White Out (27 page)

I met Tiger two weeks before the bust, when I was trying to score down by the old Cabrini-Green projects. These were their last days. The buildings were half-deserted. Scheduled to be demolished for condos. The drug trade was dying in the emptying projects, but you could still catch a dealer here and there. The trade was different in Chicago. Not like free-market Baltimore, where anyone who could get fifty bucks together bought a few bags and stood out on the corner. In Baltimore you pull up and twelve different dealers run up pushing and shoving to serve you. Every one an independent operator.

In Chicago the gangs had the trade locked down. The gang lookouts, paranoid of my whiteness, turned me away from the gang superspots. So I had to catch the stray desperate independent dealers. They were hard to catch, running fast from the cops, the gangs, and the junkies they’d burned.

Tiger was watching me as I got burned by an independent I’d cornered in the park. The dealer split. I opened the bag and flicked my tongue at the tasteless baking soda.

“Hey man,” he said as I walked away dropping the burn bag and biting my cheek. “Hey man, hey man, hey man.”

“What?” I said turning.

“I seen you want some blows,” he said.

It was late December. Four o’clock, when the white of the day stands out.

“No not blow, dope,” I said exhausted.

“Yeah, blows,” he said.

“No. Heroin. Not blows.”

“Blows, man.”

“Heroin yes, blow no.”

“Yes heroin, yes blows,” he said. “We call heroin blows.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’ve been out here all day not knowing what to say to people.”

“We call cops people,” Tiger said. “Come on I’ll take you to the lady I shop with.”

We got in my beat-up Pontiac and rolled up Roosevelt. Of course I had to buy Tiger one. I wasn’t familiar with the Chicago trade. It was better to give Tiger ten bucks than risk getting burned again. Plus the people were everywhere. The heat made the lady he shopped with keep everything in her panties. Her shop was in her panties.
I like to shop with you
, I thought.

We fixed in the abandoned project apartment Tiger was squatting in. The first brief flash of dope light blew the dust off my senses. The light lasted for sixty seconds. I had just enough time to look around. I noticed Tiger was a middle-aged black man wearing a Bears coat and orange mittens. Then I had a couple more seconds to see what was happening to me and to panic a little. Then it was gone. The facts and the colors were still there but my interest was gone. The dope was barely working anymore.

“It ain’t much,” Tiger said.

“Yeah.” I said. “I’m getting off it anyway.”

“Oh, I hardly fuck with it,” he sniffed. “So where you stay at?”

“I’m visiting my family,” I said. “Right now I’m staying with my sister up on the North Side. Roscoe Village.”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “It’s nice up there. I got a auntie who lives up near there. Up near the Cubs stadium.”

“I live in Baltimore,” I said. “I just came here to, you know. Baltimore is bad. Um. I think I need a little more if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll join you,” he said.

I couldn’t help but notice the extremely miserly way he handled his drugs. I’d only bought him one ten-dollar bag. I got three for me. I did a whole one right off, and now I was going to hit another. He took out the bag I’d bought him, which I saw to my wonder was still almost full. He shook out a very few grains. If I were quicker, I thought, I could have counted them.

I’d heard of fiends like this before. But I’d never met one. It defied common sense. Dope costs money. I always thought that once my money ran totally dry I’d have to kick. That would be it. A solid bottom to the disease. But look at Tiger. Even being dead broke and homeless didn’t get you off the hook. The disease could string you along on a few grains a day.

How little money could the disease survive on? Ten dollars a day? What about three dollars? Fifty cents? I watched Tiger shake out his few grains from the bag. He smiled over it with that nasty junkie look, seeing his first time glowing in the powder. It was worse than watching an old man look at porn. Much worse. There was barely enough dope there to see anything in. I could never get clean.

“I’m going to school,” he said.

“Same with me,” I said.

When I got back in my car the radio said it was eight degrees out. My fingers were slow. I got scared for a few seconds as the new dope fell through the brain slot and I saw I was kind of dying. But it was only for a few seconds. Then the dope light went out and I could see normally.

I could see death like I could see the color of my shoes. Like I could see the other side of the street. It wasn’t weird or scary. The other side of the double yellow lines on the highway. It’s like walking across a room. You get to your chair and you stop and sit down. But before you sit down, you think,
I can keep walking. Or I can stop. If I stop, I’m here. If I keep going, I’m over there. There’s no big mystery.

But it is often easier to compose your mind on the big questions—like death—than it is to successfully complete everyday tasks. My experience provides plentiful evidence of the truth of this statement. I had a little trouble when I got back to my sister’s from Tiger’s, for example. It was hard to find a parking space. I parked on the crowded part of the block, where I knew I shouldn’t. Sure enough, when I got out my car was sticking out over the sign that says no parking. I’d learned to expect the worst from those signs.

I got down on my haunches and looked hard. Was I over the line or not? Expect the best, but plan for the worst. What would be the worst? If they came by and chopped the car off right at the line where the sign was, it’d still drive. Maybe. But better safe than sorry. I got back in the car and tried to back up some more. I tried to fit ten inches into two inches, so to speak. Like fitting a twenty-ounce Coke into an eight-ounce glass. You can almost do it, if you pour slow and careful. Very careful, very slow.

When I got back out of the car, things were in a bad way. I was bleeding a little bit. The car was still over the line. And I absolutely had to take my depression medication. I didn’t mean maybe. Emergency! I’d forgotten to take it for maybe two days. I didn’t know if I could park the car again without it. That depression medication was really helping me. I didn’t even feel whatever had started me bleeding, for example. That was just one example. The medicine was called Zoloft. It was also helping me kick dope. I’d been taking it for two years. It wasn’t the fastest-working drug in the world. Slow but steady. You don’t know anything about science. I believed in it.

When you go for a couple days without Zoloft, it reminds you with a little “ping” in your head. It’s not like dope withdrawal or anything. But it isn’t pleasant. It’s like someone tapping you lightly on the back of your head. You turn around too fast and you fall down. No one is there but the ghost of Zoloft.

I got up off the snow where I had fallen. I got back in the car. The place I’d parked it in was too small for it but it didn’t seem to want to get out of it. Get out of it! When I got to the drugstore I saw I didn’t have my prescription with me. Or they made me see, rather.

“As I said, sir, we simply cannot dispense this medicine without a prescription.”

“The proof that I have a prescription for Zoloft,” I said reasonably, “is that I need Zoloft. Zoloft is not a drug that gets you high. No one in their right mind would want Zoloft this bad if they hadn’t been taking it for months and then suddenly ran out.”

“But sir—”

“Look at me. No one in their right mind wants Zoloft this bad.”

He looked at me. He said he would give me three pills and charge me by the pill. I started to pay him, but then he said they didn’t take out-of-state checks. I said I would buy it with an in-state check if he would let me put some vitamins on it.

“What is your return policy?” I asked. “In Baltimore you just need a receipt and they give you back cash.”

“Sir, this check…your total is $115.25. We have a limit of fifty dollars per check at this store.”

“But you said I could get the Zoloft.”

“The cost of the three Zoloft pills is $11.15 The remaining $104.10 comes from this, uh, L-Carnitine and—”

“Never mind,” I said. “I just have to run out and check on my car. It’s a new Mercedes. I don’t think it’s very safe in this bad neighborhood.”

I thought that telling him I owned a Mercedes would be a good lesson to him. When I came back in I wasn’t feeling very well. There was a different person at the counter.

“The pharmacy is closed,” she said.

“What? I was just in here,” I said.

“We close at nine o’clock, sir. It is now almost nine-thirty.”

I looked hard into her eyes. She met my gaze without flinching. This particular employee, I thought, has nothing to hide.

“I was checking on my car,” I said. I stopped.

“OK,” I said. “The pharmacy is closed.”

I was able to pay for some of the vitamins at the register up front. The employee at the register did find an opportunity to humiliate me, however.

“Um, sir? I think you’re forgetting something.”

“Oh, of course. Right.”

I picked up my keys off the floor and left. It was one of those things you think nothing of at the time.

When I got back to my sister’s block, there was no more dope left. Impossible but true. I parked and started to look for the missing bag on the floor of my car, but so much garbage got into the street while I was looking I was afraid the people would come.
Hey, smart guy.
So I drove back to the pharmacy parking lot, which was the only place I knew for sure I could park without getting towed. And it was beginning to be the only place I could be sure of in other ways.

“Hi, Jenny, this is Mike.”

“Oh, hey. Where the hell are you? Are you still staying here tonight?”

“Yes, but I got a little lost.”

“Come on! I have to work tomorrow.”

“Sorry Jen, I’ll be right over. Do you know the pharmacy on…”

I put my hand over the pharmacy phone and asked the cashier where it was located. I asked her again to make sure I’d heard right. Then I really had to laugh.

“Jenny, I’m sorry, but ha ha ha. I’m right down the street!”

“Idiot,” she said and hung up.

There was nothing to laugh about once I got back in the car. The block looked like a mouth with all its teeth knocked out. I parked almost all the way over the No Parking sign this time. If they chopped it off now, nothing would be left. Some paint chips.

Can you believe this damn junkie, Carl?

Didn’t anyone remember anything good about me? Plan for the worst. You can’t plan for the worst.

I don’t believe it! Hey, smart guy, get your ass right back here. Think I wouldn’t see you pick up that dope right in front of my face?

I grimly walked all the way around Jenny’s block two-and-a-half times before I found her building. This looks like it. This looks like it. This looks like it. I was biting the inside of my cheek.

When I finally got inside, I looked back out at the street and saw why it had been so hard to find her place. Everything looked the same. Not literally the same, but brick or stone, gray or brown, a little taller or a little shorter. Right turn or left turn. West Side or North Side. The city was filled with differences that didn’t make any difference.

I don’t believe it.
I went with my family to a hotel downtown.
Hey smart guy.
It was a holiday tradition.
I don’t believe it.
I went to the bathroom when we got there.
Hey smart guy.
At dinner I had something to drink.
I don’t believe it.
“I think you’ve had enough.”
Hey smart guy.
They don’t want to be responsible for the drinks you had before you got there.
I don’t believe it.
The off switch was two-and-a-half bags.
Hey smart guy.
Tiger called from a 7-11. I don’t believe it. I called the valet from my room.
Hey smart guy.
“Tell Dad I’ll be back in twenty.”
I don’t believe it.
Icy morning like a mouth full of broken teeth.
Hey smart guy.
“They getting everyone together in the building.”
I don’t believe it.
“The people are here.”
Hey smart guy.
“I swear I didn’t score yet; I was just—”
I don’t believe it.
They let me go; I didn’t have any more money.
Hey smart guy.
Bend over pretend to tie my shoe pick up the bag quick walk away.
I don’t believe it. Hey smart guy! Get your ass right back here.
Handcuffs, back of the cop car.