Like the Deserts Miss The Rain--Early October, 1995

Once we move out of the apartment and back to JP’s mother’s place, the routine changes.

We wake up in the morning full of good intentions and the need for dope. Fortunately we have provided for all contingencies and so we have a wake-up shot, held back from the previous night’s purchases. We shoot up and I get ready to take JP to work,.

Sometimes I say it first: I wish you didn’t have to go to work, I tell him as we walk off the elevator into the lobby.

Or he asks me: Will you miss me today?

Like the deserts miss the rain, I say, a quote that always makes him smile.

And then there is a longer moment of silence in which we both reach the same conclusion, one that barely even needs to be articulated.

“You know…” he begins.

“Yeah,” I say.

“But we shouldn’t,” he says.

“Probably not, no,” I reply.

“But we’re gonna, right?” he asks.

“Of course we are,” I tell him.

We turn around and go back upstairs, where he can call in “sick” and we can try to find anything among our few possessions that isn’t already in the pawnshop. Or we take the remains of his paycheck, or the money we were holding back for bills…Anything we can find, anything at all.

There are other considerations. Once we’ve prepared for the day—packed whatever we’re pawning into the trunk, tucked our needle-exchange cards into our wallets, then we need to work out the timing.

Okay, it’s nine o’clock now. The pawnshop opens at 11:00, so we can go there first. If we hurry up, we’ll have a chance to cop before noon, so you can get on the next delivery shift and then when you’re done we’ll have enough money for the night. He is pleased with this foresight, this leap of preparedness. We have both become adept at thinking ahead, at least within certain narrow and limited confines.

The trees on the West Side are just starting to turn, and the sky is that clear blue that only seems to come out in early October, on the morning after a rain.