The line at the Methadone clinic.

The only other people we met in those four months was our neighbor, Felicia and her three-year-old daughter. She lived in the unit next to ours. She was in her early twenties, a little overweight but sexy, and our landlord kept her there rent free and visited her at least once a week, always at night. She didn’t have a job. She was always at home, a kept woman.

The layout of our apartments was such that our dining room wall, at the far end from the couch, next to the kitchen, was her living room wall. The units were all alike. Here’s how we met.

Dave, in moments of excitement, would every once and a while grab his Uzi and fire off a round in the living room. Mostly it was at Rob C’s picture, which I’d hung in the middle of the long wall, sideways to him, opposite the front entrance and the kitchen, a brick wall between us and an adjoining unit. I still wonder why the people in that unit never complained. I’m guessing that it was cinder block behind the finished wall and with Rob’s picture in front, the bullets couldn’t penetrate. But they did the first time he shot two rounds at the dining room wall, directly in front of him, leaving two clear holes. It was mid-afternoon and Lindsey and I were sitting with him in the living room, both reading, in two chairs very near his line of fire. We paused and looked up, wondered, but knew it was futile to ask the reason why, so we went back to our books. A few minutes later we heard a soft knocking on our front door. It was Felicia, with her daughter in hand, and the first of several very pleasant visits.

Lindsey invited her in and offered her a chair opposite Dave. She sat down, with daughter in lap and glanced at all three of us for the first time, not sure whom to address, and then meekly requested, that if it weren’t too much trouble, could we please refrain from shooting bullets into her living room because her three year old daughter was often sitting there in the daytime, watching T.V.

To this we most wholeheartedly consented. Dave even jumped up from his couch, (in his dirty long johns) to apologize to the pretty mother, saying he didn’t know there was a child in that room and would never have done so if he’d known. The fact that the bullets whizzed right past Felicia also, as she was standing in her kitchen at the time, was never brought up. Yet this was the beginning of a strange, neighborly friendship for all four of us, exchanging greetings on the walkway, inviting her over to chat. Dave solicited even more of her company, (with ulterior motives). She’d bring her little daughter by, (as she was lonely) and Dave would try to find programs on his T.V. to please the little girl, holding her in his lap while Felicia sat on the couch right beside him, making small talk, as polite as she could be, an unforgettable scene. At this point Lindsey and I would slip downstairs. But those soiled long johns, and the Uzi moved politely off the coffee table to the wall beside him as she came in, put a damper on hugs and kisses, or any other amatory developments, despite his efforts.

Consistency is a great virtue in the success of any plan in life and I must say, of all the people I’ve met, Dave was the most regular in every detail of his daily routine, down to a scientific degree of accuracy. Each day was a perfect repetition of the day before, a ritual, with each act occurring at the same minute and place with unwavering exactitude, a wonder to behold, interrupted only by the brief, titillating, once a week visits of Felicia.

At seven a.m., his alarm set, he bathed, dressed and was out the door. The sound of his loud Datsun ‘Z’ starting up was like an alarm to us, Lindsey and I in our bed, waking us up to a few kisses and another day. Dave was on his way to the Methadone clinic in downtown Oakland and had to get there before it opened at eight, because there was always a long line and he had to find three willing partners to meet his daily ‘quota’.

It consisted of this. He would go in and get his dosage, 80 milligrams of Methadone, served in a little cup. Then he would supplement this, right outside the door of the clinic, and out of the view of the nurses, with three additional eighty milligram doses delivered to him by three other participants in the program by what he called ‘spit backs’. They would take their dose at the counter and pretend to swallow but once outside spit the contents of their mouths into a wide-mouth bottle he was holding. He would estimate the volume of each ‘spit’ and pay them a dollar for each milligram, which they’d then use to buy the real stuff, heroin, to shoot up, much preferable to methadone as a daily ‘high’. He told me he preferred using girls in this transaction and that with practice some of them could disgorge the whole amount with ease, he handing them the eighty dollars which they promptly spent on the real thing, probably available within a block of the clinic.

I asked him once why he didn’t just use that 240 dollars and buy the ‘real thing’. He had two reasons. No matter what dose of heroin you took you needed more than that the next day to reach the same ‘high’, a very bad equation. He also explained that he couldn’t risk being kicked off the Methadone program, because without money, he’d be in real agony. And part of the program was that they made all participants take random piss tests and if they found any of the real stuff, you were kicked out for some probationary period. By only doing Methadone he was safe and at that dosage, pleasantly high all day.

With this extra plastic bottle of doses tucked away he made two more stops on his way home. The first was what he called ‘Valium park’, a small park in the slums where a group of old black men with Valium prescriptions sat on benches each day until they were sold out. He would buy fifteen of the ‘blues’ each morning for ten dollars apiece (their best customer) and speed off to a liquor store nearby for two cans of ‘Old Milwaukee’, (where they would shortly follow with his money for bottles of ‘hooch’). This was the catalyst to the chemical reaction he desired as soon as he got home.

Around nine he would burst into the living room all aglow, rush to the coffee table, unpocket his treasures, crack open the first beer, and with one big gulp swallow down all fifteen Valiums from the palm of his hand. Next was the Methadone. He’d eyeball the slimy, spit laden, liquid for a moment, swirl it around in its jar like a wine connoisseur about to sample a new vintage, then down the hatch, the whole amount, followed by another swig of beer. His day was now complete. The work was done. The rest was pure coasting in one long, happy glow.

Next he would pull off his shoes, (army boots) and often his clothes down to his long johns, kick back on the couch, beer in hand and turn on the T.V. At ten ‘Perry Mason’ came on and I’d often watch it with him. I was always surprised at how sharp his mind was at this point because he’d just consumed, right in front of me, an amount of drugs that would have instantly killed me and another dozen like me. We both paid extreme attention to this show, almost like a contest, because it was filled with clever little clues and hints as to its outcome. And I must admit, with each of us scanning every detail of the unfolding mystery, he’d pick out the culprit before I could, and long before it was revealed at the end. We talked much during each show and he’d point out to me the salient clues.

Shortly after this show he’d begin to ‘nod’, his head drooping down, then bobbing up again a few times as if fighting sleep. But it would always win and whatever position he was in when it hit, his eyes would close and he’d begin snoring. Often I’d have to pluck a lit cigarette out of his hand, it came on so sudden. His fingers were welts of burn marks. He was usually sitting on the couch but sometimes he’d slide down on his knees to the floor, trying to deal with his cigarette, the coffee table and ashtray right in front of him and in this position he’d nod off, his butt on his heels, his head bowed forwards, like a statue in perfect balance, to sleep and snore for two hours, a genuflection to Methadone and the God Morpheus, an acolyte of opium, looking like some Hindu Buddha statue in prayer.

After an hour or two of this deep sleep (which happened everyday) he’d wake up and seem, surprisingly, perfectly sober and normal, ready to go about whatever business the day held for him. He’d make and eat breakfast, drink coffee and be on an active and even keel the rest of the day, lasting until bedtime.

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