Chapter 24.
Forty-six fucking hours. Forty-fucking-fucking-six, an uninterested ticket agent informed me of my next grand journey, from Laredo to New York, on the Greyhound. I knew that I should be relieved, that I wasn’t now sitting in a customs office at the border, with a Labrador’s snout in my crotch, sweating that the next twenty-five years of my life would be teaching English to prison guards, for packs of fake American cigarettes. This would be the end of the end, of the fucking end of this entire trip, but I also knew, I didn’t deserve being dealt any easy hands, as my karmic chip-stack was pretty low.
“Yes sir, bus leaves Laredo in three hours – you’ve got to change in Dallas and then change again in Richmond, Virginia. That’ll take you right into New York city. That’ll be one-hundred and forty five dollars.”
The ticket agent made it sound so easy, with her unflinching tone, leapfrogging Dallas to Virginia to New York, without taking a breath and nailing me for the lions share of my wallet. Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. National Lampoon’s Smugglers Vacation, began with a fist of crumpled notes and a one way pass to the Big Apple. My next priority was maximum sedation. I scanned one-eighty degrees, as if there would just so happen to be a drug store nearby. The ticket agent directed me from behind her glass partition with a weary jab in the air, with her pen. The nearest was six blocks from the Greyhound bus depot. I hunted down the drug store, with the devotion of a black Labrador on border control.
‘Doug’s Laredo Drugstore’ advertised, ‘Everything you need under one roof’, on a blindingly bright day-glo sign. A large freckled twenty-something, reluctantly lifted his video game trigger finger and pointed me to my requested aisle. I wanted the strongest off-the-shelf sleeping pills and pain killers that wouldn’t require any I.D. I found enough to drop a hippo on crack. God Bless America. Some of the drugs on the shelves, were more potent than the kilo of drugs dangling from my chest. Mr. Freckles checked my goods between alien lives.
I found solitude on a park bench, and I washed down four painkillers with large gulps of brain freeze, from a cherry cola flavoured slushie, while I watched a poodle taking a dump. It’s owner struggled to glove her hand with a supermarket plastic bag. As adrenaline receded, the reality of Betty’s death and crushing guilt haunted me. I knew she would still be alive, if I hadn’t enticed her to come. A heart attack was a possible cause of her death and a sliver of selfishness, unconvincingly attempted to rationalize, that it could have happened irregardless of the position I had placed her in. It felt like a desperate debate from the futile minority. It lasted until the slushie brain freeze subsided – I was guilty.
Repercussions from her body being found would carry an investigation, which would most likely mean I would be questioned by the police. I selfishly considered any leads back to me. I had no idea what Betty had told her mother and son, when she decided to join the Harry Bracco amateur drug smugglers club, for a weekend. Death, to anyone involved, was not an outcome, I would have ever considered. I knew Betty very well and she played her cards close to her chest. She probably would have told her family she was off to see a sick friend out of state, or some other vague but believable story, that wouldn’t prompt much inquiry. My dissociation from her death and my own personal safety evoked initial feelings of relief, only to be upstaged by well deserved, sickening guilt.
Following three more shots of brain freeze, I made my way back to the Greyhound bus depot, before the Laredo police were tipped off, that there was a very disheveled looking New York talent agent, wearing a hoodie in ninety degree heat, sweating on a park bench, ogling a poodle having a crap. Grounds for a pat down, I thought – as would most parochial police officers. I debated whether to take off my cocaine waistcoat – I knew serious deep sleep, teetering on coma was going to be on the cards, so from a security point of view, I would leave it on, until New York. The thought of losing the goods on a Greyhound, or having my bag grabbed in a random theft, prodded me to soldier on until I got home. I had never looked so forward to being back in my apartment, observing my moldy ceiling creatures slowly mutate to new positions and new shapes above my idle collection of musical instruments.
Listening to abusive messages on my answering machine, from The Stuck Pigs or Barbie, from Barbie and the Butchers, rage across the top of my refrigerator would have a familiarity that I craved. I had grown uncomfortably accustomed to my new appendage. Nervous sweat had dissolved the glue on the cartoon tape harness – it slid across my chest and the failing tape grappled to remaining hairs to perform its task. I squirrelled some eats in my bag and climbed into the Greyhound.
The next twelve hours were devoid of as much activity as possible. Sleeping pills – Daze – Piss – Sandwich – More sleeping pills – Water – Suburbia – Highway - North – Cows – Fields – Unstoppable – Sleep – Pain – Wake - Doritos – Pills – Sleep – Flutter of light – Pain - Sleep – Sleep – Wake – Piss – Neighbour – Ignore – Traffic – Sandwich – Dallas.
I waited until everyone else got off the bus. I felt numb. My brain felt like it was encased in a thick sponge. I had one hour before the next leg of my endurance test. Time of day seemed irrelevant but it felt like it was mid morning. My budget allowed for a large coffee and a donut.
Raspy announcements championed the commuter clatter. Repetitive nasal broadcasts made me edgier with each destination notice and coach number. Suspect looks from wary travellers made me very self aware. I restocked on water, chips, and a few dry sandwiches.
The trip to Richmond, Virginia, was an ooze of sweaty heavily medicated sleeps, physical pain all over, fatigue, irritation and nausea. Crippling awareness struck when our bus stopped for breaks at mundane gas stop stations. The further I escaped any danger, the closer the reality of what had happened sank in. I dosed myself with more sleeping pills, to a few grams below coma levels. Fragments of countryside and highways and towns shuttered past during brief moments of awareness. I was pilled to the gills. I didn’t piss for eighteen hours.
My own body odor and a sharp head bounce, off the tempered glass window wrenched me awake. In parts, Richmond had a ‘Pleasantville’ vibe – austere buildings that looked like they should house the Lords of Virginia, mingled amongst the Egyptian, Roman, Goth and Post Modern. If it was a holiday, Richmond would be a nice place to visit but I wanted out as soon as we arrived. I wanted to be back in New York drinking Stinky Sid’s shit coffee and deciding on which lunch special had less chance of inducing a coronary. I comforted myself that this was going to be the last leg of my massive journey. A limp shot of excitement stoked me, to clean up before my unceremonious homecoming.
“Next stop Newark folks and then on to New York city,” the speaker in the bus reassured us. It was only five days but it felt like a separate lifetime since I’d left New York. I’d watched myself devolve into a very bad person – below, any level I’d ever crawled to before. I attempted to alleviate my guilt, by convincing myself that this is what Betty would have wanted. Her mom and kid were her light in life, and if I could sell my cargo and help them out, then strapped to my chest was a small taste of salvation. There was no point in not selling the goods and having her mother and son not benefit – after all she had agreed to come on this trip, for their benefit. So this is what she would want? Right?
It was a feeble voice, suffocated by a conscience raging with guilt. And who was I kidding, she would have dropped me down a lift-shaft if she knew what the final result was going to be – with full entitlement.