She was a magnet for off-beat characters, turning up with one new weird-o after another, and I followed her to parties and met people the likes of which I had never dreamed existed. Heavy drinking and marijuana had been the order of the day and the odor of the night, and where I only sampled she indulged deeply, which was her nature. I never did know where she had first experimented with heroin, but I do know that one day the dream had begun to turn into nightmare — she was hooked.
And I was hooked on her. I lied to my parents, cheated my friends, and stole anything I could lay hand to get the money with which to supply her need, because I knew that if I did not she would sell her beautiful body for the little bags of white powder — and that final degradation I would not let happen.
Somewhere along the line I had become hooked myself and to supply both habits I had turned to pushing. I would not allow Carol to help me directly. Not my Carol, my life. I wanted her in no danger.
She did help out, though. For the six hours that I pushed the junk each day Carol sat in the bar across from our hotel, watching for narcotics agents. In case one did enter the building she was to have telephoned, giving me time to flush the snow down the toilet before the three flights of stairs could be climbed. It worked well in practice. I never found out if it would work in actuality, because the first and only time the narcos came calling the phone didn’t ring.
I had not seen or heard from Carol since the morning of the day of my arrest, but the bartender from the joint across the street had come to see me one day before the trial. I was still sick and shaking from the hell of cold-turkey withdrawal from heroin. Mike, the bartender, had come to apologize — for failing to spot the narcos when they had entered the hotel. He thought I knew that Carol was in the habit of making pick-ups in the bar during the day, leaving Mike to keep a casual eye on the hotel for a small cut with the promise of a substantial bonus if it ever were necessary to actually call me.
It had not seemed odd to Mike that my wife would be hustling while I was pushing. We were junkies. At the time of my arrest Carol had been entertaining two sailors in a cheap hotel room and Mike had missed the narcos. It had taken three guards to get me back into my cell, and if the partition had not been between us, three guards or thirty guards could not have saved Mike.
Bo was on his feet now, slightly bent, holding his gut with crossed arms. The two junkies who had been trying to get Carol in shape to make her date had slid along the wall behind me and were standing in front of the door, watching me.
Bo managed to gasp, “Jesus, Jim, that was a hell of a thing to do.” He spat on the bare mattress, perspiration beading his upper lip.
I ignored him and looked at the pair by the door. “Which one of you does she stay with?” I asked.
They exchanged a look and the one who had slapped Carol answered, a half-hearted sneer in his voice, his hand on the doorknob.
“She’s been with me about four months. I was gonna ditch her. She don’t make enough anymore — besides, her habit is too damn big and... well, look at her.”
I looked. At the tangled hair and slack mouth; at the exposed breast and pasty skin; at the scarred arms and, where the dirty slip was hiked up the thin legs, the scarred thighs. And I thought: You poor, pitiful bitch. Twenty-five years old and burned out. You can’t make enough from your body to supply its demands. You poor, pitiful bitch. And I felt no pity.
I turned to Bo, who was still holding his belly, and said, “Listen to me, Bo. Listen good. When she’s had a fix and can understand tell her this for me: Tell her Jim was here, that I came to take her away. Tell her it was going to be just like the old days — me pushing and her watching and all the snow we wanted. Just like the old days. Then tell her I took one look at her and threw up. Got that, Bo?”
Bo repeated what I had said and I could see that he believed it. When he finished I nodded and walked out. In the darkness of the hallway I suddenly wanted to cry. The feeling passed and I laughed instead.
Kill her? The mirth welled up from deep inside. Hell, I wouldn’t think of interrupting the beautiful job she’s doing on herself.
I pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs and stepped out into the night. I walked back down Needle Street toward the subway station in the park where junkies and pushers always hang out, my hand in my pocket fingering the lone five-spot. I felt elated. Carol was dead and I was alive.
Jesus, I wish I had a fix. The thought came, crystal clear and whole, as if someone had spoken suddenly inside my head. I rejected it, but the gate had been opened and I could not close it so easily.
The voice whispered: Just one. Because you feel so great. You don’t want to lose this feeling yet, do you? Just one fix can’t hurt you, Jim boy, can it?
I walked on down Needle Street, listening to the voice in my head.
A Deadly Secret
by Beatrice S. Smith
They had a secret and they kept it well... but in the end it killed them.
Early September in the midwest is often unbearable, with a humid heat that digs deep under your skin and stays there. This was one of those days. The dried fields actually shrivelled under the sun’s glare. Feeling pretty shrivelled myself, I watched them from the dusty window of the Long Lake bus. One thing, I had absolutely no premonition of disaster. Only a fierce urge to kick somebody, preferably a man, in the stomach.
Two weeks before, during our coffee break, Brad Halloway, the man I intended to marry, looked at me over the edge of his paper cup and told me he’d fallen in love with somebody else. “A blonde,” he said, as though that explained everything and maybe it did. I haven’t been able to drink coffee out of a paper cup since.
Since Brad was head of the department where I worked, I naturally turned in my resignation. No dying swan act for me, thank you. Mr. Field, the personnel manager and a real sweet guy, found me this job in Long Lake. I was to be secretary to the principal of Long Lake Grade School, of all things. The idea tickled me. I’m no burlesque queen, but I’m a lot closer, as far as looks and personality are concerned, to being a stripper than I am to being a teacher.
I was the only passenger getting off the bus at Long Lake, which wasn’t unusual. It was a real small town. But when the bus pulled away, I had a crazy notion to run after it. I remember that, though I’d hardly call the feeling a premonition.
There was a cab parked at the curb, the only cab in the whole place, I found out later. “Three-sixteen Maple Street,” I told the driver, a short, long-nosed, bald-headed fellow, a Jimmy Durante type.
“Oh, Nettie Barnard’s place over by the school. What you want over there? You sellin’ something?” the driver asked me, giving me the big eye from under his cap.
“I’m going to work at the school,” I said, then, figuring there was no sense hiding anything, I gave him the rest. “I’m the new secretary. My name is Marta Hale and I’ve rented a room from Miss Barnard. Do you know her?”
“Yep,” he said and spit out the window. “You’re takin’ Aggie Drury’s place, eh?” I said I didn’t know. “She was the secretary at the school for nearly forty years,” he told me. “Forty years!” I said. “I didn’t think anybody was a secretary that long.”
“Yep, Aggie was. And I reckon she’d be here yet if she hadn’t caught a lead ball.”
“Hadn’t what?” I leaned forward, sure I hadn’t heard right. But the cabby didn’t answer. He acted as if he didn’t hear me. Maybe he didn’t, I don’t know. Anyway, a few seconds later we pulled up in front of a big two-story house. A screened porch covered with the standard grape vines stretched across the front with red geraniums beside the steps. A pretty place, in a small town sort of way. Cheap rent, too. And with my own private bath, yet. At least that’s what Miss Barnard had said in her letter.