"James and Jim B picked Van up as promised.
They'd been going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings for days,
hoping to run into the legendary Gato so they could network.
And all because James had heard Gato was attending them daily.
Word was he'd been seen in more than one,
per some kind of court order maybe.
Jim B knew all about court orders.
'It is on the streets,' James said.
As he pulled into the parking lot of Health Services South.
'He has dope from Afghanistan.'
'You sure the dude exists?'
Van asked.
He was picking at a glob of egg yolk on his T-shirt.
'Damn.' He pulled down the visor.
Had he really forgotten to wash his face?
He rubbed his hand over the stubble on his chin
then on his head.
Rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
'Oh well.' He guessed he looked the part.
Jim B opened the door and unfolded himself.
His hair hung like a long black snake down his back,
making him seem completely vertical.
Only his face up top the stick of his body was round.
Maybe his nickname should have been lollipop, Van thought.
But Jim B it had been since kindergarten.
In fact, kindergarten was where Iván had become Van and Isabel,
Z. Only James had escaped with his name intact.
'War has opened up all kinds of new markets,' James repeated
for the umpteenth time.
He scrunched his spiky blond hair
and checked his teeth in the rearview.
'You going for the less-than-zero look?'
Van asked him.
James ignored him.
'Pipeline through Europe.
We can get in on the ground floor, I'm telling you.'
'Military is bringing it in,' Jim B said.
'Wanna bet?' Cool as a cucumber, Van thought.
Jim B was his vote for most likely to succeed.
'Dudes are dropping like flies in Norway,' James said.
He was tired of selling bundles along
with home-burned CDs out of the trunk of his car.
He had wanted one thing his whole life,
to be a drug dealer, big time.
Figured he could launder the money
by investing in the stock market.
So what the market was a little iffy now?
What wasn't?
But who, come to think of it, had ever
heard of a drug bubble?
The war had created his window of opportunity
and Gato was the man who could open it.
Once inside the dim room, Van felt
like he had entered the limbo of eternal meetings.
What circle of hell?
He guessed Darlene could tell him
if he remembered to ask her.
Another day of stained acoustic tiles on the ceiling.
Another day of sitting in a circle with a cup
of burnt coffee in his hands.
Another day of, Hi, I'm Van and I'm a fill in the blank.
Yes, that's who I am, all I am.
Whatever addiction I've decided to adopt for the day, heroin
addict, crack addict, meth addict, coke addict, sex
addict, alcohol addict, pot addict.
Defined by substance, by desire, by downfall,
by whatever comes before the hyphen, kind
of like being Mexican-American, he thought ruefully.
Defined by something you could not control.
Or like being a depressive, a schizophrenic,
a suicide defined by disease, by flaw, by brain chemistry,
by the misfiring of neurons.
So today, no different than any other day,
he was sitting in a circle of losers.
Skinny girl in fake leopard skin, Mexican couple--
dude looked mean-- some kid picking
at the scabs on his arms.
These people were genuinely pathetic.
'Hi.
My name is Jim,' Jim B said. 'And I'm a junkie.'
That, Van knew, was the most he would
say for the whole session.
He and Jim B used to argue over who
got to be the junkie because, as everyone knew,
junkies were tortured and mostly silent.
Didn't require as much acting as,
say, being a coke addict or a sex addict.
James liked the flashier roles, of course.
But by now, the novelty had worn off even for him.
'Can I tell you?'
Van whispered, looking down at the bitter dregs in his cup.
'How much I hate this?
Hate, hate, hate, hate, this?'
James motioned with his head towards
the Mexican, squashed nose like a fighter's,
all flat against his face.
Van shook his head no.
Name would be Chato, not Gato.
Jim B, with his eyes, laughed.
'Zip it,' James said.
'Zip it.' Dude was giving them the evil eye,
as was his old lady.
She was at least as old as Van's mother, wrapped in a pink yarn
sweater, probably had pictures of the kids
maybe grandkids too in her wallet.
'Fuck,' Van thought, as if it were an entirely novel insight,
when, in fact, he had it every time he attended a meeting.
This could be my life.
James.
How to explain the things Van did for James, the deep shit
he got himself into for James and Jim B,
except, of course, that they were the closest
things he had to brothers.
Went back.
Way back.
All the way to Mrs. Stukey's kindergarten.
When Van first saved James from the bullies, a pattern that
would continue through senior year of high school,
James' big mouth and the only antidotes,
Van's quick jokes and Jim B's silence.
Jim B, the backup man, because no one could ever figure out
what he was thinking, which, therefore, made him dangerous.
Loyalty had brought him to this meeting.
Loyalty.
It was the kind of thing a woman didn't understand,
not his mom, not Z, not even Darlene
who claimed that differences between the genders
were arbitrarily created by the culture
to reinforce patriarchal power structures.
'You had to accept that premise,' she said,
'before, you could argue that things had changed,
which they had,' she said.
'Thank God.' For instance, it is perfectly acceptable in this
relationship that I am the smarter and more powerful
partner.
Although weaker physically, which is due,
we both know, as much to the fact
of my being Asian as female.
While you are merely sexy.
She pinched his nipples for punctuation.
She stuck out her tongue with its round silver
stud and waggled it as a promise of more to come.
It made him dizzy.
He always spoke in complete paragraphs--
she always spoke in complete paragraphs while they had sex.
'Because,' she claimed, 'it disconnected his mind from his
body and so made his erection last longer.'
'Just let me do a little smack, baby.
I'd be hard all night long.'
He sometimes said things like that like he
was some old school junkie because it made her laugh.
Mind disconnected from body weird.
That words could do that.
Float into your head, thoughts you weren't even thinking,
sometimes in languages you didn't even understand.
È occupato questo posto?
Or epileptic seizures were often mistaken for ecstatic visions
then you think, where the hell did that come from?
Some errant radio waves?
But sometimes the voice would be as clear
as if someone uttered it right next to your ear.
And so you would zoom into this other reality.
For sure it was one reason you did drugs,
to leave the here and now, temporary respite,
especially when the now included, as it did just now,
the Chato man jumping up from his chair
so fast you'd think his balls were on fire.
Crazy vato had a knife, Van thought.
I could be dead.
'Pay attention,' the voice in his head said.
'Attention, please!
Just like the time the dudes with the Uzis
burst into the Price Club.
Attention!
Cuidado!' Right in his ear.
And then he felt something or someone push him down
so he was lying on the floor next to the stacks of dog food.
Who knew you could get intimate with bags of Purina so fast?
But of course, Gato never materialized,
not at that meeting.
And so Van had to confess his sins
again, seek absolution from the downfallen who would not
dare cast a stone because they too
had got so shit faced as to do the irrevocable.
But what, Van sometimes wondered,
what precisely was his sin?
Being out cold when his dad had crashed the car
into a telephone pole?
The sin therefore not so much the drinking
of the tequila at his uncle's bachelor's party
as the not being conscious, not being
able to hold his father in his last moments in life.
'Your sin,' Z pointed out.
Z, who brandished truth like a sword.
'Your sin is that you are not sober because had you
been sober, you would have driven
and therefore, it would not have been dad's last moment.
And your consciousness, or lack thereof, would be a moot point,
no?'
Van put his head in his hands.
So like Izzy to look not at what happened
but at what could have happened, to unravel time
so that his sin was one of commission
rather than omission.
Oh, when would Gato appear?
Van felt as if he were waiting for the Second Coming,
Gato as savior."