Free You and Me and the Devil Makes Three by Aaron Gwyn Page A

if you want to use the fucking phone. He doesn’t pay the fucking phone bills. You want to use the fucking phone, you ask me.”
    You stare at the Ohioan. Can’t be older than twenty-three, twenty-four, but he already looks like he’s in his forties. A gray tint to his skin, those haggard features you see on men holding cardboard signs at intersections.
    “You got a car?” he says.
    “Course,” you say.
    The Ohioan has managed to cross the twenty feet between you without you ever noticing. He’d been on the other side of the room, you’d asked to use the phone, and now the man is standing right here. You’re suddenly conscious of the pistol tucked in the waistband of his sweats. You study the walnut-checkered grips.
    You hadn’t seen the pistol before.
    Now you do.
    The Ohioan says: “You give me a ride to this woman’s, I’ll give you a brand-new speaker.”
    “Speaker?”
    “Car battery’s dead. You run me to this girl’s, I’ll give you this Pioneer.”
    You sit there a moment. You don’t care about the speaker, but you can see the cocaine receding toward the stars.
    “Show me,” you say.
    The Ohioan extends the pool cue toward the open front door and you rise and follow the man outside, down the steps, along a broken strip of sidewalk, over to a late-eighties model Camaro parked under the carport on the house’s north side. The Ohioan keys the trunk’s latch, lifts it, and motions you forward. You step up and see a ceramic S-Series woofer, reinforced dust cap, ultra-linear magnetic circuit. It’s an expensive piece of technology, no question.
    “You’re just going to give this to me?”
    The Ohioan nods.
    “For a ride to your girl’s?”
    “Ex,” the Ohioan says.
    You cross your arms and study the woofer.
    “What about a line?”
    “You want the speaker?”
    “I don’t give a shit about the speaker.”
    “Just want a line?”
    “I want an eight ball.”
    “So, what about an eight ball?”
    “The ride for an eight ball?”
    The Ohioan nods.
    You have a deal already, but you don’t say it. You look at the Ohioan. You tell him to show you the coke.
    At the kitchen table, the Ohioan fetches a plastic lunch pail with the Hulk fading in green and purple along its side. He takes out the thermos, screws off the lid, and rolls a ball of aluminum foil onto the glass tabletop. Opens the foil, opens a plastic baggy inside the foil, digs in a car key, comes up with a fringe of white powder, and dumps it on the glass. He produces a razor blade, begins to chop it, then string it in a line. You carry a two-inch section of green plastic straw for just such occasions, and you pull this from your billfold, bend over, and, holding shut one nostril, snort until the inside of your nose goes numb and there’s that cold sensation in the back of your throat.
    You stand up and swallow. You can feel the lamps giving off actual heat.
    “That for a ride?”
    Again, the Ohioan nods.
    You motion for him to hand it over and the Ohioan closes the ball of foil and flicks it toward your waiting palm. Your heart is hammering in your chest and you can feel the blood pulsing through your carotids.
    You are thinking, forever.
    You are thinking, more and more.
    Y OU GO DOWN Independence Boulevard and make a right on Harris, the three of you in the Charger—you driving, the Ohioan in the passenger seat, Jackson in the back. You eye Jackson in the rearview, but Jackson’s fiddling with something in his lap. His cell phone, maybe. A cell phone game. You watch until you see a red glare from the windshield and then you hit the brakes. The car squeals to a stop and you come within an inch of rear-ending a Prius.
    “Careful,” the Ohioan says.
    It’s the first thing he’s said since he got in the car. It’s only taken ten minutes to get from his house to this intersection and in that time the coke’s worn off and left you with the frazzles. Better the coke, worse the frazzles, and these frazzles are definitely bad. But