Sally is a true Pentecostal Christian and speaks passionately of the Bible and the perils of Satan. I don’t feel I fit in with that way of thinking, but think she will not like me if I don’t pay attention. Politely but distantly, I listen as she drones on about her religion, never connecting any of it with me. The Bible is confusing, and religion’s Satan scares me worse than what I already know. The phone rings.
Sally answers. “It’s for you, Dawn. He says his name is John.”
“That’s him! That’s my boyfriend!”
“Hello! John? Where have you been? I got kicked out, John!” My voice cracks. “I’m at this nice lady’s house in Studio City. I’ve been painting houses with her, and she let me stay. Okay. You got the address. Are you okay? Yeah, he’s fine. Hurry. I love you too.” “I take it that was him.” Sally looks down her nose at me. “Yeah! He’s coming to pick me up. He says to say thank you.”
John arrives a few hours after calling, much later than expected. It is well past dark and, thinking he may not even show up, Sally has already settled in for the night. But I have been restless and worried. There’s a tapping at the door just as we’ve turned out the lights, and Thor starts barking. I throw off my covers and run to look through the peephole. Sally is up, following closely behind.
“John!” I whisper with relief. “Come in. Sally, this is my boyfriend, John.”
“Hello there!” he says with a grin as wide as the state of California. It is dark, but he pulls off a pair of mirrored sunglasses and slides them up over his curls. “I’m John. John Holmes.” He reaches out forcefully for a handshake.
“Well, uh, hi. Shh! Let’s keep our voices down please. Come on in.” Sally is nervous the neighbors will hear. “I found Dawn sitting in front of that motel in Hollywood. She had been kicked out with no place to go. So I let her stay here.”
“Yes. I know. Thank you. Uh, thank you so much. I was, uh, delayed beyond my control and I, uh…” John’s eyes are red, and his head is twitching. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a huge wad of cash, peeling a hundred off the top. “Here, uh, ma’am,” he drawls in his John Wayne impression. “Here’s for taking care of my girl. I, uh, appreciate that.” John winks at her as though she is special.
Sally welcomes the money and blushes. “Well, uh, I can’t…”
“No. No. I insist.” He flirts with her harder, in his sexy porn style. “Uh, do you mind if we use your bathroom? We have to talk.”
John doesn’t wait for a response. Placing his sunglasses back on his face, he smiles his grinchy grin and drags me down the hallway with him. “Baby, baby!” He brings his lips to my ear, still grinning from the other side of his face. He locks the bathroom door behind us.
“Where were you, John? I got kicked out! The guy wouldn’t let me stay! Are you all right? Is everything okay?” I have seen the money and can tell he is really high but in a very good mood.
“Fuck that asshole. He coulda made himself a bundle. Wait. Look at this!” John opens his briefcase. Taking up nearly the entire bottom of the case is the cutoff corner of a black plastic garbage bag stuffed full with the largest brick-sized block of cocaine I have ever seen.
“Whoa! Oh my God! Is that… the deal?”
“You got it, baby. This is it! We are outta here, and this is our ticket!” He is as giddy as a child on Christmas morning.
I can only stare. My thoughts are mixed with fear and excitement as John reaches in and presses me into a long, deep kiss. “I want you,” he breathes hotly into my neck. Then, opening up the bag, he stops to admire his score, picks up a tarot card of the devil that is floating among the wreckage of his briefcase, and lays out four fat, thick lines on the back of a magazine from a shelf under the sink.
Snnnnuffffff. Snnnufffffff. His head snaps back. “Here.” He coughs as he holds a cutoff red-and-white striped straw under my nose.
Strangely mesmerized, I pull my gaze away from the ominous, dark-horned tarot and take my turn inhaling the bitter, white powder. John doesn’t let the terrible burn stop him from his raw, impulsive urge. Instantly he pulls his clothes off and desperately strips mine away in turn. He seals his tall frame, vacuumlike, onto my small, bony form. Our bodies turn instantly hot, reeling, on fire. We’re unable to hear anything but each other’s heavy breathing and frantically pounding hearts—and unable to really feel, numb because of the drug.
“Hey. Are you two okay?” a woman’s voice calls from outside the door. “I need to use the bathroom.”
John starts giggling. “Yeah. Okay. Just a minute.” Quickly we put on our clothes and open the door. A different woman waits in the hallway.
“Hi. I’m Pam, Sally’s sister!” She introduces herself flirtatiously to John. She is much slimmer than Sally, and she wears makeup and thick perfume. Sally is standing behind her, nodding acknowledgement.
“Oh.” Sniff. “Hi! Uh, sorry! Uh, we’ll be out of your way in just a minute.” John looks her slender figure up and down and decides she is cool. “Uh, you two don’t happen to want a wake-up call, now, do you?”
Pam’s eyes bug out. She watches John lay down two large lines with the very same tarot card, number thirteen, the devil. “Sure!” Pam is excited. Sally declines. I gather Thor to wait for John to follow. He never emerges.
Hours pass. The couch, a velour explosion of multicolored flowers, is a quiet place I wait holding Thor and chewing my fingernails. Immobilized by the coke that filters through my system, my mind stays blank, unable to ask questions like why? or how? I am in another world, detached, and the fact that John is still in the bathroom with Pam just doesn’t matter to me.
Sally brews some coffee and paces the kitchen, intermittently storming down the hall to coax her sister out of the bathroom. She doesn’t like this one bit, and she is getting impatient and snappy.
“Can you go check on them?” she asks. She is antsy, the edge of her worry unraveling and fraying like a snag in a wool sweater.
I break out of my private head space. “John. John. What’s going on?” My tapping is featherlike, barely making a sound.
The knob turns; the door pushes ajar. John is sitting on the toilet with his briefcase on his lap, rummaging through the assortment of junk that floats at the bottom. The garbage bag is no longer there; I assume he stashed it somewhere else. Pam is on the floor leaning against the tub, leafing through the magazine used earlier as a table for the cocaine. They are both acting nonchalant—too much so—and I can tell they’re extremely high.
“John. What are you doing? Sally is getting mad. We need to get out of here.”
Pam’s clothes are slightly disheveled and the side of John’s neck has a cluster of red blotches.
“Oh, uh, yeah, baby, uh, sure… I, uh…” His mind drifts from the massive amount of raw drugs that swirl inside his head, and he focuses on some stray topic, as if I’m not there.
“John?”
“Huh? Oh yeah. I’ll be right out, babe.” He flashes me a pasty, dry grin that looks like a discarded Mardi Gras mask. Pam stays glued to the magazine, unnatural and mannequinlike.
“He said he was coming right out.” I tell Sally the news, the bathroom announcement, and resume my spot on the couch.
Mumbling something under her breath, she stomps away to her room.
The sun makes brighter and brighter patches on the beige shag carpet, marking the end of a rigid night with no sleep. The coke is wearing off, and my body aches from the cramping tension in my limbs even though I lie on the couch trying to sleep. Sally is up and in the kitchen again. True fatigue sets in now that the many hours of the night have passed without rest, and my mouth, sticky and dry, calls out for water. Exhausted, I drag myself up to talk to Sally.