Read Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction for Free Online

them a glance, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them.
    “You wanna finish this game?” Dokes said.
    I put down the double-five and said, “Fifteen.” Dokes looked at his dominoes, slammed down the blank-five and picked up five red chips, slid me three.
    “I tried it one time,” Dokes said as I was eyeballing one of the women, the good-looking one wearing a charteuse-colored two-piece.
    “You kidding me? How was it? What’s her name?”
    “Stop gawking and play. Cocaine, I tried it one time.”
    “You? Really? You put a pipe in your mouth?”
    Dokes shook his head. “Not the pipe--I’m not crazy. This girl I was with--” I arched my eyes in disbelief. “You find it hard to believe, but I do date. I don’t feel a need to tell you when I do. Anyway, this girl and her friends were playing spades, I’m the only man there, and this one girl put a saucer on the table, scraped a few lines with a razor, passed it around. My turn I said, ‘No thanks, I’ll pass,’ and they started laughing. The second time I hit it…a little bit. Whose play is it?”
    I put down the six-five. “What happened?”
    Dokes studied his dominoes. “Nothing that made me want to try it again. Tongue got numbed, heart started racing, got a little lightheaded.” He put the double-six next to the six-five.
    “Anybody but you, Dokes, I could believe it.”
    “Believe it. Sorta scared me--it did scare me, scared the hell out of me. At home I couldn’t stop my nose bleeding. Heart beating like a engine, that’s what really scared me, didn’t like that at all. Peer pressure, dude, it’s real.” He looked over my head and said, “Don’t tell Doreen. She’s headed this way.”
    Turning I saw Doreen walking through the gate, smiling, in red short pants, a yellow halter top, and blue flip-flops, her around-the-house clothes.
    Dokes stood up and said, “Hey, Doreen. You’re looking beautiful as always.”
    Doreen, blocking my view of the two women, said, “Thanks, Dokes.” Squeezing my shoulder she said, “I’ve got good news, honey.”
    Lewis ran away, left a note saying Peking was his destination. “What?”
    “The bank called. They want you to come in for an interview. Tomorrow. Two o’clock.”
    Dokes smiled at me, said, “Congratulations,” and reached over the table for a handshake.
    Excited but not wanting to show it, I declined the shake. “An interview is not a guarantee I’m hired.”
    “What I tell you?” Doreen said. “Good things are coming our way as long as we keep our faith in the Lord. The Lord is working with you, John.”
    And that’s how it went as she and I walked to the apartment, ate chicken noodles with far more noodles than chicken for dinner, got into bed, Doreen going on and on, thanking the Lord for my getting a real job that paid real money--as if Goldenwood paid Monopoly money--and admonishing me for not being thankful for a job that required thought instead of sawdust.
    Each word out of her mouth told me she thought very little of what I did to make a living.
    No sex going on fifteen days; none over the weekend because Doreen said it was that time of the month. Now, with her lying next to me in a lacy red negligee and smelling like strawberry incense, sex was the last thing on my mind. Miss College Educated With The Respectable Job rubbed her breast against my back and threw a leg over mine.
    Her hand slid down my side, paused at my thigh before gripping my package, flaccid but rising to the occasion despite my urge to tell her that she might get a splinter in her hand, all that sawdust I worked with.
    Then, just as I was shaking all thoughts of sawdust and Monopoly money and concentrating on her hand working me hard, Doreen said, “I think I could get use to making love to a banker.”
    That did it.
    “What’s the matter?” Doreen said.
    What I wanted to say was: Your senior year in college my schoolboy wages kept us off the street, kept Tubby in the next room full and fat.
    What I said