Next time you come along with us.
“Liss-en to that goddamn wind,” Frank said, staring through the window.
Part Two
8
It was morning somehow.
Somehow it was morning, and somehow Bud’s thoughts had found voice, and they had talked the night away, and now the traffic sounds of a new day beginning were crowding the open windows, and the sunlight streamed through and patched the wooden floor with long golden rectangles.
“Morning already,” Bud said.
“It’s amazing the way time goes,” Andy said. “You sleep and then you get up, and then you sleep again, and your whole life is being rushed away.” He paused and shook his head. “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons — do you know that one? Carol is a bug for poetry, you know. Before our show closed she used to read a lot of poetry to me aloud. Only with me it’s tablespoons, not coffee spoons like the poem says. Tablespoons piled high with heroin. You cook it in a spoon, Bud, the hoss. I have measured out my life with tablespoons.” He was silent for a moment, the self-pity that had crowded his voice now spreading to his eyes and his mouth. “You know, this may sound crazy, but sometimes I feel the drug part of my life never really happened. It’s almost as if I crawled into somebody else’s skin, and that guy happened to be a junkie. Does that sound crazy?”
“No,” Bud said.
“Well, I know it does,” Andy said, “but that’s the way I feel.” He shrugged. “It’s real peculiar, too. Like... like I keep remembering things from when we were kids, as if that were the only really important part of my life, as if this other part never happened at all. It’s probably my unconscious at work — a guilt complex or something.”
“Maybe,” Bud said.
“Sure, I guess that’s it. Or maybe my memory is just crazy. But... well, like I wonder about it sometimes, about the way you get on channels, like me with heroin. Do you believe in fate, Bud?”
“No,” he said.
“I think I do, sometimes. You know, what makes somebody go down a certain path? We all start the same way, don’t we? So what’s the answer? For example, Bud, I gave you marijuana once. Once, was it? Twice, that’s right. You had it twice, and look at you now. You’re not an addict, are you? So why am I an addict? I had marijuana, and you had marijuana — I hate that word, don’t you? It makes you think of something lurid, a goddamn Oriental den or something, with everybody laying around in a cloud of smoke, and naked girls with those sheer pantaloons on, doesn’t it? Hell, you can bust a joint right on the street now without the cops tipping, I mean you don’t need a smoke-filled den or anything like that, that’s for the comic books. Why, the first time I gave you a joint, it was right on the street, wasn’t it? Sure, near the church. Oh, no, you don’t need a shooting gallery for a stick of M. Was that after you got out of the service? It’s hard to remember time exactly. Sometimes I think time is in one big conspiracy against me.”
“It was after I got out,” Bud said.
“Sure. You didn’t want the stuff, I remember, but I forced it on you. That’s an occupational disease, you know, with addicts I mean. Christ knows how many times I tried to get Helen on the stuff before she tumbled. A stick of M, and then a sniff of C, and then on to the White God. You see? That’s what I mean. Helen tumbled, but you didn’t. Hey, remember when I used to buy those Benzedrine inhalers and crack them open and then swallow the Benzedrine-soaked paper? That was after you got out of the service too. No, no, it was while you were gone. What the hell made me do that? Kicks? Hell, it wasn’t so great. Oh, it hopped me up and gave me the jumps, but it wasn’t a grand kick, not like the big stuff is. So what made me do that? And even after all the guys kept saying it was poison. You know, you can’t get a Benzedrine inhaler any more. They got this substitute called Benzedrex. Benzedrex, methadone — nothing’s like the real stuff.” He shrugged again. “But that’s what I mean. I was swallowing Benzedrine-soaked paper, and you were—”
“Everybody takes bennies now and then,” Bud said. “I know lots of kids at school who take it to keep awake when they’re studying for exams.”
He remembered Milton abruptly. Milton shoved itself into his mind, and he sighed involuntarily. He had not studied, and he had not slept either. And the test was tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning at nine.
“Sure, sure, but they’ve got reasons. I did it — what for? Do I know? Do you know? Hell, I just did it, that’s all. Like M. Somebody gave me a stick, just the way I gave you a stick. I dug it; I went back to it. You didn’t dig it at all. Now I’m an addict, and you’re a college boy. Fate. Channels.”
“I might have gone back to it,” Bud said thoughtfully. “You never can tell. But it just didn’t affect me one way or the other.”
“Oh, it affected you,” Andy said. “The first time, anyway. I know it affected you because I was watching you, man. Don’t try to snow me.”
“It didn’t affect me,” Bud insisted.
“You said the street got longer, didn’t you?”
“Only because you suggested it. You kept saying, ‘Look back over your shoulder. Doesn’t it seem like we’ve come miles?’ After a while I began to believe you.”
“So? So there you are, man. All it does is increase your... your... oh, what the hell would you call it? When somebody suggests something and you’re receptive to it. That. It increases that. You also said the buildings seemed to be tilting. I remember, man, believe me. My memory is the longest. So don’t bring the stuff down. Admit it was crazy, will you?”
The pride had crept into Andy’s voice again. Whenever he spoke of the power of drugs, the pride sneaked in like an assassin in a black robe. And yet, the self-pity was always there, too, behind the pride, like a white-clothed Lady Macbeth steering the hand with the knife. It was a peculiar combination, and it rankled Bud.
“Well,” he said reluctantly, “maybe I did say the buildings seemed to be tilting.”
“Oh, no question about it! And you also giggled like a bastard at everything we said.”
“That was a release of nervous energy,” Bud said. “I was actually afraid. I had this feeling of doing something that was dangerous.”
“Nervous energy, my foot. That was Mother M, daddy, good old Mother M. All right, I’ll grant you it didn’t knock you out. It never does the first time. But it sure as hell affected you, now don’t tell me it didn’t.”
Bud felt as if he were being backed against the wall. The memory of the incident was hazy in his mind, anyway, and he had no reason to doubt the accuracy of Andy’s recollection. In self-defense he tried to channel the course of conversation elsewhere. “The second time,” he said, “nothing at all happened.”
“Well, that’s ’cause you shared the joint with that friend of yours from school — what was his name?”
“He was your friend, too,” Bud said. “He went to Boys’ High with you.”
“Davidoff,” Andy said. “David Davidoff — what a hell of a name. Like Newton Hooton. Played oboe, didn’t he? It was funny your running into him at college, wasn’t it? Sure, David Davidoff. He had a great sense of humor, you know? Oh, not that I was real buddy-buddy with him or anything. Hell he was a senior when I was just a soph, I think. But it was funny I knew him at all, and then your running into him at college.”