Her hair is greasier, her skin more sallow, like she’s barely seen the daylight. Her eyes are heavily made up but it looks like she may have put the make up on a couple of days ago and then slept in it. Her tight, mostly leather clothes don’t do anything to hide the fact that she’s clearly lost a serious amount of weight. She’s worryingly thin. It’s only been a few weeks since I last saw Suzie and she’s become even more of a shell than she had been then. This is what being with an Angel does to you. It destroys you from the inside out, until there’s nothing left that resembles the person you used to be. I should know, because the person that she was before would never have betrayed me the way that she did.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, unable to keep the coldness out of my voice. I’m angrier with her than I can put into words. I know that I’m supposed to be the bigger, better person. That I should be able to forgive and forget. But I can’t. Maybe I’m not such a good person after all. Maybe I don’t want to forgive her, maybe I don’t want to let her off the hook that easily. She’s been let off the hook again and again, too many times to count. Now she’s got herself in a situation that she can’t get out of. She refused my help again and again, so maybe she doesn’t deserve it anymore.
Suzie doesn’t reply immediately. She just looks at me with her bleary, red eyes.
“You have a lot of nerve coming here,” I tell her, my voice low.
“Oh no, is perfect little Aimee Winters angry with me?” She waggles her head like a puppet. “Whatever shall I do?” she cackles, her voice sounding harsh and broken.
“Miss, could I get the check?” the customer at the back of the diner pipes up, waving in my general direction.
“Don’t move,” I hiss to Suzie.
I signal that I’ve heard the customer and start ringing his order up on the till, keeping Suzie in my peripheral vision the whole time. I walk over to him briskly and stand there with itchy feet while he settles the bill. He leaves a teeny tiny tip—which I can’t blame him for—and leaves. I have to walk past the “truckers” to get back to the entrance where I’ve left Suzie, and I notice that their attention is trained on her. They look like they’re taking in every move, every gesture, like nothing is getting past them. Mr. Short notices me looking at them and I swing my head away from their direction as quickly as possible, but I’m sure it’s not quickly enough.
As I get closer to Suzie, I see that she’s playing with something in her hand and it doesn’t take long before I recognize it as a wallet. It’s the wallet of the customer that just left.
“You swiped it?” I ask, shocked.
“No, he dropped it and I found it on the floor,” she replies sweetly. Or it would have been sweetly if the image wasn’t marred a little by how yellow her teeth are.
“Is that what you came here for?” I ask. “To steal from our customers?”
“Oh don’t get all high and might on me, Aimee,” she says. “You act like you’re so much better than me. Well guess what,? You’re not!” Her last words are virtually a shout, but she clearly doesn’t care who hears her.
“What do you want?” I repeat the question again, just wishing that she would turn around and leave and never come back. Seeing a former close friend under these circumstances is awful, and I’ve had enough awful to last a lifetime. “Do you have any other bullshit information to pass on to me to ‘help’ Jake?” I challenge her.
She has the decency to look a little sheepish, but the contrition passes over her face as quickly as it has appeared. “You’re still a little priss, aren’t you? Even though you’re getting some now,” she hisses at me.
“Where’s Elvis, Suze?” I ask, looking behind her and then under the counter as if he might be there. “He cut you lose once you did what they wanted?”
“What do you know, Aimee? You don’t know anything!” she shrieks, and for a moment I wonder if she might launch herself at me. She seems to be thinking the same thing, but the red mist dies down in her eyes after a few moments.
“So why are you here?” I ask, desperate to just see her turn around and go.
“I came to see how you were doing,” she says, shrugging as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“Just like that,” I breathe, unable to contain my surprise that she could be so naive.
“Yeah, can’t a girl check on her friends every once in a while?” she asks, looking around the diner for support. Finding none, she turns back to me.
“Friends? Friends?” I repeat, feeling myself getting spitting mad. I grip onto the counter to stop myself from shouting. “We stopped being friends that night when you proved that you have no loyalty and no love for anyone but yourself and whatever drug they’ve got you hooked on. We’re not friends anymore, Suzie. I thought that would have been pretty clear.” The words come out through gritted teeth but I’m proud of myself for being able to keep on more or less an even keel.
“Ah, Aimee, don’t be like that,” she says in that whiny voice of hers. There was a version of that voice that she used to use when she was trying to get her own way. But there wasn’t as much desperation to it as there is now. “What happened to ‘friends forever?’ All that crap we used to say to each other. Didn’t it mean anything?” she asks, winding her finger around a strand of greasy air and trying to look innocent.
“So you just came here to check on me, to see how I’m doing, because we’re such good friends, is that it?” I ask. “Well, that’s real sweet of you, Suzie. I’m just fine, thanks for asking, so you can go now.” I know I’m being harsh but I have a pretty good idea now of what it is that she’s driving at.
“Good, good, I’m glad you’re fine,” Suzie nods and reaches over to pat me awkwardly on the shoulder. As she moves, her smell makes me gag. She stinks like she hasn’t had a shower in weeks. “So, I wanted to see if you’d be able to help me out at all. You know, like old times?” she asks, looking down at the floor instead of at me.
“Help you out?” I ask, realizing that my suspicions have been confirmed. “Help you out how, Suze? You need a place to crash, I can help you with that. You know Sal would take you in despite everything. You need food, I know George would be happy to give you a good meal. You look like you could use it. What is it that you need, Suzie?” I ask, still gripping onto the counter, knowing what’s coming next.
“No, I got a place to crash.” She waves me away. “A real nice place,” she emphasizes. I’m about to say that I can tell from the way she looks and smells that she’s been staying in a palace, but I keep my mouth shut, waiting. “I just need some cash to settle a few debts, get myself sorted, you know.” She nods, looking at me out of the corner of her eye.
“You’re asking me for money,” I state matter-of-factly. “That’s why you came here, to see if I would give you money.”
Suzie shakes her head and her doll-like frame looks so frail I’m worried her head might come clean off. “No, not give, just loan it to me for a little while,” she says, and I have no idea how she manages to keep a straight face, but she does.
I take a deep breath and say the word that I know that I have to say: “No.” Suzie’s expression of shock would have been priceless if this entire conversation didn’t cut me to the quick.
Historically, whenever Suzie got herself into trouble, I would help her in any way that I could and, sometimes, that involved lending—or more likely giving—her money. She had clearly expected things between us just to continue in that vein no matter what she did, no matter what our relationship degenerated into. Or maybe she just didn’t have anyone else to go to.
“Like I said, you need somewhere to crash, I can help. You need a good meal, I can help. It’s more than you deserve anyway. But I’m not going to give you money so you can just buy whatever junk it is that you can’t live without,” I say.
I grab hold of her arm and pull up her sleeve to show a line of track-marks, some of which look pretty nasty.
Suzie struggles to pull her sleeve back down and cover up her emaciated, damaged arm. She snarls at me like a wild animal and turns to go.
“You think you’re so high and mighty,” she says, shaking with anger. “But you’re just like the rest of us—you’re a useless little slut. You’ll see,” she says ominously, and runs out the door, slamming it so hard behind her the window-panes rattle with the force of the impact.