Read The Little Death for Free Online Page A

back of the room. Plants
hung from the ceiling in big ceramic pots and the lighting was so dim that the
atmosphere was nocturnal. Here and there in the darkness I saw a glint of
polished brass or a mirror. Suspended from the center of the room was a large
fan turning almost imperceptibly in the stale air. It was a place for boozy
meditation — emotion recollected in alcohol, as someone once told me in another
bar — and I was in a contemplative mood. For the first time in my adult life, I
could not see any farther into the future than the door through which Hugh now
entered.
    I
watched him step from the brightly-lit doorway into the dimness of the room,
weaving slowly between tables as he approached me. He came up to the table,
mumbled a greeting and sat down. He’d had some sun since I’d seen him last. His
skin was now the color of dried roses, and his hair was a lighter blond than
before but just as disheveled. I restrained an impulse to touch him. He leaned
back into his chair, into the shadows. The bartender drifted over and stood in
front of us a moment before taking Hugh’s order. Hugh looked up, ordered
mineral water, and turned away, missing the bartender’s bright, yearning smile.
    “I
didn’t actually think you’d come,” he said in a low, slow voice.
    “You
could’ve called sooner. It’s been a couple of weeks.”
    “Too
risky,” he said, vaguely, as the bartender set a bottle of Perrier before him. “I
have to limit my contacts with outside people.”
    “Still
in hiding?”
    “You
still don’t believe me?”
    “I
don’t think anyone’s trying to kill you. Something else has got you scared.”
    “Junkies
are fearless,” he replied. He reached out to pour from his bottle into his
glass, but his hand shook so violently that he spilled the water on the table.
He very slowly set the bottle down. Then, swiftly, everything fell into place
for me.
    I
reached across the table and pulled him forward into the light. He did not
resist. His skin was feverish to the touch. His pupils were tightly balled up
and too bright. I laid his right arm on the table and spotted the mark almost
immediately, a reddish pinprick directly above the vein a few inches above his
wrist.
    “When
did you shoot up?”
    “Not
long ago,” he said, licking his lips.
    “You
told me you were clean.”
    “I
was. I ran into a friend.”
    “When?”
    “I
don’t remember. Last week? After I saw you.”
    “Why
didn’t you call me?”
    “I
thought I could handle it. I can’t. I need help.” The princely face was covered
with a film of sweat and its muscles sagged as though they were being pulled
downward.
    “I
didn’t come here to babysit a hype,” I said, standing.
    He
reached out and grabbed my arm. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. I saw
slow motion panic spread across his face. I stood above him for what seemed
like a long time. Then, slowly, I eased back down into the chair beside him.

3
    Outside
it was dusk. I turned from the window back to the room, fumbling for a light
switch. I pushed a button and three lights flickered on, unsteadily, from a
brass fixture in the center of the room. Hugh was asleep in the bedroom at the
end of the long, narrow entrance corridor. The toilet gurgled from the bathroom
where I’d poured out his vomit and flushed it away.
    From
my law practice I knew that a heroin addict could stay clean long enough to
clear his body of the addiction. If he began to use again it took him awhile to
become re-addicted. Some addicts used casually — chipping, they called it —
but sooner or later their habit caught up with them. Hugh was in the first
stage of re-addiction. His body, recognizing the opiate for what it was —
poison — struggled to reject it, making him sick. If he continued using, the
sickness would stop and the body would make its lethal adjustments. That he was
sick was encouraging because it meant there was still time to prevent his re-addiction.
    Not
that I knew how to