bicarb and coke
vinny bombora
He finished on his mobile and looks across the room at me, the morning sunlight is shining in behind him darkening his figure.
“You should get a bit of rest and pull yourself together. You’ve got to work. I’ve gotta go.”
With that he takes the few steps over to the door and leaves. My pupils are darting about the room like roaches; I note that there’s cocaine sprinkled everywhere: over the floor, across the table, on top of the cooker. Naked, screaming paranoia saturates everything. It’s half eight and I’ve got to teach a class at the university at eleven. Teeth grinding… oh my god, hands trembling… oh god, fear coursing through my veins…it’s going to be quite a bloody day.
Twelve hours before I’d been sitting in the same seat in my apartment staring vacantly into the computer screen. I mean, I didn’t know Tash that well; we’d started at the same time but due to the fact that I began hanging with drugged out company I’d hardly seen her for months. Still it was upsetting me. I couldn’t believe that at thirty one she was flying back to NZ because she’d suffered a minor stroke; mind you fish couldn’t drink as much as she can.
Stuff it, I thought, I’m not holding out no more.
I got up and rifled through my top draw until I found two five hundred milligram tabs of alprazolam… tasty. After my mates gave me a mild intervention (one of them actually did it while we were on the way to the farmacia to get some pharmos) I’d stopped for a few weeks. I downed them with a shot of white rum. They weren’t going to hit the spot though not with bleak clouds like these swarming.
I head out into the street, a gloomy night, haze hanging around the lampposts; it’s about ten on a Wednesday so it’s pretty much dead as. I turn up a back street that I know will take me to some farmacias but really I’m just trying; I doubt I’ll find one open. It turns out I’m right and I have to admit to myself that I might stoop so low as to cruise the hospital emergency ward.
There’s a few families standing around with injured members; a young boy with a bandage wrapped around his right eye, a middle aged man with his arm in a sling, a woman clinging to her bloodied forehead.
So I sidle up to the counter and a nurse walks up to me; she’s already got that look of disdain.
I rattle off a list of names, “Alprazolam, diazepam, endone, tramadol…”
She shakes her head, replies with a negative and gives me that judgemental look that says ‘drug addict’.
I leave having met the outcome I’d expected and decide I might head down to the nightclub in the centre. Hopefully there’ll be someone in there with some cocaine… now that’d certainly hit the spot.
The club is almost empty… it’s the place I sometimes frequent at the weekend but on a Wednesday there’s nothing. I get a beer and walk around scoping the crowd; anyone who looks remotely like the kind of person who might partake I hit up. No one is holding or at least they ain’t going to share with me.
The scene is too sad to stick around in even though it seems the only intoxicant I'm going to be able to acquire is available across the bar. I exit, turn right and then take the first left. I walk past the hamburguesa stand and there’s a bunch of guys there; one of them is a gringo.
“Cocaína?”
“You want?” says the gringo with an accent that has the tinge of the American.
He motions for me to follow him up the street a little. He pulls out a package of paper and unfolds it revealing a large mound of white powder. He gestures an invitation and holds it while I snort upon it with a rolled up note. We all indulge on the side of the street for quite a while.
The gringo, Tony, is about five years younger than me. He’s blonde with blue eyes, fairly nondescript; you’d note him in a bar as one of the boys but he wouldn’t stand out. His friends seem to be in their late teens. They’re local boys; they’re asking me where I’m from and for my number in between snorts.
Tony folds up the rest of his stash and puts it in his pocket. He holds up a white rock about the size of a jawbreaker gumball and offers it to me for a price that seems ridiculously cheap. I hand him the cash and as I’m about to head he asks if he can follow. I agree and he tells the rest of his boys that he is off.
We sit down at the table at my place and he begins racking up huge lines. We mow into them and conversation begins gushing like a sliced artery.
He hates Americans which is strange as he sounds just like one. He’s from some islands in the Atlantic Ocean that I've never heard of before. He’s in the family business: he smuggles drugs just like his father before him.
He swallows the gear and then flies it into LA. He’s got a connection who buys it to sell on the street. He uses the cut off fingers from dishwashing gloves to store it instead of condoms; he says it’s better for keeping your powder dry.
Turns out the last time he was up in the capital with a belly full he nearly came to grief. He arrived at the airport with his colleague and as they were about to check in some customs officers walked towards them with a sniffer dog. He managed to take off and get rid of his goods before returning to the airport to take his flight clean. Unfortunately his business partner wasn’t so lucky; the officers picked him up and put him away.
He turns his attention to me and says maybe I should think about it. He knows that getting gear into Oz means big bucks; a huge mark up. He reckons together the two of us could make a fortune. I kind of nod with interest hoping for the next turn in the conversation to arise. There’s no way I could get on a plane with a stomach full of drugs… sweat oozing from every pore; over here, search me.
The conversation peters out.
He breaks the silence anew, “You ever tried crack? You got any bicarbonate of soda?”
This surprises me as it’s the only grocery item I have in the place. My boots have been stinking of late so I’ve been pouring bicarb into them hoping the powder would cure the odour.
He dips a spoon into the coke, sprinkles bicarb on top and then adds water. We move over to the gas cooker. I light it and he holds the spoon over the flame. He talks me through the process as we wait for the concoction to bubble. The powder dissolves into the liquid and as it boils down further a thick, opaque paste forms. He takes it off the flame and pours it onto the plate next to what’s left of the coke.
He tells me the best way to smoke it is with a cigarette butt. He takes one from the ashtray, straightens it and rubs it through the paste. He lights it and draws back. I follow suit.
My forehead flops into my upturned palm and rests there for a moment as a blissed out grin careens across my gob; my mind begins to float around the outside of my skull.
I look up; Tony’s smirking.
He motions to the computer, “Check this out.”
He’s pulled up a dating site and programmed it to bring up women from the city we’re in. He tells me that this is where he met his wife. He reckons ‘the slut’s’ still got a profile on there somewhere.
We work our way through the rows of profile pictures discussing whether we would do each them. If she’s the go we check out the rest of her profile. All the while we suck back on the crack soaked butts. The hours trickle away like minutes as the two of us loaded ogle the women… there’s heat radiating.
He continues cursing his wife in the occasional outburst. He’s sure she must be on here; she’s got to be out there getting some on the side, she can’t help herself, the wanton…
We move across to a fresh page of profiles in what seems like an endless stream.
He asks me the question, “What about her?”
“Nah, not her.”
“That’s my wife.”
I reel back but he doesn’t seem to care. He’s flicking through the photos trying to ascertain whether it is actually her. He gets agitated and curses her some more when he decides that it is.
Tony lowers his voice and relates that he likes to do a woman with another guy. Yeah he likes to have two getting it inside there; bend their bodies, really push it. He likes to try and break them.
The light’s been streaming in the window for all eternity and thoughts of the impending day are gnawing at my brain.
His phone goes off and he answers. By his conversation I can tell he’s talking to his wife. He’s responding like he’s in trouble. He’s already told me that she’s fine with the way he makes his money but she doesn’t like him to get stuck in.
“I met this guy babe. He seems kind of alright, hey,” as he says this he looks toward me.
I picture him looking across at me over his wife, naked torso, hips thrusting. She’s between us; her rump’s in the air facing him. I’m dragging upon one of these butts with the crack as I take it from her. We’re trying to bend her so far that she breaks.
I hold his gaze as he continues on the phone and give him a look of non-recognition.