Read Online The Speed Chronicles by Joseph Mattson - Free Book Online Page B

bucks.”
    â€œThere’s no proof. You’d have to show provenance. A chain of custody. Where’d you get it, anyway?”
    chuck
    When I ran into him at the Brass Candle, trying to get someone to buy him a drink without actually lowering himself to asking for one, Glen looked like a cat had done its business in his mouth. There was a slight pleasure in the recognition that I was now doing better than he, so I bought him a beer and a shot and he asked me how was Gretchen. It was the half-hidden leer I perceived that made my pity, such as it was, evaporate.
    â€œLast I heard she was in jail for soliciting.”
    Did I enjoy the look of shock on his sagging face? I did for a moment, until I realized that there was no guilt in it, that he bore no sense of his own responsibility in this tragic matter. Though I am long out of the narcotics trade, it was plain Glen wasn’t, and seeing my long-awaited shot at comeuppance, I asked him if he knew anyone who wanted in on a score.
    His eyes narrowed as if he was already trying to figure out how to screw me out of the score I was generously letting him in on. “Might be I’d be interested,” he said.
    â€œFor five hundred I can get five cases of store-brand pseudoephedrine,” I said.
    â€œI got something right here on my person worth a fuckload more than five hundred, and I’d trade you outright.” He reached into the inside pocket of his coat, and I put my hand on his arm, shaking my head no.
    â€œCash only,” I told him, which got him real quiet.
    â€œYou going to be out behind the Choose’n’Save dumpster tonight?” he asked.
    â€œFuck yeah, every night,” I said, reverting to an exaggerated version of my former manner of speaking. In catching up with him I had deliberately skipped the uplifting “can-do” parts of my redemption story: the associate’s degree in English, the pretty happy marriage to Bonnie—who is a nurse’s aide and disapproves of any and all illicit drug use—and especially the assistant manager job at the very same Choose’n’Save behind which I once dealt dope.
    torie
    As soon as we got the money we went over to Larry the dishwasher’s house and scored, then we headed out toward the supermarket where Glen’s friend would be waiting with the cold meds. In the heady rush of new love Glen and I both maybe overdid the snorting, but God, it felt good. I’d packed my bag with all the clothes and jewelry I thought I’d need in my future life as Mrs. Glen Frobe.
    Did I feel bad about taking Jerry’s $2,565? Nope. The gun in his night table? A little, because what if someone broke in and there was Jerry scrambling for the weapon in the drawer and it’s not there and he gets killed and his last thoughts are, That conniving thieving bitch took my fucking piece and I loved her more than anything I ever loved, goddamnit , while the intruders, bikers as I’m imagining them, cut off his slim-as-a-pea-shoot pecker and do all manner of horrid things to him in an orgy of speed-fueled sadism that lasts until one of the bikers, I’m imagining his name is Seth or something else biblical—I know: Esau!—says something like, “Shit, man, this is one dead motherfucker,” and they go rooting around looking for whatever they can scavenge since Jerry never has much dope lying around the house and the money taped under the drawer is gone, another thing Jerry probably would be cursing me for, even as he reflects that he’s never loved anybody like he loved me, with my prominent overbite and my twenty minutes of Kegels every day.
    jerry
    Soon as I saw something going on between Torie and Glen I sensed a golden opportunity, because Glen is a guy who can’t say no to a piece of ass and Torie will do anything to get high, and when she made an excuse to leave five minutes after he headed out the door I had that magic feeling, like I