly. Satisfied, he smashes it through his finger.

              He repeats the process until his homemade claw is complete.

* * * * *

              Tina opens the curtain and steps out of the shower. She wraps her forty-year-old body with a towel. Varicose veins map out her trials and tribulations.

              Her tits, once so sought after in her twenties, are now victims of gravity. She uses a green towel with bleach stains to wrap her hair up.

              Tina hears loud banging from the adjacent bedroom.

              "Damnit boy! I'm through with all your bullshit!" she screams through the bathroom wall.

              She fixes her towel, opens the door, and darts down the hall to Skaggs' bedroom.

              "Get your shit packed and get the fuck out! I've had it with you!"

              She walks into the living room and sees her purse open on the floor, her medicine ruffled through, damn near gone.

              Tina dashes back to Skaggs' bedroom door and pounds as hard as she can. "Open up you piece of shit!"

              Skaggs opens the door, slowly. He's higher than she could ever imagine. Geeked out.