Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV
You couldn't tell where the boundary was. It wasn't marked. There was no chain-link fence with a spiral of barbed wire across the top. No row of armed guards every thirty feet or anything like that. Not even wooden posts on the side of the road, with wires sloppily affixed to it, like all the farmland had around here. There were no signs, no ditches, nothing to mark the edge at all.
People just knew to stay away from it.
Someone told me that if you were really high up, like in a helicopter, and looked at the endless fields on the other side, it was a lot prettier, a lot greener, almost like stained glass. Or if you looked up at their sky it was bluer, with fewer clouds, almost like an oil painting. But that was bullshit. If anything the grass looked worse on the other side — way more sparse and yellow, with a lot of ugly tall weeds growing amongst it.
But that could have just been what it looked like, here in the night, illuminated only by bright headlights.
I didn't know more than anybody else about where the line was, but I had a pretty good idea, and I was damn sure I kept my distance. I was leaning up against a beat-up road sign, half-rusted out and bent down almost to the earth, which marked the spot where I'd decided it was okay for me to wait. My car was idling on the side of the road it marked, and I stood next to the open driver's side door, looking up at the stars. Dust and insects swarmed around the headlights.
This is stupid, I kept saying to myself. Everything's gone to shit, I don't know why I agreed to this. But here I was. I'd gone and made that call without knowing what kind of call it would be. I just needed some answers.
That morning I'd been lying awake on the futon that was my bed, eyes open at the ceiling but the rest of me buried deep under the comforter, when I'd heard Alan shouting from downstairs — "FUCK!"
He kept saying that one word. There'd be silence after about twenty seconds, I'd hear another "FUCK!" and then silence again. I must have listened to it for about ten minutes, his swears erratically spaced but always the same word.
It was like water torture.
"FUCK!"
…
"Fucking fuck!"
It was giving me a headache. Though that could've been the rum and cokes I was downing last night.
After ten excruciating minutes of this I pulled the comforter off and went downstairs into the living room to ask his fat ass what was wrong.
"This fucking weed's no good," he proclaimed, slamming one of his grodier bowls on the coffee table. Some other empty bowls were knocked onto the rug from the impact.
"Dude," I said. "It's ten in the morning. The hell do you have to be this mad about."
"The fucking…" he sighed, throwing up his hands. "First the shrooms, now this. The fuck is that guy selling you?"
I closed my eyes. "He's selling me the same stuff he's been selling me," I sighed. "Is that Cerulean you got in there?" I pointed at his bowl. "He sold that QP to me like a month ago. It's been getting plenty of people high before you came around."
"Look, Plake," he said, picking up his disgusting bowl, and pointing it at me dramatically.
I rolled my eyes. "Don't be dramatic with me, Alan," I snapped. "Is it Cerulean or what? A man's gotta know these things."
He squinted, peering straight down the pipe of the bowl, like a puzzled child. "Yeah, I guess so," he said, his voice slurred.
"So what, it's not getting you high?"
"Yeah, I just… feel the same."
"Have you ever considered that you have a tolerance?"
"Shut the fuck up, bro, I've tried to smoke like three bowls of this stuff, I would've noticed something. Whatever, I don't care. This just…"
His voice got progressively more tired until it petered out, and then Alan seemed to simply give up. All his rage evaporated. He leaned back into the couch, his body sinking into stained grey upholstery. The broken sofa groaned beneath him. He sat like that for a bit, totally still and expressionless.
I smirked. "Are you feeling it now?"
"No," he mumbled. "I'm just… thinking."
I left him there to think, and went back to my room to sleep some more.
But I didn't sleep. Instead I lay tangled in my raggedy comforter, wide awake. I'd lit some incense hoping it would help me chill out, but it was utterly failing.
My phone pinged with text after text, every single notification like a thunderclap. I put the phone on vibrate and they became earthquakes instead.
"hey P whassup got a question for you"
"this strain isnt as good as last time"
I tossed back and forth on the futon for what must've been hours, listening to the rev and rumble of cars outside. A box fan balancing in my window blew rancid air into the room. The scent of trash and fried food made my restlessness worse.
A few people came to my house, banged on the door, buzzed my doorbell. I ghosted all of them. I yelled at my roommates to tell the intruders that I wasn't home. None of them questioned it.
I decided to take a brisk walk to clear my head. I got up again and went back downstairs. Alan was still sitting on the couch with that thousand yard stare. I didn't talk to him or even look at him. My other roommate Joey had joined him on the couch, but he was just scrolling on his phone with an empty energy drink in his hand. Both of them lost in thought. Or lack of thought, or whatever.
I always tried to be observant on my walks, but I didn't ever want to talk to anybody. People were just barely interesting enough to look at. There were some skinny white dudes in plain t-shirts lounging on the grass in the park across the street, reclining on a pile of what looked like old bookbags. They weren't moving at all, just staring off into space, into the sky.
There was this young dolled-up chick that walked by me, and she carried this massive green-sequined purse over her right shoulder. Her left arm swung wildly in front of her as she walked, compensating for the bag's weight. It probably carried everything she owned. We didn't make eye contact.
I walked down to the bodega to get a bag of chips, and saw someone rooting around in the bodega's dumpster, which was tucked over on the side of the building. He was standing amongst the refuse, throwing full black plastic trash bags out of the dumpster and into the tiny parking lot, cussing to himself. He looked old, but not old… grizzled, his white face darkened from sun and age and alcohol and whatever else he might be drowning in. Trash, clearly.
I leaned up against a fence and watched him for a bit, from across the street. It was at least more interesting than buying a bag of chips. The man continued to toss things aside until he'd made it all the way down to the bottom of the dumpster, his head just poking out of the open top door. He was making a scene, loudly drawing attention to himself. Screaming incoherently. But no one else who passed by gave him any notice.
Eventually I went into the bodega. The dumpster diver didn't see me pass his way, he was too lost in the search. It didn't seem like he was going to find what he was looking for.
There were several people in the bodega crowding the scratch tables. More than usual. People sort of hunched over, scraping at scratch tickets with chewed-down fingernails, with no expression on their faces. Almost autonomously. I never understood scratch tickets, they never appealed to me, but I guess in a way I was lucky. One less thing to be addicted to.
I got some chips and a soda and booked it in record time. For some reason I was starting to feel really paranoid. Maybe it was the lack of weed in my system, I hadn't bothered to try any for myself.
I glanced at another group of strangers who were just sort of ambling outside on the corner. Some of them had cigarettes in their hands, but most were just standing there, staring at the hazy gray pavement beneath their shuffling feet. One old geezer with a shopping cart looked up at me, a butt dangling from his lips. Our eyes met. My paranoia went up to 11.
I stared at the ground and speedwalked back to the house. It was getting overcast, and the wet air made the awful smells of this place cover everything like a dumpster. The whole city was a dumpster. And all of us just rooting around inside it like that shriveled husk of a man.
It felt like the place was dying, dying of poverty and generally drowning in chaos. But there was no indication that anyone was interested in helping.
Maybe they were paranoid too.
Maybe they were withdrawing in silent despair. No crack or pot to smoke, no coke to snort.
Maybe they thought they were being punished.
But what could I do? I thought. I'm just one man. Struggling just like the rest of them. Not nearly as badly as some, I guess, but there's not much I can offer them that they genuinely need.