As we sit down in Rosie’s tiny space, I wonder how Marshall knew what she and I had in common. On the surface we couldn’t be a less likely pair, but in one way we are the same. We’re the Harold and Maude of crack addicts, I think, as she pulls out a green metal box where she stores her stems, scrapers, and lighters. I pull out my bag and off we go, me and Rosie: cleaning our stems, packing hits, getting high.
My bag is soon empty and I ask her if I could have one of my dealers come up, and she says probably not. If I wanted more, I could give her cash and she would just go get some. She makes it sound so easy, so innocent. As if she were just running to get me some aspirin from the corner deli. And so I give her $400 and she shuffles out of the room. By this time the sun has gone down, and aside from the green Christmas lights Rosie has strung up over her stove, I am sitting in the dark. She is gone an hour or more and after I scrape my stem (and hers) and smoke down the last of the residue, I begin, for the first time since I walked up to this building, to worry about something being wrong. The possibilities begin to hatch in the quiet dark of Rosie’s den. Has she stolen from me? I wonder, but then I remember I’m in her apartment. Where would she go? She would eventually have to come back here. Or maybe she’s been caught scoring and is being dragged back here with a small army of police officers.
I begin to fear that the whole thing is a setup. That Marshall is an undercover cop or a snitch. How else would someone just conveniently have a sweet little old lady crack addict handy to shelter yours truly from the storm?
But Rosie’s no snitch. Rosie’s been smoking crack under the Christmas lights and showing me her half-finished art projects. At some point I almost leave but the prospect of a big haul of crack on its way is too powerful to abandon. So I close my eyes and wait.
I’m asleep when Rosie unlocks the door. Ooh, I’m sorry to take so long. It was a little trouble getting so much. But we did and here I am. I think you’ll be pleased. Who is this angel? I think as I wake up. Rosie lights a candle and asks me to hand her my stem. She gives me another new screen and fusses over the stems and the bags like a chemist and finally passes mine back to me with an enormous rock lodged at the end. Make up for lost time, she says, and giggles as I draw in a gale of smoke and think, here, here at Rosie’s, this is a place I could die.
Rosie talks about New Orleans. She talks about her mother, who was a painter, and all the famous jazz musicians and artists she knew. Her daughters were talented when they were young but they gave it all up. She isn’t going to give up, ever, and she gestures around us to all the bags of materials she has collected over the years. You never know what you’ll need, she says, chuckling, you never know. Rosie must weigh only eighty pounds. She is no more than five feet tall and her hair, if she has any, is hidden under a faded silver scarf. All her art projects are half to three-quarters finished. I’ll just glue some beads here and it will be just right. All this needs is an old hairnet to fasten around the edges. One of these days I’ll paint the unfinished wood on this one. None of them look like anything, and they are all just one or two little tasks away from being beautiful. Rosie’s hands shake violently as she holds each little almost-beautiful nothing up to the light.
After a few hours of smoking and listening (Rosie never asks any questions), I get restless. The room is too small. Rosie never quiets. And I have a little mountain of drugs in my pocket that makes the world seem manageable.
I leave Rosie a few rocks and a hundred dollars, and she pats my forehead as I go and says, Come back. Don’t forget Rosie. Come back.
I head out through the brightly lit hallway and down the elevator and sign out at the counter. Humming with drugs and shaky from not eating all day, I’m conscious of how ruined I must appear now. Even worse than this morning.
How will I ever be able to check into a hotel in this state, I wonder, as I walk, as slowly and calmly as I can, out onto 23rd Street. It’s late in the evening now. People are out, rushing home from dinner, heading to their softly lit apartments, and feeding their cats or dogs or paying their babysitters. Buses squeal down 23rd Street, and guys from karate practice walk together with their uniforms still on and their workout bags slung over their shoulders. My heart pounds hard behind my chest and blood streaks through my veins like electricity. I feel as light as a wafer and my pants won’t stay up. I can’t use my phone because I’m afraid I’ll be tracked down again. There is just over $8,000 left in my account, and I can’t fly anywhere, stay anywhere, appear anywhere I am known. I can’t just walk into any hotel, because two have already refused me and that was earlier in the day, several bags of crack ago, when I was more presentable. On the corner of 23rd Street and Second Avenue, I am frozen. Where do I go? Every direction is wrong. Where?
Just Here
Noah and I are heading out the door for a few weeks of vacation in Cambridge, Mass. I call my friend Robert, whose lymphoma has recently gone into remission, to check in, see how he’s doing. He sounds great. His voice is a cross between Truman Capote’s and Charles Nelson Reilly’s. He is one of the first editors in publishing who called me when I was a young agent and asked me to lunch. He’s in his forties, clearly gay, very smart, and wickedly funny. After that lunch we spoke a few times a week about work, authors we had in common, publishing gossip. Robert’s references — professional and literary — often went over my head and I would pretend to understand. If he knew, which I’m sure he did, he never let on.
Robert tells me on the phone that he has to head back into the hospital for something having to do with his lungs. No big deal, he says, not to worry. I startle for a moment and when I ask him again, he reassures me that it’s nothing, that it’s routine.
We go up to Cambridge. Noah and I read, go to movies at the Brattle, drink lots of coffee, and walk around and look at Harvard and the great houses spread out on all sides of the campus. What we always do. And then one morning one of Robert’s colleagues calls to say that he is dead, that he went into the hospital and it turned out he had pneumonia.
I’ve known Robert for four or five years, see him every two or three months, and we speak on the phone regularly, but I can’t say we are close. He is a part of my work life, and a consistently bright part. His battle with lymphoma has gone on, as far as I know, for a few years. He has been, with me anyway, always vague about the details. His treatment had gotten rough for a while, he left work for several months, but the remission seemed strong. He flew to Europe to go to the opera and dove back into publishing. He was back to normal.
I hang up the phone and after a few stunned, still moments, I start sobbing. I cry for days and can’t stop. At dinner, during walks around Cambridge, in the shower, at the gym. I cry uncontrollably. The last time I can remember crying was at the hospital with my mother three or four months before. Eventually the tears stop, but the hard fact of never seeing or hearing Robert again plunks down somewhere in my chest and does not leave.
We come back to New York over Labor Day weekend. There is a memorial service for Robert scheduled on September 10 at the University Club. A writer I represent flies to New York from Chicago on the ninth. Robert edited and adored his novel, which is just about to be published. We go to the memorial service and listen to the writers Robert edited tell stories of how brilliantly he edited their work. How well he took care of them. How much fun he was. Their words make me feel alone, lonely. We go to L’acajou and I start drinking right away. Glass after glass, I drink it like water, and my face prickles with the heat of too much alcohol in my blood. I excuse myself to go to the bathroom and call Julio and tell him to call his dealer, that I’m coming over, with cash. Later, after paying the bill, I say my good-byes, get in a cab, run into Julio’s building, and pace the elevator as it crawls to his floor.