You Love Me(You #3)(67)

He isn’t hiding drugs, which means you’re not finding drugs and you want to find drugs because that would make it easier for you to force him to check into rehab, which would pave the way for the two of you to split up. It wouldn’t be about the drugs. It would be about the lying.

So now I’m off-island at a bar in Poulsbo called Good Old Daze, which is poppin’ as bars like this are on Thirsty Fucking Thursday. It’s easy to spot Aaron the drug dealer (a.k.a. Ajax. A.k.a. not all kids who grow up on Bainbridge turn out to be angels). I read about him on the Bainbridge Island Community Facebook page. People blame Ajax for the untimely death of a guy named Davey and Ajax holds court at a table in the back with an overall lack of shame about his purpose here. He wears a brown leather jacket that screams 1987 and Bruce Springsteen wails about hungry hearts and the barmaid pours stiff drinks in dirty glasses. I met Seamus for a beer at Isla and pretended to get a booty call and sneak out the back so Oliver won’t see—the work I do for you, Mary Kay—and then I drove into Poulsbo.

I order a shot of Jack and make my way to Ajax, who mad-dogs me when I stand there at his table. Shaking. “What of it?” he says.

“I heard… Are you Ajax?”

Ajax scans the bar to make sure this isn’t a sting and I tell him I knew Rudy—thanks to Facebook, I know all about RIP Davey’s bad-influence buddy Rudy—and before you know it, I have a seat at the unsteady table with Ajax. A couple quick exchanges about the shitty scene at the bar—Ajax was hoping to get laid tonight—and then we’re in the bathroom and just like that, I am the proud owner of ten highly toxic, no-good little M30s.

It’s bone chilling, Mary Kay. A man is dead because of these poison pills and Ajax doesn’t warn me about the fentanyl. He really doesn’t care about me or the dead guy but then, that’s the world, isn’t it? The fecal-eyed family doesn’t care about me either and this is why we need to find our tribe and take care of each other.

He tells me I can go now, and so I do, out the back door, into the rain, past a girl sucking a guy’s dick in a Honda, past a woman crying in her car—Bell Bottom Blues, you made me cry—and into my car. I’m shaking for real now. It’s scary to be in possession of all these fatal little pills and Ajax’s paranoia is infectious. I adjust the rearview and turn on the interior light and I put the fucking pills in the trunk.

I know it’s irrational, but I don’t want to die from M30 fumes.

It’s a straight shot home once I hit the 305 and I play Simon & Garfunkel to wash the Good Old Daze out of my brain but I drive too fast or too slow. I can’t stop checking the rearview. It’s really raining tonight, not drizzling, and Shortus is going home—You were luckier than I was tonight—and my wipers aren’t working quite right. It’s a two-lane road, always quiet and dark at night—it’s fucking Bainbridge—and I tell myself that the set of headlights a few car lengths back is nothing to worry about because this is the way to the ferry. I turn up the volume and focus on bridges over troubled waters but my heart is beating fast.

Can you catch fentanyl by touching a tainted plastic bag? Am I ill?

Home at last and sweaty as fuck—I shouldn’t have worn your favorite sweater—and I walk into my house and I call out to my cats but my cats aren’t dogs. They don’t come when called. I grab some paper towels and head back outside. I stare at my car, my car full of poison. I don’t want an accidental contact high and I sure as hell don’t want anything to happen to my cats. I pop my trunk and the paper towels aren’t plastic, but at least they’ll provide some boundary between my skin and the fentanyl.

I fold four paper towels and pick up the bag of death and my heart thumps faster—is fentanyl airborne?—and I walk back to my house. And then I hear the sound of my guitar. I clench the paper towels.

Oliver.

“In here,” he says.

I walk around the corner, down into my sunken living room, and there he is, on my couch, strumming my Gibson. Chills. Flashbacks. All of it. “Did you have a good night, my friend?”

“It was okay.”

He’s tuning the guitar again and he’s pure Angeleno. He’s not a great writer. And he’s not a great private detective and he probably put his detective hat on tonight because he hit a snag in the spec script he’s no doubt writing in his downtime.

He eyes the wad of paper towels. “What’s that, Goldberg?”

“What’s up, Oliver? Did my bid on the Frank Stella not go through?”

I dump the paper towels in the trash bin—I pray my cats don’t find a way in—and he tosses my guitar on the floor and man-spreads on my sofa in the spot where you sat.

“I saw you in Poulsbo,” he says. “And needless to say, I am not pleased, my friend.”

Of course he followed me. Of course tonight had to be the night that he threw himself into his work. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He just shakes his head. “Don’t mess with me, Goldberg. We had a deal. You stay outta trouble. And that means you stay clean. Away from trash like Ajax.”

In some fucked-up way I forgot that he is what he is, a private fucking detective, a dancer for money. But that’s not my fault. It’s easy to forget the origin of our relationship because most of the time he’s just on me about art. I flop into a chair. “Oliver, I’m telling you. It’s not what you think.”