Cold Turkey: Early October 1995

Without the possibility of dope there doesn’t seem to be too much need to go to work.

We are not going to score, we tell each other. We are going to get clean, once and for all and then maybe once we know we’re clean, maybe then we can do it again. But until then we are on the straight and narrow. Until then there will be no more talk of spots, no more talk of scores and shots and needles. Until then there will be routine and saving money to get back all the things we pawned, and then to get a new apartment.

But those things are a long way off, and dopesick is here and now. I am freezing cold and it is no better outside; gray and rainy and getting dark early, now that it is October. And somehow I am expected to get through four hours of this—four hours in this kitchen, or on the road doing my deliveries, actually even getting out of the car into the cold and the rain and the chill that is not only on the outside anymore. I don’t know how I’m going to do it.

Since we’ve moved back to JP’s mother’s house, food is not a problem anymore. Even so, I make myself a little pizza just to have an excuse to stand near the oven as it cooks, just as a hope of something warm. I take a few bites and then throw it away; my stomach wants no part of it.

I page JP. He does not answer.

An hour into my shift an order is ready to go out, and so I pull my jacket tight around me and dash out to the little red Dodge. I pull onto the expressway, the fastest way downtown on a Saturday afternoon, and off onto the Ohio Street feeder ramp. As I pull up in front of the high-rise, I lean into the back seat to get the bag of food and a shudder tears through me. My skin is crawling and jumping, and my eyes are watery. I sit for a moment in the front seat with the engine running. On the radio, they are playing a new Cheap Trick song: a cover of John Lennon’s “Cold Turkey”.

I laugh, and the sound is raw and scary even to me.

I go upstairs and drop off the food, collecting my two-dollar tip. In the elevator on the way down I find myself sweating and shivering at once.

When I get back to the restaurant I page JP again. He does not answer.

I make myself a cup of tea and wait for the next delivery to go out. I don’t know if I can do this or not, I think, but I cannot let JP down. Not again; not this time. We’ve tried before and generally—though not always—I have been the first to crack. I have been the first to say let’s try this next weekend instead. Not always, but often enough. Often enough that I don’t want to do it again.

The next delivery is in Lincoln Park and so it takes a while; the streets are slick with the rain and the traffic is worse than usual, and it’s starting to get dark even though it’s only four o’clock. Two more hours, and I can go home and get into the bed and pull the blankets up around me and be with JP again, be safe again.

The delivery nets me a dollar-fifty tip and a long, strange look from the girl who answers the door. I can’t imagine how I must look to them, the normal ones, the ones who aren’t me. I have lost the ability to see myself clearly, if I ever even had it.

I get back to the restaurant and the cramps in my hands are starting, and my skin is all over goosebumps and I am yawning after almost every breath, and the panic is coming up in my throat and demanding solace, and so I pick up the phone to call JP and swallow my pride and tell him I can’t, I can’t do this, I know I’m weak but a few more days won’t hurt us, right? but when he answers the phone I know I can’t say it, not this time, and so I swallow down the panic just long enough to say ,”Hey baby.”

His voice is sleepy. “Hey,” he says. “I was just resting. Trying to, anyway. How is it for you?”

“Bad,” I tell him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

I am tense and silent with the effort of not asking him whether we can put this off—til tomorrow, next week, forever—and I almost do not hear him saying “Sofia called, earlier.” And when I do hear it, I am first of all jealous, just a little; she is still beautiful and stronger and wilder than me, and I do not trust her entirely, but the next thing he says makes me forgive anything she ever does or did or might yet do, because he says “She says she found a new spot. I told her we were trying to go clean and everything…but, well… I was thinking…I mean, we don’t have to go sick this weekend, right? We could wait a couple more days…”

I put my forehead against the cool plaster wall, and I close my eyes and start to laugh.

“God bless Sofia,” I tell JP, through my laughter. “I’ll pick you up in an hour.”