rehab, he suddenly appeared to be everything she'd wished for back then. Was it possible to change that much?
Feeling a fresh stab of guilt, she fished the drugs out of her jeans and walked over to the dresser, opening the foil carefully, separating out two fat lines with a MetroCard and rolling up a bill.
The first line almost took her head off. Jesus, she thought, it's crank. For some reason, she'd assumed it was coke. Like who wouldn't? At first she was pissed, but then she thought, What the fuck. If she wanted to stay up, she might as well stay up. She could sleep tomorrow. In the meantime, Jeffrey would have a dance partner. She did the other line for good measure, then stepped into the shower.
By the time she emerged, she was up for anything, though she was a little too jumpy to give Jeffrey his blow job just yet. Right at this moment the idea seemed kind of nauseating. But now they had the whole night ahead of them. She changed into her black vinyl skirt and the pink spandex top she'd bought at Patricia Field for her gig at CBGB.
Emerging into the living room, she found Jeffrey sitting on the floor in front of the TV, watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas. She stole up behind and tack led him.
“Whoa, what's gotten into you?”
“It's just your rock-and-roll girl, ready to dance.” He fended off her attack and held her at arm's length, looking into her eyes. “Oh my God. You're wired.”
“I wanted to stay up with my baby.”
“I don't believe this.”
“What's the matter?” She stopped wrestling with him. He'd never been judgmental about drugs before.
“You're fucking wired.”
“I left some for you, if that's what you're worried about.”
“This is rich.”
“What's rich?”
He took her hands in his. “You looked so tired and I felt so sorry for you. I just took a Xanax and an Ambien.”
It took a moment for this dart to lodge itself in her speeding brain. “Oh shit.”
“Yeah.”
She collapsed into his arms, laughing. “Merry Christmas,” she said.
He kissed her. As much as she wanted to kiss him back, his lips felt strange on hers, which were slightly numb and had begun to take on a life of their own.
He managed to stay awake for another half hour, during which she regaled him with tales of upstate New York and Toronto, the quirks of the locals and the outrages perpetrated by her band mates, until he began to nod off on the couch.
“I'm awake,” he said several times, snapping his head upright. In the end, she pulled off his shoes and put a quilt over him.
How was it that on this night, the first promising Christmas Eve of her life, she'd ended up alone again? She tried to think of whom she could call. Certainly not her parents, whom she hadn't spoken to in more than a year. She briefly considered Will Porter, her lost-and-found lover, who'd taught her how to play the blues like Bukka White and later how to live them. Waiting all night for him to come home, hiding her money in the toilet tank, one night dragging him into the bathtub and filling it with cold water and ice, just like he'd told her to. Will finally turning blue, if not black.
She was crying. To console herself, she did another couple lines, not that the first were wearing off, not that they wouldn't keep her buzzing into the dawn, but she wanted to get past the guilt about Will. She was entitled to that, surely, on a lonely Christmas Eve.
She called the loft in Brooklyn where the boys would be, but she only got the answering machine, which played a bar from the Sex Pistols' “God Save the Queen.”
After watching Carnal Knowledge and sweeping the entire apartment, she tried to rouse Jeffrey, who was asleep on the couch, a thin trail of saliva running down his cheek.
“Honey?” She shook his shoulder. “Honey, are you awake?” She turned up the volume on the TV and then undid his belt and began to massage his cock. After a few minutes he shook his head and rolled over, burying his face in the cushions. She scratched at the skin on her arms, tormented by an invisible rash. If only Jeffrey would wake up long enough to scratch her back.
On one of many circuits through the kitchen, she decided to scrub the sink. She scoured and polished until the green Comet slush and the pink sponge