We were in the cab heading North. Nick was talking in his flat, dead voice.
“Some funny stuff we’re getting lately. It’s not weak exactly. . . I don’t know. . . It’s different. Maybe they’re putting some synthetic shit in it . . . Dollies or something. . .”
“What!!!!? Already?”
“Huh?. . . But this I’m talking you to know is O.K. In fact it’s about the best deal around that I know of. . . Stop here.”
“Please make it fast,” I said.
“It should be a matter of ten minutes unless he’s out of stuff and has to make a run. . .Better sit down over there and have a cup of coffee. . . This is a hot neighborhood.”
I sat down at a counter and ordered coffee, and pointed to a piece of Danish pastry under a plastic cover. I washed down the stale rubbery cake with cofee, praying that just this once,please God, let him make it now, and not come back to say the man is all out and has to make a run to East Orange or Greenpoint.
Well here he was back, standing behind me. I looked at him, afraid to ask. Funny, I thought, here I sit with perhaps one chance in a hundred to live out the next 24 hours- I had made up my mind not to surrender and spend the next three or four months in death’s waiting room. And here I was worrying about a junk score. But I only had about five shots left, and without junk I would be immobilized. . . Nick nodded his head.
” Don’t give it to me here,” I said, “Let’s take a cab.”
We took a cab and started downtown. I held out my