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... Better sit down over there and have a cup of coffee.... This is a hot neighborhood." I sat down at a counter and ordered coffee, and pointed to a piece of Danish pastry under a plastic cover. I washed down the stale rubbery cake with coffee, praying that just this once, please God, let him make it now, and not come back to say the man is all out and has to make a run to East Orange or Green- point. Well here he was back, standing behind me. I looked at him, afraid to ask. Funny, I thought, here I sit with perhaps one chance in a hundred to live out the next 24 hours -- I had made up my mind not to surrender and spend the next three or four months in death's waiting room. And here I was worrying about a junk score. But I only had about five shots left, and without junk I would be immobilized.... Nick nodded his head. "Don't give it to me here," I said. "Let's take a cab." We took a cab and started downtown. I held out my hand and copped the package, then I slipped a fifty- dollar bill into Nick's palm. He glanced at it and showed his gums in a toothless smile: "Thanks a lot.... This will put me in the clear... I sat back letting my mind work without pushing it. Push your mind too hard, and it will fuck up like an overloaded switch-board, or turn on you with sabotage. And I had no margin for error. Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference. They would like to jump down into their stomachs and digest the food and shovel the shit out. Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. Like one of those thinking machines, you feed in your question, sit back, and wait.... I was looking for a name. My mind was sorting through names, discarding at once F.L.-- Fuzz Lover, B.W.-- Born Wrong, N.C.B.C.-- Nice Cat But Chicken; putting aside to reconsider, narrowing, sifting, feeling for the name, the answer. "Sometimes, you know, he'll keep me waiting three hours. Sometimes I make it right away like this." Nick had a deprecating little laugh that he used for punc- tuation. Sort of an apology for talking at all in the telepathizing world of the addict where only the quan- tity factor -- How much $P How much junk? -- requires verbal expression. He knew and I knew all about wait- ing. At all levels the drug trade operates without sched- ule. Nobody delivers on time except by accident. The addict runs on junk time. His body is his clock, and junk runs through it like an hour-glass. Time has mean- ing for him only with reference to his need. Then he makes his abrupt intrusion into the time of others, and, like all Outsiders, all Petitioners, he must wait, unless he happens to mesh with non-junk time. |
