Alphabetic Karma, Part 2

Over the next few weeks, we're going to serialize Alphabetic Karma, a short story originally published by Hawkshaw Press. Sign in every Wednesday and Sunday to get the next paragraphs. When we left Kimmie last, she had been dumped in a downtown park by her father.

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. . . She slumped on the other end of the bench, stared out over the park, and asked, “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“You could say that.”

She was in her mid-twenties going on forty, maybe twenty pounds underweight, her face smudged in dirt. “Runaway?”

I could hardly get the words out. “More like throwaway.”

She pivoted to face me. “Nameʼs Zoe. First day?”

I glanced down to see my hands clasped together, knuckles white.. “You might say that.”

“Know what youʼre doing?”

“Not at all.”

“Got a buck or two?”

I shook my head.

“Okay. Iʼll loan you five. The first thing you need is a blanket and a day bag. Letʼs hike over to the thrift store.”

Zoe fairy-godmothered me for four days. She had money from somewhere and we panhandled all day. Mostly she scored dope with her funds, but each night we would settle somewhere in a corner, huddle under our blankets, and sleep on the concrete. My bones ached so deeply in the morning, only an hour in the sun could iron me out. At first, Zoe didnʼt want me to watch her injecting, but soon she had an episode where she was desperate to punch the drug into her vein. I saw the pop, right there, on the sidewalk with people walking by not ten feet away.

I remember squatting in a downtown parking garage on the stairs where they exited to the roof, taking a pee. Five steps up from me, Zoe told Levon, “Hit me up here, baby.” She swept her hair off to the side and pointed to the scabby pinpricks on her neck that rode her jugular. He jabbed in the needle and shoved in the plunger. Levon acted as her regular hit doc, but I believed he should at least have provided a new syringe and needle for the cost of the dose.

I watched Zoe shudder as the drug rushed home. Is smack trying to rush home to me? Is this me in three months? That night Levon offered to trade four days of dope to Zoe. Zoeʼs side of the deal? Kimmie, thatʼs what. I left Zoe in the stairwell, struggling with her decision.