“So what are we getting? An eighth?”
“How much is an eighth?”
“It’s about this much. An eighth is an eight ball. That’s like 30 lines. Good-sized lines. That’s three grams. For the three of us, ten lines each, maybe twelve depending on the size of the eighth.”
“How much is an eight ball. In dollars,” I asked.
“How much do you have?”
I hand Charisma some cash. She hands me back a hundred-dollar bill.
“This should do it,” she says.
“I’m going with you,” I say.
We presented our plan to Brooklyn.
“What we should do,” Brooklyn said, “is get one eight ball to do with Rambuncto and crew. Then a second eight ball to do just the three of us. We’ll find a real good hiding place—so good that us three won’t even be able to find it.”
I start to nod.
Baker starts to nod.
In seconds, we’re all smiling with our combined brilliance. Shoulder hugging and shit. Straight out laughing.
Soon, Charisma and I are back from the white trash coke-sellers’ settlement. I go in with her this time and it’s nothing like buying from my friend in Hollywood. Not nearly as friendly. Not nearly as high class. In Hollywood I wasn’t scared. In Dayton..I was a little scared. Things were much tenser here over the amount of money spent for an eight ball.
When we got back to the house Brooklyn was on the phone with Rambuncto.
“He’s out!” she sang. “He’s muthafuckin’ oouutt! They freed my baby!” Brooklyn said to Baker.
“Al-right!” Baker said. “Have his ass come over so we can do some coke.”
“Can I use the car?” Brooklyn asked.
“Sure thing,” Baker said. “Get him fast, I don’t want to have to wait too long in order to start this coke dose with those fuckers.”
“I just gotta go to his parents house—that’s where they’ll be.”
“Are his parents glad to have him back? We’re not taking him away from their welcome home celebration?”
“Are you kidding?” Brooklyn says. “They prob’ly don’t give a shit he’s out. If I was them I’d be mad as hell—and scared—to have Rambuncto back home.”
“Yeah,” Baker says. “You’re really first class in how you pick ‘em.”
“I would care more if his dick wasn’t so good up in my pussy and shit!”
“You know,” Baker said, “there is more to dating than how the guy’s dick tickles yo’ mothafuckin’ puss.”
“Bring your advice, girl. Bring it up to my junk like a dump truck. Break that shit off up inside my shit. Then lean yo’ head up into my pussy area and listen real close to what she tells you. Shhh! She’s talkin’ to ya. Hear what she say? CRUNCH! That’s my pussy tellin’ yo’ ear what the fuck time it is and I’ll tell you what time it isn’t: by tellin’ you what ain’t up and that’s my pussy listening to advice from your dumb ass about what to do with this dick and that dick in relation to her majesty’s pussyship lord almighty—you smell that shit?—That’s her holiness straight and wide, ready for that wide-load dick to enter me, root around up inside my cavern of pleasureful g-spot-housing snug from my man. This is what my man’s been waiting for—What?—Baby, yes!—I’m coming for you, baby. I’m sending myself over with the car as soon as you and I is done talking.”
“Look,” Baker says. “That’s all good and well but we’re going upstairs and hiding this second eight ball behind the one wall in the attic. Both remember and forget that—those boys are going home after the first and before the second eight ball, ok?”
Baker and Brooklyn do a pinky shake.
Brooklyn goes back to her phone call.
Baker and I are gone and back before Brooklyn notices:
Baker heads up the first set of stairs, before the crook in the staircase. She leans inside her bedroom, says “Wendy, you alright?” and I hear nothing come back from inside the room. Baker ducks 🦆 her head out and leads me up the stairs to the attic.
“Did you want me to check on Little Baby Faulkner?” I ask.
Baker waves me off. “If Brooklyn doesn’t have care of him, no one will.”
“Ok,” I say.
Charisma sits us down in front of a large wooden spool that is being used as a table.
“You know what this needs?”
I see what she’s saying. Grab the mirror off the wall—a huge two foot by three foot piece of glass—and I place it down on the spool. It has no frame, no beveled edges—perfect for our purposes. I go in my cargo pockets and pull out the two eight balls and toss them on the mirror.
Charisma takes one of the bags and goes to the wall behind the futon. She rips out a sheet of drywall and puts her hand back there, feeling around for a joist.
“This..is..perfect!” Charisma says, pulling her hand out empty. “Unlikely to be gotten at by us and the boys. Likely to be remembered and gotten to later..once the boys leave.”
“Can we do some lines?” I ask her.
“Of course! It’s your shit—you bought it. It wouldn’t even be right if you didn’t try it before serving it to others!”
Charisma and I do a couple lines each.
“Mmm-h!”
“Ahh-hah!”
“Oh, my,” my fuck friend says. “My my my my my-my-my-my my!”
Through a head rush I say: “Holy. Good. Fuck.”
“Is that as good as what you had in LA?”
“That might be better.”
My phone rings. It’s Nik.
“Hey buddy.”
“Hey man. I was just thinking if you’re available, we could get together like we talked about and watch Rushmore and get high. Want to come over?”
I knew when Nik referred to getting high that he would have real good shit and that if he and I smoked while watching Rushmore I wouldn’t be able to follow the plot and the end result would be the same as us smoking weed and watching nothing.
I said: “Nik. I am so sorry. I remember us scheduling that for tonight but I can’t say yes because I..did some other form of intoxicant today..and..I’m..completely fucked. I hope we can get together later this trip or if it, or if not, maybe we can get together next time you’re in LA? If that works?”
Nik said: “I understand. Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.”
“Indeed. See you soon.”
Click.
I sat there in Charisma’s attic knowing that if I had planned to come here to visit Nik that I would be having an entirely different experience..one less insane..and that Nik would never mind that we were doing cocaine and I knew that for whatever reason I was here for the coke-first experience, snorting myself into oblivion, without too much alcohol or pot..that I would rather die in the attic of this East Dayton house than admit to Nik that I was doing coke, with or without him.
I closed my phone. Stared at Charisma.
“How’s your friend?”
“Nik? Is ok. I thought it might be a head too many if I invited him though.”
“Not really,” Charisma said. “If you want to invite him..”
“I’m ok,” I say. “I’ll see him again, you know.”
“Are you nervous about meeting Rambuncto?”
“I wouldn’t be..except for how you and Brooklyn talk about him.”
“How do we talk about him?”
“Like..he’s the devil or something.”
“Oh, no,” Charisma says. “Rambuncto isn’t the devil. He’s hardly one of the angels of satan. All he is is an East Dayton thug. A wannabe.”
“What is he in jail for?”
“This time? Assault. Of me and some of my friends.”
“Aww, Charisma..no..”
“It’s no big deal.”
“That he assaulted you and your friends?”
“I know what it sounds like.”
“And you’ve had sex with him. Before or after his assault of you?”
“Some before, some after.”
“Why are you still hanging out with him!?”
“Huh?”
“Charisma. Bakerton. Why are you hanging out with a guy who went to jail for assaulting you? Can’t you move on, find new friends? What the fuck.”
“It’s not so easy,” she says. “You don’t understand. I’m in this tiny city—everyone knows everyone. You’re in Hollywood—can’t you make new friends anytime you want?”
“I guess so.”
“It’s not so easy, here. And you’re judging me for fucking him, some guy who went to jail. You never went to jail?”
I shake my head.
“That’s because you’re too smart to go to jail. Every time you’ve driven drunk. Every time you’ve done coke or meth or heroin—or stolen things from a convenience store. I know you’ve done all those things—don’t try and convince me that you haven’t.”
“I have,” I say. “I just do them a certain way.”
“Doesn’t that go back to high school? When we were kids? You know what we called you?”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Well, it was a lot of things. But the one I’m thinking of is blameless thief. That’s to reflect how you were the one who always did them worse things but never got caught. You were the good kid/bad kid. Remember the time you grabbed Jazmine Rice’s breasts in the hallway outside the video arts room?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you ever wonder why you didn’t get in trouble for that?”
“Because I asked her first if it was ok?”
“No,” Charisma said. “It’s because you got it on camera. Most people: that’s just evidence of what they did wrong. You never even had to spin it: the fact you had it on video was evidence that you did it as part of an art project..at the creative arts school. You see what I’m saying? Everything you did wrong was wrapped in an invincible layer of blamelessness. Of an art project! Of your larger context of whatever lofted thought process you were going through that was bigger than what was even going on with your teachers.”
Charisma’s phone rings.
She looks down at the screen.
“It’s Rambuncto. He’s here.”