with barely a glance at the audience.
She sat drawn up against the wall, glowering at him, rubbing her wrist. "I'm about half a second," she said, "from busting you up real good."
"Burn the place down, is that it? Huh? You like fire? I'll show you fire, babe." He turned and plunged the paper baton into a candle flame, he waved this torch at her, fouling the air with his spitted taunts, a black storm of swirling ash out of which her screaming face appeared as a cardboard mask punched with three bleak bottomless holes. At the first bite of flame on the skin of his own hand, he dashed off for the relief of the bathroom, clutching still his wand of charred newsprint magically alive with dozens of tiny glowing worms. Sounds of cursing and running water.
In his absence Latisha tried to decide whether to go, whether to stay, whether to do up another bowl. He was back before she could come to any conclusion. A ragged length of wet toilet paper wrapped around the fingers of his right hand. He glared at her, accusingly. "Where's the damn stem?" he asked.
Afterward, he stared off into the effervescing middle distance, wearing the same expression he'd presented to teachers in the middle of elementary school math tests. He didn't move, he didn't speak. The drug radiated endlessly outward, to the prickling borders of his body -- and beyond. It possessed a shape, that was true, its outlines shimmering in teasing grandeur somewhere out there where one cryptic irrepressible impulse in this bundle of contradictions that served him adequately enough as an identity longed to be, to inhabit the contours of this other, larger self completely. He was on a mission.
Whatever happened was meant to be. You can't always get what you want. Easy come, easy go. Same old shit. Get the bastards before they get you. Love makes the world go round.
The moment he heard the word "crack" he knew that one day he would try it and like it. He knew weird stuff like that about himself all the time. The fateful introduction took place at a record company party, but it was somebody in real estate, a shiny broker with manicured nails and a pretentious lawyer-type wife, who offered him, out on the deserted patio, his first kiss of the pipe. Sweet. So now this was simply another activity he performed, another of the habitual quirks that defined him; he wore a Cubs cap in the house, he ate penne with tomato sauce every Monday night, he visited his son's grave once a week, he passed through doorways on his left foot, he chewed gum in church, he smoked a little rock. Now, having added this last routine to his repertoire without much more consideration than in picking a dime up off the street, he was discovering that it brought with it its own inescapable thoughts, a veritable towering system of interlocked. . . well, not ideas exactly, more like mental events, a complete philosophy of them whose arguments he was compelled, a not unwilling student, to explore to the finest nuance. Such were the days. Latisha could not remember when she had slept last. It was like food, she didn't need much anymore. She was new, a woman from the future. Dreams, though, still needed her, swooping in at any hour, unannounced, sometimes unrecognized, deep into the intricate urgency of the passing moment she could be startled awake by the sudden evaporation of objects, happenings, truths, her surroundings deftly replaced by another set whose reality might or might not be so permanent. Some dreams she needed to flee, to walk off, pacing anxiously from wall to wall in an imaginary foot-worn trench, her assigned post, guarding the twin-doored closet as if it were the maximum security cell that bad thoughts escaped from. The vision she was trying to shake now was of a pack of hungry gray dogs licking blood off a window. Lots of blood, lots of dogs. She was on the other side of the glass. Then, prompted by private signs, she rushed from the room on vague errands in the spooky no-man's-land of the
She sat drawn up against the wall, glowering at him, rubbing her wrist. "I'm about half a second," she said, "from busting you up real good."
"Burn the place down, is that it? Huh? You like fire? I'll show you fire, babe." He turned and plunged the paper baton into a candle flame, he waved this torch at her, fouling the air with his spitted taunts, a black storm of swirling ash out of which her screaming face appeared as a cardboard mask punched with three bleak bottomless holes. At the first bite of flame on the skin of his own hand, he dashed off for the relief of the bathroom, clutching still his wand of charred newsprint magically alive with dozens of tiny glowing worms. Sounds of cursing and running water.
In his absence Latisha tried to decide whether to go, whether to stay, whether to do up another bowl. He was back before she could come to any conclusion. A ragged length of wet toilet paper wrapped around the fingers of his right hand. He glared at her, accusingly. "Where's the damn stem?" he asked.
Afterward, he stared off into the effervescing middle distance, wearing the same expression he'd presented to teachers in the middle of elementary school math tests. He didn't move, he didn't speak. The drug radiated endlessly outward, to the prickling borders of his body -- and beyond. It possessed a shape, that was true, its outlines shimmering in teasing grandeur somewhere out there where one cryptic irrepressible impulse in this bundle of contradictions that served him adequately enough as an identity longed to be, to inhabit the contours of this other, larger self completely. He was on a mission.
Whatever happened was meant to be. You can't always get what you want. Easy come, easy go. Same old shit. Get the bastards before they get you. Love makes the world go round.
The moment he heard the word "crack" he knew that one day he would try it and like it. He knew weird stuff like that about himself all the time. The fateful introduction took place at a record company party, but it was somebody in real estate, a shiny broker with manicured nails and a pretentious lawyer-type wife, who offered him, out on the deserted patio, his first kiss of the pipe. Sweet. So now this was simply another activity he performed, another of the habitual quirks that defined him; he wore a Cubs cap in the house, he ate penne with tomato sauce every Monday night, he visited his son's grave once a week, he passed through doorways on his left foot, he chewed gum in church, he smoked a little rock. Now, having added this last routine to his repertoire without much more consideration than in picking a dime up off the street, he was discovering that it brought with it its own inescapable thoughts, a veritable towering system of interlocked. . . well, not ideas exactly, more like mental events, a complete philosophy of them whose arguments he was compelled, a not unwilling student, to explore to the finest nuance. Such were the days. Latisha could not remember when she had slept last. It was like food, she didn't need much anymore. She was new, a woman from the future. Dreams, though, still needed her, swooping in at any hour, unannounced, sometimes unrecognized, deep into the intricate urgency of the passing moment she could be startled awake by the sudden evaporation of objects, happenings, truths, her surroundings deftly replaced by another set whose reality might or might not be so permanent. Some dreams she needed to flee, to walk off, pacing anxiously from wall to wall in an imaginary foot-worn trench, her assigned post, guarding the twin-doored closet as if it were the maximum security cell that bad thoughts escaped from. The vision she was trying to shake now was of a pack of hungry gray dogs licking blood off a window. Lots of blood, lots of dogs. She was on the other side of the glass. Then, prompted by private signs, she rushed from the room on vague errands in the spooky no-man's-land of the
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