Текст книги "The Marijuana Chronicles"
Автор книги: Jonathan Santlofer
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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 13 страниц)
Mattia’s parole had been approved. On the last class day, Mattia had stood before Agnes to thank her. His lips had trembled. His eyes were awash with tears.
Again she thought, I remind him of—someone. Someone who’d loved him, whom he had loved.
From his prose pieces, she knew he lived on Tumbrel Street, Trenton, in a neighborhood only a few blocks from the state capitol rotunda and the Delaware River. This was a part of Trenton through which visitors to the state capitol buildings and the art museum drove without stopping, or avoided altogether by taking Route 29, along the river, into the city. Agnes wondered if he would be returning to this neighborhood; very likely, he had nowhere else to go. How she’d wished she might invite him to visit her.
Or arrange for him to live elsewhere. Away from the environment that had led to his incarceration.
Hesitantly, in a lowered voice so the other inmate-students wouldn’t hear as they shuffled out of the classroom, Mattia said, “Ms. Agnes, d’you think I could send you things? Things I would write?”
Agnes was deeply touched. She thought, What is the harm in it? Mattia is not like the others.
He’d wanted to mail her his “writings,” he said. “I never had such a wonderful class, Ms. Agnes. Never learned so much …”
Agnes hesitated. She knew the brave generous reckless gesture would be to give Mattia her address, so that he could write to her; but instructors had been warned against establishing such relations outside the prison classroom; even to allow Mattia to know Agnes’s last name was considered dangerous.
“If I knew you would read what I write, I would write more—I would write with hope.”
Yet still Agnes hesitated. “I—I’m sorry, Joseph. I guess—that isn’t such a good idea.”
Mattia smiled quickly. If he was deeply disappointed in her, he spared her knowing. “Well, ma’am!—thank you. Like I say, I learn a lot. Anyway, I feel like—more hopeful now.”
Agnes was deeply sorry. Deeply disappointed in herself. Such cowardice!
This was a moment, too, when Agnes might have shaken hands with Mattia, in farewell. (She knew that her male instructors violated protocol on such occasions, shaking hands with inmate-students; she’d seen them.) But Agnes was too cautious, and she was aware of guards standing at the doorway, watching her as well as the inmate-students on this last day of class.
“Thank you, Joseph! And good luck.”
Now, she would make amends.
Several years had passed. If Mattia still lived in Trenton, it would not be such a violation of prison protocol to contact him—would it?
He’d “paid his debt to society”—as it was said. He was a fellow citizen now. She, his former instructor, did not feel superior to him—in her debilitated state, she felt superior to no one—but she did think that, if he still wanted her advice about writing, or any sort of contact with her as a university professor, she might be able to help him.
What had Mattia said, so poignantly—she had given him hope. And from him, perhaps she would acquire hope.
She was getting high more frequently. Alone in the cavernous house.
Smoking “pot” was becoming as ritualized to her as having a glass of wine had been for her husband, before every meal. She had sometimes joined him, but usually not—wine made her sleepy, and in the night it gave her a headache, or left her feeling, in the morning, mildly depressed. She knew that alcohol was a depressant to the nervous system and that she must avoid it, like the pills on the marble ledge.
Getting high was a different sensation. Staying high was the challenge.
Mattia might be a source of marijuana too. She hadn’t thought of this initially, but—yes: probably.
(He’d been incarcerated for killing a drug dealer. It wasn’t implausible to assume that he might have dealt in drugs himself.)
(Or, he might have cut himself out from his old life entirely. He might be living now somewhere else.)
(She wasn’t sure which she hoped for—only that she wanted very much to see him again, and to make amends for her cowardice.)
Getting high gave her clarity: she planned how she would seek out Joseph Mattia. Shutting her eyes, she rehearsed driving to Trenton, fifteen miles from the village of Quaker Heights; exiting at the State Capitol exit, locating Tumbrel Street … None of the Mattias listed in the directory lived on Tumbrel Street in Trenton, but Eduardo Mattia lived on Depot Avenue which was close by Tumbrel (so Agnes had determined from a city map), and there was Anthony Mattia on 7th Street and E.L. Mattia (a woman?) on West State Street, also close by. A large family—the Mattias.
In this neighborhood, she could make inquiries about “Joseph Mattia”—if she dared, she could go to one of the Mattia addresses and introduce herself.
Do you know Joseph Mattia? Is he a relative of yours?
Joseph was a former student of mine who’d been very promising.
Hello! My name is—
Hello! I am a former teacher of Joseph Mattia.
Her heart began pounding quickly, in this fantasy.
Getting high was a dream. Waking was the fear.
* * *
In the cavernous house the phone rang frequently. She pressed her hands over her ears.
“Nobody’s home! Leave me alone.”
She had no obligation to pick up a ringing phone. She had no obligation to return e-mail messages marked CONCERNED—or even to read them.
Since getting high she was avoiding relatives, friends. They were dull “straight” people—getting high to them meant alcohol, if anything.
Of course they would disapprove of her behavior. Her husband would disapprove. She could not bear them talking about her.
Sometimes the doorbell rang. Upstairs she went to see who it might be, noting the car in the driveway.
These visitors, importunate and “concerned”—she knew she must deflect them, to prevent them calling 911. She would make a telephone call and hurriedly leave a message saying that she was fine but wanted to be alone for a while; or, she would send a flurry of e-mails saying the same thing.
Alone alone alone, she wanted to be alone. Except for Joseph Mattia.
Another time making a purchase from her musician-friend Zeke. And another time. And each time the price was escalating.
The third time, Agnes asked Zeke about this: the price of a Ziploc bag of “joints.” And with a shrug Zeke said, “It’s the market, Agnes. Supply and demand.”
The reply was indifferent, even rude. Zeke did not seem to care about her.
She was hurt. She was offended. Didn’t he respect Professor Krauss any longer? The way Agnes had rolled off his tongue, and not Professor Krauss.
She would find someone else to supply her! Nonetheless, on this occasion, she paid.
* * *
Her first drive to Trumbel Street, Trenton. Five months, three weeks, and two days after the call had come from the hospital summoning her, belatedly.
Getting high gave her the courage. Strength flowing through her veins!
In her expansive floating mood she knew to drive slowly—carefully. She smiled to think how embarrassing it would be, to be arrested by police for a DUI—at her age.
In the car she laughed aloud, thinking of this.
The car radio was tuned now to the Trenton AM station. Blasting rap music, rock, high-decibel advertisements. Fat Joe. Young Jeezy. Ne-Yo. Tyga. Cash Out. She understood how such sound assailing her ears was an infusion of strength, courage.
Such deafening sound, and little room for fear, caution. Little room for thought.
It was thought that was the enemy, Agnes understood. Getting high meant rising above thought.
She exited Route 1 for the state capitol buildings. Through a circuitous route involving a number of one-way streets and streets barricaded for no evident reason, she made her way to Trumbel Street which was only two blocks from State Street and from the Delaware River. This was a neighborhood of decaying row houses and brownstones—boarded-up and abandoned stores. It was tricky—treacherous!—to drive here, for the narrow streets were made narrower by parked vehicles.
Very few “white” faces here. Agnes was feeling washed-out, anemic.
It was a neighborhood of very dark-skinned African Americans and others who were light-skinned, possibly African American and/or Hispanic. Eagerly she looked for him.
Turning onto 7th Street and State Street, which was a major thoroughfare in Trenton, she saw more “white” faces—and many pedestrians, waiting for buses.
Why did race matter so much? The color of skin.
She could love anyone, Agnes thought. Skin color did not mean anything to her, only the soul within.
Mattia’s liquid-dark eyes. Fixed upon her.
Ms. Agnes, I feel like—more hopeful now.
A half-hour, forty minutes Agnes drove slowly along the streets of downtown Trenton. Trumbel to West State Street and West State Street to Portage; Portage to Hammond, and Grinnell Park; right turn, and back to Trumbel which was, for a number of blocks, a commercial street of small stores—Korean food market, beauty salon, nail salon, wig shop, diner, tavern. And a number of boarded-up, graffiti-marked stores. Trenton was not an easy city to navigate since most of the streets were one-way. And some were barricaded—under repair. (Except there appeared to be no workers repairing the streets, just abandoned-looking heavy equipment.) She saw men on the street who might have been Joseph Mattia but were not. Yet she felt that she was drawing closer to him.
She told herself, I have nothing else to do. This is my only hope.
Her husband would be dismayed! She could hardly bring herself to think of him, how he would feel about her behavior now; how concerned he would be. He’d promised to “protect” her—as a young husband he’d promised many things—but of course he had not been able to protect her from his own mortality. She’d been a girl when he’d met her at the University of Michigan. Her hair dark brown, glossy-brown, and her eyes bright and alert. Now, her hair had turned silver. It was really a remarkable hue, she had only to park her car, to walk along the sidewalk—here, on Trumbel Street—to draw eyes to her, startled and admiring.
Ma’am, you are beautiful!
Whatever age you are, ma’am—you lookin’ good.
Ma’am—you someone I know, is you?
These were women mostly. Smiling African American women.
For this walk in Trenton she wore her good clothes. A widow’s tasteful clothes, black cashmere. And the cloche hat on her silvery hair. And good shoes—expensive Italian shoes she’d purchased in Rome, the previous summer traveling with her historian-husband.
They’d also gone to Florence, Venice, Milano, Delphi. Her husband had brought along one of his numberless guidebooks—this one titled Mysteries of Delphi. She’d been astonished to see, superimposed upon photographs of the great ruined sites, transparencies indicating the richness of color of the original sites—primary colors of red and blue—and extraordinary ornamental detail that suggested human specificity instead of “classic” simplicity. Of course, Agnes should have known, but had never thought until her husband explained to her, that the ancient temples weren’t classics of austerity—pearl-colored, luminous, stark—but varicolored, even garish. Ruins had not always been ruins. Like most tourists she’d assumed that the ancient sites had always been, in essence, what they were at the present time. Like most tourists she hadn’t given much thought to what she was seeing and her ideas were naïve and uninformed. Her husband had said, The way people actually live is known only to them. They take their daily lives with them, they leave just remnants for historians to decode.
He had opened that world of the past to her. And now, he himself had become past.
She thought, He took everything with him. No one will remember who he was—or who I was.
She was beginning to feel very strange. A lowering of blood pressure—she knew the sensation. Several times during the hospital vigil and after his death she’d come close to fainting, and twice she had found herself on the floor, dazed and uncomprehending. The sensation began with a darkening of vision, as color bleached out of the world; there came then a roaring in her ears, a feeling of utter sorrow, lostness, futility …
At the intersection of 7th Street and Hammond, out of a corner bodega he stepped, carrying a six-pack of beer.
He was older, of course. He must have been—nearly forty.
His dark hair threaded with gray was longer than she recalled, his eyes were deep-socketed and red-lidded. His skin seemed darker, as if smudged. And he was wearing civilian clothes, not the bright blue prison uniform that had given to the most hulking inmates a look of clownishness—his clothes were cheaply stylish, a cranberry-colored shirt in a satiny fabric, open at the throat; baggy cargo pants, with deep pockets and a brass-buckle belt riding low on his narrow hips.
She saw, in that instant: the narrowed eyes, the aquiline nose, the small trim mustache on the upper lip. And something new—through his left eyebrow, a wicked little zipperlike scar.
He stopped dead in his tracks. He stared at her, and then very slowly he smiled as a light came up in his eyes, of crafty recollection.
“Ma’am! You lookin’ good.”
L
INDA
Y
ABLONSKY
is the author of
The Story of Junk: A Novel
. As a journalist and critic, she covers the contemporary art world for
T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Artforum, W, Elle, Wallpaper
, and other publications. Current projects include a memoir of life in New York during the 1970s, and a new novel.
jimmy o’brien
by linda yablonsky
Over the winter of 1980, I caught hepatitis and had to stay home for a month. No drinking, the doctor said. He didn’t say anything about smoking pot.
If your thinking tends toward the dark side even when life is sunny, hepatitis can feel like the end of the world. You can’t get out of bed. You read depressing books. No one wants to come near you. Not that you want anyone to see you with a pimpled yellow complexion and jaundiced eyes. Then there’s the bloat of your belly. That alone can make you want to die. Spoon the pain of inflammation into your cup of humiliation, and you have a flawless recipe for despair.
Jimmy O’Brien was my savior. He nursed me from a safe distance. Five thousand miles, he said. He had left New York and was living on the Big Island in Hawaii, growing Mary Jane. His mother in New Jersey had seen an ad for the land and invested all her savings.
During my illness, his phone calls and the product he sent me, ostensibly to sell, made all the difference. Smoking his weed lifted my spirits. It relieved my discomfort. Watch the mail, he’d say. I’m gonna send you a present.
Jimmy was always nice to me. Up until the time Alice shacked up with him, I thought he was gay. What else was I supposed to think? He was with Johnny Giovanni every time I saw him, and Johnny was undeniably queer. Don’t tell my girlfriend, Jimmy would say, but it wasn’t an affair. It was theater.
Johnny called himself a “body artist” and Jimmy was his foil. They went around town together just for show. Photographers dove after them. They were both six feet tall and kinky, in a comic sort of way. The fashion crowd adored them. The tabloids reported their escapades. We looked. We lusted. We laughed. Oh God, Alice would say. Who are they?
Johnny was a prancing spider, thin and swarthy. He cultivated a scruff of beard. On the street, his jacket opened on a bare, buff chest that he shaved and polished. He tied leather straps across it, pulling them taut under his nipples. No matter what the weather, he never wore a shirt. Just quilted black jodhpurs, wraparound shades, and, usually, a skullcap of black leather that was more like a hood. We had mutual friends. They looked after him. He had genuine talent, but he couldn’t take care of himself.
Jimmy was an Adonis, an angel cake of manhood, light on his feet. He moved with a swing of his narrow hips and a toss of his long blond hair. It fell past broad, square shoulders as chiseled as his jaw. I could never take my eyes off him. High cheekbones, blue eyes, wide mouth set in a permanent grin, he titillated and growled, he giggled like a girl. He could also pose a threat. Danger lurked in his hands. Hardly an hour would pass without him offering to punch a guy out.
He wore the same outfit day and night: a white T-shirt, black leather pants molded to his muscled body, black leather cuffs, and a black leather jacket that set off the golden rain of his hair. In hot weather he traded the leather pants for jeans just as tight, a Bowie knife tucked in his boot.
We’d meet up at Johnny’s for a drink and a toke, and go dancing, except that Jimmy didn’t dance. He’d get a drink and rest his head in a woofer, feeling the beat. No music could be loud enough.
Jimmy always had his ear to something. A telephone, mostly. It’s my girlfriend, he’d say as he dialed. It’s my bookie. It’s my mom. He didn’t have a job. His work was being Jimmy.
He lived with the fashion model who supported him. She was often out of town on a shoot or in Europe for the collections. He knew all the models because of her. He liked pretty women. If you saw them passing a joint, chances are they got it from him, along with diet pills, tranquilizers, and cocaine. He always had a roll of cash. He didn’t worry. He didn’t have to think.
Never take the subway, he said one night when we couldn’t find a cab. The subway was beneath him in more ways than one. He was a king.
I saw him eat now and then, usually breakfast at five a.m., after the clubs had closed. Generally, he lived on drugs and drink. His usual routine was to stay up for eight days and then take a day of rest. Alice called him a miracle of modern medicine. Her father was a doctor and after he met Jimmy he said the same thing.
Alice was divorced. She lived in a suite of rooms on the second floor of her father’s sprawling duplex on the Upper West Side, on the park. She kept a full bar in her sitting room. She had cable TV long before the rest of us. Her mother had been an alcoholic who died young, and Alice was moving in the same direction. She worked in a boutique off Fifth Avenue, modeling swimsuits and designing displays. One afternoon, Jimmy stopped by with a bottle of champagne. The sales staff gathered around him with the customers in the store. When the boss arrived, Alice was fired. Jimmy was her consolation.
He’s been here for three days, she said, when I went to see her. They hadn’t slept at all. She was sitting on her bed, doing her nails. Heavy chains were nailed to the wall above. Leather cuffs dangled from the chains.
Jimmy wasn’t just the best sex she had ever had, he was the best fun. I can’t describe it, she said. Bondage appealed to her. Something about the resistance, she said, nodding toward the cuffs. The friction. The harder he pulled the more she wanted him. They fucked all day, all night. They had takeout. He made phone calls and then they fucked again. Of course, there was booze. Of course, there was pot and cocaine and pills. I’ve never been so wet, she said. It’s heaven.
Alice was my best friend. She was almost as tall as Jimmy, but had dark curly hair and wore exaggerated makeup. When she laughed you could see bubbles in the air. More often she was sad, adrift. She felt like an orphan. In her laugh you felt the depth of her.
Jimmy appeared with a bottle of Johnnie Walker. He downed some pills with it and rolled a joint. It was football season and there was a game on TV that he wanted to watch. The only thing that Jimmy liked better than getting stoned was football. And guns. He collected firearms and subscribed to magazines for enthusiasts. In high school, he’d been the quarterback. His only ambition had been to go pro but something had happened. He’d broken training. He’d gotten a girl pregnant. He’d beaten up the captain of the team, I don’t know. He had stories.
Now he was back on the phone. Not to his girlfriend. His bookie. He bet on games and he won the bets, for himself and others. When the game was over, he passed out.
Don’t go, Alice said. I don’t want to be alone.
Sometimes Jimmy called to complain about his girlfriend or Johnny. I don’t know how they met. Johnny got on his nerves. He repeated everything he said and needed constant attention. Sometimes Jimmy called to buy weed. I always had a connection. One day he invited me over to his place. His girlfriend was at work and he wanted to play.
I lived in the Village. He was in Spanish Harlem. I took the subway. I had to change trains a few times. It took forever. You gotta get out of that habit, he said. He looked mad.
He had a one-bedroom on the eighth floor. He poured me a cup of coffee and locked himself in the bathroom. Excuse me, he said. I gotta go shoot up.
What a joker. I laughed. And I waited. I sat on the leather couch in his living room, thumbing through the gun and fashion magazines on the coffee table. Thirty minutes later, he emerged in full makeup and a dress.
Am I gorgeous or what? he said, sashaying across the room, a hand on one hip then the other. His gravelly voice had become a breathy falsetto. He ran his tongue over his lips. Think I could get a guy to pick me up in a bar? he twittered. I could go for some handsome devil in a suit.
His slinky blue frock clung to his body, which suddenly seemed curvaceous. The slender legs were good and he walked in his girlfriend’s gold heels as if born to them. I took out my lipstick and applied it, partly in self-defense.
You ought to be a model, I said.
I know, he replied. I’m wasting my time taking bets. C’mon, he said. Come out with me. Let’s see if we can pick up a couple of jocks!
There was a mirror on the wall and he checked himself out in it. Did his girlfriend know?
Don’t you breathe a word, he barked. She hates when I wear her clothes. But see? They fit me better.
I couldn’t say. I’d never met her. I was thinking of Alice. His eyes met mine and fluttered. He asked for help with his zipper.
He was naked beneath the dress.
Jimmy wasn’t hugely endowed, considering the rest of him. It didn’t matter.
Let’s go watch the game, he said, and led me into the bedroom. The bed was large and had a steel frame. Its white satin sheets glowed in the waning sunlight from the windows. He closed the blinds and turned on the TV at the foot of the bed. Under it was a large black suitcase. He opened it. Don’t peek, he said. When I looked up, he was holding two sets of leather cuffs on short lengths of chain.
Jimmy’s tongue filled my mouth and I didn’t resist. I was stoned and feeling amorous. He undressed me. Take a breath, he said, attaching a metal clip to each of my nipples and screwing them tight.
That hurts, I said at the pinch. I was surprised by how much it excited me.
Lie down, he said, and I did. He cuffed my wrists and ankles, and hooked the chains to the bed. A flame of desire leapt through my body from my toes to my eyes. They were burning. I opened my legs. I needed air.
I knew you’d like this, he said. He turned on the television. He rolled a joint.
Jimmy!
Don’t rush me, he said, and busied his hands in the suitcase. Blood rushed into my ears. I was throbbing. He lit the joint and took a deep toke. Watch the game, he said. Relax.
How does anyone fall in love? I couldn’t guess. I thought about money. Money was something you could measure and count. It added up to something. Love was intangible and confusing, impossible to manufacture or predict. Escaping it had more pitfalls than embracing it.
Jimmy!
He put tape on my mouth. He sat down to watch the game. I heard the sound of a crowd cheering, of helmets cracking, men grunting. He turned back and held himself over me, caressing me with his hair and licking me. He tightened the screws and I bucked. He was hard. You look beautiful, he said, and kissed me again. His mouth was soft and his tongue was long. What was I doing? Most of the time, I preferred women to men. But they weren’t Jimmy.
He reached into the suitcase.
Fuck me, I said.
He stood up. Now he was holding a shotgun and jerking off. I can’t fuck you, he said. My girlfriend would kill me. She’d cut off my hair! She’d dismember me.
The gun went off. I felt the bullet rush past my ear. It hit the pillow inches from my head. You weren’t worried, were you? he said. C’mon, let me teach you how to shoot.
He released me and slipped back into the dress. He showed me how to hold the gun, click the safety, how to take the gun apart and clean it, how to put it together again. He stood behind me to guide my aim. The gun had a telescopic sight. We were standing by the bedroom window, looking at a man on the roof of a building across the street.
Get that dweeb, he said. Let me know when you’re ready.
I wanted badly to pull that trigger, but not at a total stranger. All that provocation. It got to me.
I’m ready, I said.
That was the last time I saw Jimmy. He called a month later. He was moving to Hawaii, where he was going to get rich growing pot. He was leaving for the good life. He would call. Don’t forget me, he said. And stay out of the subway.
For a while, he called every week. The land was fertile and the sensemilla was prime. He still wasn’t sleeping. Poachers kept him awake. He shot them. Police helicopters flew overhead. It wasn’t the life he expected. But he was determined to stick it out. Once you go a certain distance, there’s no turning back.
On my worst day of the hepatitis, the mailman brought a cardboard box postmarked Hawaii. Some books for you, he said. The box was filled with plastic sandwich bags of Jimmy’s marijuana, his fat, perfect buds, very clean, very sweet. There was an envelope in the box. Inside it was a Polaroid of Jimmy. He was dressed in a tank top and grinning at the camera. He had a rifle on his shoulder, poking through his hair. I could see mountains behind him and the sky. On the back of the picture it said, How do I look?
After that, we lost touch. People come, people go. They cross your path and alter it. There’s no turning back.
Life grew more complicated. I no longer lived alone. I quit drinking and smoking pot. It bored me. I hated the smell. Twenty years was enough. My relationship ended. I changed my look. I never thought about Jimmy. Until he phoned, out of the blue, an epoch or so later.
Hey, it’s Jimmy! Remember me?
What, you kidding? Jimmy!
He was back in New Jersey, in the town where he grew up. He was a family man, married, two kids. He even had a job coaching high school football. Yeah, he said. White picket fence. The whole nine yards.
He wanted to come into the city. He was clean now, he said, but he still had his weed.
Alice was gone, I told him. Breast cancer. Johnny, his brain exploded. That’s all I knew.
I heard, Jimmy said. But you sound good.
I’m good, I said. Call anytime.
He never did.
