This thing with Becca and Steve was quickly getting out of control.
They were fighting and arguing all the time, and if they weren’t together they were bitching about each other. Joe and I had tried to talk them into ending it but they were “in love”.
Neither wanted to leave their original significant other or one another. It was a disaster. Due to the chaos of thing Steve and I started hanging out more often.
I think he thought he could get information out of me. None the less we quickly became good friends and I had even met his girlfriend and son a time or two.
One night Joe called me at home, he had left a little while before to hang out with Steve. He needed a favor. Welk, to be honest, Steve needed the favor but didn’t want to ask. He needed to pick up his girlfriend but the baby was asleep and Joe had to go pick up drugs, he wanted me to come sit with his son until he got back.
Normally this would have been no issue at all, but this wasn’t a normal situation. I had just done 2 bags of dope and was higher than God. I told Joe what was going on and that I was sorry but I couldn’t do it. He told Steve what was up and that’s when Steve got on the phone.
He told me it was fine. I had nothing to worry about he would be gone 20 mins and he swore the baby would never wake up ( he was a toddler not a baby about 3 at the time) he slept through the night regularly. I just had to sit there in the living room and watch tv for 20 mins. He could tell I was still hesitant so he appealed to a side of me I didn’t realize at the time had so much control over me.
“If you do this for me I will give you 3 bags”. Without missing a beat “I’ll be there in 5” spilled from my mouth. I got dressed and walked the 3 blocks stopping to throw up twice along the way. I got there and sat at the kitchen table outside the little man’s bedroom terrified the whole time that he was going to wake up and something would go wrong because I was too high to function right.
All the anxiety and paranoia brought me down to a semi-functioning level before he even made it back. Things went exactly as Steve had said they would. He was gone about 20 mins and little man never once woke up, never even rolled over.
I felt like a total piece of shit though. I should never have been there with that little boy in the condition I was in. I tried not to make eye contact with his girlfriend got my payment and walked home as fast as I could.
I did my drugs and tried to forget the shitty thing I had done to get them. It would be harder than I thought.
There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. -SHERMAN ALEXIE
