Inevitably, one evening he brought home a package and she was not home. He sat waiting for her, the package in his lap. He stared at the package, turning it over and over in his hands, as though he were trying to burn a hole in the wrapping paper with his eyes. Five, ten minutes passed, and he couldn’t stand it any longer. He untied the string, removed the wrapping paper, and opened the box.
The box was filled with a white powder. He looked at it, smelled it, and tasted a flake of it. It was nothing that he could recognize. He was wondering what the devil it could be when he heard a key in the lock, and he began guiltily to rewrap the package. Sara entered the room while he was still fussing with the string.
“Andy!” she cried. “What are you doing?”
“The package came undone,” he said lamely. “I was rewrapping it for you.”
She looked at him accusingly. “Did you see what was inside?”
“Yes,” he said. “What was it, Sara?”
She took the box from him. “Never mind,” she said. “Just some powder.”
But this time he would not be put off. He had to know. “What is it? I’ll find out anyway.”
She let out a sigh. “I guess you had to find out. I…”
He waited.
“It’s…horse, Andy.”
“What!”
“Horse. Heroin.”
“I know what ‘horse’ is,” he said. “But what are you doing with it? You’re not an addict, are you?” He couldn’t believe what she had told him, but he knew from the expression on her face that she was telling the truth. Still, it was hard to believe, and he did not want to believe it.
“No,” she said. “I’m not an addict. I’m what they call a pusher, Andy. I sell the heroin to addicts.”
For a moment he could not speak. Finally he managed to say, “Why?”
She hesitated. “Money,” she said. “I make lots of money. And it costs money for an apartment like this, and for good clothes and steak for dinner.”
“You’ll stop. I’m making enough money for us both, and you’ll stop before you get caught. We’ll get a smaller place somewhere and…”
“No,” she cut in. “I won’t get caught, Andy. And I want to keep on like this. I like steak, Andy. I like this place.”
He stared at her. His mouth dropped open and he shook his head from side to side. “No! Sara, I won’t let you!”
“I’m going to.”
“I…I can’t pick up any more packages for you.”
She smiled. “Yes, you can. And you will, because you need me.” She threw back her shoulders so that her breasts strained against the front of her dress. “We need each other, don’t we?”
He stood up, and the package fell to the floor. He reached for her and lifted her in his arms, carrying her to the bedroom. And they came together fitfully and fiercely, as though the force of their bodies could erase everything else.
Later, when he was lying still beside her, she said, “In a way, it’s better that you know. I’ll need help with the business, and you can quit your job and help me. I guess it’s better this way.”
At that moment Andy began to distrust her. His love slowly dissolved, eventually to be replaced by an ever-increasing hatred.
The following morning he quit his job. It had never been an especially exciting job, but he had liked it. He liked the office and the people he worked with. He hadn’t wanted to quit.
But he could never give up Sara. He couldn’t live without her, couldn’t sleep again in an empty bed. She had become a habit, a part of his routine, and he had to have her no matter what.
The days that followed were hell for him. Sara taught him the business step by step, from pickups and deliveries to actual sales. He learned how to contact an addict and take his money from him. He watched feverish men cook the heroin on a spoon and shoot it into a vein. And he watched Sara refuse a shot to an addict without money, and watched the man beg and plead while his hands twitched and his knees shook.
He thought he would lose his mind. He argued with Sara, telling her what a rotten thing she was doing, but he couldn’t sway her. He saw her for what she was—cold, mercenary, and ruthless. And in her arms at night, he couldn’t believe that she was the same woman.
Bit by bit, piece by piece, he learned the business. It became a routine after a while, but it was a routine which he hated. He settled into it, but he had trouble sleeping nights. Time after time he tried to leave her, but it was impossible.
One night he was siting in the living room, trying to read a magazine. She came over and sat beside him, taking the magazine from his hands. She handed him a brown cigarette, loosely packed. “Here,” she said, smiling. “Smoke this.”
“What! This is marijuana, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. Smoke it.”
“Are you crazy?”
She smiled slowly and ran her hand up and down his thigh. “Don’t be silly. I’ve been smoking pot for a long time now, and it doesn’t hurt you. It makes you feel real fine. Try it?”
He drew away from her, his eyes searching hers. “I don’t want to become an addict, Sara. I’ve seen the poor fish suffer, and I don’t want it.”
She laughed. “It’s not habit-forming. I’ve been smoking since I was seventeen, and I just have a joint whenever I want one. You want to stay clear of horse, but this won’t hurt you.”
He drew a deep breath. “No,” he said, firmly. “I don’t want it.”
Her hand worked on his thigh, and with her other hand she toyed with the buttons on her blouse. “You want me, though,” she said, huskily. “Don’t you, Andy?”
She put the cigarette between his lips and lit it, and made him smoke it quickly, drawing the pungent, acrid smoke deep into his lungs. At first he was dizzy; then his stomach churned and he was sick. But she only made him smoke another, and this time the smoke took hold of him and held him, and the room grew large and small and large again, and he made love to her with a thousand voices shrieking warning inside his brain.
And so marijuana, too, became a part of Andy’s routine. He smoked as an alcoholic drank, losing his worries in the smoke. It was more a habit with him than it was with Sara. He grew to depend upon it, mentally if not physically.
And he learned things, too. He learned to smoke the joint down to a “roach,” or butt, in order to get the maximum charge from it. He learned to hold as much smoke as he could in his lungs for as long as possible, in order to intensify the effect. He learned to smoke two or three joints in a row.
At the same time, he learned his business from start to finish. He bargained with contacts and squeezed the last cent from customers, burying his conscience completely. He gained an understanding of the operations of the narcotics racket, from the Big Man to the small-time pusher. Everything he did became part of him, and part of his routine.
He sat alone in the apartment one day, just after selling a cap of heroin to an addict. He opened a glassine envelope and idly poked the powder with the point of a pencil.
Horse, he thought. White Horse, the same as the bar where they had met. Valuable stuff. People killed for it, went through hell for it.
He sat looking at it for a long time, and then he folded a slip of paper and poured some of the powder on it. He raised the paper to his nose, closed his eyes, and sniffed deeply. He drew the flakes through his nostrils and into his lungs, and the heroin hit home.
It was a new sensation, a much bigger charge than marijuana had given him. He liked it. He threw away the slip of paper, put the heroin away, and leaned back to relax. Everything was pink and fuzzy, soft and smooth and cool.
He started sniffing heroin daily, and soon he noticed that he was physically aware of it when it was time for a fix. He began increasing the dosage, as his body began to demand more of the drug. And he didn’t tell Sara anything about it.
His hate for her had grown, but it too became habitual. He learned to live with it. However, when they had a disagreement over the business, he realized that she was standing in the way.
Andy wanted to expand operations. He saw that, with a little effort and a little muscle, he and Sara could move up a notch and have a crowd of pushers under them. He explained it to her, step by step. It couldn’t miss.
“No,” she said, flatly. “We’re doing fine right where we are. We make good money and nobody will want us out of the way.”
“We could make more money,” he said. “Lots more. The cops wouldn’t be able to touch us.”
“It’s a risk.”
He shrugged. “Everything’s a risk. Walking across the street is a risk, but you can’t stay on your own block forever. It’s a chance we’ve got to take.”
She refused, and once again she used her body as a bargaining point. At last he gave in, as always, but the hate was beginning to boil in him.
A few days later an addict came whining for a shot. Andy saw the way he trembled and twitched, but the spectacle didn’t bother him any longer. He had seen it time and time again, until it was just a part of the day’s work.
“Sorry, junkie,” he said. “Come back when you raise the dough.”
The man begged, and Andy started to push him out the door when a thought came to him. He opened the door and let the man in.
“C’mere,” he said. “You got a spike?”
The addict nodded dumbly and pulled a hypodermic needle from his pocket. Andy took it from him and inspected it, turning it over and over in his hand. “Okay,” he said at length. “A shot for your spike.”
The man sighed with relief, then demanded, “How am I gonna take the shot without a spike?”
“Take it first; then get out.”
Andy followed the addict into the bathroom and watched him heat the powder on a spoon. Then he filled the syringe and shot it into the vein in his arm. It hit immediately, and he relaxed.
“Thanks,” he said. He handed the syringe to Andy. “Thanks.”
“Get out.” The addict left, and Andy closed the door after him.
He washed the syringe in hot water, then put some heroin on a spoon. He deftly filled the syringe and gave himself a shot in the fleshy part of his arm.
It was far more satisfying than sniffing the powder. It was stronger and faster. He felt good.
As the heroin became more and more a part of his life, he switched to the mainline, shooting it directly into the vein. It was necessary to him now, and he itched to build up his trade until he controlled narcotics in the town. He knew he could handle it. Already, he had virtually replaced Sara. She was the messenger now, while he handled the important end. But she still called the shots, for she still held the trump card. And no matter how he argued, she would simply rub herself up against him and kiss him, and the argument would be finished. So he could do nothing but wait.
And, at last, he was one day ready.
He took a long, sharp knife from the kitchen drawer and walked slowly to the bedroom, where she lay reading. She looked up from the magazine and smiled at him, stretching languorously.