Crack
Today you are wearing a white body marked vertically and
horizontally with underwear, garter belt, stockings. You move
unsteadily on the two black bars of your heels. A bald man sits on
the side of the bed and plays with spoons and baking soda and
cocaine. The mattress is covered in a single rough sheet the colour
of camelhair. It is the only sheet he owns. He protects it with a beach
towel when he thinks he is ready to come.
He turned the light on the bring you the dish of cocaine, and now you
don't know how to turn it off. The room is swimming in a sickly
yellow. The plate is made of a material that won't smash no matter
how many times you throw it at the wall. Outside you hear cars
passing and then something that sounds like thunder but it can't be
thunder because through the blinds you can see a few mean streaks
of light. You know it's sunny out there, whichever street this room
faves. You know that out there is a familiar neighborhood, full of
faces you see every day lining up at the bank, posting letters, buying
cafe au lait or a chef's salad from the bakery across the street.
The rolled bill is wrapped several times around with elastic. The
powder snuffles up your nose, only a little more dense than the air
you normally breathe. The aftertaste cuts thin bleeding lines down
the back of your throat as it travels down. You massage your breasts
with your hands and bend over the man on the bed. He removes
his glasses and puts them on the bedside table where they won't be
accidentally crushed. From different jars and saucers he spoons
powder into a vial, then water; he shakes a flame under the glass
and burns it black and brown across the bottom. Something is
forming out of nothing, out of the cloudy water a nugget hardens
and rattles with the sound of broken china between his rhythmically
shaking fingers.
Somewhere in the neighborhood there is a fire. Lights and bells
burble throgh the streets; doors open and close in the rest of the
building. He gets up to lock the bathroom and bedroom doors. He
shakes the last drops out of a beer can, squashes one side flat and
pokes ten holes into it's dented side with a bent nail. He sprinkles
cigarette ash over the holes and lays two cream-coloured cocaine
rocks on top of the bed of ashes. He touches a long, flickering flame
like a lecherous tongue to the rocks cuddled in their grey nest. You
inhale through the opening at the top of the can, from which a gold
bubbling beer should flow. You leave an impression of your upper
lip in a ruby lipstick along it's rim.
You stand up when he lies back on the bed and closes his eyes to the
ceiling. You think you know that reflection in the mirrored closet
doors- you are somebody you have met before, maybe you sat
behind yourself in class a long time ago, or you are someone you saw
on a television show that's since been cancelled. Through brown
slits he watches you open your legs. Wider, he says. You gather one
breast up in two hands and place your own nipple into your mouth.
Good girl, he says.