I ride the 54C loop farther eastward, between the brackets of the rivers, until the edge of Shadyside. I walk to Ellsworth Avenue down streets of mansions and tended lawns—these are houses of the dead, everyone who lived here is dead. Tree shade, a row of cars idling up ahead at the light at Negley—and just beyond the intersection, a sign for Uni-Mart. I used to buy milk there. Overpriced cereal’s on the shelves, and instant coffee, and Twinkies, Slim Jims. Antacid and aspirin behind the counter. They used to sell Playboy magazine there, and Penthouse—long after you couldn’t easily find actual magazines, but Uni-Mart sold them on a wire rack along with fashion magazines and Us Weekly and magazines with pictures of girls and trucks, all shrink-wrapped. I’d love to look at those. I’d love to wander the aisles, to smell the ammonia-clean of the bathrooms and the hot dogs juicing on their rollers and watch a Slushie gush bright cherry red into a waxy paper cup—but not now, not now.
The Georgian Apartment with its black iron gates. This is where we lived. Layering, the scent of mown lawns, of car exhaust, of fried food from the restaurants a few blocks away on Walnut. I’m here. Layering, every tree marked with a SmartTag: American Elm, White Poplar, special highlights on a Cutleaf Weeping Birch, and along the ground, Lily, Tulip, every flower—with links to Wikipedia, JSTOR, the Phipps botanical database. Moving SmartTags on insects, an annotated anthill with journal references about fifteen feet away.
I’m here—
On Ellsworth, the ginkgos have shed their leaves, carpeting the sidewalk with a vomit-sour sludge of crushed berries. I run through the Georgian’s courtyard, stone benches line the walk and columns flank the double front doors. Layering, the scent of the fuchsia peonies overflowing the Grecian planters. The apartment lobby’s tiled black and white, with brass mailboxes for the tenants and a carved mantel over an ornamental fireplace. It’s all so real. My reflection’s in the mirror above the fireplace but I can’t stomach to look. The paisley carpet on the central staircase is threadbare and stinks of cigarette smoke. The stairs and floorboards creak. Fire doors and ill-lit hallways. An Exit light at the far end of the hall, a window with gauzy curtains. I’m here. Room 208.
I’m here—
Just outside the room door, a section of the apartment wall’s been repainted as a SmartTag, scrolling through faces of 208’s previous tenants—the pictures pulled from driver’s licenses and student IDs, the census, or linked through cached Facebook profiles to the names on the leases.
Blaxton, John Dominic and Theresa Marie—
The SmartTag vanishes, loading my profile. I step into the foyer of my old apartment. The walls are cream and the floors are a gleaming blonde hardwood. The kitchen is a galley, the bathroom small—cracked tiles and a sink with separate handles for hot and cold. The radiators cough and clank. I take my coat off, my shoes. We didn’t have much furniture, but what we had is here—the seafoam Ikea couch in front of the bookshelves, a set of wooden Ikea chairs we’d painted red. The bookshelves sag with stacked poetry books and poetry manuscripts sent to me to consider, books and manuscripts I never read, never will read. Railroad tracks cut through the busway gully about fifty yards from the building. We’d hated the trains when we first moved in, but grew accustomed to the swaying iron lullaby as they rushed near our windows each night. I miss them, Oh God, how I miss them. Our bedroom is spare—a futon with pillows and comforters, the sheets tangled like we’d left them. A set of dresser drawers bought cheap in the children’s section of Target. A television with a DVD player. I undress. I lie in bed with her, holding her, waiting for the trains to sing us to sleep. I breathe in the scent of her hair. Night falls.
11, 17—
“Dominic—and I’m here because I’ve had problems with Adware, that sort of thing. I’m a survivor of Pittsburgh. I tweak to enhance immersion, so I’m here for substance abuse, too, but that’s considered a secondary on my paperwork—”
“Hello, Dominic,” they all say.
The leader sits beneath the clock. Sickly green walls. A chalkboard: What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.—Ralph Waldo Emerson. The others slouch on folding chairs in a semicircle staring at me, fluorescent tubes carving their faces in white and shadow. A few twitch for a fix—cigarette packs and lighters already in their sweaty hands.
“Dominic, you have the floor—feel free to speak your mind. Tell us about your grieving. What are you struggling with? You don’t have to stand—”
“Brown sugar, mainly. I’ve also done MDPV, Adderall, Dexedrine and LSD, but they don’t work as well, sometimes they kink the immersion with paranoia—”
I’ve casually become an expert of stimulants, the paraphernalia of attaining highs vivid enough to make the streams real, and I hate myself for it—I hate how easily I recite the litany of shit I’ve used and how quickly I can catalog their range of effects. I was never like this, I was never like this before—Theresa wouldn’t recognize the man I’ve become.
“I had an episode the other day,” I tell them. “Heroin in my system from a pill called a valentine when I dropped brown sugar at a KFC and lost control. I can’t even remember—the police picked me up wandering Dupont Circle. I’d stopped up traffic—a public nuisance, my fifth disturbing the peace charge. They arrested me and checked me into an Urgent Care clinic. They cleaned my blood. Dialysis with dopamine stims and a pack upgrade to the Adware that’s reconditioned my cravings—”
“Involuntary Assistance,” they call it: two dozen beds, male nurses with heavy hands used to subduing violent patients. Nylon straps, buckled down. The patient next to me retched crystallized blood—Christ. They laced me with tubes, plugged me into the machine. I gave up, stopped struggling. Intravenous fluids coursed through me. I didn’t feel the dialysis, but heard the whir, chug, whoosh of the machine cleaning my blood and rushing it back to my heart. I wondered where I was—The hospital. Did something happen to me?—savoring the last wisps of Theresa and Pittsburgh as Twiggy’s heroin valentine was filtered from my body. The Adware downloads completed and my personality numbed—fucked everything up, all my account settings. The nurses flashed visuals of drugs and measured my responses, tinkered with my Adware until I fell within the normal range. My addiction was cured.
“A clean bill of health?” asks the leader.
“A clean bill of health, but I was convicted on a drug abuse felony because of the heroin and sentenced to eight years of prison, but the sentence was waived in exchange for a correctional rehabilitation program. I lost my job—”
“What happened?” asks the leader.
“My boss’s hand was forced because of the felony charge,” I tell them. “But I think he was losing patience anyway. He voiced and told me that my employment status had changed, that I would no longer be working for him. I tried to argue—”
“And now you’re here with us, a grief support group for men affected by Pittsburgh-related PTSD—”