That one came close, all the more because then, like now, he was to blame. But as terrible as he’d felt-the racking crying that left him hollowed out, the sense that the world was empty-it didn’t add up to the combination of cocaine shakes and paralyzing horror that he had let down and endangered everyone he loved.
How about the time he’d slipped on the icy steps of the Michigan Avenue staircase down to the Billy Goat Tavern, tumbling half a flight to hit the cement with a sickening crack, the pain vicious as broken glass, his leg broken in two places, cars sliding by, exhaust and the queasy yellow light of the underpass and the sense that he was all alone in a city that wanted to break him?
Nope.
Katz holding a cigar to his nuts?
Nope.
He felt an urge to giggle and retch at the same time. It had been almost four days since he’d had so much as a bump of coke, and he was shocked at the desperate way his every cell seemed to be screaming for it. The sky was a spotlight, white and hot and hard.
Hell with them, he thought. Jenn and Alex and Mitch, Katz and Johnny Love and Victor, his father, his coworkers. Hell with them all.
The cab pulled up to his building, and he paid without counting, just handing over bills and climbing out as the driver said, “Hey, man, you OK?” Slammed the door and went in the lobby and hit the elevator button again and again.
His hands were shaking as he fumbled with the keys, and he dropped them and cursed and kicked the front door hard enough to hurt his toe, then bent and snagged them and jammed them in the lock and twisted and walked into his home.
The air smelled sour, and he remembered vomiting that morning, on his knees in front of the toilet, desperate for a line, not doing one. Lying on his side on the couch, the TV on mute, until the phone had rung, Katz on the end of the line, saying he needed to see him right now. Telling him to come to the Continental.
That Katz had betrayed him didn’t surprise or sting. But his friends? The people he had tried to protect? That they couldn’t even try to understand why he had done what he had, that there had been reasons-
Fuck it.
He strode to the bookshelves, snatched the Montecristo box, opened the lid, and shook out the contents to clatter on the glass table. Habit taking over as he unrolled the baggie of white powder, unzipping it to pour a too-large pile. The razor had bounced to the Oriental carpet, and he stooped for it, then dropped to his knees and began to chop the pile furiously. It was good stuff, already fine, and in half a minute he had broken the few clumps and then divided the pile into four thick rails, each long as the span between thumb and forefinger. Ian transferred the razor to his left hand and took the pre-rolled twenty and leaned forward, one end in his nostril, his body calmer already, the shakes easing as they sensed what was coming, the bitter winter snort of relief. The air-conditioning was on, and he could smell his own sweat as he bent over. The motion reflected off the polished surface, the sunlight glaring oblique through the windows, turning the table into a mirror so that he could see his features ghosted over the powder. Pale and hard-angled, with dark pits instead of eyes. A cadaver with a rolled-up bill jammed up his nose.
It was the most haunting thing he had ever seen. Ian froze, staring down at his own face eight inches away. His fingers palsied on the twenty, and his breath scattered the edges of the cocaine like dust. Every part of him wanting to just take a quick blast, just one, something to ease this feeling, to let him think clearly, to banish the memory of the friends who had betrayed him and the job he had blown and the father who never knew what to do with a son who liked games and the man in the suit saying he would visit that same father and do terrible things to him. If he just did a little his mind would clear, and he wanted it, God, he wanted it, more than he’d ever wanted anything, more than Gina or his father’s love or the thrilling uncertainty of the unturned card, and he hated it, more than he hated even himself, and the two feelings yanked at him, tore into him, made him clench and shake and want to scream, and then he felt a slick burning in his left hand.
The pain was sharp and immediate, and it broke the trance. He straightened and blinked. Blood was dripping onto the glass, big fat drops that spattered in perfect patterns, softening red to pink where they hit the powder on the table. Slowly, like a man waking from a dream, he unclenched his fingers. The razor blade. He’d forgotten he was holding it, and his tightening fist had jammed a good third of it into the meat of his palm. Gingerly, he tugged it out, the sliding sensation vaguely nauseating. He dropped it on the glass, where it hit with a ting.
Shit.
Ian closed his hand. Heat and the throb of his pulse. His fingers were red.
Is this all you are?
Is this what you want to be?
He heard Katz’s voice from last week. Laughing, calling him a degenerate. A drug addict in a suit.
A wave of disgust pounded him. He yanked the bill from his nose. Grabbed the cigar box from the floor and upended the Ziploc into it, then leaned forward and used a forearm to shovel all the blow from the table into the box as well. He stood up fast, and walked hard to the bathroom. The toilet seat was still up from the morning’s puking. He held the box over it.
He hesitated before dumping it. But only for a minute. Then he kicked the handle with the tip of his dress shoe and watched it all swirl away.
OK. He’d made some mistakes. And even the things that he had done with good intentions, like paying off Katz, had made things worse. But he wasn’t going down like this. Not Ian Verdon, no way. He’d worked too hard, come too far. Cocaine wasn’t going to beat him, and neither was Johnny Love or Victor, that sick fuck. And if his friends didn’t want his help, well, fine. He’d do it on his own.
Do what, exactly?
The thought took the wind from him. What was there to do? Monday morning, Jenn and Mitch would go to the bank, get the mystery bottles, and give them to Victor. That would be that.
Or would it? Only as long as the guy held true to his promise. Ian had heard too many pitches to buy that “believe every word I say” schtick on credit.
Ian’s left hand was wet with blood. He spun the faucet, held his hand under it. The pain was steady but distant. Hell of a week. A black eye, a sliced palm, a second-degree burn on his balls, dope sickness, and the rejection by his only real friends. Hell of a week.
Somehow he had to make this better. Make up for all the ways he’d blown it.
How long have you got, kid?
All right. Maybe not all the ways. But as many as he could. Help his friends. Get back to being the man he once had been. The guy on the go, the Tennessee Refugee who had come to the Windy City and made a killing.
How, though? Beyond where to score premium flake or play in a private poker game, he didn’t know anything about the criminal world. His cell phone didn’t have numbers for ex-cops with friends on the force or gangbangers working as muscle.
Well, OK. What do you have, then? What are you capable of?
He could always go to the police. But while he wasn’t sure of Victor’s magnanimity in victory, he was damn sure of the man’s willingness to carry out his threats if crossed. His father, Alex’s kid, the others… Ian shivered in the cold tile bathroom. He couldn’t risk it. Especially not knowing what he was dealing with.