Aftershock Read online

  She didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. The distant red exit sign was a moon, refracting. I raised a hand and slowly placed it, finger by finger, on her bare skin. She didn’t pull away. All breathing stopped. My fingers trailed down liquid flesh, her contoured bicep, her arm tucked against her tummy. Our hands clasped, wound tightly around each other. With a sharp inhale, Lee turned towards me. The warm brush of her hand on my cheek made me swoon. My head lost track of gravity. Lips on cheeks and tongues against tongues and eyelids and skin, salt on fingers and mouths, and Lee’s hand on my bare leg below my boxer shorts. Her shoulder rose to meet my hand, and my hand slipped down under her tank top.

  Suddenly there were footsteps in the hall and low voices outside our door. Lee froze, I dove for my own bunk as the door opened. The beam of Mona’s flashlight showed the silhouette of a late arrival to an empty bunk.

  Suppressed giggles rebounded between our beds like echoes down a lake.

  Cops.

  The cops scared her. She held her breath as a matched set of baby-faced uniforms walked up to the prescription counter. Jules got up casually from the chair with the backrest, as though she’d just been testing it out, started sidling down the aisle. Quickly. Don’t look rushed.

  One moment, ma’am, she heard the young man say, and at the same time the female cop asked the pharmacist, This person here?

  Jules feigned obliviousness, kept walking. She thought her knees might buckle from fear, adrenalin, withdrawal. Take your pick.

  Excuse me, ma’am. She felt a hand on her shoulder and she flinched, and the grip tightened. She turned around, felt the sweat, slick and pooling under her breasts and arms. Her palms were itching, wet and hot.

  The pharmacist, young and nervous in her striped hijab, pointy features and wire glasses, handed the policewoman Jules’s forged scrip.

  I always call the prescribing doc on this stuff. There’s too much of it on the street.

  And?

  He goes, Call the cops, that’ll teach her. I guess he knows her. He was pretty upset.

  I’m sure that’s an understatement, Jules muttered to herself. The two cops and the pharmacist all turned to look at her with a humiliating mix of pity and disgust. She couldn’t stand it.

  I have chronic pain. Jules heard the petulance in her own voice and felt even more miserable. I need my meds, she tried again, only now, she knew, she sounded like the junkie they already thought she was. The cops exchanged a look, a rolled-eye, how-is-this-woman-such-a-cliché look, and Jules felt burning tears of exasperation. They were children. What did they know? This was all Rod’s fault, and she found herself hating him with surprising ease.

  The boy cop was suddenly behind her. Her shoulders wrenched as she instinctively tried to pull away. Pain whip-cracked from her neck to her elbow. Icy metal scratched and pinched at her wrists. She panicked in a full-body sweat, at once hot and cold.

  Fucking handcuffs?

  This made no sense, no sense at all. Her chest arced out like a bird’s breast, waiting for an arrow. I haven’t even done anything. Her voice high and tight as a wire.

  Girlcop, stone-faced, patted her down. Boycop said, Procedure.

  They each grabbed an elbow, propelled her out the door, the cop car by the curb, red light flashing. Boycop uttered an automatic spiel that may have included words like “possession” and something about the right to counsel, and a firm hand on her head pushed her into the caged back seat. She heard cackling laughter from the alcove next to the pharmacy and saw the old drunks and the young shoplifters, doubled over, watching her get taken away.

  My car. She strained around to look at it, parked behind the cop car. They’ll tow it. It’s a rental.

  Not our problem, ma’am. Girlcop drove while Boycop rummaged through Jules’s purse. He found an empty Oxy bottle, turned it over in his hand, read the label. Turned and looked at Jules.

  Been on this shit for a while, eh?

  Long enough.

  He pulled out the pink message slips, ironed them out. Who’s David?

  None of your business.

  Right now, ma’am, it’s all my business.

  He opened up Jules’s wallet, pulled out her driver’s licence. Her head pounding, hands cramped behind her back, skin itching everywhere, Jules imagined punching through the mesh cage and elbowing Boycop in the throat as she grabbed her stuff back. Her self-image was not as someone who resented authority, but she felt like a surly teenager as she watched Boycop type her name into the car’s computer console and tell his partner:

  She’s not in the system.

  Of course I’m not. Jules glared out the window.

  Boycop went back to pawing through her purse. And these are . . . ? He held up the wad of sheets from Rod’s prescription pad, waved them at her through the bars of her cage.

  Jules stared beyond his hand at nothing. What’s it look like?

  The paper stopped waving. Lady’s got some attitude. He shuffled through pages, one by one, his head shaking side to side. Not good, not good at all. He looked at his partner again. Half of these are filled out. He turned to Jules. Now why would a lady like you need five hundred Oxy pills?

  Girlcop whistled. That is too much. That much’ll kill ya.

  She didn’t need five hundred. He’d found the pages with her rejected signature attempts. She wished she could set them on fire with her eyes. Instead, she said:

  You get your training from cop shows?

  See, now, why would you go and say something like that, when what I have here—he held up the wad of paper—is enough to charge you with trafficking. We’ve already got you on forgery. And, like, three other related charges. So, what you want to do now—Boycop swung around in his seat to look directly at Jules—what you want to do now is not give us a reason to make things worse for you than they already are. Got it?

  Jules didn’t answer.

  AT THE STATION, they grabbed her elbows again, roughly steered her past people waiting in chairs for god knew what, detectives who barely glanced at her and uniforms who nodded at her captors then raked their eyes over Jules, their faces twitching in amusement or judgment, or both. They propelled her to a desk and sat her on a folding chair. Girlcop logged on to a computer terminal while Boycop hovered behind her looking smug. They took Jules’s name and address, place of employment and next of kin. After some hesitation, Jules gave them Chloe’s name. Chloe could never know about this. But there was no one else.

  What are you charging me with? She’d forgotten, or missed it somehow, and what Boycop had said about trafficking tugged at a thread of worry in her brain.

  He leaned over his partner’s shoulder. Let’s see here . . . possibilities are Forgery, Uttering a Forged Document, Seeking a Controlled Substance . . . Possession for the Purpose of Trafficking.

  Possession? But—

  Explain it to the Crown, ma’am.

  The old-school wall clock read 3:20 by the time they let her use a phone. The heavy plastic handset felt sticky and smelled sour. Or maybe it was her. She balanced it in her hand for a few moments, testing its weight, considering. She couldn’t call Rod. Chloe couldn’t help her, obviously. So she called Drew.

  They led her to a concrete cell that reeked of stale urine, where she spent an hour heaving into a seatless toilet, then finally collapsed onto the steel bench along the back wall.

  Rough day, eh?

  Her cellmate was a young woman in cheap office clothes, thick ankles in bad flats, ill-fitting black skirt, dumb blouse. She gave Jules a sympathetic look and a hanky, motioning to her mouth. Jules touched her face and, mortified, wiped off the puke that was crusting there. She would have laughed if she hadn’t felt so wretched.

  Just a Monday, Jules said.

  She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.

  Oxy, am I right?

  Jules cracked open her lids enough to see that The Secretary was still watching her intently.
/>
  That’s what my ex was on. Till it got too expensive. The Secretary took in Jules’s suit, rumpled and ill-cut but far from cheap. Respectable, Jules liked to think, even though she felt like garbage. Damn near killed him, the woman said.

  Jules was then subjected to an impassioned rant about the evils of Big Pharma, all patents and lies and manufactured addiction. She tried not to listen. She found the paranoia exhausting. She would have taken more Oxy then and there if she could have and really didn’t care what Big Pharma was doing.

  An addict’s an addict, take it from me. Oxy, fentanyl, smack, don’t matter. That shit ruins lives, and not by accident.

  The Secretary’s “fella” had arrived, a cop at the cage door informed them. He blinked slowly, eyelids sliding down then up his fishy grey eyeballs, an articulate display of total apathy. He took The Secretary’s elbow and propelled her down the hall.

  After that, no one came for hours. Every fidget reverbed off the concrete, scratched at the silence, her skin itched and crawled. She could hear pipes running close by after periodic flushing. A peephole of a window was cut into the concrete wall over her head. She watched a watery shaft of light retreat from the shortening day, almost apologetic. It got dark. She slept some. By the time Drew showed up with his thousand-dollar-an-hour attorney, it was nearly light again.

  Lawyer.

  On a dime, the cops’ behaviour completely changed. They led her into an interview room with a table and chairs and brought her a cup of coffee. They offered her breakfast. They sensed power, or money, or both.

  Drew gave her a hug, and she embraced him gratefully, which was a bit like cuddling up to an elephant, she couldn’t get her arms around him. It’s okay, honey, he said, and Jules didn’t know if it would ever be okay, but she knew she needed to get the fuck out of there and he was making it happen, and in that moment she loved him.

  Releasing her from the embrace, he studied her face.

  You look like shit, he told her, which she knew meant, You must feel terrible, and she did, so she said, Fuck you, which made him smile.

  After a short conversation with Girlcop, the lawyer told her they were holding her for a Show Cause hearing. They wanted to charge her with trafficking and determine if she could be released on bail until her trial.

  Until her trial.

  Trial?

  Jules tried to stay focused on what he was saying, but the cramping in her stomach was back, and she was starting to panic that something was really wrong with her, that withdrawal had somehow triggered a burst appendix or a ruptured spleen.

  I’m not going to jail.

  The lawyer, a fortyish man named Marc with sandy-coloured hair in a perfectly tailored sandy-coloured suit, leaned back in his chair and looked at her.

  Well, not if I can help it. But this is serious.

  MARC WAS EITHER very persuasive, very connected or very lucky. Probably all three. He found a Justice of the Peace with room on her docket and a Crown attorney who was happy to expedite matters, and by four o’clock that afternoon she was in a tiny, battered courtroom with the two lawyers, the robed woman behind the bench and Drew. They threw around words and numbers that seemed utterly meaningless—we can drop the five-one-five-six and the three-six-eight if she’ll cop to the three-six-six—until Marc leaned over and whispered in her ear: plead guilty to forgery and possession, they’d drop the trafficking, and he’d try to get her probation.

  She started to argue that she’d never actually gained possession of anything, but Marc shook his head. This was the deal. So, she nodded assent.

  Then things started to happen very quickly. The court would allow bail. Was her bail covered? Yes, Drew Baron was providing collateral. This was news to Jules. She shot Drew a sheepish glance meant to indicate that she would pay him back, and he squeezed her shoulder but avoided her eyes.

  The Justice of the Peace, mid-sixties and exuding uber-competence, glared over her wire frames at Jules.

  Do you know how lucky you are?

  Jules nodded. What she knew was that having ended up here in the first place made her a statistical anomaly, which, by definition, meant it was the wrong kind of luck. She was standing next to Marc, trying to stop the sensation of being sucked into a vacuum by fixing her eyes on a knot of wood on the Justice’s podium.

  I’m not sure you do.

  Jules looked up at the Justice’s scowling, slightly jowled face, her sharp eyes with lengthy dark circles under them.

  I can see the shape you’re in. But you seem to have friends, and resources . . . I really don’t want to see you back here.

  You won’t, she tried to say, but it came out hoarse and tentative. But the Justice seemed to hear it, stopped shuffling papers and studied Jules for a moment.

  Let me ask you this, Ms. Wright. Do you think you have a problem?

  A problem?

  What the hell kind of question was that? Of course she had a problem. She had a lot of problems. She was standing in court facing criminal charges, for one, fully in the throes of what felt like the worst flu of her life.

  A drug problem.

  Oh. Of course. Jules felt everyone in the courtroom waiting for her answer, and she really wanted to give the right one, but she didn’t know what that was. It was hard to think. She started to shiver, clamped her jaw shut to hide the chattering of her teeth. But she knew she had to say something.

  I don’t snort it or anything, was the best she could come up with.

  The disappointed Justice shook her head and imposed the following: no booze, no drugs, house arrest. We can’t mandate treatment until conviction, but the court will respond well to demonstration of good intent. And I’m releasing you into the custody of your surety here, Mr. Baron. That work for you, sir?

  She didn’t ask if it worked for Jules.

  That was the Show Cause hearing. It could take weeks or even months to get a date with a judge. It’s high season, Marc said, with no apparent irony. I’ll make some calls, see if I can speed it up. But at least you get to leave.

  In an upstairs office, Jules signed a piece of paper that said she intended to plead guilty to one count of uttering a forged document and one count of possessing a Schedule I Controlled Substance. They would let her go. Sort of. Not home. To Drew’s.

  They tagged her ankle with an electronic bracelet, To keep you honest, said the cop who locked it on. Jules couldn’t tell if she was trying to be funny. Other than Drew’s house, the only place she could go without special permission was therapy, twice a week on a pre-approved schedule. And Drew had to accompany her. She couldn’t even go home, to her own house, without registering a flight plan, and certainly not alone.

  Girlcop appeared with a plastic crate and started pulling out: Jules’s purse, a manila envelope with all her purse’s former contents, her watch and earrings, her cellphone and a crumpled wad of the remaining blank prescriptions. Jules was surprised Boycop hadn’t taken them. The young woman gave her a hard look and dropped them into a plastic bag marked EVIDENCE.

  Ghost.

  Sitting in the passenger seat on the way to Drew’s to begin what she could only think of as her incarceration, Jules leaned her head against the window and watched the darkened city slide by. Beside her own face she could see an edge of reflection, a second pale nose and jawline, cool and thin as film, as tail lights, storefronts, a million shining beacons flickered through it. Her own ghost, riding along.

  Forty-seven years old and arrested for possession. And though she knew she had to come clean or risk losing everything—whatever she had left—maybe even going to jail, for fuck’s sake—all she wanted was to get her hands on more pills. She’d run out Saturday, and now it was Tuesday evening: seventy hours of the opiates leaving her system, and leaving it screaming, each molecule of Oxy armed with a dagger, slashing and burning on its way out through her pores, her intestines. And the thing, the only thing, that would bring a halt to the razing was to reverse the exodus. Send in reinforcements: more Oxy. Nause
ous, she rolled down her window.

  How the hell am I going to get through this?

  She wasn’t really asking Drew so much as putting it to the universe, but he was there, and so he answered, lying, telling her detox was the hard part, everything would be easier once they got her clean.

  Clean.

  She wasn’t even sure what that meant, or if she remembered what it felt like.

  It’s just painkillers, she said to Drew. I need them.

  But she heard herself, and she knew.

  They turned down Drew’s street, detached homes on one side of the road hunkering defensively against the bare bones of row-house condos waiting for their flesh on the other. Drew hated the condos, said they made him feel dirty and cheap.

  Pulling into his driveway, he sighed, his tummy hugging the bottom of the steering wheel. Looking straight ahead, he acknowledged aloud that he wasn’t in a position to judge.

  The security light had come on, its glare making her eyes seek rest in the stark shadows of things.

  God knows, Drew said, I hop on and off the wagon a couple times a year. But, well, some people can’t handle it. And I’ve seen where that can go.

  Jules looked over at him. The light made his skin gleam, and she realized he was sweating.

  Remember Mikhail? he asked.

  Oh god.

  One of the first times she’d seen Drew socially outside of work, maybe six or seven years ago now, she’d met his then husband of eighteen years, a professor of Russian studies. Tall and broad, square-headed with deep shadows under his eyes, like a handsome version of Frankenstein’s monster, he’d made her see the more serious side of Drew—not earnest, as Drew was irreverent to his core, but down-to-earth and thoughtful. They talked about gay rights and gender inequality, living through the AIDS crisis and the backlash against feminism. Mikhail went on a rant about how they were all lobsters in the pot of climate change, and Drew said,

  Sweetie, that’s why we left the SUV at home.

  Not so we could get hammered?

  Added bonus.