I finally make it downstairs to the bar and am immediately disappointed that the place is nearly empty and dotted with a few couples and business colleagues traveling together. I don’t see the vulnerable and restless loner I’m looking for — that magical kindred partner in crime, game for a long night.
I slam three or four vodkas and begin to get shaky. More than twenty minutes without a hit is pushing it, and I’ve been downstairs for at least half an hour. Vodka usually eases that jittery feeling, smooths the little wrinkles of horror that slip in as a high teeters toward a crash, but it’s not helping much now. In any case, I’ve got the largest pile of crack I’ve ever seen waiting in the room and there is no good reason to stop. I signal the waiter as calmly as I can, leave two twenties and a ten with the $35 tab, and make for the elevator.
The night swirls with thick smoke, and I go through nine of the sixteen bags by early afternoon. I have never smoked so much in such a short time — two bags, shared with at least one other person would normally be a big night — and my skin tingles with heat and I’m aware of every breath and every heartbeat. All my clothes and toiletries are scattered around the hotel room and still I have too much left to smoke to make leaving the room seem like a good idea. I call the cabdriver from last night and leave a dozen messages. He doesn’t call back. It takes hours to pack and clean up, with hundreds of pit stops to smoke and drink along the way.
With three hours before the flight, I finally make my way down through the lobby. As I check out, I notice, near the door, five or six men between the ages of forty and sixty. Each has some distinct but unspecific quality — gray slacks, grim shoes, Windbreaker. Head-to-toe JCPenney. They mumble to one another and it seems — though it’s not exactly clear — that they all have earpieces with wires tucked discreetly into their shirts. There is no one else in the lobby. Only one cab waits at the taxi stand. I hear, That’s him, from one of them, or I think I do, as I make my way through the electric doors to the breezeway outside. As I get into the taxi, I notice all five or six of them leaving the hotel and heading toward two or three cars parked in front of the building. The driver gives me a knowing look and states more than asks, Continental, which is of course my airline, but how does he know? I ask him and he says, It’s Newark, everyone flies Continental. I look at his ID displayed in the Plexiglas partition and see that the photo, just like the one in the cab yesterday, is obscured by a piece of cardboard. I begin to panic. He starts the car, pulls away from the hotel, and as I watch the cars filled with the JCPenney guys follow us, I know I am, right now, crossing over from one world into another. I can already imagine myself remembering this cab ride, how it will signal the end of the time when I was free.
I’m about to be arrested. I have a bag of crack and a very used pipe folded in tissue in the front pocket of my jeans. I don’t see how I can get rid of it. Throw it out the window? No, these guys, whoever they are, are right on our tail. Stash it in the garbage when we pull up? No, same reason. Stuff it in the seat cushion of a car that is probably being driven by an undercover DEA agent? Obviously no. Swallow it? Maybe. But the glass pipe… what do I do with the glass pipe? These solutions flash and burst, one by one, again and again, as we crawl toward the terminal. None are possible.
Before I left the hotel room, it seemed like a good idea to bring along enough crack to get high in an airport bathroom just before getting on the plane. As the terminal comes into view, I realize, too late, how insane this idea is. We pull up to the drop-off zone and I notice that one of the cars is directly behind us. I look away as I get out of the cab and pay the driver, who seems indifferent to the fare.
As I make my way into the building, my only thought is when. When will they tap my shoulder and ask me to empty my pockets and open my bags. At the check-in counter? In the security line? The gate? It doesn’t seem possible that I’ll ever make it to the gate.
Pilots in their uniforms walk in their particular way toward their flights. I imagine their sunny families in the nice but not so affluent suburbs of Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. Their sons who collect little model airplanes and show off by knowing all the names — Cessna, Piper Cub, Mooney, 747. I can see my father’s TWA captain’s uniform and hat hung up on the old-fashioned coatrack in his den and remember how handsome I thought he was when I was young. How he looked like a movie star in those dark pressed pants and crisp white shirts. My father. How did this happen, I imagine him asking when he hears about what is about to go down. How did it come to this, Willie?
There is little distance between the check-in counter and security. I have no idea what to do or where to go. If they’re going to arrest me, why haven’t they done it by now? I think of getting back in a cab and heading into the city, but I begin to doubt my perceptions. It must be the drugs, must be paranoia. I’m too small in the grand scheme of things, I reason, to warrant a battalion of JCPenney guys and a hotel stakeout.
I need to ditch the drugs and the pipe. I see a bathroom to the left of the security area and quickly make a beeline there. As I enter, it’s empty. Two stalls and three urinals. I go to a stall with the intention of flushing the bag and the pipe, but when I get in and close the door, I see the toilet has only a trickle of water and seems to be running without stop. It won’t flush. I check the next one and it’s the same. I think maybe they’ve disabled them so I can’t flush my stuff. I feel like a trapped animal. I hear someone enter and quickly pull down my jeans and sit on the toilet. Minutes pass and I barely move. I try not to make a sound at first but then realize that of course he can see my feet and that I should pretend to behave normally. As if I am going to the bathroom. Whoever entered doesn’t leave and I begin to imagine there is actually a whole SWAT team of DEA agents and police silently filling the room. It’s almost impossible not to peek under the stall to see if there are, as I fear, a sea of boots and shoes. But part of me also wants to prolong not knowing as long as possible. To my left is a toilet paper holder and I slowly tear off some sheets and go through the motions of wiping and the audible pantomime of actually using the toilet. At some point it occurs to me that the only thing I can do is wipe down the pipe and bag for fingerprints, wrap them in toilet paper, and place them under the plastic casing of the dispenser. It crosses my mind to throw the crack in the toilet, let it dissolve in the water and hope the residue disappears eventually; but there is something in me that holds back, that can’t bear to watch the drugs erode to nothing. I start imagining the difference in jail sentences — ten years with a bag of crack? probation with just a pipe? Still, I wipe down the pipe and bag, wrap them carefully in toilet paper, and stash it all in the dispenser. I do this as quietly as I can and then pull up my jeans, buckle my belt, and open the door to the stall as if it is the last free second of my life.