a tall glass with a bendy straw sticking out of it. The only thing better would have been a loaded hypo, but one thing at a time. I held my hand out for the glass.
He pulled the blanket back up first, then took a knee beside the bed. “Slow, Jamie. You’re one sick American, I’m afraid.”
I drank. It was wonderful on my throat. I tried to take the glass and chug it down, but he held it away from me. “Slow, I said.”
I dropped my hand and he gave me another sip. It went down fine, but on the third one, my belly clenched and the shivers came back. That wasn’t the flu.
“I need to score,” I said. This was hardly the way I wanted to re-introduce myself to my former minister and first adult friend, but a junkie in need has no shame. Besides, he might have a skeleton or two in his own closet. Why else would he be going under the name Dan Jacobs instead of Charles?
“Yes,” he said. “I saw the tracks. And I intend to maintain you, at least until you’ve beaten whatever bug you’ve got running around in your system. Otherwise you’ll start throwing up whatever I try to feed you, and we can’t have that, can we? Not when you look to be at least fifty pounds underweight as it is.”
From his pocket he brought a brown gram bottle. It had a small spoon attached to the cap. I reached for it. He shook his head and held it away from me.
“Same deal. I do the driving.”
He unscrewed the cap, dipped out a tiny spoonful of grimy white powder, and held it under my nose. I snorted it up my right nostril. He dipped again, and I treated the left nostril. It wasn’t what I needed—not enough of what I needed, to be exact—but the shakes began to subside, and I stopped feeling like I might hurl up that nice cold orange juice.
“Now you can doze,” he said. “Or nod off, if that’s what you call it. I’m going to make you some chicken soup. Just Campbell’s, not like your mother used to make, but it’s what I’ve got.”
“I don’t know if I can hold it down,” I said, but it turned out I could. When I’d finished the mug he held for me, I asked for more dope. He administered two very stingy snorts.
“Where’d you get it?” I asked as he tucked the bottle back into a front pocket of the jeans he was now wearing.
He smiled. It lit up his face and made him twenty-five again, with a wife he loved and a young son he adored. “Jamie,” he said, “I’ve been working amusement parks and the carny circuit for a long time now. If I couldn’t find drugs, I’d be either blind or an idiot.”
“I need more. I need a shot.”
“No, a shot’s what you want, and you’re not going to get it from me. I have no interest in helping you get high. I just don’t want you to go into convulsions and die in my boondocker. Go to sleep now. It’s nearly midnight. If you’re better in the morning, we’ll discuss many things, including how to detach the monkey currently riding on your back. If you’re not better, I’m taking you to either St. Francis or the OSU Medical Center.”
“Good luck getting them to take me,” I said. “I’m two steps from broke and my medical plan is convenience store Tylenol.”
“In the words of Scarlett O’Hara, we’ll worry about that tomorrow, for tomorrow is another day.”
“Fiddle-de-dee,” I croaked.
“If you say so.”
“Give me a little more.” The short snorts he’d doled out were about as useful to me as a Marlboro Light to a guy who’s been chain-smoking Chesterfield Kings all his life, but even short snorts were better than nothing.
He considered, then parceled out two more hits. Even stingier than the last pair.
“Giving heroin to a man with a bad case of the flu,” he said, and chuckled. “I must be crazy.”
I peeked under the blanket and saw he’d undressed me down to my skivvies. “Where are my clothes?”
“In the closet. I segregated them from mine, I’m afraid. They smelled a trifle gamy.”
“My wallet’s in the front pocket of my jeans. There’s a claim check for my duffel bag and my guitar. The clothes don’t matter, but the guitar does.”
“Bus station or train station?”
“Bus.” The dope might only have been powder, and administered in medicinal quantities, but either