“What did you want to tell me?” he said. She had told him earlier on the truck to come to her room after they came back from the Negro section of town.
She threw the towel on the bed and sat in the stuffed chair across from him. She smoked the cigarette and looked at him.
“It can wait. Did you call Elgin?” she said.
“He said he’d come around tomorrow. He wants some money.”
“Give it to him.”
“The bastard is worse than cancer.”
“He’s better than some,” she said.
“Why ain’t they taken his license away?”
“They did a long time ago. How many bags do you have till tomorrow?”
He took a small folded square of paper from his coat and held it between two fingers.
“This is it, and I’m fixing to take it right now,” he said. He unfolded one end and lifted it to his mouth and let the white powder slide off under his tongue. He walked to the desk and put the paper in the ashtray. He lighted a match to one corner and watched it burn.
April went to the dresser and took a shoe box out of the bottom drawer. She went into the bathroom and remained there a few minutes, and then came back out with the shoe box and replaced it in the drawer. The sleeve of her robe was rolled up over her elbow. She pulled it down to her wrist.
She turned off the light at the wall switch. She took off her robe and lay on the bed. J.P. got up from the chair and walked to the window. He had swallowed some of the cocaine before it dissolved in his mouth, and there was a feeling of nausea in his stomach. She turned her head on the pillow and looked at him. The pupils of her eyes had contracted to smal
l points. The light from the street lamp cast J.P.’s shadow on the ceiling. April laughed.
“You’re upside down,” she said. “You are. Look at yourself. The white candy horse is galloping and you ride him upside down.”
He sat on the bed. He was high, but he felt that he might get sick and then the shaking would start and he would sweat and have chills at the same time.
“When are you going to mainline?” she said. “Little boys can’t eat candy all their life.” She laughed steadily now. “Little boys get sick when they eat too much candy. Does J.P. feel sick? Poor J.P. always feels sick. Poor poor poor poor J.P. Nice little boy with too much sweet in his mouth.”
She reached around him and touched him.
“Let April be your nurse. We’ll have some nice medicine.”
He got up to undress. He stood in his shorts, and then the room shifted under him and something went yellow in his head and crimson and then black, and he felt his mind slip out of time and something rush away inside him to darkness. He fell on the edge of the bed and rolled off on the floor in the woman smell of her robe satin soft against my face the reek of yesterday’s love and she laughing get up J.P. too much sugar in little boy’s mouth come let April make it right she leans over the side of the bed and looks at me smiling her hair wet and sticks to her neck her hand comes down and touches me not even the whores behind the railroad depot come on J.P. not on the floor we can’t have fun on the floor she laughing louder if I could move and slip again in time and her hand touching me warm like the woman smell in her robe like the sweat and sour milk and soap smell of her breasts that time in Lafayette when she put them in my hand and I no I was high I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t high can’t stop now her hand like warm water and I rushing to meet her in the final burst of white corn cast upon the ground.
He woke in the morning with a pain in the back of his head. He was stiff from sleeping on the floor. He walked across the room in his shorts and became dizzy and had to sit down. April was still asleep. Her head was turned towards him on the pillow. Her mouth was open, and the wrinkles around her face and neck showed clearly in the morning light. J.P. didn’t remember what had happened the night before, and then it came back to him. He looked down at himself and felt disgusted. He picked up his clothes from the chair and went into the bath to shower. He wrapped the soiled underwear in a towel and put it in the clothes bag hanging on the door. He dressed and went into the room. April was awake.
“Give me my robe,” she said.
He picked it up off the floor and threw it to her.
“That’s a nice way to hand it to me,” she said.
“You look like hell.”
“What’s that for?”
“Goddamn it, what do you think?”
“You mean that! Oh God, you were funny. You should have seen yourself. I laughed until somebody next door started hitting on the wall. You lying on the rug with that expression on your face. I’d give anything for a picture of it.”
“Stop laughing.”
“I can’t help it. You were so funny. Your face looked like a child’s when he’s sucking on his first piece of candy.”