Tim Murphy - Christodora

“U feel like hanging out?” he texted Carrie while waiting for a bus on Sunset, where every stray glance from the folks around him — the elderly ladies in faded housedresses and the Honduran cleaning women in T-shirts and jeans — seemed to signal: We know what you’re about to do . But whoa, he was free! L.A. had never felt like this before, a wide-open playground. He could probably hook this up with Carrie, but even if he couldn’t, he knew he’d do it by some other means, probably within hours. There was the joy of that wild, blank canvas in front of him. Which reminded him. . ATM? He knew he had only so much time to get resources before Drew and Christian discovered the cards were absent and canceled them. He hit an ATM outside a convenience store, withdrew the maximum allowed sum of $400, then, still enjoying the hard, lean focus of liberation, trucked it with his bag a few more blocks until he came to another ATM and took out another max of $400.

Right after that, he got Carrie’s text: her address, then “u coming now?”

“u bet,” he texted back.

“u r not far. take the bus south on Alvarado.”

She gave him more detailed directions after that and he started walking. Eventually he got to Westlake, her nondescript neighborhood, found her pale yellow apartment complex with the scraggly palms outside, buzzed her unit until she let him in, then walked down a dim hallway with faded industrial carpeting and water stains on the ceiling.

Carrie answered the door in a tank top and cutoff jean shorts, barefoot. “Heeey,” she said, her eyes widening at the sight of his huge duffel bag. “What’s up with the bag?”

“Well,” he began, taking in her place: an ill-lit studio with a futon, a thirty-two-inch TV, a laptop and speakers, piles of clothes everywhere, and a poster of Debbie Harry circa 1979 on the wall over the futon. “I’m over it. I’m just over it. I’ve had enough.”

She took a few paces back from him. “You’re going back to New York?”

He hadn’t even thought that far ahead. “First I really just wanna get high,” he said. There, he’d said it. He shrugged and laughed sheepishly.

Carrie put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, shit. Really?”

“Couldn’t you kind of get that’s what I was talking about when I asked if you wanna hang out?”

She put her arms around herself. “Well, I mean, I wasn’t really sure.” She continued hugging herself nervously. He knew she had about thirty days clean at that point, her most time ever. But here was where he had to have discipline, focus! Human feeling must be pierced through with laser precision if he was going to pull this off.

“I would like to do this with you just once,” he said. He knew he had to work fast. He stepped toward her and took her face in his hands, massaging toward the back of her neck, down her bare shoulders. “We can both go back and start counting again after that.”

“Oh God,” she said. She had her hands on his arms now but she wasn’t exactly pushing him away. “It’s been so hard getting to this point.”

“I need a break from the effort,” he said.

She made a tortured sound, digging her nails into his arms. “Mateo, you have to go,” she finally said.

They stared at each other. He knew he was giving her the blank, lost, little-boy sheepdog look. How to play this? he wondered. Perhaps best to walk it back for a moment.

So he did, literally. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll find my own. Sorry I came over. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I wish you’d just go to a meeting,” she said. “Do you want to go right now?” Carrie had a car, a crappy little 1994 Civic.

He couldn’t tell her he felt it was too late for that — his bag was packed, the credit cards were stolen. “I’m just gonna go do my own thing,” he said, reopening the door to leave. He turned back, kissed her quickly on the forehead. “Take care of yourself.”

He felt the loneliness he was leaving behind: her single, sad room; the total lack of connection to L.A. except for those early, tenuous friendships in meetings; the TV with a talk show on low volume. He was counting on it.

And it worked. Carrie sighed. “Put your bag down, Mateo. We can drive over to a guy I know.”

Ding, ding, ding. Now was the time to play it carefully. He turned. “You can just call him for me and I can go myself,” he said. “You don’t have to be part of this.”

She’d turned to put on her flip-flops, grab her car keys and sunglasses. “Just shut up,” she said flatly, averting her eyes as she walked past him toward the door. And there he felt the moral split! Look what you’ve just done, he thought, you are the devil, basically. But he also thought: Mission accomplished. Now he just had to be steely and keep all ambivalence and feeling tamped down until the spike went in.

Neither of them talked as she drove. On Sunset, he noticed a girl, semi-obscured in a doorway, nodding in short-shorts and a tank top, and he hoped that Carrie hadn’t seen her. Carrie drove west on Third Street into a pretty neighborhood on Windsor Square, pulled up in front of a peach-colored apartment building on a corner.

“You didn’t call him first?” he asked her.

“He’s always here,” she said.

Carrie buzzed.

“Yeah?” came a guy’s voice.

“Hey, it’s Carrie!” she called breezily.

The buzzer sounded, the door clicked open. The halls of the apartment smelled like some sick orangey cleanser. Mateo heard MGMT blaring on the other side of the door, which opened. The guy was a fucking hipster with graying temples; he looked like he could be a screenwriter. The place was midcentury-thrift trendy, a big photo of topless Bardot over the teak-frame couch.

“Hey!” the guy said. He kissed Carrie and then, strangely, turned up the music so that everyone had to strain to talk over it. Oh, Mateo realized, he was afraid of clients wearing a wire. Carrie didn’t seem nervous. She just seemed sort of glazed and sad. Well, Mateo thought, too bad. The guy wanted them to hang out. Carrie looked at Mateo questioningly. Had they fucked before?

“Nah,” Mateo said, “let’s just go back and chill out.” He handed the guy $200 and asked for spikes, too.

The guy looked at him anew, impressed. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

Then the guy shrugged, going off into the bedroom. Mateo sat down on the couch next to Carrie, saying nothing. He put a hand on her neck, massaged it. She looked at him and shook her head. Oh, shit. Her eyes were welling. Time to take action. He leaned over, kissed her gently on the lips.

“We are going to have a very nice time,” he said softly, smiling.

“I know,” she said, sounding more resigned than excited.

The guy came back with a paper bag, which Mateo put in his jeans pocket. He thanked the hipster douchebag in his completely non-suspect, pretty neighborhood.

“Don’t be a stranger, Carrie,” the hipster said as they were leaving. Carrie looked back at him and smiled weakly. They drove back to her place in silence. The TV was still on — she’d forgotten to turn it off.

“I want to take a shower first,” Carrie said.

“No, no, no, come here,” Mateo said, pulling her back, taking her in his arms. He couldn’t wait. His heart was throbbing right out of his chest and he was sweating all over, so he had to make this sexy if he wanted it to happen right away. “I like you like this,” he said. “I wanna smell you.”

“Gross!” She laughed, squirming in his arms. He eased her down to the floor.

“Hold on,” she said.

She went to the kitchen and came back with stuff they needed: the spoon, the lighter, paper towels, and alcohol. They sat down on the floor together. Mateo already felt high. He’d done it; he was sitting here with everything he needed right in front of him. His heart was in his throat, a swarm of butterflies were dancing in his stomach, his arms and legs were already delicately twitching with what he’d learned in rehab was called “euphoric recall.” He pulled off his belt and took off his shirt and looked at the left inner elbow where the dim quarter-inch track mark he’d had was fading, then tied his belt loosely around his arm. Carrie was setting things up for him resignedly. He dared to look at her. She was slowly shaking her head.