The Empty

by James Maddox

     “Where’re we going?” I ask, stubbornly, like I don’t want to go anywhere if Jeremy is leading the way.  I have been broke for so long, dry for so long, but now – oh, God, now – now we have the stuff in his jacket pocket, and I’m asking, asking and asking, where are we going?  stubbornly, while feeling like I should just stop here in the middle of the street, here in front of everyone and everything, stick the needle in my arm, in my groin, hip, toe webbing, the inside of my knee, maybe do it twice, just to get the feeling, to prepare myself, to wake myself up for what’s coming.  Where am I going?  I’m going pretty fucking high, and I don’t hope to return for quite a while. 

Pity fly time’s being delayed.

     “We’re going someplace safe, man,” Jeremy says.  “This’s it, so good it’ll have you kissin’ God.  Trust me, man, we’ll want the privacy.”

     Jeremy’s not so bad off.  He gets (steals) cash from his parents and friends.  He would steal from me, too, but like I said, I’ve been broke.  My last fix was last month (one week ago).  His was yesterday.  One day.  So, yeah, he’s not in my world.  He can still think straight; he can still think of things that deal with comfort, rather than with need.

     Jeremy’s boots slosh through puddles of melted snow as I follow behind.  His feet will be freezing later.  He’ll complain.  He’s always complaining about something that he has done to himself, passing the blame off on someone who happened to be there at the time whenever the horrible incident occurred. 

Jeremy is a fuck-up, sure, but he has purpose.  All those people that you wish you knew, Jeremy knows, and somehow they all owe him a favor.  Tonight’s score happened because Jeremy wanted it to.  And though he’s a step away from being just like me, nobody but me can see it. 

“Aw, shit, man,” Jeremy marvels as we run through a traffic jam, cars so close together you’d think they were flirting with each other, bumper to bumper.  “This’s going to be so good, dude!  I tell you or what? Huh?  I told you we’d get it.”

“So why aren’t we shootin’ it?”  He’s got me running all over the fucking city, in between the people that stare at me because of the way I look, because of the grease in my hair, because of the unrest in my eyes, because, like a lot of people in the city, they can read me like a book, no damn deal to it.  The truth printed on me like a label.

Junky.

Waste.

Weak.

Fag.

They look at me, and I want to kill Jeremy for putting me through all this, for leading me through this mob by my hunger, my addiction, the chain pulling me along.  Instead, I keep running and hope this will all end soon.

But it doesn’t, can’t, and won’t.

“Please, can we just stop?”  I’m sure I’m crying now.  If Jeremy wasn’t such a fuck, he might turn around and see my pain, let me go free in any of the back alleys that we’ve passed along the way --- but he doesn’t look back.  He’s got drive.  He’s clear on where we’re going and how it’s going to be.  He understands only that which is in his line of vision; the peripherals are of no consequence. 

All I know is that he has the junk (he has me) in his jacket pocket, and that to him the way I feel is a peripheral. 

The coldness of the city, of New York, catches the breath coming from my mouth and gives it color, gives it shape, makes it something for only a few seconds.  The air inside me, the colorless air, the shapeless air, it can’t wait to get out and get a taste of what it’s like to be something.  My lungs heave. My side cramps.  The entrances blocked with exiters, enterers cannot get in.   My whole body, feeling the effects of losing air, collapses in on itself. 

I can’t go any farther.”

Did I say that out loud?

“Here!” Jeremy smiles like a coyote as he says, “Here it is, man.  This is the place.”

And then he speeds up.

And then I speed up, as the chain is pulled taut.

The destination, the safe place, is a condemned building, and before I walk inside, I know how filled it is with squatters, know the truth about its safety, which is that it’s not safe at all.  But Jeremy strolls in like he owns the place.  These squatters are nothing but friends that have stayed overnight.  The bundled up men coughing, hacking, like old, rundown engines, they are his fraternal brothers.  The women, their arms laced with the open sores that match our own, their shifty hands reaching up at an endlessly itching nose, these are his girlfriends, and they could be mine if I wasn’t so stingy, so hungry for more than my share of the world’s junk.  So ceaselessly empty.

Walking past all these people, we make our way up a flight of stairs and to the second floor of the building.  Our steps echo against the walls, ticking like the second hand of a pocket watch, until we stop and I hear the ticks fade away.

Jeremy kicks open a door and chases out a man who was sound asleep, maybe dreaming of a priest and a suitcase and a strange Mexican boy with a bursting appendix.  The old man mumbles a few words while leaving, as though he is mumbling to me then himself then me again.  I can only hear a few odd phrases – “Grassed on me he did.” and “They call me the Frisco Kid.” – and then he’s gone—

—and Jeremy and I are alone in the room, together.  A solitary window lets in sun through its grimy plate glass.  It filters in only the bad light, but even this can’t destroy the moment I’m about to receive.  Jeremy reaches into his pocket and pulls out everything (the only thing) in parts that seem to greet me warmly.  I swoon and smile, enjoying this pre-rapture. 

I reach for the stuff.

“Piss off.”  The lord of the squatters, their brother, their dick, gets it first.  And why not, he scored it all.  He’s right.  Piss off.  He’s right and only so kind in his sharing.

Readying himself with the tourniquet first, Jeremy proceeds, setting the cube onto the spoon like it’s as delicate as silk straight from the worm.  I think we’re both holding our breath.  He drops citric acid and water into the silver curve. It takes two cranks for the flint to spark up, kiss the gas and make a flame.  Jeremy passes up the cig filter and puts the needle in, pulls back the plunger, takes it all in.  Taps the syringe, removes all the air.  Pulls the rubber tight.  Doesn’t need to tap the vein. Knows were everything is supposed to go. Pulls back, blood mixing with the stuff, and pushes forward, letting it in slow.  Release – the needle still clinging to his inlet – a stain forming from the inside of his pants, a climactic look of pleasure blanketing his face.  He breathes.

The silence is so peaceful, but it’s not enough, not for me.

Repeat procedure, except use the cig filter to separate the impurities.

I finish and smile, holding it in my hands, the fruit of my labor. 

As I marvel, I see movement from behind my fingers, from behind the salvation I hold in my hands, in a peripheral space that Jeremy would never take time to see.  Jeremy’s shaking.  His needle has dropped to the floor. His feet are kicking out, thudding, thudding against the floor.  His head bangs against the wall, against the flower pattern wallpaper, harder and harder.  He clenches his body, his eyes dart from side to side, until he screams, “Oh no, oh NO!  THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THIS ROOM!”  Then he breathes out in jerking motions that remind me of the men down stairs, with their old-engine respiratory systems.

And then he’s gone.

Jeremy (a cheat) was a fuck-up, and I can imagine somebody giving him (a thief) a hot shot simply because he (a liar) was a fuck-up. 

Jeremy was a fuck-up; now, Jeremy is gone – and none of this information helps me in the least.  My fruit, as it turns out, is poisoned, and somehow I know that if I take a bite it won’t be glass coffins or dwarves or princes for me here.  Even an ambulance would be asking too much in this part of town. 

But I keep looking—

                   To Jeremy.

To the needle.

                                           To my arm.

                   To Jeremy.

To the needle.

                                           To my arm.

     —keep looking and thinking about the small differences between the two of us, the cig filter, the size of Jeremy’s small body and my larger one, the two different clusters of junk, how he injected the stuff – how much at a time – and how I would.  A shiver passes over me and I know it’s more than the temperature.  It’s the chain, the addiction pulling me.  It’s New York.  It’s the bum in the room and the people downstairs, in the streets, everywhere.  Everywhere… everywhere.

     Or maybe it’s me.

     My body calls for me to make a decision, pushing which I should choose by way of headaches and quivering skin, wanting, more than anything, to be released from pain.  Saying in its own way to Fuck the consequences and savor this last takeoff.  I look to my mind for some sort of reason, but my better judgment seems to be caught in a haze of confusion brought on by the prospect of coming so close to the goal, and the frustration of losing it all at the last minute.  Instead of holding me back, it’s giving me the go-ahead as well.

     This is how choices are made.

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