ii.

white lines

          The powdered crystals burn the inside of my nostrils, but it's now such a familiar sensation that I scarcely feel it. I like it, actually. The feeling of discomfort is always followed by the rush of tingling nerves and a numb mind, the intensity of a high that I consistently crave.

            There's a man beside me. His coarse hand rests on my lower back, against the soft expanse of skin exposed beneath the crop top's fabric. The feel of his darker skin flush against mine, as he runs his fingers lightly back and forth in circles, doesn't bother me.

His name is Darren. He's one of the few I've gone back to, and one of the few men whose name I've bothered to remember. I can hear that he's still slightly out of breath, despite the ten minutes that have passed.

            The heat of Florida's atmosphere has invaded the cramped space of my apartment. I can't afford air conditioning. The shades are drawn across the only two windows, but the material is cheap and thin and is practically useless. Sunlight finds its way through, anyway, burning the smoky air inside the room into a boiling temperature. Sweat clings to the surface layer of my skin.

            Darren is smoking a cigarette, despite my earlier demand that he didn't. The smell of smoke always clings to everything it touches, and my couch and sheets already reek of stale tobacco from months ago, before I quit smoking indoors.

            I lean back after clearing the line and tilt my face upwards. The cracked popcorn paint of the ceiling swirls above me, the entire apartment lilting to the right. My eyelids flutter shut for half a minute, and the darkness behind them flashes with a faded red hue.

            The man beside me lets his hand drift lower. I twist to look at him, his face seeming much closer than it truly is – like I'm viewing him through a clouded fishbowl. Rubbing the knuckle of my forefinger beneath my nose, I inhale loudly through my nose to remove the last traces of cocaine.

            "Good hit, baby?"

            Darren has the bad habit of calling any girl he fucks "baby". It makes my innards curl with distaste, but I don't tell him to stop. His hand is wedged between the faux leather skirt and the upper nylon band of my thong, fingertips warm as they press gently against my ass.

I wonder if he can tell it isn't doing anything for me.

Instead of answering his question, I shrug. Darren brings the stubby cigarette to his lips, inhaling deeply and causing the embers at the tip to flare red. When he breathes out, the smoke washes grey the air between us, and I suddenly crave the heat of a cigarette's smoke in my lungs and the calming feel of nicotine in my veins. I haven't had one since early this morning, right after I woke up.

He lets his right hand hang over the worn arm of the couch, the smoking cigarette releasing flakes of ash onto the stained linoleum below. The floor is trashed, anyway, but for some reason this gets to me. He's acting exactly as he would if he were in his own apartment – and he sure as hell does not live here.

"Watch it," I snap, leaning away from him. I jab a finger at the dirtied glass tray atop the coffee table before us, already half-filled with old ash and cigarette stubs. "There's the ash tray for a reason."

Darren rolls his eyes. He's got to be Puerto Rican. Or maybe he's half African American, half Caucasian. I can't be sure – and the steadily increasing high isn't helping my thought process. The skin of his face is just beginning to wrinkle, the corners of his eyes already revealing creases of crow's feet. He told me last week that he's twenty-nine, but I know he isn't. I think I let myself believe he's younger than he really is, because it doesn't do my self-esteem any favors to admit I've slept with a forty-year-old man.

I'm only twenty-two.

            "Christ, look around you, baby." He gestures at the living room around us, the smoking cigarette still stubbornly fixed between his fore and middle finger. The room – which serves as both a miniature kitchen and living room – is certainly cluttered with shit. Empty beer bottles litter the floor space, and a few were even crushed underfoot at one point, with shards of green glass coating the linoleum tiles like powder. There's a thick layer of mud by the entrance door, too, with footprints streaking it halfway to the couch ten feet away. Dust has collected in all four corners and coats every mismatched lampshade.

            "This place," he says, "it's shit. A little bit of ash isn't gonna kill you."

            I reach over and pluck the cigarette from between his fingers, flicking it to the dirtied floor. I crush it beneath my foot, which is only covered by a thin sock, before he even gets a word out in protest.

            When I'm high, I have little tolerance. And when I have little tolerance, I do stupid shit. Like piss off a man who has over a hundred pounds on me, easily.

            "What the fuck?"
Darren's standing, now, his pancake-for-a-hand finally out of the back of my skirt. I haven't moved, and I don't look up. Flatly, I tell him, "Go home, Darren. If my apartment's shit, then leave."

            "What's up your ass?" he spits angrily. He points to the extinguished cigarette stub at my feet. "I wasn't done with that."

            "Does it look like I give a shit? I told you not to smoke in here. Get out."

            When I glance up lazily, I can see the cords in his neck popping out against the flush of red. He's furious. I always knew he had a temper, but I never spend enough time with him to see it. It's usually a quick fuck and then he leaves, but he decided this time to hang around and get high with me. Now, I'm sure, he's wishing he didn't.

            Darren curses at my under his breath, a muttered "bitch" that rolls off my back as easily as a drop of water. He snatches his wifebeater off the couch, nearly ripping it as he tugs the white tank-top over his head. I'm not even looking his way as he prepares to leave, focused on the plastic baggy of cocaine before me. Carefully, with practiced ease, I pour out a thin white line onto the coffee table.

            He's starting for the door now, but he's jabbing one last round of insults at me just as he turns the handle. "Have a nice life, Kira – Kate, whatever the fuck your name is. Good luck with your whoring around." Darren rips open the door and spits onto the threshold, then whips a quarter across the room almost as an afterthought. It flies into the wall above the couch, leaving a significant indent, and falls onto the sagged cushions below. "Almost forgot to pay. Fucking slut."

            "Good one," I say dryly.

The door slams shut, the walls shake, and I bend my head downwards to take another hit.