Chapter Eleven: Lotus flowers are bitter
I didn’t care what anyone on campus thought anymore and started wearing black again. After a rough time tying my shoes, I slipped down the hall to Tim’s room. He was sitting at his workspace studying and said he wanted to show me something now that I was properly initiated. So I squeezed my way through his clutter and sat on the edge of his bed covered with faded rainbow sheets.
Tim’s single room, that his parent’s paid extra for, was a sublime mess only a disturbed artist could create, but there was a mini-fridge where extra beer was stashed. I scanned the expanse of milk crates filled with CD’s stacked along the walls almost reaching to the ceiling. It was hard to read the small labels but I made out Classical, Opera, Jazz, Funk, Folk and Rock N Roll. Two big labels struck my attention Hardcore and Heavy Metal.
His room comforted me with dirty open arms just like my room. Tim left his clothes on the ground and kicked them into a pile just like me. The main difference, besides the mini-fridge, was the Goodwill couch he got for free. The lumpy cushions were masked with a variety of colorful tapestries. He pushed his chair back and locked his door. He raised his right index finger up to his lips and tippy-toed over to a wood drawer built into the wall mounted desk and cabinets. He waved me over and said, “I want to show you something.”
A pile of text books from the workspace above casts a shadow over the drawer. Tim wrapped his hand with a towel and tugged it free.
“Look at the handle. Be careful,” he said.
I inch forward, bend at the knees and tilt my head to look. The drawer’s recessed bronze handle had a sharp edge and behind two wire nails stuck out as fangs ready to bite. The inside was barren but oddly not as deep as the drawers in my room.
“Step back, now for the fun,” he said.
Tim popped out a false bottom made of cardboard painted to match the wood. A bonanza of drug paraphernalia and porno-magazines was revealed. Tim’s Ark of the Covenant. The drug drawer only chosen could see. Scattered along the sides were roach clips, papers and glass bowls for smoking, spoons, baggies, straws.
He spun to me and said, “Now for the best part.”
He wrestled the drawer out and placed it on the floor. He knelt down and began to fish inside the empty space.
“Got it,” he smiled and looked up to me with tongue between his teeth.
The ultimate drug accessory, a triple beam balance, escaped the darkness. With a few slides of the weights, he could break up bags of bulky pot and could level the finest bags of powder. Tim was a dealer and I was in a drug lair. There’s a drug lair in every college as I was told. We did a line to make studying more interesting and then I was on my way. Felt good to be let in on a secret.
The Friday after I had last seen Elyssa, I was hanging out in Tim’s room while he was at class. He wanted to bring me along to purchase some merchandise for the upcoming festivities so I waited and wanted to open the drawer but stopped myself. It could be a test. I got some extra cash from the ATM and was in the mood for commerce. Tim’s room smelled of stale cigarettes and musty clothes as I sat in the sea of tapestries reading the play Lysistrata for class.
My nerves wound up.
Tim was late and I ran out of smokes. He warned me not to leave and waste time since there was a specific window of opportunity.
He arrived a few moments later and my panic vanished but my curiosity was piqued. His bright white teeth were chattering as he bobbed his head to some unheard music.
“Where the fuck were you man?” I asked.
“I had to get a car dumbshit. Where the fuck else you think I was? Oh, you thought I forgot about you and the jonesing is setting in. Don’t worry man, it’s all good,” he said.
“I need to get back before dinner and finish some work, so I want to make this quick,” I said.
“O, fucking, K.”
Parked right by the side entrance, a silver steed in waiting, was Erin’s car. A four-door foreign car with all of the features, fixtures and options glittered under the sun.
Tim was heavy on the gas pedal and turned down a main thoroughfare off towards the other side of this once thriving factory town, the blighted side. The dying side. I was told by George that the police kept a crow’s nest there to sight white rich kids out of state. Erin was from New York.
My skin jumped as shanty after shanty went by my window and I hadn’t sniffed or smoked anything. All I could think about were the commercials for adopting kids or pennies a day and the opening bars to Dueling banjos in everyone’s favorite movie about sodomy in the South. Sue-ee indeed.
Tim didn’t speak the entire time and was rocking back and forth in the driver’s seat. We took a right up a hillside where row houses were tacked into the ground. The car came to a halt in front of a single story house with a rotting porch. Remnants of white paint on the outside walls were flaking off in the wind. I raised my eyebrows and asked Tim, “Is this safe? How do these guys make money out here in this shit hole?”
Tim turned, smiled and looked at me with bloodshot eyes. His empty pupils slurped up the afternoon light.
“Listen, these cats are cool if you don’t act like a chump. No shit, no issue. The locations change every month kid. It’s all good,” he said.
Sweat began building on my palms. We walked around the house to the back porch and there was a high-end Ford truck parked behind the garage. Now I knew these guys were not poor hillbilly hustlers.
Tim knocked on the screen door and a Mastodon in a dark business suit and blue tinted glasses answered. He expanded his chest, looked down and said, “What up T? I haven’t seen you for a couple weeks.”
“This is Walk. He’s cool. Got some serious cheese to lay down so let’s go see the man,” Tim said as the large man scoped me out like a target.
“Walk huh?” he said to Tim.
“Yup,” he replied and threw his hand out for a shake.
Inside, the only things I could recognize in the dark were cobwebs and the blackout curtains. We followed the bodyguard down into a cinderblock cellar. At the far end of a hunched corridor, a horizontal light shone across the space revealing a door. Tim looked back at me and lifted an eyebrow as we passed by a boxy de-humidifier humming along.
“What’s going down Rascal? I’m here right on time,” Tim said as he stood in the shaft of dusty light.
“No, you’re late, but that’s alllllllright my man since you said you gots the green,” a squeal of voice said.
I breached the dark lane and passed into the light and Tim said, “This is Walk.”
“Ha, that’s a fucken funny ass name. So funny it’s almost insulting kid. Shee-it I’m being rude. Call me Rascal,” said a man with a pock marked face, who reminded me of Mr. Potato head wearing Ray-Bans, sitting behind a green card table.
Tim sat next to him on a fold out chair.
“Okay, Rascal,” I said.
“So what can I do you gentlemen for?” he asked and Tim began to roll out the list of items along with a roll of cash.
I sat in a metal chair under a chrome lamp. The mastodon crushed the checkerboard love seat by the wall. He hoisted off his blue glasses and said, “You can call me Earl.”
He put out his fleshy hand and his jacket opened up. There, as obvious as a two headed calf, was a large caliber hand gun.