The Beggar's Garden by Michael Christie Page B

TV, she would tap the cookie with her index finger after each bite, ashing the crumbs carefully into a little pile on her plate.
    â€œDon’t worry about me. Just hope it doesn’t run out,” I say to Oppie, hoping it won’t run out.
    A woman with a baby is sitting across from us and I wonder why the baby is up this late. Oppie plays peek-a-boo with it for a few blocks by hiding his face behind his hat. Then Oppie lights a smoke, takes a big drag, and blows it right in the baby’s face, chuckling as the woman freaks and we get kicked off the bus.
    Back on the sidewalk, I notice Oppie’s smile has become strained and his face bleached. He insists on carrying all the vials himself, and he has begun to mutter. His walk has warped into an exaggerated parody of someone trying to walk with confidence. I wonder if he is a ghost and whether ghosts get the same high. I try to imagine the goings-on inside his brain. What an instrument to be flooded with so much cocaine! His mind is like a Ferrari entered in a demolition derby. He mutters something about the “allure of alkaloids” and then something about someone named Prometheus and a vulture and a rock. “You want more rock?” I say, and he nods like a little boy. I need to keep him away from people for a while.
    We run out of rock shortly thereafter, and I try to convince him we should slow down. Oppie pulls out a roll of bills like thecavalry and hands the whole thing over to a man whose face I will never remember.
    â€œHank, I think this new batch of stones may be cut with something vile,” he says later, glancing at me suspiciously.
    When I shut my eyes there is a dioramic theatre of brilliant neon, and I have resolved to keep them open so as not to lose Oppie if he starts to run. We’ve ducked into a doorway shielded from the street by a tiled staircase, and in a further effort to slow him down, I suggest maybe he should try to cook up a rock on his own for once.
    â€œWell, that certainly contravenes the terms of our agreement, Hank, now doesn’t it? I supply the goddamn rock, you the steady hand and experimental know-how! Isn’t that it?”
    He is starting to yell again, so I don’t press the issue. We smoke more and I hold the pipe. I’m saving the better hoots for myself because he doesn’t really need them, and because he is starting to annoy me. He begins kicking the bus shelter in front of us with his leather boat shoe, over and over, trying to break the glass and laughing insanely. When I tell him they are made of shatterproof glass now, he says he knows that, although he doesn’t stop.
    We find ourselves back in the park that isn’t named after him and I’m beginning to think Oppie is losing his mind. Occasional forays into madness are, from what I understand, pretty standard for a genius, but this seems to be of an assortment darker and more potentially irreversible. He is mumbling in a heinous amalgamation of the many languages he seems to know. His teeth are yellowing and his fingers are blackened from gripping the charred pipe.
    Aside from the playground there are a few trees and a brick structure on the perimeter of the park, but mostly it’s just a field.Oppie is rocking back and forth, staring into the park’s dark centre. I’m thinking about whether this is the highest I’ve ever been and conclude statistically it must be, but somehow I feel clear and alert. Could there be an upper limit? A cap, like terminal velocity or supersaturated solutions? I figure we need more data. I can see my room from here, and although I want to go home and read my book, and although I know there is probably already enough resin in my pipe to keep me high at least until tomorrow, I resolve to stand by him, to ride it out; that is, if it can be ridden. He needs me.
    He hasn’t said anything for about an hour when my scientific thoughts are dispersed by his voice, raw from smoking