8 The Drug Squad
The Drug Squad
When I was done with my exam, I was feeling rough…
like really rough. I thought I’d done OK, but I couldn’t focus.
I had something on my mind and I’m sorry to say it wasn’t Noam Chomsky and his damned universal grammar.
I stepped outside, stared at the parking lot, felt sorry for myself, and took a breath.
Then I walked to the light-rail stop. Before I reached it, I could sense someone was following me. Mike. Again. He smiled.
“I’m starting to worry you’re following me,” I said.
“How come you can’t just be happy to see me?”
“Because you’re depressing, and I’m depressed enough already.”
He ignored my remark, which seemed to be his MO. Then I shook my head—I knew I shouldn’t be so bitchy—and apologized. He was understanding.
“We all have bad days,” he responded.
“And weeks,” I said.
Because it had been a week now since Lana showed up on our doorstep.
And things hadn’t gotten any better. Ross and I were barely talking, and when we did, it was about stupid stuff: whose turn it was to make the bed, what time we’d be getting home.
We were like strangers stuck in an elevator trying not to feel uncomfortable with each other.
“Are you going to Ross’s?” he asked. “Me too. I’ll tag along.”
He spent the entire train ride picking at a sticker on the railing, so we didn’t talk much. It wasn’t until we were almost at the apartment that I asked him something I’d been wondering for some time.
“Mike, I was curious… Where exactly do you live?”
“I’m a free spirit. I sleep wherever I can.”
“You don’t have a home?”
“What for?”
“Like…to feel safe,” I said. “So you don’t have to worry about living on the street.”
As I opened the door, I saw Sue in her chair reading a magazine.
She waved at me, not at Mike, and Mike took out his tobacco and papers and started to roll a cigarette as he explained.
“I’ve been on the street before. It’s not so bad.
But usually I find a girl to shack up with.
And if not, there’s always Ross. Or my parents. ”
I wished I could go through life feeling so relaxed.
“Excuse me, dumbass, but I don’t know what you think you’re doing.” Sue interrupted him. Then she turned to me and said, “Tell him to stop.”
I responded that everyone else in the house seemed to smoke, and she rolled her eyes and said, “That’s not tobacco.”
Mike pleaded with me, “Didn’t you say you were having a bad week? Well, I’ve got the cure right here.”
“Drugs!” I almost yelped. I didn’t even dare to touch it. “Get it away from me!”
“It’s not drugs-drugs,” Mike said. “It’s just a little weed.”
“Isn’t that illegal?” I cried. “Couldn’t we go to jail for it?”
“Maybe in the nineteen-forties,” Sue said. Then she walked over and told Mike, “I’ll make a deal with you. You can smoke it here if you share with everyone.”
“Are you crazy?” I shouted.
“Jesus, relax,” Mike said. “Have you never broken the rules before?”
How many times had I heard that question as a teenager? From my sister, from my brothers, from friends. Then came a brief moment of reprieve. Then Monty started asking me the same thing. Were they right? No! I could be crazy when I wanted to. Couldn’t I? Hell yes.
“Give me that,” I said angrily.
Mike and Sue applauded when I flicked the lighter, lit the joint, and inhaled.
It tasted strange, and the smoke burned my throat a little.
I wanted to cough, but I tried to be tough and hold it in.
I tried to pass it, but Mike and Sue found the scene so funny that they made me take two more hits.
In ten minutes, we were all laughing like little children.
“Ross is going to be so pissed,” Sue said, and Mike admitted that he’d never gotten high in his brother’s apartment before. As they sat on the couch and I settled into an armchair, I looked up, my feet dangling off the edge. I can’t say I felt good exactly. But I didn’t feel bad. I was just…there.
“How is it, newbie?” Mike asked.
“Uh, nice…”
My voice sounded so weird! And that made me want to chuckle.
I blinked, I felt relaxed, I almost felt like I was floating.
I tried to focus on one point in the ceiling, and as I did so, I zoned out so much I forgot the rest of the world.
My mind was completely blank until I started hearing a droning voice saying, “Hellooooo…?”
He laughed, I laughed with him, and I turned sideways on the chair, letting my head hang off and asking them, “You guys…why are you sitting on the ceiling?”
Mike suggested I needed another hit, which I took gladly, and then he asked me what had been up with me. “Didn’t you say you were depressed or something?”
As I tried to pronounce the word depressed , Sue said lucidly, “She’s depressed because she’s jealous of Ross’s ex.”
“I am not!” I shouted. My indignation made them giggle, and then I had to giggle, too. But I struggled on. “The thing is just… Like, my sister was reminding me of how fucked up I was when I… Wait, what are we talking about again?”
“Your sister and your dark past,” Sue said.
“Right… I was going to say, a few months ago, I had one of those… What do you call it? When you lose your shit and you stay that way for a while.”
“Like a panic attack?” Sue asked.
“Yeah, one of those!”
“Why?” she and Mike asked in unison.
“You’re going to laugh at me.”
“We’re already laughing at you,” Sue said.
“So I found out my boyfriend, Monty, and my best friend, Nelle, had been sleeping together behind my back. For the first couple of months we were going out.” There was a pause, and then everyone exploded, me included.
I couldn’t believe it! I had been so upset back then that I thought I wanted to die, and now I was laughing about it.
And it had been a real panic attack. We’d gone to the doctor and everything.
I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe, my legs were giving out.
It was horrible. And now it might as well have never happened.
I guess Mike was right about marijuana being my medicine.
“Your friend sounds like a bitch,” Sue called out.
“Yeah,” Mike said, belching. “And your boyfriend doesn’t sound much better.”
“You’re right…” I mused, and Sue shouted, “Fuck them!”
“Fuck them!” we all chanted.
“I’m going to get some beers,” Sue said.
As I struggled to open mine and Mike and Sue poked fun at me, I heard the door open, though it sounded a million miles away.
Ross entered, scowling, seeming to save the worst of his disapproval for me.
And yet the only thing I could think was that I’d never seen him look so handsome.
“What the hell’s going on here?” he asked his brother.
“What are you talking about, bro?” Mike asked and took a sip of his beer.
“You think you can just bring drugs into my house? You think I don’t know what marijuana smells like?”
We couldn’t stop giggling. Ross turned and looked at me, then back at the other two. “Did you get Jen high?”
Since they didn’t answer, he came close and looked into my eyes. I smiled at him. He didn’t smile back. He was pissed.
“We did it together,” Sue said. “We’re the drug squad!”
I tried to take a sip of my beer and spilled it down my shirtfront, and it startled me so much I fell out of the chair.
As I stretched out on the floor, holding my stomach and trying to restrain my giggles, Ross took away my beer and said, “Jesus Christ, look at you.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me up so fast that my stomach ached.
I looked down at myself. I didn’t see what the big deal was. I actually thought it was funny.
“Ross, chill out!” I said. Between cursing at his brother and reminding Sue that this was his apartment, he was trying to stand me up.
But when he saw it wouldn’t work, he wrapped his arm around my waist and lifted me up.
Sue told him not to be a spoilsport, that they had some left for him, and the stare he shot back at her could have cut glass.
I was up now but still wobbly, so I kept holding onto Ross’s shoulders, but I admit there was an ulterior motive, too.
He was so close to me that one of my feet was between his.
He was looking at my soaked shirt and shaking his head.
In my uninhibited state, I didn’t mind. Flirtatiously, I told him, “Easy, big guy. My eyes are up here. And you know, I do have a boyfriend.”
Jaw clenched, he said, “This isn’t funny, Jen.”
“It is a little funny.” I reached up and tapped him on the tip of his nose.
Dragging me down the hall, he said, “You need to take off that wet shirt.”
“I don’t want to,” I said, “I’m with my friends. You know what that’s like, Ross, being friends with someone. Like you and me. We’re just friends, right?”
He was getting steamy. But for some reason I just thought it was funny. “You aren’t getting jealous, are you, Ross?”
“No, dammit,” he said. “I just want you to take off that nasty shirt.”
“Yeah, he does. To see what you’re hiding under it,” Mike shouted. He and Sue started chanting about Ross wanting to see my boobs until he finally shouted, “Enough!” Before I knew what was happening, he’d lifted me over his shoulder and was dragging me off to his room.
“Let me go!” I said. “I’m dizzy, and you’re making it worse.”
“Then you shouldn’t have smoked that shit!” he said.
“It’s a free country, Ross. I don’t know why you think you can just barge in here and, uh…
” He set me down and I grabbed his arm to keep from falling over and cracking my head.
Then I realized I’d forgotten what I was saying, but I felt too indignant to shut up, so I continued.
“And another thing: If you’d have come earlier, you could have had fun with us.
I don’t know why you’re so bitter all of a sudden.
You’re acting like Sue. You should try to enjoy life.
You’ve got lots of years ahead of you unless, like, a truck runs over you or something. ”