Michael Christie - The Beggar's Garden

My mind accelerates with a myriad of science-related questions, questions I’ve never had the chance to say out loud, and all of them seem too elementary for his finely tuned understanding. “Did you know the park out there is named after you?” I sputter, my clamping jaw carving jagged chunks out of my syllables.

“Ha. Of course it’s not, Henry, it’s named after Vancouver’s ghastly and colitic imp of a second mayor, David Oppenheimer — no relation. Why would they name it after me?” He lights up his third cigarette in one mechanical motion and blows more smoke into my room.

“Everybody around here thinks it is,” I say. “Regardless, your question is churlish and time is precious, so moving on, I will cut to it …” He clears his throat.

“In my humble opinion it is not possible to be a scientist unless you think it is of the highest value to share your knowledge. Would you agree?”

“Yes,” I say, still wondering if churlish is bad.

J. Robert’s eyes again find my empty crack vials. “And accepting this axiom you must agree as a scientist that it is invariably good to learn, that knowledge is good. Yes?”

I nod.

“Do you truly believe that?”

“Of course,” I say, sounding decisive and intelligent.

“Excellent. So now we arrive at the crux of my proposal, Henry, and that crux being … In the spirit of scholarly inquiry, I hereby formally request your assistance in the procurement and consumption of the drug commonly referred to as crack cocaine.”

“I have no money.” It is the first thing I can think of; next is wishing to have denied ever smoking it.

“Aha! A pragmatist! Of course I have more than adequate funds to suffice for our purposes; think of it as our research grant, and when I say ‘our,’ Henry, I am illuminating the fact that you will be an equal participant in the inhalation of the psychoactive substance in question.”

I say nothing. His eyes are so kind and forgiving, they make me want to turn around and see if they are actually meant for someone behind me.

Method

Although he is too foreign-seeming and well dressed to be a cop, J. Robert’s eagerness and complex questions put the dealers off. However, even when turning him down, they treat him with more respect than they ever did me, calling him sir, and one of them going so far as to ask why such a fine gentleman would want to get high with a goof like me. Finally, after promising to report all details of the experience, I convince J. Robert to stay back while I complete a transaction. The man is impressed by my large request and American money and says he is from Seattle and is just selling to get home. He stuffs J. Robert’s money into his jeans before telling me he has to go pick up more vials because he doesn’t have that much on him. I follow him nervously with J. Robert trailing a block behind. He leads us to a rooming house and I wait for a minute while he runs upstairs. I don’t have to find out what J. Robert would do to me if I got burned for his money because the man returns with a plastic bag rattling with vials, and I act like the whole thing was no big deal.

The sun is out and fluffy clouds bump together in the sky above the park. Clouds are glorified smoke. My days are defined and determined by the comings and goings of various types of smoke. We are walking briskly now, J. Robert slightly ahead of me. We come upon an old drunk woman lying at the edge of the park, passed out before she could reach its boundary, pickled in the sour jar of her body. I get a whiff of mouthwash vapour, strangely sweet and ironically fresh. Her mouth is loose and open, jaw pushed slightly forward, like she is concentrating on something fragile and complicated. “Alcohol evaporates faster than water,” I say, but J. Robert is too far ahead to hear me. It’s as if this woman is sublimating, I think, solid straight to gas, her life’s horrid memories fuming from her rubbery ears. I tighten my grip on the bag of vials and quicken my pace.

He tosses his suit jacket over my TV, unbuttons his sleeves, and shoves them up his arms. “Your apartment is significantly smaller from the inside, Henry.” This is the longest I have ever gone between buying rock and smoking it. He rubs his hands together, sits cross-legged on my mattress. “Teach me everything,” he says, “everything you know.”

As I’m laying out our supplies — pipes, steel wool, lighters, mouthpieces — it starts to rain. It feels as if the room’s air is being sucked through the bars out the window and up into the churning clouds, and I feel cold. I explain the entire process to J. Robert, savouring the details, making it sound as complicated as possible. He studies my face, sometimes moving his lips along with me as I talk.

He raises the pipe and his hands are shaking.

“Like I said now, don’t scorch it.”

I can’t believe I’m telling a genius to be careful. He does a good job melting it and starts to get a toke, but he lowers the pipe trying to watch the rock burn and the liquefied crack dribbles out the end into his lap.

“Goddamn it!” he says with an intense and boyish concentration.

I start coaching, “Don’t stop! Keep smoking it, tip it up, that’s it, now inhale — go go go go …”

He brings it back to his lips, musters a pretty good one, but blows it out too early.

“I don’t feel anything, Henry. Goddamn it, show me properly, you buffoon!”

“Here,” I say, blowing on the scorched pipe to cool it down. I load another rock, cook it, take a big hoot, then hold it to his lips and he fills his lungs. He holds it, blows it out, and shivers. His porkpie hat is tipped back like a newspaperman and his forehead is varnished with sweat.

“That was the one, Henry … Oh yes … I’m getting the picture.” He closes his eyes and leans back on my bed. “I’m experiencing the prologue of an extremely pleasurable sensation now — differing vastly from what I imagined, however, but quite promising.”

I help him smoke more rocks. Then he starts chain-smoking cigarettes, pacing the limited circumference of my room.

“It’s no secret I’m a vastly superior theoretician than experimentalist; this is a reality I have always accepted.” I can’t imagine how deeply he is thinking.

“Oh, Henry, without your steady hand, your know-how, I would be a stranger to these marvellous sensations. I feel such a marked increase in self-control, vigorous and capable of productive work.”

“I’m glad I could help,” I say.

He kneels beside me. “Henceforth, I shall refer to you as ‘Hank,’ because, Hank, I propose you just keep on doing what you do best, hitting those little delectable balls out of the park for me just like Hank Aaron smacking his home runs. Hey, old man? We can be partners. What do you say?”

“Okay,” I say, “partners.”

Either he or I wants to smoke another. So we smoke another. Then he begins a series of brisk jumping jacks in the centre of my room.

“Christ, a man with your kind of prowess, Hank, we could’ve really used you at Los Alamos. Just imagine it: the world’s greatest intellects, working together in seclusion, a truly cooperative effort to stop the greatest evil mankind has ever known, nature’s deepest secrets unfurling before us like the desert mesas.”

J. Robert is grunting with exertion and the rain is making the trees outside tell him to sssshshhhhh.

He finishes, which serves as a good reason to smoke another.

“We could’ve had a building erected specifically for ingestion; this substance would have tripled both creativity and productivity. A sizable supply could have been requisitioned, and of course rationed and distributed equally. Oh, we would have had a functional device years earlier, we could have vaporized Berlin as soon as Hitler jumped a border, for Christ’s sake. Hank, I once tired of your platitudes; now I see you for who you are: a great probing and unflinching mind, steadfast and brilliant, but yet modestly so; not a pompous blowhard of pseudo-academic tripe, but a scientist, in the most unmitigated sense of the word.”