He felt a violent and alarming swelling in his arm and recognized immediately that the spike had slipped out of his vein and he had squirted the solution under his skin.
‘Shit,’ he shouted.
Chilly came shuffling through. ‘What’s happening, man?’
‘I missed,’ said Patrick through clenched teeth, pushing the hand of his wounded arm up against his shoulder.
‘Oh, man,’ croaked Chilly sympathetically.
‘Can I suggest you invest in a stronger light bulb?’ said Patrick pompously, holding his arm as if it had been broken.
‘You shoulda used the flashlight,’ said Chilly, scratching himself.
‘Oh, thanks for telling me about it,’ snapped Patrick.
‘You wanna go back and score some more?’ asked Chilly.
‘No,’ said Patrick curtly, putting his coat back on. ‘I’m leaving.’
By the time he hit the street Patrick was wondering why he hadn’t taken up Chilly’s offer. ‘Temper, temper,’ he muttered sarcastically. He felt weary, but too frustrated to sleep. It was eleven thirty; perhaps Pierre had woken up by now. He had better go back to the hotel.
Patrick hailed a cab.
‘You live around here?’ asked the driver.
‘No, I was just trying to score,’ Patrick sighed, posting the bags of Vim and barbs out of the window.
‘You wanna score?’
‘That’s right,’ sighed Patrick.
‘Shee-eet, I know a better place than this.’
‘Really?’ said Patrick, all ears.
‘Yeah, in the South Bronx.’
‘Well, let’s go.’
‘All right,’ laughed the driver.
At last a cab driver who was helpful. An experience like this might put him in a good mood. Perhaps he should write a letter to the Yellow Cab Company. ‘Dear sir,’ murmured Patrick under his breath, ‘I wish to commend in the highest possible terms the initiative and courtesy of your splendid young driver, Jefferson E. Parker. After a fruitless and, to be perfectly frank, infuriating expedition to Alphabet City, this knight errant, this, if I may put it thus, Jefferson Nightingale, rescued me from a very tiresome predicament, and took me to score in the South Bronx. If only more of your drivers displayed the same old-fashioned desire to serve. Yours, et cetera, Colonel Melrose.’
Patrick smiled. Everything was under control. He felt elated, almost frivolous. The Bronx was a bit of a worry for someone who had seen Bronx Warriors – a film of unremitting nastiness, not to be confused with the beautifully choreographed violence of the more simply, and more generically named The Warriors – but he felt invulnerable. People drew knives on him, but they could not touch him, and if they did he would not be there.
As the cab sped over a bridge Patrick had never crossed before, Jefferson turned his head slightly and said, ‘We’re gonna be in the Bronx soon.’
‘I’ll wait in the cab, shall I?’ asked Patrick.
‘You better lie on the floor,’ laughed Jefferson, ‘they don’t like white people here.’
‘On the floor?’
‘Yeah, outta sight. If they see you, they gonna smash the windows. Shee-eet, I don’t want my windows smashed.’
Jefferson stopped the taxi a few blocks beyond the bridge and Patrick sat down on the rubber floor mat with his back against the door.
‘How much you want?’ asked Jefferson, leaning over the driver’s seat.
‘Oh, five bags. And get a couple for yourself,’ said Patrick, handing over seventy dollars.
‘Thanks,’ said Jefferson. ‘I’m gonna lock the doors now. You stay outta sight, right?’
‘Right,’ said Patrick, sliding down further and stretching out on the floor. The bolts of all the doors slithered into place. Patrick wriggled around for some time before curling up in a foetal position with his head on the central hump. After a few moments his hip bone was persecuting his liver and he felt hopelessly tangled up in the folds of his overcoat. He twisted around onto his front, rested his head in his hands, and stared at the grooves in the floor mat. There was quite a strong smell of oil down at this level. ‘It gives you a whole new perspective on life,’ said Patrick, in the voice of a television housewife.
It was intolerable. Everything was intolerable. He was always getting into these situations, always ending up with the losers, the dregs, the Chilly Willys of life. Even at school he had been sent every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, when the other boys joined their teams and played their matches, to remote playing fields with every variety of sporting misfit: the pale and sensitive musicians, the hopelessly fat Greek boys, and the disaffected cigarette-smoking protesters who regarded physical exertion as hopelessly uncool. As a punishment for their unsporting natures, these boys were forced to make their way round an assault course. Mr Pitch, the overwrought pederast in charge of this unwholesome squad, quivered with excitement and malice as each boy crashed myopically, waddled feebly, or tried to beat the system by running around the wall at the beginning of the course. While the Greeks splattered into the mud, and the music scholars lost their spectacles, and the conscientious objectors made their cynical remarks, Mr Pitch rushed about screaming abuse at them about their ‘privileged’ lives and, if the opportunity arose, kicking them in the bottom.
What the hell was going on? Had Jefferson gone to fetch some friends so they could beat him up together, or was he simply being abandoned while Jefferson went to get stoned?
Yes, thought Patrick, shifting restlessly, he had hung out with nothing but failures. Living in Paris when he was nineteen, he had fallen in with Jim, an Australian heroin smuggler on the run, and Simon, a black American bank robber just out of prison. He could remember Jim saying, as he had searched for a vein among the thick orange hairs of his forearm, ‘Australia’s so beautiful in the spring, man. All the little lambs frisking about. You can tell they’re just so happy to be alive.’ He had pushed the plunger down with a whimsical expression on his face.
Simon had tried to rob a bank while he was withdrawing, but he had been forced to surrender to the police after they had fired several volleys at him. ‘I didn’t wanna look like no Swiss cheese,’ he explained.
Patrick heard the merciful sound of the locks opening again.
‘I got it,’ said Jefferson huskily. ‘Goody,’ said Patrick, sitting up.
Jefferson was happy and relaxed as he drove to the hotel. When he had snorted three of the bags Patrick could understand why. Here at last was a powder that contained a little heroin.
Jefferson and Patrick parted with the genuine warmth of people who had exploited each other successfully. Back in his hotel room, lying on the bed with his arms spread out, Patrick realized that if he took the other two bags and turned on the television he could probably fall asleep. Once he had taken heroin he could imagine being without it; when he was without it he could only imagine getting more. But just to see if all the evening’s trouble had been completely unnecessary, he decided to call Pierre’s number.
As the telephone rang he again wondered what kept him from suicide. Was it something as contemptible as sentimentality, or hope, or narcissism? No. It was really the desire to know what would happen next, despite the conviction that it was bound to be horrible: the narrative suspense of it all.
‘Hallo?’
‘Pierre!’
‘Who iz this?’
‘Patrick.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Can I come round?’
‘OK. How long?’
‘Twenty minutes.’