Free The Story of Junk by Linda Yablonsky Page B

activity, too.
    It bothers me to see the name Executive—my brand of choice—emblazoned on the front page of the paper. Executive is white dope. Now everyone will go there. The wait-lines are already excessively long.
    At the stairs, a bouncer asks to see our tracks. This guy always gives me grief. I don’t have tracks, only a few pricks in the crook of my arm, no larger than a bug bite. Kit rolls up her sleeves: she has scars from her knuckles to her elbows, and because I’m with her they let me in. Another creep stands at the “window,” the mail-type slot they’ve cut in the wall of a locked apartment on an upper floor, telling everyone to have their money ready. You put your money through the slot, and a minute later, out comes your stuff. You never see the guy inside. You don’t get to check the bags to see if they’re beat and you don’t read that in the Times . Reporters never get this far. Not unless they’re junkies.
    One very hot day we’re locked in at Executive two hours. “They must be re-upping,” says Kit, when we hear the all-clear and the line doesn’t move an inch. Suddenly, we see Lucky, Sticky’s house manager, races down the stairs and heads for the door.
    â€œThis is too much for me, man,” he gasps. “I can’t take it.” He’s heard about a new place on Tenth Street and B called Lareda. He’ll see me at work. But in the middle of my shift, it’s Rico who runs in the kitchen, his eyes wild, snot running from his nose in glistening green strands. I don’t have to ask what the trouble is. I’ve seen this happen before.
    â€œYou busy?” he says, checking the orders clothes-pinned to the line in front of me, switching his bony hips from side to side, wiping the sweat from his brow. He’s agitated.
    â€œYeah,” I say. “Steady rush all night.” I cut a finger slicing a steak for a sandwich but it’s Rico’s appearance making me ill. “Wipe your nose, man, will you? Pick up, damn it!” I yell at a waitress.
    â€œPipe down,” she says—one of my favorites, Tina. “This table’s too drunk to remember how to eat.”
    â€œWhat about Kit?” Rico mutters, giving Tina the once-over. “She home?”
    â€œNo,” I say, wrapping my hand in a dish towel. “She’s playing a gig in New Jersey.”
    â€œI need you to go out there for me,” he says, nodding toward the Lower East Side. “Take a cab. Go quick.”
    â€œI gotta finish these orders.”
    â€œDon’t make me crazy,” he says. “Finish what you’re doing, then go. Quick.”
    I give Pedro the nod, lay a red snapper on a plate, turn some steaks, pop a French fry in my mouth, and duck out to run over to the spot on Tenth and B. It hasn’t yet made the news. I leave the cab at Avenue A and walk along the park, where I can watch the action in front of me. I see a renovated, fully occupied residence at the corner. A yellow-skinned guy with close-cropped hair is standing on a landing in front of it, wearing a sneer. At my approach, he gives a signal and disappears inside the glass-enclosed vestibule behind him. “Yeah?” he says, as I follow. “What’s up?”
    I hand him forty dollars, he goes inside. “Wait here,” he barks. A minute later he’s back with four bags folded into tiny rectangles of lined yellow legal-pad paper. No glassines here. I like that. Not so sleazy. In the park, I sit on a bench under a tree and undo one of the papers. I cup it to my face and take a snort. Baking soda!
    I race over to Executive, blood dripping from my nose. I still have money for a deuce. On my way out, the door to a shooting gallery under the first-floor stairs swings open and I look inside. It’s a dirty cubicle of a room with a ratty mattress on the floor and a bunch of hard-assed junkies with spikes in their arms,