We gather up what little we have and leave. Heading back into the Gansevoort is terrifying, and yet, as certain as I am that we are about to be busted, I stomp right back into the elevator, down the hall, and into the room. It’s precisely how it was when we left it hours ago. I head straight to the window to see if cop cars have pulled up in front of the building. Nothing. No one but the doorman and a few passersby. Then to the closet and the bathroom to see if anyone is lying in wait to ambush us. All is clear, but it takes a few big hits, half a bottle of vodka, and thrashing on the bed with Malcolm for the panic to fade.
Later, as the sun comes up, Malcolm steps out onto the little balcony. I’m going to have to split soon, he says. His cell phone has died and he says that he has to go back to his life. I convince him to stay one more night. We have enough to carry us through to early evening when Happy goes back on call, and I promise to really load up. The day clicks by as it usually does, the routine of sex and drinking and hits and ordering food that we barely eat repeats itself from the day before.
Malcolm’s talk of his life out in the world makes me think of mine, and I quietly pray for one of these hits to finish me off. I pack each one thicker than I had before and hold the smoke in my lungs a beat or two longer than it feels like I can. My neck throbs and my arm aches and I wonder when. Again, the lines from that novel. It would be now.
Malcolm packs up his things in the morning while I doze. I hear the toilet flush in the bathroom and notice he has nearly emptied the ashtray on the bedside table where I keep the drugs. He has left a few rocks and taken many. I let it go. Not because I don’t care, but because I knew he would steal, and the night before, while he was in the shower, I hid two whole bags in my blazer jacket to last me through the day until midnight, when I can get more cash. Our good-byes are brief.
The day grinds on. I try to listen to my messages — something I have avoided for days — but my cell phone produces a text message I’ve never seen before that seems prophetic: Memory Filled. New Text Rejected. The message keeps buzzing into the little screen, making it impossible to listen to voice mail. After a few minutes of trying, I give up. As evening comes on, a nerdy boy from room service brings a plate of nachos that I don’t eat. The truth is, I order food to have human contact. He is flirty and talks about NYU, where he is studying political science, the five guys he lives with in Williamsburg. As he speaks I am shamed by the youth of him: the pink skin, the clear eyes, the voice that doesn’t get snagged on sarcasm or exhaustion. He steps closer as he talks and I can almost smell the Ivory soap he must have used in that crowded loft in Williamsburg early that morning as he showered for work. He could not be closer now, and I could not feel further away. He is a boy at the beginning of everything, untarnished and lovely in a way he does not yet even know. And I am something else, not a boy, with hands covered in burn scabs and black soot from changing the screens on the crack pipes all night. I had, at first, thought about seducing him, but when he finishes talking, I can only scribble my signature on the bill and shrink away. When he leaves, the voices from outside begin to bark louder than usual. I finally am able to listen to a voice mail from Noah that tells me he loves me and is not angry but terrified I am dead. Just come home.
I get high and drink, and when the voices outside get too loud and I’m convinced I see a man in the opposite building with a video camera trained on my room, I do a huge hit and decide to go home. To face the music and rush into Noah’s arms. I gather up my drugs and stems and clean the crumbs off the table surfaces and head out the door.
A cab pulls up alongside me as I walk out onto Gansevoort Street. It slows, gently, and I hop in. Home? the man with a craggy Eastern European face and matching accent asks with a kind smile. I say yes. The music playing in the cab is Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” and it is calming and magical. The atmosphere twinkles, as if the cab is enchanted. The panic I felt in the room just minutes ago has disappeared. You’re one of them, aren’t you? I ask, as I have a few times to cabdrivers who seem to know where I am going but who only ever smile in response. I check the driver’s photo, which, like all the rest since the airport, is obscured by cardboard or paper. I look into the passenger seat up front and see, as I’ve now seen at least a dozen times, carefully laid out zip-lock bags filled with money — single dollars in one, larger bills in another, and coins in yet another. Like all the cabs with knowing drivers, it is immaculately clean. I ask him who he works for and he chuckles and says he can’t say. I press and he just laughs. But you do work for someone and you’re not a cabdriver, right? He laughs more and says, You’re the first one to see. I can’t believe he’s crossed the line and acknowledged that he is not a New York City cabdriver. I knew it! I say, relieved that these strange encounters with taxicab drivers have not been drug-induced delusions hatched from my paranoia.
The driver seems kind. When he turns around to speak, his eyes dance with light. He is grandfatherly and appears amused. I press on with more questions. Why don’t they just arrest me? He answers, because they want to watch me. That they have been observing me for a long time, before my recent craziness even, and that it’s only now that I’ve been able to notice. Is it good? I ask, and he says, Yes, it is good. Someone is taking care of you. You are going to be fine. I ask him who it is and he says he cannot say. But that I am lucky and, again, not to worry. I ask him if they are listening to me in the hotel and he says yes. I ask him to prove it and he says, Well, you know, you get very upset sometimes. Very nervous and very upset. I ask him if they hear and watch me have sex and he laughs and says they do but not to worry, they’ve seen it all before. We pull up to One Fifth, and as we do I feel calm and strangely blessed. No fare, right? I ask and he smiles and waves me away. Don’t be so upset, it will all be okay, he says as I climb out of the cab in front of the building.
I am overcome with a wave of relief, and as I stand there, two people walk by — they are wearing the shoes, the coats, the earpieces, the complete JCPenney outfit — and they smile as if I have finally been let in on some great secret. I can now see that all of them, every last Windbreakered one of them, has been looking out for me the entire time. They’ve been protecting me! I say out loud. This is why I have not been arrested. I look around the street, across Fifth Avenue and up 8th Street and see several people looking my way as they walk at that unmistakable pace, that deliberate and performatively normal gait.
In the lobby, Trevor is at the desk and does not seem alarmed to see me. This is still before Noah notifies the building management to call him if any of the doormen or porters see me and before he has the locks changed. I run past Trevor and he shouts hello. When I enter the apartment, it is empty. It hadn’t occurred to me that Noah wouldn’t be home. I pour a drink and do a hit in the bathroom and pace the living room for what seems like forever. It is strange to be home after being gone these weeks. Benny, my cat, eyes me warily and disappears into the bedroom. The apartment seems smaller than I remembered, more precious, as if each pillow and book and photograph is part of some meticulously arranged exhibit of The Life Before. I wait, and as I do, I play out the scene that will unfold after he returns. He will want me to hand over all the drugs I have on me and agree to go to rehab. I am desperate to see him. Want to hug him and be hugged by him and somehow blink away the last weeks and resume our lives. But the longer I’m there, the more impossible this seems. I don’t know how long I stay that night, but it is too long, or not long enough, and I leave.