She lived in a studio apartment at the top of a fourstory walk-up on Avenue B and Twelfth Street. The floor was covered with gum wrappers, the walls deco rated with posters of vintage album covers and artsy photographs, usually of frighteningly skinny women shaded in odd pastel light. The room smelled like patch ouli and cinnamon. Our tea rested on what appeared to be an antique trunk, covered in customs stickers from every corner of the earth. Portugal, Greenland, Syndey, Prague, the Sudan. This woman didn't look like she traveled much. Odds were she'd bought the pieces, stickers already applied.
The bed was unmade, and I noticed a large box sticking out from underneath. She saw me looking at it, said, "Clothes. I keep meaning to donate them."
She was lying, but I wasn't here to judge.
"So how did you know Stephen?" I asked.
"We used to…" She looked away from me. Then she pulled a lighter from her sock, took a bent cigarette from a drawer. "You mind if I smoke?"
"Go right ahead."
She took out a glass ashtray and set it on the table.
It was crusted with old butts and ash. Flicking the lighter, she lit the cig and took a long puff, holding it aloft between two fingers.
"We used to get high together," she said.
"Used to?" I asked.
"I met him when I moved to the city eight years ago.
Wanted to be on Broadway, you know? All that kicking and dancing. I was voted 'most likely to succeed'in high school. Starred in all the drama shit. Figured I'd come here and show those Rockette girls how things are really done."
"And then?"
"It's a tough gig," she said like a woman who'd given up the dream long ago and had come to peace with it.
"Too tall. Too fat. Too short. Nose too big. Tits too small.
There's always an excuse. So I started waitressing in
Midtown, cool little Irish pub. Some of the actors used to go there for a drink after the shows. Then I'd come back here, get high and crash. That's how I met
Stephen."
"How exactly did you meet him?"
"Funny story," she said, taking another long drag. "I used to call this guy named Vinnie when my stash needed re-upping. Well, his name wasn't actually
Vinnie. It was kind of a global pseudonym that all the runners used, they'd all call themselves Vinnie. There were probably a dozen different Vinnies working at any given time, covering different parts of the city. So one day I'm outside on the stoop waiting, and another guy kind of ambles up and just stands around. I can tell from the way he's walking, kind of looking at the street, side to side, he was definitely a user. So I said hi. He said hi back. Vinnie rolls up half an hour later, this greaser wearing a hat turned sideways, couldn't have been a day over fifteen, and fills us both up. And since it's always more fun to see those bright lights with company, we went back to his place."
Rose's eyes flickered to the walls, then back to the table. There was sorrow and pain in her eyes that hadn't been there a minute ago. She was trying to stay cool, but I could tell she'd cared about Stephen.
"It was kind of funny, because Stephen and Vinnie had this little, I don't know, chat. Friendly, like two buds. I figured Stephen had used this guy before. You know how sometimes you order pizza so often, the delivery guy kind of becomes your pal? At first it's all tips and friendly hi's but then you're talking about the weather. One pizza guy actually asked me out once.
That's when I knew I needed to learn how to cook."
"How long did you know Stephen?" I asked.
Rose sniffed, tapped out her cigarette until it stopped smoking. Then she placed it in the ashtray amidst a graveyard of used butts. She stared at them for a moment, like a woman who'd been trying for years to quit and realized just how addicted she was.
"Just about seven years."
"Were you two close?"
"Depends on when you mean," she said. Her voice had become a little more abrasive. She had feelings for
Stephen, but there had been some bad times, too. I imagined that when two junkies got together it wasn't exactly Ozzie and Harriet. If a relationship between two such people could be thought of as "tumultuous," it was probably the best one could hope for. I'd had enough relationships that were able to find trouble on their own without the uncertainty caused by stimulants and hallucinogenic substances.
"Did you date?" I asked, hoping she wouldn't get offended at my prying.
"Again," she said bitterly, "depends on when you're talking about."
"Were you seeing each other when Stephen got killed?"
"Hell, no," she said irritably. "See, thing is, after a while you get tired of the life. It's one thing to be irre sponsible and screwing around in your twenties. I mean, everyone does it. Most folks don't settle down by twenty-five and spend time worrying about a mortgage and a 401k. I didn't, and neither did Stephen. But then you hit thirty, and you're still renting a studio smaller than a shoe box, and guys like Vinnie stay the same age because whoever the dude is who supplies them just keeps hiring high-school kids. Funny. I must have had half a dozen dealers all named Vinnie, all under the age of twenty-one. You know how stupid you feel when you're thirty and some kid is selling to you, and you know he's still in high school and probably makes more money than you?"
"So you were looking to go clean," I said.
"Have been for a year now," Rose said. She stood up, picked up the ashtray and brought it into the kitchen where she tapped out the contents into a trash bin. She came back, put the tray back into a drawer like it had never been taken out. "Trying, at least. The hooks are a lot easier to dig in than they are to pull out."
"What about Stephen?"
Rose sighed, leaned back in her chair. A wistfulness crossed her face. "I thought he was trying to quit. He seemed like he was. See, I never really thought Stephen had that serious a problem. Just recreational crap. I mean, everyone smokes a bit. Shoots up a bit. It's all about keeping it under control. I did that, and then I quit. Stephen never quit. And in case you haven't noticed, addicts never stay even keel. They either get better or they get worse."
"And Stephen got worse."
"Like cancer," she said.
I looked again at the skin under Rose's shirt. I could see the bruises weren't track lines, but destroyed veins.
Dark blues and black, yellow skin surrounding them.
Perhaps even an infection gone untreated. Whether drug addiction started off as a disease I didn't know, but sure as hell once those hooks dug in, the virus swam around in your system until it ate you from the inside.
"What do you do for a living, Rose? I mean, all those drugs couldn't be cheap."
"Graphic designer," she said proudly. "I make eighty grand a year."
She noticed how impressed I was.
"And your employer, they…"
"Never knew a thing. Been working for a television studio doing Web site design for six years. They figure the geeks are wired differently than everyone else, and that we were all born in the same freaky nursery. So you come in with your hair messed up smelling like stale cigarettes and beer, they figure you were up late
'hacking.' Most people can't differentiate between a designer and a programmer. As long as you know html, you're golden. As if they even knew what the letters stand for."
"Stephen," I said. "What did he do?"
The moment I said it I felt a sadness. The more I learned about Stephen Gaines the closer I got to him.
The more I despised having never known this man at all.
"I know he tried to write for a while. He wanted to do culture reporting, trend pieces…" Rose's voice trailed off.
"Did he get any published?"