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workweeks with lots of travel. He was rarely home. When he was, it frequently would spiral into chaos. Mostly I was raised by my mother. She went back to work temporarily when I was six and never left. She worked as an executive secretary during a time when secretaries were known as “girls.” My parents work hard. If they ever find out what I am doing, I will be one big fucking disappointment.
    My mind is going a million miles a minute. That is one of the drawbacks of cocaine. It makes me think too much. I put my hands across my eyes. Both are throbbing in unison. I am going to go back to sleep and pray for better luck.
    Six months later, I decide it is time for me to get away from Cincinnati. “Decide” might not be the right word. My terrible choice in company has made the decision for me. My mom used to tell me, “Show me who your friends are and that will tell me who you are.” Well, my friends are slowly becoming people I would have called cutthroats and junkies. I guess I am becoming one as well. I thought I was so different from all the other users. I was a person who cared. I would take people in for a few days here and there, people off the street who were traveling through the cityfollowing the Grateful Dead or some punk rock band. They would tell me their stories of dope sickness or some other drug-related malady that I thought was surely in their head. How could some little pill or powder have such a huge hold on you? I thought to myself as I dismissed their complaints as fiction. I was somehow above them because I was too strong to get hooked on anything. I had gone all these years without any issues. It was easy to delude myself into believing I must be fine. The evidence was stacking up against me, yet I turned the cloudiest of blind eyes.
    My judgment has gotten as low as my standards. One blurry night recently changed the course of my life. I was hanging out at a bar—the way I would spend most of my evenings after work—with a friend of a friend, since my usual happy hour companion had passed out early at my place. We’d been downing some cheap fortified wine called Cisco. It’s known on the street as “liquid crack” and tastes like grape lighter fluid. This man used to go out with one of my friends. We spent our time exchanging stories about her. She was a beautiful woman with long blonde hair. She wore liquid eyeliner and always had a Newport hanging out of one corner of her mouth. I loved her and he had loved her. We had this thing in common. Everything else was so very different. He had recently been released from prison. That should have scared me, but the liquor gave me artificial courage.
    He was entertaining me with stories about the predicament he was in that was like something out of a gangster movie. He owed some money to a loan shark. Do those really exist? I thought as I sipped my gin and tonic. I tried tofocus on pacing myself so I wouldn’t throw up later. In the morning, he was planning to present the loan shark with the money: $2,240, to be exact. He had the cash with him, but he said he was a little short on his debt. I had seen the movies. “Are they going to break your legs?” I asked. He laughed at my ignorance. Not at what they would do to him, but at how I stupidly did not understand that these things really existed.
    When we finally staggered back to my apartment, our noisy laughter woke my sleeping houseguest, who got up and left quickly. No time to swap stories with two drunk fools on a Thursday night. Unfortunately, the houseguest took something else with him. Without my knowledge, he clipped my drinking partner. My friend didn’t notice that his money was gone until he woke up later, and our earlier laughter turned into terror.
    â€œThese people are going to kill me, Tracey,” he told me frantically.
    He flipped over my mattress in vain.
    I offered naïvely, “Let me help you look for it.”
    He pushed