He laughs, superior. "They're called lines, Mom, if you snort them. You chop up this powder with a razor blade on a mirror usually and make them into lines about an eighth of an inch wide and an inch or two long. You inhale them into your nose with a straw or a glass tooter you can buy at these places down in Brewer near the bridge. Some of the guys use a rolled-up dollar bill; if say it's a hundred-dollar bill, that's considered cool." He smiles, remembering these crisp, glittering procedures, among friends in their condos and apartments in the high northeastern section of Brewer, backing up to Mt. Judge.
His mother asks, "Does Pru do this with you?"
His face clouds. "She used to, but then stopped when she was pregnant with Roy, and then didn't take it up again. She's become quite rigid. She says it destroys people."
"Is she right?"
"Some people. But not really. Those people would have gone under to something. Like I say, it's better for you physically than alcohol. You can do a line at work quick in the john and nobody can tell the difference, except you feel like Superman. Sell like Superman, too. When you feel irresistible, you're hard to resist." He laughs again, showing small grayish teeth like hers. His face is small like hers, as if not wanting to put too much up front where the world can damage it. Whereas Harry in his middle age has swelled, his face a moon above it all. People down here, these smart Jews, like to kid him and take advantage, like the three in that foursome.
She touches her upper lip with her tongue, not certain where to take this interview now. She knows she will not be able to pry Nelson this open soon again. He is flying back tomorrow afternoon, to make a New Year's party. She asks, "Do you do crack, too?"
He becomes more guarded. He lights a Camel and throws his head back to drink the last of the coffee. A nerve in his temple is twitching, under the gray transparent skin. "Crack's just coke that's been freebased for you – little pebbles, they call them rock. You smoke them in a kind of pipe, usually." He gestures; smoke loops around his face. "It's a nice quick lift, quicker than snorting. But then you crash quicker. You need more. You get in a run."
"You do this, then. Smoke crack."
"I've been known to. What's the diff? It's handy, it's all over the street these last couple years, it's dirt cheap, what with the competition between the gangs. Fifteen, even ten dollars a rock. They call it candy. Mom, it's no big deal. People your age are superstitious about drugs but it's just a way of relaxing, of getting your kicks. People since they lived in caves have had to have their kicks. Opium, beer, smack, pot – it's all been around for ages. Coke's the cleanest of them all, and the people who use it are successful by and large. It keeps them successful, actually. It keeps them sharp."
Her hand has come to rest on her own bare foot there on the sofa cushion. She gives her toes a squeeze, and spreads them to feel air between. "Well you see how stupid I am," she says. "I thought it was all through the slums and behind most of the crime we read about."
"The papers exaggerate. They exaggerate everything, just to sell papers. The government exaggerates, to keep our minds off what morons they are."
She bleakly nods. Daddy used to hate it, when people blamed the government. She unfolds first one leg, resting her heel on the round glass table, and then brings the other parallel, so the bare calves touch; she arches her brown, tendony insteps as if to invite admiration. Her legs still look young, and her face never did. She jackknifes her legs down and sets her feet on the rug, all business again. "Let me heat up the coffee. And wouldn't you like to split that stale Danish with me? Just to keep it out ofyour father's stomach?"
"You can have it all," he tells her. "Pru doesn't let me eat junk like that." Janice finds this rude. She's his mother, not Pru. As she stands in the kitchen waiting for the coffee to heat, Nelson calls in to her comfortably, finding another subject, "Here's an off duty assistant fire chief hit a motorcycle with his blinkers and siren on – probably stoned. And they think it might rain on New Year's."
"We need it," Janice says, returning with the Aromaster and the Danish cut in half on a plate. "I like the weather warm, but this December has been unreal."
"Did you notice in the kitchen what time it was?"
"Getting toward noon, why?"
"I was thinking what a pain in the ass it is to have only one car down here. If nobody minds, when they get back, I could run some errands."
"What sort of errands would they be?"
"You know. Stuff at the drugstore. I could do with some Sominex. Roy has a rash from leaving his wet bathing suit on after swimming in all that chlorine; isn't there some ointment I could get him?"
"You wouldn't be going back to the people you were with in the fish restaurant the night before last? People who can sell you some lines, or rocks, or whatever you call them?"
"Come on, Mom, don't play detective. You can't grill me, I'm an adult. I'm sorry I told you half of what I did."
"You didn't tell me what really interests me, which is how much this habit is costing you."
"Not much, honest. Do you know, computers and cocaine are about the only items in the economy that are coming down in price? In the old days it cost a fortune, nobody but pop musicians could afford it, and now you can get a whole gram for a lousy seventy-five dollars. Of course, you don't know how much it's been cut, but you learn to get a dealer you can trust."
"Did you have any this morning? Before you came out ofyour bedroom to face me?"
"Hey, give me a break. I'm trying to be honest, but this is ridiculous."
"I think you did," she says, stubbornly.
He disappoints her by not denying even this. Children, why are they afraid of us? "Maybe a sniff of what was left over in the envelope, to get me started. I don't like this idea of Dad taking Judy off on a little sailboat – he can't sail for shit, and seems sort of dopey anyway these days. He seems depressed, have you noticed?"
"I can't notice everything at once. What I do notice about you, Nelson, is that you're not at all yourself. You're in what my mother used to call a state. This dealer you trust so much, do you owe him any money? How much?"
"Mom, is that any business of yours?"
He is enjoying this, she sadly perceives; he is glad to have it wormed out of him, and to place his shameful burden on her. He shows relief in just the way his voice is loosening, the way his shoulders sag in his fancy paisley bathrobe. She tells him, "Your money comes from the lot and the lot's not yours yet; it's mine, mine and your father's."
"Yeah, in a pig's eye it's his."
"How much money, Nelson?"
"There's a credit line I've developed, yeah."
"Why can't you pay your bills? You get forty-five thousand a year, plus the house."
"I know to your way of thinking that's a lot of jack, but you're thinking in pre-inflation dollars."
"You say this coke is seventy-five a gram or ten dollars a rock. How many grams or rocks can you use a day? Tell me, honey, because I want to help you."
"You do? What kind of help?"
"I can't say unless I know what kind of trouble you're in."
He hesitates, then states, "I owe maybe twelve grand."
"Oh, my." Janice feels an abyss at her feet; she had envisioned this conversation as confession and repentance and, at the end, her generous saving offer of a thousand or two. The ease with which he named a much bigger figure indicates a whole new scale of things. "How could you do it, Nelson?" she asks lamely, limply, all of Bessie Springer's righteous stiffness scared out of her.
Nelson's pale little face, sensing her shock, begins to panic, to get pink. "What's such a big deal? Twelve grand is less than a stripped Camry costs. What do you think your liquor bill runs to a year?"