Don Winslow - A Cool Breeze on the Underground

“That’s right. You’re an idiot.”

“I am.”

“But you’re a live idiot.” Graham stood up, walked over to Neal, and took him by the collar with his one real hand. “Listen, son, anytime you have to disappear, it’s serious. You disappear because you have to. Now your fuckup with the notepad made it easy, but I would have found you anyway, for all the reasons I told you. When you disappear, you don’t leave anything behind except yourself. You become somebody else. Or you’ll get found. And the next time you get found, it might not be me, but someone who wants to kill you. You got that, son?”

“Yes, Dad.”

Graham let go of him. “Good. Now get lost. I’ll drink the coffee.”

Neal walked down the stairs and onto the street. Two days later, he was unhappily ensconced in a sleeping bag in a state park in Rhode Island. He hated every minute of it.

Graham didn’t find him, however.

Getting off heroin won’t kill you. Problem is, you wish it would.

The body is a vindictive fucker. It wants what it wants, and when it can’t get it, it starts dreaming up ways to motivate you: runny nose, runny eyes, aching joints, aching muscles. It makes your skin crawl and your nerves jump. It makes you shake, rattle, and roll. You get cold, freezing cold, and then you get colder, and you think you’re going to shake apart, actually shake to bits. You start to breathe in short, nasal snorts and exhale in long sighs and groans. Sometimes the floor starts pitching like the deck of a small ship in a big storm, and then you just want to lie there and hold on to your knees, because they hurt so much. And if you could just get warm…

Neal wrapped Allie in blankets. She shivered anyway as she stalked the bedroom, trying to walk away the ache and the cold.

“‘She can’t take much more, Captain,’” she said.

“Huh?”

“Didn’t you ever watch Star Trek? When Captain Kirk would make Scotty take it up to Warp Eight and the Enterprise would start shaking and Scotty would get on the intercom and say, ‘She can’t take much more, Captain’?”

“And then they’d all tilt from one side to the other.”

“Yeah. Right. But then it would be okay.”

“Until the next week.”

“Give me something.”

“I don’t have any.”

“Please…”

“I threw it all away.”

He was sitting on the bed. She dropped to her knees in front of him.

“I’ll blow you,” she said.

“Alice…”

“I will. I’m good.”

“C’mon,” he said, lifting her up. “Walk. I’ll help you.”

He put his arm around her shoulder as they paced the room.

“Neal. I’m not going to make it through the night.”

“Yeah you will.”

“I’ll die.”

“No you won’t.”

Yeah you will? No you won’t? Brilliant stuff, Neal thought. Maybe you can open up an office, charge forty bucks an hour, and say, “Yeah you will,” “No you won’t.” He almost wished he hadn’t thrown the smack away. This girl was hurting bad. And his record at getting women off heroin wasn’t so great.

“I’m scared,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“Wrong answer, you asshole! You’re scared? Now you fucking tell me? This whole thing was your goddamn idea!”

She started to laugh. “You’re scared.”

She was laughing as she started pounding on his chest and his arms with her fists. Her laughter quickly turned to tears.

The cramps started later. She tried to throw up but couldn’t, and her retching dry heaves hurt as much as the cramps. Neal held her from behind-one hand on her neck, and the other pressed into her lower stomach muscles. Between heaves, he draped her head with a cool cloth and talked to her, telling her she’d get past it, she’d be okay, that she wouldn’t die. He sang her songs, whatever lullabies he could remember from his mother’s snatches of maternal cogency. He summarized the plots of Star Trek episodes, playing all the parts and making the noises of phasers and communicators. They played games: Name a rock group for every letter of the alphabet (The Angry Aardvarks, The Zony Zebras), sing the theme music from old TV shows. (They got The Brady Bunch but couldn’t recall The Partridge Family.)

Morning came at last.

Neal thought it had probably been the toughest night of his life.

He knew it had been the hardest of Allie’s. She had sweated it out, hung tough, all those good cliches. Now she was finally asleep. With the dawn had come a little peace.

He needed it. It had been a night spent with a tortured Allie, and a night spent with his own ghosts: a girl that he could help, a mother he couldn’t. A thousand memories of that woman in pain and need, and a little boy unable to do a thing who hated her for it, hating himself for it. But on this night, in the here and now, he had helped, And they got through it together.

As he slumped in his chair, watching Allie sleep, getting rested for the next paroxysm of need that would hit her, he realized that his rage was gone. The sorrow would always be there, he knew, but the rage was gone. Maybe there is a God, he thought, and he sent, me Allie Chase.

Allie didn’t know where she was when she woke up a while later. She sat up with a start, then noticed Neal and managed a weak smile. Then she leaned over and threw up into the bucket Neal had put there for the purpose.

“I love morning, don’t you?” Neal asked, receiving a muttered obscenity in reply. He tossed her a damp cloth to wipe her face.

She tried to get out of bed, but her legs were wobbly. Neal grabbed her elbow and helped her up. They made a shaky trip down the stairs and he plunked her down in a chair in front of the fireplace. It took him a couple of minutes to get the fire started, and then he carried a smoldering stick into the kitchen and lit the wood-burning stove. He put the water on for tea, and spooned a large dollop of honey into Allie’s cup. “You okay in there?” he yelled.

“Terrific.” He took the sarcastic tone as a good sign. “Be right in.”

“Yip yip.”

He looked out the window while he waited for the water to boil. Up the hill to his left, he could just make out a small dog hustling a herd of sheep along the crest. He wondered where the shepherd was and how far away he lived. Surely he’d notice the smoke from Simon’s chimney and maybe stop by for a cup and a chat. Neal started to work on some lies to tell in that eventuality. Lost in mendacity, he was startled by the shrill whistle of the kettle.

He dumped what he figured was a couple of teaspoons of smoky, black tea into the bottom of the pot and poured the boiling water over it. Then he swished the pot gently a few times and let it set. He found the strainer and a tray and took everything over by the fire, where he poured Allie the first cup.

“Drink,” he ordered. “Yummy.”

“Ill throw it up,” she warned.

“Jesus Christ, we wouldn’t want you to throw up!”

She took the cup and sipped. “Sweet enough.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

“That’s what I am.”

Neal shook his head.

“What? I’m not a bitch?”

“Yeah, you are. But I think it’s more of a habit than a permanent condition.”

“I like being a bitch.”

“Are you hungry?”

Her look of total disdain answered his question.

“I am,” he said.

“Then eat.”

He found some oatmeal cookies in a cupboard and took them back in.

“Is today going to be as bad as yesterday?” She looked like a scared child. It reminded Neal how young she really was.

“No. You won’t get as violently sick. You’ll be real jittery, though, and you’ll get the aches again. But not as bad.”

“How come you know so much about this?”