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"Vasily – music. We need some sweet music for Kate to shoot up to."
Vasily goes over to the sound system. He flips through satellite radio channels, and then finally selects one. Soon, mellow jazz plays, the music not too loud, just background – it sounds like Miles Davis. He remains there, as if he can't bear to watch Kate. I wish I could do the same. I've never seen junkies actually shooting up in person – only in television reality shows. It's even worse in real life when you're not separated by a screen.
"What is this?" Kate says, looking at the packet.
"Only the best," Julien says. "Michel insists I get you pharmaceutical grade."
On her part, Kate is busy arranging her equipment, spreading it out, lining it up, her actions jerky, impatient. Out of the case comes a new short tip insulin syringe, a spoon, two small vials of liquid – one clear, one slightly yellow. A lighter. A blue rubber tourniquet. Some small balls of cotton about the size of the end of a cotton swab. A couple of packages of alcohol swabs.
"How was your day, Kate?" Julien says, his voice playful. He watches me intently.
Kate ignores him.
"Where the fuck is Michel?"
"He's going to be away for a while," Julien says. "Remember I told you I'll be looking after you now?"
"What-the-fuck-ever."
She focuses on the process, her hands almost shaking. She cleans off the spoon with a swab, dumps the powder into the spoon, draws up some of the clear liquid in the syringe, and then uses the plunger of the syringe to mix it up. Next, she holds the spoon over the lighter flame until the liquid boils. She drops a small piece of cotton into the mix and draws up the liquid in the syringe through the cotton.
"Nothing to say to your sugar daddy, Kate?"
"What the fuck took you so long? I told you I'm sick."
"Just trying to keep you alive, love," Julien says, smiling. He looks at Reynolds. "If she had as much as she wanted when she wanted, she'd have OD'd by now."
She grabs the tourniquet and wraps it around her upper arm in a slipknot, pulling the end tight with her teeth. She slaps her upper arm to reveal a vein but I can see a half-dozen needle marks already there. She then cleans her arm with another alcohol swab, inserts the needle, pulls back on the plunger to ensure she has a vein, dark red blood filling the tip, and releases the tourniquet, slowly injecting the liquid into her vein, pulling a bit more blood back before finishing.
I'm horrified and mesmerized at the same time.
Kate sits back, closes her eyes and sighs, the empty needle on the couch beside her hand. Julien picks up the needle and places it on the table.
"There you go," he says, stroking Kate's hair. "Feeling better?"
Kate doesn't respond, just lies back slack-jawed.
"So," Julien says, turning to Reynolds. "How goes the battle?"
Reynolds is still agog at Kate's shooting up in front of us and struggles to speak. He opens his mouth a few times, and then looks at me. I look away, at my feet, and the far windows – anywhere but at Julien and Kate. It's about the saddest thing I've seen for a long while, and makes me feel like an incredibly small and petty jerk.
"Oh, don't mind Kate," Julien says. "She has a bit of a smack habit. She decided to go out and get some extra for herself one day – against the rules, I might add – and got arrested. She went to jail instead of rehab, because you can get junk in jail but not in a hospital and she didn't want to detox or do methadone seeing as she's on her way out. She shoots up two or three times a day – four on a bad day. We won't hear much out of her now. I just like to keep her around for a while, in case she stops breathing," he says and looks at her, his head tilted to one side. "One of these days though. . ."
At that, I stand and leave the seating area, unable to sit and watch any longer.
"Where are you going?" Julien says, his voice low. "Come back and sit down."
I swallow hard, biting my lip to keep control. "I'm going to the bathroom."
"Be quick."
I find the bathroom and close the door and lean against it, my emotions at the edge. What a bastard! He arranged all this just to make me feel like the petty jealous female that I am. He could have told me that Kate was dying. Why Vasily didn't tell me is confusing. Perhaps he didn't know how bad she is.
My hands shake, my stomach in knots, tears stinging the corners of my eyes. I won't cry. I won't.
I grab some toilet paper and hold it to my eyes, mopping up the moisture, blowing my nose.
"Eve . . ."
