Digging the Vein by Tony O'Neill Page A

part of me that wishes someone had been around to protect him from himself instead of egging him on into a habit.
    “ How about something a little stronger?” he asked, and I shrugged and said, “Sure.”
    We headed up to his room, where he locked the door as quietly as he could. He popped a CD into the player and went to his desk. He retrieved the tin foil and the heroin and laid it out on the bed.
    I had smoked it once before, but had been turned off by the effects. It had made me tired and disinterested in all that was going on around me. I didn’t get sick, but it wasn’t the kind of high I was looking for. Now though, I thought that maybe it was. I watched Chris as he cut a piece of the ball of black tar with a pocket-knife and spread it onto a section of foil. He smoked quickly and with experience, following the bubbling melting blob of heroin down the foil with his pipe, inhaling the fumes and exhaling the smoke through his nose when he was done. He was in the process of passing me the pipe and the foil when he hesitated slightly and seemed momentarily in two minds about whether to give it to me.
    “ Look, we can go buy some more. I’ve got money,” I said, thinking maybe that he was worried about leaving himself short.
    “ That’s cool…” he said, heavy lidded, “but are you sure you want this? You know the deal, right?”
    “ Yeah I know the deal,” I told him. “And yeah—I’m sure.”
    I awkwardly smoked some of the heroin. I found moving the lighter in such a way as to push the heroin down the foil a difficult maneuver to execute while concentrating on following the drug with the pipe and inhaling at the same time. Eventually, seeing me waste good drugs became too much for Chris and he held the foil and the lighter for me, allowing me to inhale a couple of big hits. We sat back listening to the stereo. Slowly, I felt my mood begin to brighten. It was unperceivable at first, but as I noticed a pleasant sensation starting in the base of my skull, sending shivers of pleasure throughout my body, I realized that I really didn’t care about what was happening with Joan. I mean, what was the problem? She could fuck whomever she wanted. Suddenly, I felt silly for putting so much significance onto what was basically some coked-up sex between friends.
    Even Christiane seemed like less of a problem. So it wasn’t working between us. Either we could solve our problems, or we couldn’t. It didn’t seem worth making myself miserable for. I was twenty years old for Christ’s sake, and I was worrying like an old man.
    “ Good shit, ain’t it?” asked Chris, and I grunted in agreement.
    “ I love it,” he continued. “Don’t need to get drunk any more. Or do coke. It’s nice not to wake up hung over and fucked up every morning. It’s nice just to feel …”
    “ Content?” I offered.
    “ Yeah,” he agreed. “Content.”
    As the shadows gathered in Hollywood we drove downtown to pick up more smack, buying from the street dealers at USA Donuts on Bonnie Brae. We pulled into the parking lot and stopped, sitting in a parking space with the engine running. I watched Chris, waiting for cues. There was a gaggle of ten or so young Latino kids hanging out by the donut shop and within a minute or so of us pulling up, one broke off and approached us. Chris rolled down his window as the kid, who looked to be in his early twenties, leaned in.
    “ Whatchoo need, man?”
    “ Chiva.”
    “ How much?”
    “ Two twenties.”
    The money was handed over, and the kid spat two tiny colorful balloons into his hand and passed them over to Chris. With that he was gone, a furtive look to the left and right, before rejoining his friends. I still felt great from the little bit of heroin I smoked in the morning and I took the balloon that Chris passed to me.
    “ Put it in your mouth,” he told me, “until we get out of this fucking area. There’s a lot of cops, man. If we get pulled, swallow.”

GOODBYE