“It’s garbage-can fentanyl, for fuck’s sake. He’s giving it to you because no one wants it.” Eitan didn’t mess with fentanyl unless he knew exactly where it had come from. He liked to stay off law-enforcement radar, and killing your clients tended to draw attention. Someone had paid off a debt to him in what was supposed to be heroin cut with fentanyl, but it had passed through too many hands to be considered clean.
“Don’t screw this up for me, Alex,” Len said. “Make this shithole look nice.”
“Let me get my magic wand.”
He’d slapped her then, but not hard. Just an “I mean business” slap.
“Hey,” Hellie had protested. Alex was never sure what Hellie intended when she said, “Hey,” but she was grateful for it anyway.
“Relax,” Len said. “Ariel wants to party with real people, not those plastic assholes Eitan keeps around. We’re going to go get Damon’s speakers. Get everything cleaned up.” He’d looked at Hellie, then at Alex. “Try to look nice. No attitude tonight.”
“Let’s go,” Alex had said as soon as Len left the apartment, Betcha in the passenger seat, already lighting up. Betcha’s real name was Mitchell, but Alex hadn’t known that until he got picked up on a possession charge and they had to scrape together bail. He’d run with Len since long before Alex and was always just there, tall, stocky, and soft-bellied, his chin perpetually flecked with acne.
Alex and Hellie started walking, heading toward the concrete bed of the L.A. River, then up to the bus stop on Sherman Way, with no destination in mind. They’d done it before, even sworn they were leaving for good, gotten as far as the Santa Monica Pier, Barstow, once all the way to Vegas, where they’d spent the first day wandering hotel lobbies and the second day stealing quarters from old ladies playing the slots until they had enough for bus fare home. Speeding down the 15 in the air-conditioning on the way back to L.A., they’d fallen asleep leaning on each other’s shoulders. Alex had dreamed of the garden at the Bellagio, the water wheels and piped-in perfume, the flowers arranged like a jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes it took Alex and Hellie hours, sometimes days, but they always came back. There was too much world. There were too many choices, and those only seemed to lead to more choices. That was the business of living, and neither of them had ever acquired the skill.
“Len says we’re going to lose Ground Zero if Ariel doesn’t come through,” Hellie said as they boarded the RTD. No grand plans today. No Vegas, just a trip to the West Side.
“It’s talk,” said Alex.
“He’s going to be pissed we didn’t clean up.”
Alex looked out the murky window and said, “You notice Eitan sent his girlfriend away?”
“What?”
“When Ariel came to town. He sent Inger away. He hasn’t had any of the usual girls around. Only Valley trash.”
“It’s not that big a deal, Alex.”
They both knew what Ariel was coming to Ground Zero for. He wanted to slum it for a while and Alex and Hellie were supposed to be part of the fun.
“It never feels like a big deal until it is,” Alex said. There had been other favors. The first time was a film guy, or at least someone Len said was a film guy, who was going to get them lots of Hollywood business, but Alex learned later he was just a production assistant, straight out of film school. She’d ended up sitting on his lap all night, hoping that might be all there was to it, until he’d taken her back to the little bathroom and put their filthy bath mat down on the tiles—a weirdly chivalrous gesture—so that she could blow him in greater comfort while he sat on the toilet. I’m fifteen, she’d thought as she’d rinsed out her mouth and cleaned up her eye makeup. What does fifteen look like? Was another Alex going to slumber parties and kissing boys at school dances? Could she climb through the mirror above the sink and slide into that girl’s skin?
But she was fine. Really okay. Until the next morning, when Len kept slamming cabinet doors and smoking in this way he had where it seemed like he wanted to eat the cigarette with every drag, until at last Alex had snapped and said, “What is your problem?”
“My problem? My girlfriend is a whore.”
Alex had heard that word so many times from Len it barely registered anymore. Bitch, slut, occasionally cunt when he was feeling particularly angry or when he was affecting British gangster. But he’d never called her that. That was a word for other girls.
“You said—”
“I didn’t say shit.”
“You told me to make him happy.”
“And that means suck his dick in Whore?”
Alex’s head had done a dizzy spin. How did he know? Had the film guy walked right out of that bathroom and just announced it? And even if he had, why was Len angry? She knew what “make him happy” meant. Alex had felt nothing but rage and it was better than any drug, burning doubt from her mind.
“What the fuck did you think I was going to do?” she demanded, surprised at how loud she sounded, how sure. “Impressions? Make him some balloon animals?”
She’d picked up their blender, the one Len used for protein shakes, and smashed it against the refrigerator, and for a moment she’d seen fear in Len’s eyes and she had wanted very badly to keep making him feel afraid. Len had called her crazy, slammed out of the apartment. He had run from her. But once he was gone, the adrenaline had poured out of Alex in a rush that left her feeling limp and lonely. She didn’t feel angry or righteous, just ashamed and so scared that somehow she’d ruined everything, ruined herself, that Len would never want her again. And then where would she go? All she’d wanted was for him to come back.
In the end she apologized and begged him to forgive her and they got high and turned the air-conditioning up and fucked right next to it, the air coming in cooling gusts that masked their panting. But when Len had said she was a good little slut, she hadn’t felt sexy or wild; she’d felt so small. She was afraid she might cry and she was afraid he might like that too. She’d turned her face to the vent and felt the icy breath of the AC unit blow the fine hairs back from her face. She squeezed her eyes shut, and as Len had jackrabbited away behind her, she’d imagined herself on a glacier, naked and alone, the world clean and empty and full of forgiveness.
But Ariel wasn’t a film student looking for some strange. He had a reputation. There were stories that he was only in the States because he was dodging the Israeli police after roughing up two underage girls in Tel Aviv, that he ran a dog-fighting ring, that he liked to dislocate girls’ shoulders as a kind of foreplay, like a boy pulling the wings off a fly.
Len would be furious when he returned home to find the apartment still a mess. He’d be even madder when they didn’t come back to Ground Zero for the party. But they could survive Len’s anger better than Ariel’s attention.
Alex understood that Len had expected some kind of jealousy when he’d brought Hellie home with them that day from Venice Beach. He hadn’t predicted Hellie’s warm laugh, her easy way of looping her arm around Alex, the way she’d pluck a paperback from Alex’s shelf of thrillers and old sci-fi and say, “Read to me.” Hellie had made this life bearable. Alex wasn’t going down the path that led to Ariel and she wasn’t going to let Hellie go either, because somehow she knew they would not come back from him intact. They didn’t have a great life. It wasn’t the kind of life anyone imagined or asked for, but they managed.
They took the bus over the hill, down the 101 to the 405 to Westwood, and walked all the way to UCLA, up the slope to campus and through the sculpture garden. They sat on the steps beneath the pretty arches of Royce Hall and watched the students playing Frisbee and lying in the sun reading. Leisure. These golden people pursued leisure because they had so many things they had to do. Occupations. Goals. Alex had nothing she needed to do. Ever. It made her feel like she was falling.