About an hour later, I stood outside of Recovery Now, my suitcase at my feet. At least I’ve got my fucking phone back. Of all the things I’d had to hand over when I checked in, turning off my phone and handing it to the front desk woman had hurt the most. I had about half a battery charge left on it—or at least I had when I’d turned it off and handed it over. I sat on a bench, waiting for Mary to show up; she had her own discharge to take care of.
The woman who stepped through the front doors of the rehab building looked like Mary K, the woman I’d come up against so many times and who I’d banged the fuck out of, but her normal expression of confidence, that knowing gleam in her dark eyes, was totally gone. She was pale, her eyes a little wild, her mouth in a blank frown. As soon as she saw me, I watched her reassemble the façade she kept up; her eyes sharpened, her chest rose and fell with a deep breath, and her lips twisted in a not quite smile.
“Do you have anywhere to go?” she asked me.
I shrugged. “I could go to my apartment but J’s probably got someone waiting for me there,” I said sheepishly. “I could call my band mates, my label.” Mary looked me up and down, and I watched her take another breath. Her hand moved and I heard the metallic clinking of her keys.
“Come on,” she said, picking up a box and hefting it up to her hip. “I’m going to assume that your dealer doesn’t know where I live, and I’m going to hope he hasn’t smuggled anyone into the facility yet to find anything out.”
I smiled wryly. “You’re seriously going to let me stay at your place?”
Mary shrugged and gestured for me to follow her. “I got into this business to help addicts,” Mary said simply. I followed her into the parking lot, a few paces behind her, carrying my suitcase. “You’re an addict, and you need help.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not really an addict,” I said. Mary turned quickly and met my gaze with the familiar level, knowing expression on her face.
“Seriously? You’re going to pull that on me now?”
I smiled. “I have a problem,” I said quietly. “But…I wouldn’t say that I can’t quit the drugs. I’ve done it before.”
Mary rolled her eyes. “Just so you know, you’re not using in my house. I don’t care what the reasoning is. I don’t care how much you want to. I catch you using in my house and you’re out, dealer after you or not.” She stared into my eyes; it was obvious that she was waiting for me to say something.
“I’m not a shitty houseguest,” I said, feeling almost offended. “I don’t use in other people’s houses unless they’re using or have told me I can. Besides, I’m on a break from the drugs right now.” I had put it to myself that way—that I was just taking a break, being sober for a while. I hadn’t exactly committed to quitting altogether; I figured once I got out of the situation with Big J, I would figure out whether it was worth it to quit, or whether I had just let things get out of control for a while. After all, it wasn’t like I was doing heroin; at least not on the regular. I’d tried it a couple of times, but the high just wasn’t worth it to me.
“Just remember,” Mary said, turning back towards the line of cars. She stopped at one; it was an old, run-down looking hunter green Volvo, a boxy-looking tank of a car.
“Nice ride,” I commented. Mary glanced at me, unlocking the trunk with her key.
“It gets me places,” she said with a kind of quiet contentment. “What do you drive?”
I smiled down at my suitcase as I dropped it into the cavern of a trunk. “Currently? Nothing.” I shrugged. “I fucked up my last car somehow, I don’t remember how. One of my band mates said he’d take it into the shop for me.”
Mary unlocked the car at the driver’s side and gestured for me to get in. The inside of the car smelled of her perfume and of cigarettes, an undercurrent of sickeningly-sweet coffee from an ancient spill. I settled myself into the passenger’s seat. “You smoke?” I asked her.
Mary smiled wryly. “Off and on. Mostly when I’m stressed.” She lifted up the center console armrest and withdrew a pack of Parliaments. “Like right now.” I chuckled and took my own cigarettes out as Mary cranked up the car. Immediately I sighed in relief at the flood of cool air from the vents, even as I rolled my window down. Mary shook a cigarette free of her pack and put it between her lips, reaching down in automatic movements to put the car in reverse as her other hand pressed the window button.
In a matter of seconds, we had both lit up our smokes, and she had pulled out of the parking spot, shifted the car into drive, and started to make her way up the lane, towards the exit. “Another rule: if I’m driving, I’m in charge of the music, and no bitching from you; got it?”
I laughed. “That’s the rule for the van, too,” I said. “Unless you want to play some fucking ear-bleed Miley Cyrus shit, I won’t complain.” Mary snorted and pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road. She reached blindly into her purse and I watched as she found her phone, shoved the purse back down under her legs in front of her seat, and managed to somehow juggle the cigarette between her fingers, the aux cord, and her phone. She came to a stop at the light and looked down at her screen. After a moment, she selected something and set the phone down in a convenient cubby, taking another drag of her cigarette as the song started: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Soft Shock.” I sat back in the seat I’d taken. There didn’t seem to be anything for me to do except watch the scenery pass by, at least for now.