John Shirley: Wetbones

"You've been using again," Garner said.

She said, "Uh…" as she tried to decide whether it was worth the effort to deny it.

He went on, "You've got tweakin sores on your arms and face. You've been picking at cocaine bugs."

She started to cry, with a ratchety sound in her throat, and a bubble of phlegm appeared at a nostril. He gave her a tissue from the box on his desk, and she wiped her nose awkwardly, her fingernails getting in the way. They were six-inches long, painted gold, curling like the nails of a tree-sloth. Her brown hair was razor cut into wave patterns along the sides. She was a white girl, but these were the emblems of ghetto culture, Garner knew, which probably meant that she was living with Donald again. He decided to ask her point blank. Theological issues were for later. (Why didn't Terry call?)

"You're back with Donald, aren't you?"

"And you think that's bad, right, because he's a black man."

"Hell no, not because he's a black man, because he's a fucking crack addict, Aleutia, and he's got you back on the shit."

She broke down, then, and he put his arm around her and patted her. She said she was sorry, she knew it was hurting the baby, but she just found herself at the rock-house at five in morning, looking for Donald.

"You were looking for the cocaine, girl, you know? At least as much as Donald."

"So I'm a fucking addict. I didn't ask to be no addict."

I hear you. I was – I'm an addict too." He hadn't done dope of any kind in years but you were supposed to never talk about being an addict in the past tense, because that led to complacency, and somewhere inside, the addict was waiting for complacency. "I've been there. People who say, 'It's your fault because you started and you should have known better', those people are full of shit. We all had a direction in our life, a momentum, see, that carried us into addiction. Your stepdad raping you, your Mom beating you up because your stepdad raped you – the shit you went through goes on and on. You felt like you had to hit the streets. I can see that. But once we know what's happening, we can take responsibility and get the fuck off the streets, Aleutia. You know?"

She shook her head. Shivering. She was having a strong craving now, he knew. A spooncall. Or, in her case, a pipecall. She put her hand to her mouth and he could imagine a crack stem, the glass coke-smoking pipe, in her fingers.

Looking at her, he saw a little girl. Not much older than his own kid. It made him ache with worry about Constance. He thought: I'd better call the cops, tell them Constance is missing…

No. He knew what they'd say: It hadn't been long enough. Give her time. And if they picked her up when nothing was wrong she'd be so mad at him…

He forced himself to concentrate on Aleutia. "Look, Aleutia – you had a cocaine relapse, that's all. It's easy to do. We haven't had a chance to talk much and there's some stuff – Listen, Crack gets you two ways. One, getting off is a way of escaping from all the shit, right? Addictive personalities. We've talked about that. Second – and this is important, Aleutia – it gets to you neurologically. Meaning it messes with your brain chemistry. It pushes your brain-buttons, so to speak. You ever see that film of the white rat that's got a wire running into its brain? The rat pushes a button to stimulate the pleasure centre of the brain and it becomes this little furry button pushin' machine. That's all it can do, it doesn't eat or sleep, it just pushes that fucking button till it dies, girl. It reprogrammed itself that way."

"Oh God, that's fucked up." Her face crumpling. "What're you saying, we're like robots? Programming and shit?" Tears streaking her makeup.

"Only up to a point. You get trapped. Neurologically trapped."

"It's like a fucking roach motel," she said miserably, reaching for a clean tissue.

He nodded, thinking about the baby in her belly: trapped in the trapped. He took a deep breath. "But if you get off the shit, and give yourself a whole new system of rewards, well, eventually, you can get free. It takes time for the brain to get normal. And holding on till then takes help from outside the trap. What you need to do, maybe, is think about going to a halfway house. Inpatient recovery home. For six months, say…"

Aleutia just shook her head. After a moment she said, "Can I smoke a cigarette?"

Before he could answer, the phone rang. Aleutia was startled as he lunged at it. "Yeah?"

"Mr. Garner? This is Terry. Um – her car's there. But I swear – Constance's just not at this mall. And all the stores are closed now…"

Ephram was sitting in his living room at the desk, writing in his journal. The old fashioned rolltop was the only piece of furniture in the room, except for the LA-Z-Boy recliner by the CD player. He was listening to Franz Schubert.

Ephram wrote in his journal to soothe himself, after the irritation of his labours over Megan's body.

He wrote, 'For 18 July 199 -':

… found that the large wire clippers worked very well to remove her fingertips, and I disposed of the fingertips quite confidently off a pier, finger food for the crabs, ha ha. Disposed of the clippers off the pier also.

The body presented another problem. The sea cannot be trusted with a cadaver. As planned, tied it to the underside of a train. This had to be carefully timed in order to avoid discovery of the body by railroad workers before the train should begin its work. All went well, thank the Spirit. The train dragged the body a goodly distance, face down on the cinders, making shreds of the face and many other identification details and of course providing a reasonable explanation for the death, if no coroner chooses to look too closely. After the ropes broke, it dropped the body. I removed the ropes. Some drugged girl wandering across a railroad yard… I of course used the blowtorch to remove body hair… Perhaps a full incinerator would be ideal after all and when I find another wealthy subject I will shore up my bank account and look into the purchase of an incinerator big enough to do the job… After disposing of Twenty-six I traced Twenty-seven by her pscent, ha ha, finding her outside one of those dreadful arcades at the Southshore Mall…

Garner almost collapsed with relief when he saw Constance coming up the sidewalk. He didn't think about the odd, drifty way she was walking, didn't think about it consciously at first, till she came into the kitchen with him. Then he was hit by one incongruity after another.

''Where's your necklace?" She was never without that tacky gold-letter necklace that spelled out her name.

"Hm?" She looked at him from the other side of a fog bank. "Um – I don't know." Indifferent. Normally she'd have run around like a decapitated chicken, looking for the necklace.

She looked tired, too. She didn't smell like crack smoke or pot, but… all the other signs were there. She was wobbly on her feet. Not meeting his eyes. Distancing. Indifference to what used to be important to her.

How could it happen so fast? It just didn't happen that way overnight.

"What is it, hon?" he said gently. "Was it cocaine or what?"

"What do you mean?" Her voice dreamily monotone. Normally she would have said, Da-ad! I'm sure! Gross!

"Where's the car, Constance? I didn't see it outside."

"Car?" She blinked. Twice. "Oh. God. I left it at the mall. I'm sorry." She smiled distantly. "Happiness comes in places you never expect, didn't you say that once, Dad?"

"Uh – yeah."

"You were right. I would never expect… a guy like…" She shut her mouth. Rather abruptly.

"A guy like who, Constance? Hon – did someone give you drugs?"

"No." Soft-spoken conviction. Convincing understatement.

"You fall in love?" That was a kind of drugging. "Falling in love" released hormones, endorphins, made you feel drugged. He knew it was grasping at straws but he grasped at it anyway.