"Fresh smell of death on your tongue
You bait the hook and here come the children
Another grave stone to sell
While you get rich in the valley of hell."
- Drones in the Valley – Cage the Elephant
The Drug Dealer
One would think that a man would be devastated after seeing the body of his murdered cousin drowning in her own blood. I wasn't devastated, I was pissed off. How could a nation become so corrupt? How could so many people be so wicked to the very core of their being? Maybe I was the lucky bastard that just got stuck with all the bad people in the world.
The first thing I did when I got home was buy a bottle of Jack Daniels and a bag of ice. I knew I had cigarettes left in my apartment, unless someone had broken in while I was gone. The cigarettes would have been the only thing worth anything in the entire building.
My taxi driver was silent on the ride home, thank God. I paid him and stepped out onto the constantly damp sidewalk with a sigh. It was odd, but I felt safe here, standing in the middle of the highest crime rate in Seattle. I was home again.
That night was long and torturous. I drank my whiskey and smoked all my cigarettes one after another. I tried piecing my paper together, but Alice's dead blue eyes were the only thing that came to my otherwise blank mind. I watched the news, but it was the same old shit that those news anchors talked about every God damn night at six.
By ten o'clock, my mind was foggy and the world was looking a little less dreary. I threw the last few drops of my cup down my throat and then stumbled around my apartment, grabbing my jacket, my keys, and my bottle of Jack. I lit another cigarette as my feet tumbled down the stairs and onto the street. I finally inhaled, relieved that my lungs were constricting once more. Smoking made me feel more alive, ironically. Every time I inhaled and my lungs felt like they were going to shrivel up, I felt more real, more here and now.
My journey to nowhere in particular got me to a small club down the street from my apartment. I finished my cigarette and shoved the bottle into my pocket, flashing my I.D. and brushing past the bouncer.
It was one of those clubs that was mostly for girls. There were men, but it was clear that they were only there for tail. What normal man wouldn't be? My odds of getting laid were extremely high tonight. Maybe that's exactly what I needed. A good fuck from a pretty girl with a tight cunt.
Thankfully every girl was just as drunk as me, if not even more intoxicated. I started talking to a short girl with really curly hair. My theory was that if her hair was spun that tightly, she had to be mentally unsound in the sack. Unfortunately, the girl's voice was far too annoying for me to handle. Then I began talking to a silver blonde girl, but, once again, the sound of her voice coming through her nose wasn't very appealing.
This happened to me several more times. I'd start talking to a woman that met my physical standards and then I'd find some annoying flaw, something that made me want to laugh right in her face when she tried to seduce me. Usually I wasn't this mean, but the whiskey was really getting to my head.
I decided to take a break from my search. I went to the bathroom and somehow managed to undo the zipper on my jeans. I don't think I've ever felt so relieved in my life. Too bad pissing didn't feel as good as an orgasm. Then I wouldn't have to fucking find someone decent enough to take home with me.
My hopes weren't as high once I stumbled back out into the bar. I sat down on the bar stool and just watched. When did I become so brooding? I had always been judgemental, but I was never so dark before. I had my opinions about people and I wasn't afraid to let them fly. That's why I didn't have friends at college.
"It's kind of pathetic, isn't it?" a bored voice asked me. I didn't bother to turn around. "All these girls and not one of them have anything to offer besides a loose pussy."
I turned around. There was a tall, slim, blonde sitting beside me. She was very pretty, prettier by far than any other girl in the bar. And, as a bonus, the sound of her voice didn't make me want to hit my head against concrete.
"Well, what makes you so different?" I asked. She had a head on her shoulders, not a balloon full of air. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to come to the bar.
She smiled briefly at me. "I'm not a virgin, so I may not be tight, but at least I can talk about something besides random shit like how good you look or how well you dance," she replied. "Now, what makes you different from every other creep in this bar? Why don't you have a girl grinding on you?"
"For one thing, I don't grind," I told her. "People over the age of twenty-one shouldn't 'grind.' And, I'm just feeling selective tonight. I don't want to wake up in the morning and hear a voice that I want to kill."
"So, every single girl here has an annoying voice?" she asked. When I nodded, she snorted. "Well, good luck with ever finding a voice you don't hate in the morning. Girls were made to be annoying."
"Apparently."
We sat in silence, watching the almost orgy going on in front of us on the dance floor. I had another whiskey and she got a bottle of water. Curious. She wasn't drinking.
"I'm Edward, by the way," I told her, breaking our silence.
"Rosalie," she replied, shaking my hand quickly, like this was business instead of leisure. She looked at her watch and sighed. "Listen, I usually don't do this, but do you want to come to my apartment with me? I just live down the street."
"Sure," I answered automatically.
She smiled briefly and then we began leaving the bar. We got out onto the street and we both lit a cigarette.
"So, Edward, are you originally from Rainier Beach?" Rosalie asked as she exhaled the smoke that had been painting her lungs with tar.
"No," I exhaled, blowing out my smoke as well. "I'm from Chicago. I'm going to the University of Washington."
Rosalie whistled. "College boy, huh? I knew you weren't from Rainier. Too pretty for an inner city boy. Too smart."
My brow creased. I was too pretty for Rainier? "What is that supposed to mean?"
She laughed quietly. "That club is full of Rainier natives, Edward. I've known most of those people my whole life. I know Rainier, that's all. I knew as soon as you shut Jessica Stanley down that you weren't from around here. Smart boy." She smiled at me.
"So you've always lived in Rainier then?" I presumed.
"Yep," Rosalie replied. "Born and raised. Haven't ever left, probably never will."
"You must like it here," I concluded.
Rosalie shook her head with a small smile. "No, I hate it. But Rainier's a black hole as far as I'm concerned. Only three out of forty kids in my class went to college. Only twenty-five of us passed. Hell, ten of us died before grad." She shook her head again. "That's nothing new, though."
I nodded, pretending to be empathetic. There had been four hundred kids in my class. I didn't know any of them well enough to care what happened to them.
"Well, here we are," Rosalie announced. "It's a shithole, but what apartment here isn't?"
I followed her to the second floor. She opened the door and led me into an apartment that was a lot like mine, except cleaner and homier.
"Want something to drink?" she asked, pulling off her sweater. "Or do you want to just get down to business?"
We went to straight into business, and that's exactly what it felt like. It was like we were obligated to fuck each other because we were a lot alike. Don't get me wrong, Rosalie was a hot girl and a good lay, but she didn't blow my mind. We both got off, though, and that's all that really mattered.
By the time we cleaned up and rested for a while, it was already three o'clock in the morning. I didn't feel the need to go back to my shithole though. I wanted to stay.
"Why don't you drink?" I asked when Rosalie brought me a beer and herself a glass of water.
"I don't like getting crunk," she replied, taking a sip of water. "Some people love that feeling, but I just feel useless. I'd rather smoke weed than drink.
So she did drugs. That wasn't uncommon in Rainier. I'd be surprised if there was one person in my apartment building that hadn't at least tried drugs.
"You just do weed?" I asked before taking a swig of my beer.
"Yeah, but I used to do the hard stuff, too." She lit a joint and inhaled deeply, closing her eyes and looking silently euphoric. "I was hooked on meth for a long time."
"What made you quit?"
Rosalie shrugged and watched the smoke drift out the open window. "My dad was into the drug business. I've been around drugs all my life. But then my ex, uh, died from an overdose." She blinked back some tears. "That was when I was sixteen. Haven't touched the stuff since."
"Good for you," I murmured.
She nodded, trying to smile. "Yeah, I guess so." She continued to smoke while I drank. There was a nice, soothing silence.
"Do you smoke weed?" asked Rosalie. "I could hook you up if you do."
"You sell drugs?" I asked in disbelief. She didn't seem like the type, especially after hearing about her old boyfriend.
"Yeah." She inhaled again. "You wouldn't believe the money I make. People tend to trust a girl more than a guy when it comes to drugs. And since my dad was infamous around Rainier, my client list is pretty big, too."
"What happened to your dad?"
"He's in jail right now." Another inhale. "He was importing from Portland."
"How long is he in there for?"
"Oh, I'd say at least another five years," Rosalie guessed, exhaling a smoke ring. "Maybe more, maybe less. Who knows?"
"So you just took over for him basically."
"I guess you could say that," she murmured. "But I only deal with weed. I even bought an apartment to grow in."
"No one checks on it?"
"How long have you been living here, Edward?" Rosalie asked with an arched eyebrow. Apparently that was a stupid question.
"Around six months."
"And in these six months, have you ever seen a policeman that was the least bit worried about what goes on in the apartment buildings?"
I shook my head.
"Exactly. As long as I don't get reported, I'll be fine."
"You sell weed even though you've had people die because of OD's and your dad's in jail because he's a dealer," I concluded. "I don't get it."
"It doesn't need to make sense," Rosalie muttered. "Yes, drugs have affected my life in a negative way, but they've also helped me. I make money and I feel good. That's enough reason for me."
People usually didn't surprise me. I could usually figure a person out within minutes of meeting them. Their body language, their facial expression, their tone of voice. I'd become an expert on it all. But Rosalie took me by surprise. I thought maybe she wasn't as materialistic as everyone else. I thought maybe I'd finally found someone that was enough to keep me occupied, to keep me guessing. I was obviously wrong.
Everyone was about money and status, especially in a low-income area. If you didn't have money, you'd die because you couldn't pay back your debt or because you'd eventually starve to death. If you didn't have status, you didn't have protection from the ever-present gangs in American society.
"How do you do business by yourself?" I asked. "I mean, aren't there assholes around here that would try to fuck around with you because you're a girl?"
"My dad's buddies" – in other words, her father's gang members – "are with me whenever I meet with someone. They're looking out for me most of the time."
"Has anyone tried to pull anything on you?"
"Well, yeah," Rosalie replied. "When I first started out, I was by myself. Then Dad heard that I ended up in the hospital because of this asshole, Royce, that beat the shit out of me. He put me under the watchful eyes of his group."
Her eyes were hard, like sapphires. She was a person that you didn't screw around with because she'd come back with a vengeance. There was no doubt in my mind that Royce had been found face down in an alleyway.
The sun was making an appearance now. I checked my watch. Four A.M. I had an 8:30 class. Thankfully I was sobering up.
"I should go," I murmured, standing up. "I have class in a couple of hours."
Rosalie nodded. "Okay, I'll see you around, I guess."
"Sure."
That morning at 7:45, Rosalie Hale's weed apartment was burnt with her inside. All of her long, beautiful blonde hair was disintegrated. Her body resembled charcoal. Her bones were black and her skin was nothing more than powder. The only reason they could tell who the body belonged to was because of her dental records. She died when she was only nineteen-years-old.
She had such a promising future.
