The Vanishing Year(9)

“I don’t know the protocols. The funeral homes generally have individual protocols.”

I left him in his office, the ashtray tilted up to his face, chasing the red hot ember around the glass with a broken Camel between his teeth.

Mick came back to Max’s a week later, throwing a dirt-streaked manila envelope in front of me, thick with bills. I sat in the same chair, with the same drink, the same shoes, the same hatred on my tongue.

“There’s a thousand there. I’ll get more. How much time do we have?”

“Four weeks from the day she died, so that’s only two more.” I flipped the envelope back and forth between my index and middle fingers. “Don’t even bother.”

He sat on the stool next to me. “I failed Evelyn a lot. I failed you.”

“You don’t owe me shit, Mick.” I needed to stave off some kind of misplaced daddy syndrome, which churned my stomach.

He ordered a whiskey. Then another. He clasped my shoulder and the gesture seemed almost paternal. Caring. He bought me another drink. I felt the tear work its way down my cheek, splashing on the bar top, and under his thumb he slid the white pill across the bar top. It didn’t feel like exploitation. It felt like friendship. It melted on my tongue, acrid and bitter, and when I closed my eyes, I floated. That night, Mick took me home, left me in Evelyn’s apartment, a three-story walk-up on Market with peeling paint and a useless front lock. I slept on her bed, in her nightgown.

When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t feel bad. No real hangover, just the faded memory of happiness. It wasn’t a high like I’d ever known, back in college we’d tested E, a warm liquidy pooling between my thighs and a bursting in my chest like we were in love with the whole world. This time, there were no hallucinations, no real elation, just a lighthearted easiness that I hadn’t felt in months. I wanted it back. It tugged at me like physical craving, but as innocuous as caffeine.

I hung out at Max’s every day after that, waiting for Mick, but telling myself otherwise. I’d turn and look at the door every time it opened. Truth be told, I was starting to like the smell of the place. Evelyn’s apartment smelled like expired Calvin Klein. When he came back, the envelope in his hand was thin. He tossed it down and sat with a grumbled sigh.

He ordered us drinks without asking. “You’re not taking care of yourself, Hilary.”

I knew I looked like hell. I didn’t know what to say. I was falling apart? I wondered how many of those little white pills I’d need to stay oblivious forever? I hadn’t washed my hair in more than a week, and it shone wet with grease. I wore the same pair of jeans because everything else fell off. Evelyn didn’t have a washer so I’d worn them in the shower, scrubbing shampoo into them with my fingernails and hanging them over the curtain rod to dry.

The landlord had started coming around, knocking. He hadn’t heard Evelyn died, but he still needed his rent, cancer or not. I had begun sneaking in and out, looking furtively up and down the hall before darting down the steps and into the street. The bills were stacking up.

This time, he put the pill on the cocktail napkin. I almost didn’t see it.

“What if I want more?”

“You don’t have money, Peach.” He picked something out of his molar. I stared at the envelope between us.

“I need money. I need to bury my mom. Pay her rent. Pay her credit cards.” I licked my pinkie and pressed it to the pill, lifting it to my mouth.

Mick blew out hot, sour breath, leaned back, and dug in his jeans pocket. He came up with a small, white envelope, about the size of a playing card. He slid it under my thigh, his palm resting on my knee for a beat too long. “Unload these for ten each. We’ll split the profit, you can keep one for every ten you get rid of.”

I pulled the envelope out and pinched it open. Inside were ten little white pills. I gave him a look. “No.” But my heart thumped in my chest.

“Okay, then. Got a better idea?” The smirk on his face made me want to slap him. I sealed the envelope back up and stuck it in my back pocket. All those little tickets to oblivion.

“See you in a week, Peach.”

? ? ?

At first we met weekly, but then I started seeking Mick out, calling his phone. I needed more than one of those little tabs. They made me feel like I could solve my problems. I figured out that the stay-at-home moms in Berkeley loved “legal” pills. Oxy, Vicodin, whatever Mick gave me. It didn’t matter. Plus, I didn’t look like a drug dealer: I took a shower, washed my hair. I was “in college.” I took the BART down a few times a week and hung out in Cragmont Park. It was all so fucking civil. I never felt weird or creepy hovering around playgrounds peddling pills to pristine little blonde women. I was one of them.

I’d watch them pay their ten bucks, pulling from stacks of green tucked inside Chanel purses. They parted with it so easily, and then they’d slip the pills between their teeth, swallow once, and kiss their fat, drooly babies, burying their noses in downy soft hair. They’d wander away, pushing Bugaboo prams, holding hands with their skipping six-year-olds, and I’d sit under the gazebo, watching them sway and giggle until I couldn’t see them anymore.

I felt weird about selling to students, that somehow it was less destructive to supply professor’s bored wives with “pep” pills. Besides, the students scared me. Their fresh-faced happiness was so familiar, it gave me a pain right below my breastbone. I couldn’t look them in the eye, couldn’t pull off being “one of them.” No, the moms were easier. At least, if I didn’t think about it too hard.