Chapter 79

the sound: Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit, Stevie Ray Vaughn – Little Wing, Metallica – Nothing Else Matters

Willam S. Burroughs once said that “In the end junkies have no interest in sex, and they have no interest in other people except as suppliers of their junk.” Michael had always said “there’s no such thing as an ex-junkie.”

I now I believed him.

Robert held out his arm and I wrapped the belt around it, he took it from me to pull it tight...

”top or bottom” I asked? Eyeing his veins with a once practiced ease...I wasn’t particular...I’d use his arm or his hand…his veins, his choice.

Robert nodded towards the veins in his arm and I nodded back cos they stood out like snake attachments to his forearm.

I removed the small peice of cigarette filter I was using as a filter from the point and carefully set the point back into the bowl of the spoon to suck the liquid up into the syringe. I was surprised at how little my hands shook until I up ended the syringe looking for bubbles before flagging out the air.

I looked at the syringe and sighed, licking the sweat off my upper lip, My hand began to tremble severly and as I watched the tremor moved up my arm.

I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to breath deeply while I held myself and twitched…twitched hard, just like I had when I went through all that hell it took to get clean, I twitched and itched.

Robert grabbed the syringe out of my hand his arm almost knocking me off of the bed in his hurry.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he yelled.

“I’m a junkie” I whispered my head turned away from him, my hair falling forward to hide my face.

“what?...what the fuck…you’re what?” he barked “speak up….what?”

“I’m a fucking junkie” I yelled back, suddenly angry.

“I’ve been clean, but only for a couple of years asshole…I’m a junkie…you know? Once a junkie always a junkie you fucking prick!” I was suddenly standing beside the bed wagging my finger at him and crying.

“hold up…hold up…” he said…”how come nobody told me?”

“pffffffffft..yer not so fucking important in my life big guy...” I said as I eyed up the syringe and realized that in my mind I was already plotting to get the damn thing away from him…

Robert looked from me to the syringe in his hand, back to me and then followed my eyes boring holes in his hand. “Maybe you shouldn’t do this?” he suggested.

“Ya fucking think?” I whispered hungrily watching him move the syringe from the hand closest to me to the one with the belt on on the other side of the bed.

I sat down on the side of the bed again and looked him square in the eye. I could see that the dilaudid was working, but I could also see the pain in the crinkling around his eyes.

Thoughts flitted through my mind….“He can’t move very quickly…

no….

I could grab n dash….

no….

he’d never catch up…

no no no NO!”

Just as the compulsion to grab the syringe almost overcame me we heard a sound in the hallway outside the bedroom door.

Robert looked about frantically and made a grab for the kit on the bedside table – the belt on his arm waving pointedly and more than showing what he was up to…he missed.

I grabbed the works at the same time as he threw the syringe through the open door of the closet I heard it hit the far wall and licked my lips.

“Later” he said, as he pulled the belt off his arm and I hid the works…sliding them down the back of my pants.

No sooner did Robert relax back against the pillows again did the door open and Mrs. K and Rosie waltzed in, two huge bags of take out food in tow.

“Saved by the redheads” I thought, as Mrs. K slipped into my place at Robert’s bedside and Rosie and I headed to the kitchen to plate up the meal.

Going through the mundane steps of standing at the kitchen counter putting Chinese food on plates allowed me to get my residual tremors under control and I honestly thought that we’d pulled it off until Rosie reach around me and pulled Robert’s kit out of the back of my pants.

She turned to me with a question in her eyes.

“Saved by the redheads” I said sheepishly.

Rosie shook her head and threw the kit in the garbage.