We Live in Water (8 page)
This time, however, it was different. I know it sounds crazy, but I’d begun to worry that my little prank had somehow caused her to get sick. And I take it as a positive sign that I didn’t want that for her. I really didn’t. I sat in my car down the street and gazed up to our third-floor corner window, just hoping to get a glimpse of her. It’s winter now and the early night sky was bruised and dusky. Our old condo was dark. It crossed my mind that maybe she had moved, and I have to say, I was okay with that. I had just reached down to start my car when I saw them walking up the sidewalk, a block from the condo. Tanya looked not only healthy, but beautiful. Happy. The big, dumb, sensitive, cheating chef was holding her hand. And I was happy for her. I really was. She laughed, and above them a streetlight winked at me and slowly came on.
There was a line in the newspaper’s apology that stunned me, describing what I’d done as “a kind of public stalking.” I shook when I read that. I suppose it’s what Tanya thinks of me too. Maybe everyone. That I’m crazy. And maybe I am.
But if you really want my side of the story, here it is: Who isn’t crazy sometimes? Who hasn’t driven around a block hoping a certain person will come out; who hasn’t haunted a certain coffee shop, or stared obsessively at an old picture; who hasn’t toiled over every word in a letter, taken four hours to write a two-sentence e-mail, watched the phone praying that it will ring; who doesn’t lay awake at night sick with the image of her sleeping with someone else?
I mean, Christ, seriously,
what love isn’t crazy
?
And maybe it was further delusion, but as I sat in the car down the block from our old building, I was no longer wishing she’d take me back. Honestly, all I hoped was that Tanya at least thought of me when she read our page.
I really do think I’m better.
And so when I started the car to go home, and they crossed the street toward Tanya’s condo, I was as surprised as anyone to feel the ache come back, an ache as deep and raw as the one I felt that night in late October when I first saw the lamp go out.
I told the other officer, the one at the scene, that I didn’t remember what happened next, though that’s not entirely true. I remember the throaty sound of the racing engine. I remember the feel of cutting across traffic, of grazing something—a car, they told me later—and I remember popping up on the sidewalk and scraping the light pole and I remember bearing down on the jutting corner of the building and I remember a slight hesitation as they started to turn. But what I remember most is a spreading sense of relief that it would all be over soon, that I would never again have to see the light come on in that cold apartment.
I FUCKING HATE PORTLAND.
It’s so earnest and smug. There was a Portland guy here in Shelton on a meth pop and even he had it—that too-sweet-to-believe thing. Like a lot of chalkers, the guy’s teeth were rotted, so he couldn’t say his
R
s and I used to fuck with him about it.
So you’re from Poland?
Po’tland,
the dude would say calmly.
So you prefer being called Polish or Polack?
No, I’m f’om Po’tland.
Fuck off, Polack.
Then one day on yard, someone racked the poor helpless guy for standing too close and knocked out two of those black, hollow uppers. It was weird—afterward he could say his
R
s again, but he had a low humming whistle whenever he spoke. So we called him Kenny G. He actually believed this was an improvement.
I suppose I’ve hated Portland since I took a pop there. It was a shame, too, because it was the perfect Portland scam. A guy in my building was a volunteer recruiter for Greenpeace, and one day when he left his car unlocked I stole his pamphlets and sign-up logs. I couldn’t use that shit in Seattle so I drove to Union Station in Portland, picked out two lost kids who looked like they could be college students, and put them out downtown. There was a girl, a little redhead named Julie, and a loaf named Kevin. I put gay Kevin on Burnside a block from Powell’s and sweet Julie on Broadway, on the corner in front of Nordstrom.
Kevin was okay—friendly, made good eye contact—but Julie was the find: nineteen, short curly red hair, and what looked like a decent body under her hippy dress. She’d been kicked out of her house for accusing her stepdad of feeling her up, and though I’d heard that story a hundred times, it was harsh coming from her, because, like a lot of good-looking girls, she seemed convinced it was her fault.
I figured the bookstore would be the better place, but it wasn’t even close to Julie’s haul at Nordstrom—no one more eager to help the environment than a guilty white liberal dropping sixty on a tie. But then I switched them and Julie kicked ass at the bookstore, too, so it was all her.
It was almost too easy: the kids stopped shoppers, flashed a Greenpeace brochure, and asked them to join. Thankfully, most people don’t want to join, or claim they’re already members, but they’re more than happy to give a one-time donation, especially when the kids say they’re trying to raise four grand to go on the big Greenpeace ship that disrupts whaling. I’d printed up some tax-deduction receipts off the IRS website, and it was amazing how this convinced people we were legitimate. This was the cash side of the business: fives, tens, twenties, a few fifties. On the first day alone, Kevin got almost four hundred and Julie took in six-and-a-half. I chopped half, five-twenty-five for running the thing, and then sold Kevin some weed for the rest of his take. I tried to sell Julie some, too, but she shook her head.
I need money more than I need weed, Danny
.
Of course, some shoppers got nervous or suspicious and didn’t want to give cash, or claimed they had none. This was fine. Like I told the kids:
Make them
want
to give you the thing you’re taking.
So the kids would reluctantly mention credit cards and checks, but say that Greenpeace discouraged it. And they said they’d need to see some ID. Nothing kills suspicion like suspicion.
That was the real haul: credit card numbers and checks. I gave the kids twenty bucks for every card number but I got four hundred dollars each from a guy in Mexico; in two weeks I had given him seventeen. Give me your number and I can have four grand run on your card in Mexico before you’ve put your wallet away.
Checks were even easier. In Seattle I had a dude did nothing but print up phony checks. He had an ID template that made temporary driver’s licenses and soon we were running phony checks all over the state.
This was all a nice diversion from my real business, running bud down from BC. My territory was Washington and Oregon, from Bellingham all the way down I-5. I had seven stops: Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Portland, Eugene, Salem, and Ashland. Two trips a week, up and back, meant two nights a week in the midpoint, Portland. People have a certain picture in their mind of a bud smuggler—white-boy dreds, Marley T-shirt—but I’d be a moron to dress like that for fifteen hundred miles a week with six kilos in the trunk. So I wore a suit and kept my hair short, hard-parted on the side, like a fifties superhero. But the key was my car: I had to be the youngest man in America in a loaded gray 2006 Buick Lucerne. Cop could pull me over blazing a spliff, coke spoon up my nose, syringe hanging from my tied-off arm, dead hooker in the passenger seat and still just tell me to ease off the gas and have a nice day.
No game works forever, of course, and I knew the Greenpeace thing could bust a hundred ways: kids steal from me, marks get suspicious, credit card companies get a whiff, real Greenpeacies get pissed. I put the half-life at three months. This was early November, so I figured I’d run the game at least through Christmas—when the banks and credit card companies are too busy to notice the extra draws—make a little side money and move on. In the meantime, I was careful. On my return run through Portland I always collected the Greenpeace material so the kids couldn’t freelance. I moved Julie and Kevin around and worked hard to stay away from real fundraisers.
And once each, I had the kids strip in front of me, to make sure they weren’t holding any money back. This is drastic shit, but you do it right, it only has to happen once. It makes a real impact, kid standing in front of you freezing his ass off while you go through his clothes. You make him stand a long time too, while you ignore him. Then, at the end—so he knows how far you’ll go—you have him spread his ass cheeks, like a jail search. This is always necessary with drug dealers, but even if it weren’t I’d do it anyway, to remind these kids that they’re nothing. Meat.
I’ll be the first to admit I was looking forward to this with little Julie. It wasn’t like she had a stripper’s body; she was small. I wasn’t into the waif thing. But there was something about the way she moved, like poured syrup, and I couldn’t help being curious about what lay underneath all those clothes.
Like my car, I chose my hotel rooms carefully. No sketchy motels for me. In Portland, I took a room at the Heathman downtown. I liked the porters in their Beefeater costumes, and I liked sitting on the mezzanine by the fire, drinking Chivas, and making eyes with the businesswomen. That’s what did it for me, women in suits, not little homeless girls. My first night at the Heathman I hit a blonde prescription drug rep—impeccable makeup, Pilates-hard ass.
I’m in the same business
, I said. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had to re-drywall my room after we were done banging around in it.
I was a month into the Portland gig when I called Julie up to my room. I sat on the big fluffy bed and told her to disrobe. Right away these big tears rolled over her cheeks.
No, it’s not that, I said. I just need to make sure you’re not stealing. I’d strip-searched Kevin a week earlier and he’d thrown a fit.
Danny, how could you think I’d ever steal from you?
But Julie just nodded, turned away from me, looked out the window, and started unbuttoning. I couldn’t believe how many layers she was wearing—wool scarves and flannel and army surplus. And then there was just . . . her. Pale little body. Freckled shoulders. She was shaking. She turned away. I could see every little bump in her spine. It was her back that got to me, in fact, tapering down to this tiny waist, which I could’ve put my two hands completely around.
Then she started crying, in these jerking little hiccups.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt worse in my life. She was so
small
. Not a tattoo or a ring anywhere. I turned away as I went through her clothes. They were warm. I’ve never felt so horny and so shitty at the same time.
Hell, I knew she wasn’t stealing from me; she was outdrawing Kevin two-to-one.
It’s okay, honey,
I said.
You can get dressed now.
I didn’t touch her, and still the strip search changed things between Julie and me. She stopped meeting my eyes. Even her take started to go down. I’d watch from coffee shops and it was like she was shrinking. Where before she stepped up to shoppers, now she huddled against the wall, waiting for them to make eye contact. Soon Kevin was outdrawing her. This happens to dealers, too: they lose nerve and start shrinking, until, finally, they’re done.
One day in mid-December, toward the end of the deal, I bought Julie and Kevin each a slice of pizza at the place across from Powell’s. I explained that we were going to have to quit after Christmas, but that I’d use them for other things if they wanted work. Of course, I wasn’t really going to use them again; but you always want them to think that you might have more money for them so they stay loyal.
I’m up for anything
, Kevin said quickly.
Julie said nothing.
How about you?
I asked her.
You don’t want her
, Kevin said.
Kevin and Julie had some sort of secret. She shoved him like she was trying to shush a seven-year-old.
What’s goin’ on
, I asked.
Julie gave her money to Greenpeace
, Kevin said, and then he broke into laughter.
She just stared at the ground as Kevin told the story. She’d gone to that shaggy Saturday market in Old Town and there was a Greenpeace booth under the Burnside Bridge. She’d stood there reading the material and looking at these kids behind the booth—so earnest, such believers. And then she just . . . snapped—took all the money she’d saved from our gig, almost twelve hundred bucks, and donated it.
Christ, Julie
, I said.
But that’s not all
, Kevin said.
Then she tried to get me to donate
my
money, too.
This was what really broke him up.
As Kevin told the story, Julie’s eyes got teary again.
It made me feel better
, she said quietly. Then to Kevin:
I thought you might want to feel better, too.
I feel fine
, he said, as he bit into his pizza.
Julie
, I asked gently
. You think what we’re doing is wrong?
She gave a tiny nod.
That’s because it is wrong, Julie
, I said.
I’m the West Coast distributor of wrong.
I leaned forward.
Now I could tell you that we’re no different than any other business or some shit like that. I could tell you a million lies, Julie, but just ask yourself this: do you think for one second those kids at the market can save a fucking whale?
She looked up.
They can try.
Come on. You know this is a hard goddamn world. You know what the world does to helpless things, don’t you, Julie?
Yes
, she whispered.
That’s right
, I said.
You know. Those whales are fucked. So fuck the businessmen and fuck Nordstrom and fuck your creepy stepdad and your blind mother. And if you wanna go home to your mom and her husband and save the whales, then fuck you too, Julie.
Now, I’ve given this speech—or some variation of it—fifty times. But I’ve never had happen what happened with little Julie. She jerked a little when I mentioned her stepdad and mom and then she stood up.
You’re right, Danny
, she said
. Thanks.