“Pretty good stash, huh?” Santiago asks me. Then he waves Tristan over again. “Get the fuck over here, man, you’re making me nervous. Let’s have a good time already.”
Tristan ignores my pleading eyes and sits down on the floor. He snorts a line of the powder, then reaches over and drags a finger across some loose powder and rubs it on his gums.
“That’s a good boy,” the guy laughs, patting him on the back. “None of this sobriety shit in my house.”
Tristan stands up, shaking his head like he just swallowed something spicy. Still avoiding my eyes, he asks, “Dude, can I use your shitter?”
The guy turns to him with an appalled expression. “What do I look like, a preschool teacher?” he asks, shaking his head. “You gonna raise your hand to talk, amigo?”
Tristan lets out a small, tight laugh, then disappears into the hallway without looking at me. I try not to think about where he is going or what he is doing. If I do, I might pass out from worry. Plus, now that Tristan is gone, I have bigger concerns. Santiago moves closer to me on the couch, and keeps shoving the dollar bill in my hands. “I won’t bite,” he promises.
I have no choice but to take another sniff. Tristan is gone, and I can’t let this guy go looking for him because then we would be in even worse trouble than my being a little high. Even my skin is buzzing. In my mind, I am praying to a God I do not believe in to get us out in one piece. But my mind and body have separated.
I grab the bill. The powder burns my nose as it goes up, and the chemical aftertaste pools in my mouth a moment later. My heart rate, which was already faster than I’ve ever felt it, is now working overtime. My teeth feel numb and alive at the same time.
“How did you meet my amigo?” the guy asks then. He relaxes into the couch with his arms raised and wide. I’m so relieved he isn’t forcing me to do more drugs that I tell him the truth.
“At a horrible party,” I say. “He was there taking wallets.”
He seems amused by the story. “And what were you doing?” he asks, with a smirk.
“Looking for a friend of mine,” I explain. In any normal circumstance I would have shut up then, but the coke is making every thought in my brain flow out of my mouth. “My best friend. Margot. She kind of ditched me for this guy, and I hadn’t seen her in a while, and I wanted to talk to her about that and some other stuff, you know, but then I got there and she couldn’t even get off his lap for a second.” My mouth dry, I swallow my spit and catch my breath. “So I leave and she follows me out, but not to apologize or anything, to tell me she’s moving and we all have to find new apartments.” I start shaking my head now. I know I’m in a room of men who couldn’t care less about me and Margot’s problems, but for some reason it’s sort of a relief to get it off my chest. I hadn’t really thought about it since it happened. I’d relegated it to the back of my mind, along with everything else in my previous life, before my dad cut me off and Tristan swooped me up into his world. “And that was all after I found out my dad cheated on my mom and might have had another kid with her. She’s been messaging me from Ukraine.”
“Damn,” Santiago says, the smirk moving from the corners of his mouth to his eyes. “That’s a lot.”
The other man still sitting on the couch with the other dogs shakes his head. “Women,” is all he contributes to this conversation. I sort of forgot he was in the room. I turn and scan my surroundings and suddenly notice that I am a woman alone in a room of men I don’t know. I find myself craning my neck, looking for Tristan to return.
“Don’t stress, chica,” the guy says. “I got a daughter your age. How old are you anyway?”
I swallow, my throat even dryer than before. “Nineteen.”
“Nineteen,” he says. “You’re practically a baby.” A look passes between Santiago and the other man.
“How old is your daughter?” I ask.
“I got four, can you believe it? The oldest just turned eighteen.” He taps his chest a couple of times, and gazes into the space ahead of him with genuine awe. It was a good call to ask about his children, I realize in the moment with a flutter of hope. “She’s an angel. Gonna rule the world one day.”
Everything stands perfectly still for a moment, and I start to think the danger has passed. I even forget what it is we are doing there. But then his thin friend with the half-shaved head returns with my drugs, and breaks the spell. He has two little baggies, which he places in my hand, making sure to touch my hand a little longer than necessary. I stifle the urge to cringe. I stuff the drugs into the front pocket of my backpack and put it back on my shoulders right away. Now I am starting to actually get annoyed at Tristan. He better hurry or I’ll have to get the hell out of here without him. If I am allowed to do that.
“What’s her name?” I ask, as an attempt to return to our previous casualness. “Your oldest daughter.”
“Isabella,” he says with a grin. “Real smart, like you. Not like her Papa. Don’t know where she gets it. It sure ain’t from that bitch of a mother, god rest her soul.” Here, he crosses himself. I want to ask what happened to this mother, but I’m not sure I want to know the answer. Then I regret not asking more about her, because Santiago chooses that moment to look behind him. A crease of uneasiness crosses his face. “What did this fucker eat before you got here?” he asks, forcing a small laugh. “Damn.”
“McDonalds,” I lie, because I know when he has eaten it in the past he also spent a lot of time in the bathroom. “He didn’t feel well after.” This must not be an uncommon reaction because the guy nods and doesn’t push it. He reaches over to the table and takes out a cigarette, and offers me one. It’s almost like he offered me a lifeboat, I’m so happy to take it. But maybe my McDonalds lie wasn’t as good as I thought, because I catch a look pass between the men, and soon the other one is up again. Presumably to check on Tristan. My mood towards him shifts from annoyed to furious. He put me in a terrible position. He claimed to know where the money was. If he does, then what is taking him so long? Not to mention he broke his sobriety over this dumb plan. I stand up under the premise of going to the pet one of the dogs on the couch opposite ours, the black boxer-lab. I need to put some space between me and Santiago. “Is she friendly?” I ask, walking over more spilled trash and another bong and what looks like a broken guitar being used as a table.
“As a housecat,” he laughs. I pet the other dog instead. The coke recycles my emotions in waves, like a Ferris wheel, for moments terrifying me, and then filling me with a confident joy that is totally out of whack with the present situation. It throws my intuition completely off, and I don’t even feel that there’s a man hovering behind me, until his hand has grazed my backside.
I can’t help but jump a little. Then I correct myself and move to sit next to the dog. I try to tell the dog to save me with my brain. But Santiago seems to merely be having fun with me. He lets out a brief chuckle and picks up an ashtray that is sitting on the table next to us. Then he returns to his previous seat on the couch and pretends like I’m not even there.
Petting that dog like it’s my only lifeline, my anger returns with a vengeance. I keep the cigarette in my hand and smoke it slowly in case I will need to use it as a weapon. It’s gone quiet and still in the living room, and this isn’t a good sign. Any moment they are going to start looking for Tristan, and any moment they will find him somewhere he shouldn’t be. And in the midst of all these contradicting emotions and worries I somehow find a moment of clarity: that my life has gone completely off the rails. That I need to get away from everything that is keeping it off the rails; Milwaukee, Riverwest, and most of alclass="underline" Tristan. Of course, this is the moment Tristan chooses to make his reappearance. He materializes, as if out of nowhere, and sits beside me on the couch. He puts an arm around my shoulder and squeezes. I have no idea if he found the money and if so, where he is hiding it.