Heather Lewis - Notice

I began this because it wasn’t so foreign to me. He sat back and watched for a while before he held out the bag. And when I didn’t move in response, he licked his finger and stuck it into the bag. Brought it out all covered in white and then he touched me, started with his finger almost inside me, running it along and in between.

I didn’t feel much. Or at least what I felt seemed to come from his finger and not the drug, felt ordinary that way. I didn’t feel enough off the heroin either, believed it should’ve kicked me down further given how long it’d been since I’d had any. But maybe because I’d spent so many months drowning, this couldn’t compare. Couldn’t take me any further down than Beth already had.

I found this acutely unsettling. I’d looked at this drug as something to count on. A last and sure thing that would hold her at bay and let me keep going. Something to keep my own baying in hand, make it heel.

I went into the packet again, took a lot more into my body, until I should’ve been sick but wasn’t. Not in the physical way I expected. And this, the futility of it, made me want to be away from him, and from all of it. Be away from my life.

Nonetheless, I went through the motions. Did the things he told me to, which were no worse than things I’d done before. They only felt worse for the things in my head, going on in concert. These things being all about Beth, or the things in me she’d uncovered. No matter what I did, or what he did, I couldn’t get rid of her, couldn’t get rid of me.

That he wouldn’t fuck me enraged me. And then I realized it wasn’t about wouldn’t, it was more about couldn’t and I became reckless and insulting. Felt power in this, in taunting him, until he pulled that briefcase on to his lap and opened it.

I couldn’t see inside it and so when the gun came out, it startled me, though I don’t guess it should have. What startled me more was him handing it to me. He said, “You want it so bad? Use this.”

And when I didn’t do anything, when I let the gun just hang limp in my hand, he yelled at me, “Do it.” And then softer he said, “You’ll do each thing I tell you.”

I stared at the gun. It was heavy and looked old-fashioned. It had a long, dull-gray barrel, and the wood of the handle felt smooth and worn like he’d fondled it for years.

I still held it awkwardly, with my hand wrapped around it, around the trigger guard and the wood. The weight of it dragged my arm down, then started it shaking until I trembled all over.

“Cock it,” he said.

It took some effort to pull back the hammer. I had to use both my hands to accomplish this. Had to rest my arms in my lap to steady them some. And while my body kept up this terrible shaking, my mind stayed completely still.

“Go on, fuck yourself,” he said.

And here too I was slow and my dawdling got him yelling again. “Go on,” he said first, and then the soft voice again. “You wanted it bad, right? Well, sweetheart, here you have it.”

I put the barrel between my legs. I put my feet up on the bed and held myself open, and the rest of me upright. I slid it back and forth between my legs, felt everything go slippery there and in my head.

“Put it inside.”

I did this easily, though the sighting notch caught me up a little, tore at me some.

“You like it?” he asked, but it wasn’t a question. “You like it,” he said, again.

I moved the barrel in further and then out some. I found myself moving my hips in a way that sickened me, though the shaking had passed, taken over by arousal and nausea.

“Pull the trigger,” he said. And I didn’t feel fear or even anything like it. I didn’t even pause. I just squeezed the trigger and felt myself squeeze round the barrel, and then I heard a cold click and the sound of his laughter.

I curled on to my side and curled up, still with the gun there inside me. He came over and opened my legs, which was not so easy to do. He took the gun back. Pulled a shirt from the floor and wiped the barrel off, still laughing but quieter.

I lay there and watched him, watched him flick the chamber open. Tip bullets into his hand – just two of them, clinking dully together.

He put the gun into his briefcase, the bullets into his pocket. And he plugged the phone in, had a curt conversation with Jeremy, and then he was gone.

This left me alone – alone with the packet. It didn’t have much left in it. I searched around for a needle, already knowing I didn’t have one. Still I went through everything. Looked in every drawer and every pocket with insatiable need. I kept searching and searching despite knowing I’d never find what just wasn’t there.

Finally I gave up and went to bed, saving that last bit of junk because I figured I’d need it later. That it might not be so easy to get more. Or that what I’d have to go through to get it would take some days to face. This was what my life looked like now, looked like to me – just resting up for more of the same kind of thing that took me nowhere good.

I did rest. But I slept in that nodding, incomplete way. I’d expected this to feel comforting. The way it had when I was a kid, using that stuff in the beginning and it working so well. But it wasn’t working now and I knew it had nothing to do with the method of delivery. I knew none of this old stuff would help me now. That Beth had opened someplace in me I might never get closed.

So I went to her office the next day, still addled and jangled. Sloppy from the rest of the dope, different but not different enough. Enough that she noticed, though. That when I went into her office and sat down, she took one look at me and said, “What’s with you?”

And I said, “Huh?”

“You look like hell.”

These statements were so plain, so direct, which still seemed so unlike her.

I said nothing in return. I just sat there because I seemed to have no idea what I was doing, where anything was going. Only had this horrible want to be in her bed and not mine. Strong enough I said, “Take me home with you.”

It came out in that same reckless way, like the things I’d said to Burt. She looked startled. Like she was calculating things in her head. Things I couldn’t know like the whereabouts of her husband.

Finally she said, “All right.”

I felt a crazed glee. This fantastic belief everything would be okay now or at least better. I knew it showed. I knew I was smiling, and I could tell it concerned her.

We drove in silence pretty much. Once in a while she patted my thigh the way a mother might when something’s not right.

We got to her house and once inside I went up the stairs. I’d taken my clothes off and gotten into her bed before she’d gotten into the room. She stood in the doorway for a bit. I couldn’t look at her, turned my head away. I said, “Come here. I need you.”

Hearing these words come out of my mouth unnerved me. Her, too, I’m sure from the way she sat beside me, still fully dressed and seeming unsure whether to touch me.

I touched her. I pulled her down beside me. Began kissing her, grabbing at her clothes. First her shirt, then her skirt, unable to stay focused on one or the other until I’d begun kissing her breasts and then sucking them.

She gave in then. I felt it. I felt her body change. She lay back and let me, and I was surprised at my energy. Didn’t know where it could’ve come from, all in this sudden way that made me feel stronger.

I didn’t take off her skirt, I just pushed it up; pulled her underwear aside and pressed into her. She tensed a little, and so I was the one telling her to take it easy. But then I stopped being easy myself, or maybe never had started.

I drove my hand into her. I wasn’t sure what kind her cries were, not at first. I was afraid I was hurting her except it was clear I wasn’t.