Bill Clegg - Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

I wander past the bright, contrived windows along Wooster and try to remember what time of year it is. It looks like Christmas but I’m sure it’s not. It takes longer than a few beats to remember that it’s March. I make my way into a wide, light, serene store, with low tables and discreet racks hanging with what look to be carefully curated garments. I ask a dark-haired saleswoman with eyes like opals — blue with flashing gold and red — if they have any men’s turtleneck sweaters. I tell her I’m visiting and have run the one I’m wearing into the ground. She looks down my torso at what I am wearing, and her frown and wrinkled brow seem to agree. She directs me down a flight of steps to the lower level. Near the bottom of the stairs is a small basket of folded cashmere turtlenecks, and I pick the smallest one they have, in burgundy, with a cable knit pattern, and find a changing room. The moment the door clicks shut, I pack a thick hit, cough loudly to mask the sound of the lighter, and hungrily draw from the stem. I blow the smoke wide and close my eyes for a few minutes. I have no idea where I will go next and I lean against the back of the changing room wall and let the warm glow of the drug shield me from caring. This little changing room, nothing more than a cube of light and mirror and white paint, is safe, and for a moment I am calm.

I slump further down the wall and let every tense, clenched muscle loosen. It feels as if each limb, every digit, could fall off. The contraption of my body feels barely assembled, on the verge of collapse. Out of nowhere comes a memory of Noah weeping at Japonica. Shaking his head and sobbing. Telling me not to explain, not to say another word, that he knew I was high, could see it on every inch of me.

I pack a hit as big and as fast as I possibly can. It takes a few deep draws for the vision of Noah to dim, and after a few more hits the exorcism is complete. The tiny changing room is thick with smoke, and I know I need to leave. After another big hit, I suddenly remember the SoHo Grand Hotel, which can’t be far and where, thankfully, I have no history.

I sit up and shimmer with the promise of a clean, new hotel room as more smoke curls around the ceiling of the changing cubicle. Energized now with a plan, finally a place I can go, I cool off the lighter and stem and head back into the store. As I walk, I notice that my jeans won’t stay up anymore. My old blue cashmere sweater is tucked in all around my waist, but the soiled, worn-thin Levis are still slipping off me. I need to get a new hole punched in my belt before going to the hotel.

The downstairs of the store is brighter now than I remembered, and smaller. I worry they’ve been listening to me get high and that they can smell the smoke pouring from the now open door of the changing room. Without trying on the sweater, I race upstairs to the opal-eyed woman and tell her I’d like to buy it. She runs my debit card through and as she pulls out the bag that has the words Christopher Fischer scrawled across its meridian, I look around the store. Where once it had a sleek impenetrable chic, it now has a slapped-together, flimsy quality. The bag looks odd, too thick, too bright, too big, as if it were a prop bag for some off-Broadway play that involved shopping. The opal-eyed woman folds the sweater in a confection of tissue, places it in the phony bag, and hands me my receipt as she tells me to have a nice evening. I can feel my grip on reality loosen as I take the bag. Is this some setup? But how would they know I’d come here? I rush out of the store and onto Wooster Street.

A few beats later I hear my name being called in a high-pitched, nervous, southern accent. Bill, oh, hello, Bill . I freeze. ROSIE?! Old art-project, crack-smoking, 23rd Street Rosie? What’s she doing here? Jesus, is she in on this? I look around and can’t see anyone I know. My heart pounds and my neck chokes with a sudden rush of blood to my head. And there she is: Barbara. A lovely middle-aged, impeccably dressed woman who acts as an adviser to foreign publishing houses, what people in publishing call a scout. I’ve known her, not well, for years. She eyes me with worry, but kindly, and quickly I say hello and move on before a conversation can take root. Seeing her jolts me into thinking about book publishing, the agency, Kate, our employees, my writers — Jesus, all those writers. And with them the names and faces and voices of all the publishers, editors, agents, scouts, publicists, and assistants roar to life, one by one, like a great, animated mural — scolding and disgusted. And then, again, memories of rehab and Noah flood back in. With my fake shopping bag in one hand and debit card in the other, I start hustling west toward the SoHo Grand.

I see — oh, dear God, thank you — a leather shop and immediately go in, take off my belt, and ask to have a few new holes punched. This is the third time I have done this in the last five weeks. At one point, in some hotel room, I have taken a knife and stabbed out a new, albeit rougher, hole. The old guy behind the stack of bags and wallets eyes the weathered belt and me cautiously and says, You’re going to need more than just a few . He makes three and when I put the belt on it links, easily, to the last one. I consider having him make another, but judging by how quickly he makes the holes and rings up the price, it seems he wants me gone. I walk for a few blocks toward the hotel, but before I get there I know I need to change out of my mangy blue sweater. I’ve been wearing it for over a month. It’s stretched out of shape and the unidentifiable residue that crusts and streaks along the neck and chest is, I’m worried but not exactly sure, beginning to smell.

A few blocks away, I see a small Chinese restaurant. It’s the kind with only three or four tables that is mostly for takeout. There are no other customers in the store when I enter. I step up to the counter and ask if I can use the bathroom, and the boy there, no more than sixteen, says that it’s for customer use only. A woman I assume is his mother joins him and repeats that it’s not for public use.

I am desperate to change and also getting antsy for a hit, so I order three dishes and some egg rolls for takeout and ask, a little impatiently, if I can use the bathroom now . The woman says, yes, if I pay first. So I do. I walk past the counter to the back of the kitchen, where there is a tiny bathroom. Luckily it has a window and a mirror. I run the water and flush the toilet to mask the sounds of the clicking lighter and the popping sound the drug makes when it’s lit. I pack the stem and light up. I load it again, since I’m feeling far from relieved after the first hit. The rock pops at the end of the stem when I pull, and the glass at the very end cracks apart. This sometimes happens when you put a big cold chunk of crack in a still-hot stem and light up too quickly. I scramble as quietly as I can to clean up the small bits of glass, find the thank-God-still-intact rock of crack, and reload the broken stem. My agitation is high, so I pack in even more. The hit is big and I blow the smoke out the window and, thankfully, begin to feel a wash of relief as I exhale. I wriggle out of my sweater and see my torso in the little mirror. Ribs and bones jut everywhere, and the color of my skin is light gray. Little scrapes and burn marks and scabs speckle my arms, chest, and stomach. I feel, for the first time, beyond the desire for sex, as if I have passed into another state of being high, where sex no longer matters. I am relieved, because the body in the mirror is not one I would want anyone to see. I look more closely at the worst burn marks and cuts, the ones on my hands and forearms, and I shudder. I look in the mirror again and see how little skin I have, how my frame seems covered by the thinnest sheet, pulled tight. I look like I crawled out of a fire, starving. I have never seen my pelvic bones winging from my abdomen in the way they do now and I’m relieved, as I pull the sweater over my head, that this glorious, thick miracle of costly fabric covers all of it. I wash my face and hands, wipe away various stains on my jeans, and pick lint and hair and detritus from the rim of my trusty cap. I find Visine in my jacket and drown my eyes in it. I wash my mouth out with soap and rub it under my armpits to cover up whatever odor may be coming from there. I fire up another blast, blow on the stem, wrap it up, put the old sweater in the bag, and open the door that leads to the kitchen and the front of the shop. There are two men — heavy-jacketed, dull-panted, gray-shoed Penneys — and they are looking directly at me as I step toward the counter. The food is in bags, ready, and I grab them, thank the woman and the boy, and leave. As I walk west, I turn back and see the two Penneys exit the restaurant and begin walking my way. I change directions several times, and after twenty or so minutes I think I’ve lost them. I throw the Chinese food and the shopping bag with my old sweater into a garbage can. My heart is racing and I’m worried that I’ll be too panicky to make it through the check-in process at the front desk of the SoHo Grand. I’m too jumpy to stop at a bar and get a drink, so I decide to just go for it. Just get to the room. Once there, I will be okay. Once there, I can order room service, call Happy, drink bottles of vodka to take the sharp edges off. I am focused on the short-term relief of the hotel room, but under everything is a creeping knowledge that with not much money left, not much more weight to lose, and not many more places to hide, this is it. An end of some kind is near.