We met ten years ago on a stretch of long and lonesome street in the slums of London. Garbage and prostitutes lined the streets. The women puffed their cigarettes with mouths rimmed in sickly red, dark eyes glowering under the weight of mask-like make up, their faces cowering behind powder to hide bruises and scars. The first time I saw you, you were surrounded by high heeled shoes and fishnet stockings. The call girls were pulling on your clothes and whispering sultry obscenities in your ear in their crude accents. Your blonde hair poking out of the sea of purchasable flesh like a beacon soon to be swallowed by sin. But still,you were grinning like an idiot, accepting sips of liquor from their devilish lips and smoking their cigarettes with filters dirty with lipstick and chipped nail polish.1
"Oh come on, honey," they said. "Come on, baby, let's have a good time why don't we?"2
"I don't think I can, birdie," you said, laughing like an old-time sinner. "Maybe another time."3
Your eyes, large and blue, sparkled bright in the dark.4
"Oh come on now," they insisted, pulling on your collar. "Don't be shy now, mister."5
Your cheeks were flushed red with alcohol as you struggled from their grasp, wrenching your sleeve from one woman's clawed hands. You pulled away from another woman's embrace, all the while smiling your soft, sincere, sinner's smile. But still, they kept coming.6
"Please, mister," begged one, "I've got a child at home."7
But all you could do was smile and shake your head apologetically.8
"Please, mister," started another.9
I cut her off with a bruising grip on her upper arm. You looked at me with a relieved look in your eye, but with the same, same, frighteningly same smile on your lips.10
"He doesn't want any," I growled. She glared at me with her smoke-rimmed eyes and pulled away with a jerk, her heels knocking against the cobblestones. The others snarled at us, turning from sweet to desperate to resentful. Lovely birds with chirping voices and nicotine-scented feathers turned into filthy alley cats with raspy gnarls and liquor-flavored kisses.11
"Get lost then," they screeched, spitting on us. "Don't be taking up our time!"12
I grabbed your cold hand and hauled you through the alley, dragging your stumbling body through the maze of sex and sin and drugs. You ran behind me, struggling to keep up, too drunk to walk straight. We ran through the winding intestines of Camden, soles slapping against gravel, shadows dancing over stone. We didn't stop until we reached the border of Kings Cross, coming to a sea of lights that was London.13
You stood panting next to me, hand still intertwined in mine. You looked into the bright landscape, eyes searching the neon bars and halogen hotels. You looked and looked until you couldn't take in any more.14
Then you doubled over and vomited your dinner over my shoes, collapsing into a lump at my feet.15
--16
You awoke in the tangled sheets of my tiny mattress while I was preparing my morning line of cocaine over a tiny mirror. You looked at me with a bewildered expression on your face. You looked at your surroundings too. You looked at the walls, plaster peeling back to reveal greenish primer. You looked at the windows, dirty and fractured from age and drunken nights. You looked at the bed, messy and stained with semen and blood. And you looked at the desk, where I sat snorting my lines with a straw up my left nostril.17
"Hey," you said. "Where am I?"18
"My flat," I said through a sniffle. I licked the mirror and straw clean. "You fainted last night."19
"Oh," you said.20
I handed you two pills of percocet.21
"For your head," I said.22
You nodded and swallowed them dry.23
--24
"So you want money," I said as I drank my black coffee. My teeth ground against themselves, my jaw clenching as I swallowed the bitter liquid. You sat across from me, eyes half-lidded in a state of lucid living. I thought of what you must have been feeling then. The world must have seemed like a haze to you, like a bad transmission or a bleeding painting. You nodded slowly, jaw slack, head drooping.25
"You picky about how you're going to make it?" I asked as I took another sip.26
You shook your head slowly.27
"I could use someone to help me around town," I said. I was living off of coffee then, the acid burning a hole through my stomach, releasing a jittery fire into my bloodstream.28
"What do I have to do?"29
"Sell drugs."30
--31
I was a small-time dealer then. No gunfights or knife wounds, just finely powdered dreams and stardust. Heroin, cocaine, ketamine, ecstasy, morphine, amphetamines. The list went on and on. I dealt anything that was quality, anything that I had, anything that I liked using myself. I would sit at my desk during the day, staring at the telephone and smoking opium, waiting for the phone to give its shrill cry. I waited for the addicts to round themselves to me one by one like sheep flocking to their herder. I waited for the hippies, the desperates, the depressed, the delusional, and the schizophrenics. I waited for men who prayed to dead Indian gods for a safe experience, for women who snorted cocaine off of the vaginas of their lesbian lovers, for the boys who danced all night in a pulse of love and perfection. I waited for the depraved addicts who beat their children and spouses for a bit of lunch money spent on heroin. I waited for the speed fiends who gnawed their knuckles clean thinking about their next fix. I waited for the ketamine users who wanted to transcend reality into the realm of death.32
And I waited for myself to be delivered from my sallow occupation.33
And at night you would scour the streets with me, bringing the bittersweet fruit of sin door to door like a wicked angel offering false salvation. And we would watch in fascination as our pockets filled with money as the night went on, sometimes loose one dollar bills in a thick roll, sometimes twenties and fifties floating lightly into our palms. We would stop halfway through the night to buy a drink for the both of us, whiskey for me and beer for you. And we would sit with our pockets full of gold side-by-side and chat about football or the weather.34
Your blue eyes would continue to burn like beacons in the dark night, never faltering, never changing. Just eerie hollows that never changed for better or worse through our nights of sin. And your smile, always sloppily pasted on sideways, hanging on your face, teeth gleaming in the night.35
--36
"Why do you do this?" I asked one night as we smoked cigarettes in the car. You were busy spinning the chamber of my revolver, watching intently as the bullets spun round and round.37
"Because," you said quietly, giving the chamber another spin, "I need the money."38
"For what?" I pressed, taking a sip of my coffee. I finish my cigarette and fling the stub into the putrid garbage already lying on the streets of London.39
"I want to be better," you said slowly, pronouncing every word carefully. "I want to be able to be a good person."40
There was a thick silence.41
"One day."42
--43
Samuel was the first to go. Overdosed from heroin. Needle still stuck in his arm.44
--45
"Why do you want to do this?" you asked as we trudged through the forest of tombs, ties loosened and discarded, salt tears still fresh on our cheeks. Our umbrellas hovered over us like giant black clouds as the grass crunched under our feet.46
"Because," I said softly, stepping over a tombstone, "I need the money."47
"For what?" you pressed, following me to the car. We got in and lit cigarettes, the tips glowing like eyes through the dark.48
"I want to kill someone," I said slowly, taking a deep draw of my cigarette. "I want to do justice."49
There was a thick silence.50
"One day."51
--52
Jack was the fourth. Raving on ecstasy. Danced so crazy that his heart exploded.53
--54
We kissed slow and sweet on Queensway one blind, starry night, the car muffling the ruckus around us as drug confetti poured on the street in waves. Your mouth, soft and delicious, melted into mine, hard and bitter. Our tongues danced, wet and slick, colliding in bursts of controlled accidents. We touched, near desperately, every inch of each other, grinding and hot, melding into one boiling lump of meaningless passion.55
And, as we kissed and touched and touched and felt in the brightly-lit carnival of carnage, I thought faintly that I could hear.56
That I could hear in the far distance soft weeping and bawling heartbreak.57
And the end.58
Our end.59
--60
Samantha was the seventh. She was such a tiny little thing. Stuffing herself so full of painkillers that she couldn't feel when the dream stopped. And death began.61
--62
"Let's leave," you said, sheets pooled around your hips as I smoked my morning cigarette. Your chest still gleaming from the sweat of our affair. The sun was rising slowly behind you, its rays penetrating your silhouette. "Let's save ourselves."63
I stared at you hard with my coal eyes. Then turned to take another puff from my cigarette.64
"You're a good person," you said, crawling toward me with one hand holding the blankets. "You don't belong here."65
"I belong here perfectly," I growled, walking to the other corner of the room. The cigarette smoke followed me like a ghost.66
"If you stay here, you're going to get killed!" you screamed, voice ringing through the walls of the room. "You're going to get killed and then you're going to get arrested! Is that what you want?"67
I whipped around to face you, the smoke wrapping around me like a typhoon. "Big words coming from a sinner like you!" I spat, tossing the glowing stub over my shoulder and out the window. You looked at me with disbelief bleeding from your eyes. I continued on.68
"Killed?" I sneered. "And don't you suppose that I deserve to be killed?" I snatched a lighter from the dresser and lit another cigarette. I leaned heavily against the window frame as I breathed the chemicals in. The rough smoke slithered down my throat and filled my lungs with poison as the sun continued to rise cautiously around me. I held the smoke in for a long moment and looked at you as you stared at me in silent contemplation, unvoiced accusation, and blatant damnation. I looked at you as you glared at me, blood boiling with anger and hatred and betrayal.69
And then I exhaled, a stream of smoke shooting from my lips like a comet.70
"Don't you suppose that you deserve to be killed?" I said quietly, my eyes counting the cracks on the ceiling. I knew that you were trembling, fists clenched in fury, but I went on. "Don't you suppose that maybe you don't deserve to be a better person?"71
"Don't you dare compare me to you," you hissed, body stretched as if ready to strike. "I'm nothing like you."72
"Oh!" I cried with a hollow snicker. "The fox preaches!" I ignored the crumpling sound of my heart and the roar of my regret.73
I chuckled through another puff of smoke and staggered to the other side of the room, the thin ghost zigzagging behind me in equally unsteady steps.74
"You," I said with contempt, waving my arms with a gentleman-like flourish, "who sells drugs to the poor." You flinched. "You who takes money from the addicts." You quivered. "You who spends that money for your own gains. You who spends it on your cigarettes and beers, on your whores and dry cleaning. You who kills so that you can have your petty little 'better life.'"75
I laughed. "You are no more worthy of redemption than me!"76
"Don't compare me with someone who dreams of being a murderer!" you screeched, your booming voice filling the room. You pointed a burning finger at me. "You who pretends to be Abel when you are really Cain! You who pretends to be victim when you are really criminal! You who wants to kill his own brother! You! You! You!"77
You were hysterical then, beating on me with your fists, sending the both of us tumbling to the floor. We collapsed like two tired puppets with cut strings over the hard concrete, chests pumping hard from uncried tears and rage. We laid there for a long time, listening intently to the pounding of our hearts as the sun made its slow way across the sky. We laid there thinking about our blurred pasts and our blank futures. We laid there thinking about each other, the soft touch of our fingers on each others' skin. We laid there thinking about our words, those invisible piercing blades that punctured holes in our bodies until we could no longer stand.78
And we laid there knowing that it would be the last time we would ever be.79
Like this.80
--81
"I've got enough money," you whispered, eyes downcast. "Enough to leave."82
There was a thick silence.83
"Come with me."84
--85
It was foggy the day you left, a blanket of ghouls covering the bricks of the city with their translucent bodies and tortured howls.86
I watched you get ready from the tangled nest of my bed. I counted the notches of your spine as your nude body flexed and stretched to clothe itself. I traced the contours of your muscles, the broad planes of your chest with my eyes, circling your birthmark with my stare. I glared through the lamplight as the warm glow bathed your canyons and peaks, the darkness in the hollows of your cheeks, the glimmer on the swollen hilltops of your lips. I looked on as you turned away from me, pulling on your socks and your shoes and your heavy winter's coat.87
I watched as you slowly evaporated before me, turning invisible and absent second by second, breath by breath.88
And then you grabbed your suitcase.89
Turned to me.90
And smiled.91
You smiled your little lopsided smile that creaked and swung loosely by the hinges of your mouth. You clumsily slathered on your empty optimism and hopes and dreams and love. And gave it all to me.92
And then.93
You left.94
--95
And softly, it began to rain.96
--97
There is blood under my fingernails, dark and dry, cracking and breaking under my skin. I am puffing on my last cigarette, bent and broken, the cylinder wedged between my fore and middle fingers. I blow storybook clouds into the unforgiving night air and stare at the starless night painted neon with sin. I embrace the stillness and silence, the deep and frightening quiet in my soul for the first time in a long time. I absorb it. I absorb it all.98
I absorb the starless sky. I absorb the unnatural glowing skyline. I absorb the heavy and dead lump that sits beside me, quickly growing cold in the damp winter air. I absorb my hands, now red and bruised with self-righteous blasphemy.99
And I think. Clearly for once.100
For the first time.101
I think of you.102
Of where you might be. Of what you might be doing. Of who you might be dreaming of.103
And of being a good person.104
There is a thick silence.105
One day.106
Author notes
pitter patter
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