Floating at the Bottom
Brendan Molloy
Greg was on the bed behind me, twitching and snoring like a dreaming dog. I was trapped with him. My mother had come back from her trip early and was sleeping downstairs. He couldn’t leave. If she saw him, it would be over. I would be back on the street.
So I sat there, perched like a broken-winged bird, watching the clock tick. 3:33 AM. 3:34 AM. 3:35 AM.
8:48 AM. My mother finally left. I’d heard her getting ready for over an hour, taking her time. I went to the top of the stairs and watched her pull out of the driveway and fly down our suburban street towards Route 3 and her Midtown law office. She’d be gone until late.
I walked back into my bedroom slowly. I could hear his labored breathing. His leg stuck out from beneath the covers.
“Wake up.” I slapped his foot.
“What?” he grumbled out, rolling over and looking up at me.
“You have to go.”
“Why?”
“My mom went to the store; she’ll be back soon and she’ll come up here.” The lies filled my mouth as naturally as saliva. “If she catches you, I’m going to get kicked out again.”
“Well, then you can just come live with me.” He sat up, leaning back on his elbows and grinning.
I thought about what it would feel like to knock every tooth out of his ugly little mouth with a hammer. “I wish,” I smiled. “But for right now, you gotta go.”
He kept talking as he got dressed — but I didn’t listen. We walked downstairs and got to the front door before he turned around.
“Here, for you,” he pulled something out of his bag.
I looked down at it. “I don’t like crack.”
“It’s coke.”
“It’s crack.”
His eyes squinted and he grabbed my arm with force. “Well if you don’t fucking want it, you don’t have to be a bitch about it.”
“Sorry.” I smiled quickly. “I’m just kidding.” I pressed my hand into his chest gently. “Thank you. Very sweet of you.”
He let me go, grinning. “You’re welcome, babe.” He kissed me and left.
I watched him walk away. He had a painfully inflexible stride, like his whole body was made of stone.
Things looked odd, everything was off. My mind couldn’t process the familiar sights of my mom’s house. Fear cropped up beneath everything. My body started shaking, and I felt tears pooling in my eyes. I dug my nails into my palm. I felt my jagged pointer finger draw a little blood.
I dumped the cookie of crack onto the dresser in the attic. Fuck him, and fuck his drugs. I’m done. I sat on the bed, my hands rubbing the bruises on my neck. Fuck him. I was starting to shake. I knew I should sleep. But there it was. Staring at me from the dresser. It would be pointless to waste it.
I was lost then, and shortly after my mother caught on. A tumultuous scene left me with only one option. As I walked to Greg’s, I tried desperately to banish the events of that night from my mind; there was a much more pressing matter at hand.
I could feel sobriety’s cold hands beginning to close themselves around my throat.
I stood on the pavement, clutching a duffle bag to my chest that held every possession I had left to my name, and built enough courage to go ring the bell. The house itself was beautiful; another proud castle sitting smugly in Montclair’s estate section. I remember driving by it as a kid; the owners back then had a stable in the yard with a horse. My brothers and I would marvel at it, wondering exactly how and why they decided on such an extravagant pet. The thought brought tears to the corners of my eyes—a story about someone else. Completely irrelevant to me.
I forced myself to walk up and ring the bell. Thankfully, Greg answered, whisking me upstairs before I had to talk to anyone else.
The current owners had converted the third story to a small apartment; two rooms conjoined by a narrow hallway. It felt entirely separate from the grandeur below; Rapunzel’s uninspired hovel atop a beautiful tower. Despite this, Greg had expected me to be impressed when I first saw the house. I feigned bewilderment at the fortress he did not own, feeding his ego enough to keep him satisfied.
“Do you have anything?” I asked immediately, as we walked into his room.
“I’m out.”
“You have to go get more,” I told him.
“That’s seriously the first thing you’re going to say to me?” He growled back at me.
“It’s just . . . My mom kicked me out.” I sat at his desk, picking through wrung out cotton balls. “I just don’t want to think about it, okay. Why can’t you understand that?”
He looked at me angrily. “You can’t just hang out with me without being completely off your ass?”
“No! That’s not it.” Oh fuck. “It’s just . . .” I spluttered, “been a really terrible day. I just want to be able to relax with you without having to be upset.” I turned back to see his face contorted in anger. I stood up, throwing my arms around his neck and leaning my face into his shoulder. “It’s not about you. Please.”
“Fine.” He pushed me back. “I’ll be back soon,” he barked as he stomped away, hurling open the door with enough force to make the floor shiver. Bark. Yell. Hit. Admittedly, these levels could have a bit of erratic energy to them; but, at that point I could read them easily enough. Two rage levels away from me having to care.
His heavy boots stumbled away down the stairs as his hand aggressively slapped the banister. I listened intently as the bam/slap, bam/slap, bam/slap got fainter and farther away. The front door slammed shut.
Safe now. For a few hours, probably. He would come back with enough rock to last us a day or two. His mood swings got worse when he was high, but dealing with his erratic anger was better than facing my current situation clear headed. It wasn’t what I wanted, not really. Shooting crack is like escaping a serial killer: the rush is incredible, but it leaves the lingering feeling that the guy is eventually going to catch up.
The opposite door creaked. My eyes jerked up to see a ghost standing in the frame. His skin was powdered cocaine, his eyes a messy stain, but his smile opened easily and animated his skeletal face with a spark of life.
Oliver held up a pack of American Spirit Blacks. “Smoke?”
I smiled. A junkie doesn’t offer you a free cigarette for no reason. “Sure.”
He began walking down the stairs, and I followed him. He smuggled me outside past the border isolating the makeshift trap house upstairs from the sober world beneath. We crept through some manicured bushes to find ourselves on top of an old stone wall.
He lit two cigarettes, took one from his mouth, and handed it to me.
“So. You live here, now?”
“Yep.” I guess he’d seen my beat-up duffle on Greg’s floor. I had been there only a few hours, but a hopeful half-truth beat telling him I was living nowhere.
“Are you two dating?”
“Absolutely not.”
He laughed mildly. “Alright.”
I looked at him, wondering if he felt any loyalty to Greg. “Do me a favor and don’t tell him that, okay?”
“Yeah. I usually do my best to avoid taunting cracked-out lunatics.”
Good. I leaned back, taking a long drag off my cigarette.
“Then what are you doing here?” Oliver asked.
“I guess you could say I’m in between places.”
His face sobered. “Oh.” He took a drag of his cigarette and awkwardly evicted the smoke from his lungs. “How’d that happen?”
I could have told him that my mother ordered cops to escort me off her property and screamed curses at them for refusing to arrest me. That I would have called a thousand people before showing up at Greg’s door if my phone’s service hadn’t been disconnected. That, honestly, none of them would have answered. That not even a homeless shelter would take me because of the little cup they make you fill during your entrance interview. I could have said a lot, but instead I responded with the common denominator of it all: “Heroin.”
“Oh, sweet. Me too.” He took another jerky drag of his American Spirit. “I mean, not sweet, exactly. But cool. It’s like we’ve shipwrecked on the same shitty little island.” His laugh became uneasy.
“There must be shittier islands to get wrecked on.”
“Which ones?” the ease returned to his smirk.
“Ones with lions and crocodiles.”
“Pretty sure we have some of those.”
I smiled, taking another deep drag and savoring the smoke in my lungs. “Are you two friends?”
“Me and Greg? Hard to say really.”
“How come?”
“You just . . . I mean . . . how long are you staying?”
“I’m not sure.”
He shifted back and forth, taking a drag and letting the smoke squat in his lungs a while. “Just be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“Bullshit.”
“Well, it’s not like these are unfamiliar waters for me.”
“You can still drown in them. And don’t forget about the crocodiles.” He smiled.
“Aw, that’s so cute. You’re worried about me.” I gave his arm a soft push.
“Shut up.”
He looked away from me, up the empty street as if Greg might round the corner at any moment. I looked back to the house towering above us. Every part was perfectly constructed; the flawlessly manicured lawn, the overflowing window boxes, the perfectly maintained wood. The lights were all off, and it felt as if the house were asleep with the rest of the world. The only indication that this monument was not as pure as every other perfect little suburban home on the street were the lights shining boldly from the attic windows.
My American Spirit had burned more than half way down before I started again.
“I don’t think he wants you and me to be friends.”
“We’re not going to be friends.”
“But you clearly like me.”
He laughed. “What makes you think that?”
“Ollie . . . You gave me a cigarette.”
“Maybe I’m just a generous guy.”
“You’re not.” I smiled in a way I shouldn’t have.
“Don’t do that.” “What am I doing?”
He shook his head. “Not. Fucking. Careful.”
“What’s the worst he could do to me?”
“Well, I won’t be alive to find out.”
“You worry too much. He’s not going to be back for another hour at least.”
“You’re fucking crazy.”
“Maybe.” I gave him a crocodile smile; he was close enough now. “Hey. You should hook me up, while we wait.”
He looked at me harder. “He wouldn’t like that.”
“Who cares?”
He rubbed his fingers up and down the butt of his cigarette, staring down at it as if it could counsel him on how to handle me. He took a long drag before flicking it into the street. “Fine.”
He stood up as I clipped the last few drags and slipped my cigarette into a pocket. We crept back the same way we’d come — feeling now more like home invaders than smugglers — and found our way into his small room at the top of the stairs. Greg’s door still hung lazily open as I walked through Oliver’s.
Twenty minutes later I was laying on Oliver’s floor, staring blankly into the ceiling. He was leaning against the bed and rubbing the crook of his arm through his sweatshirt. Slamming dope is like sitting on the bottom of the ocean. Some part of you knows that pretty soon you’ll run out of air, but, for now, floating feels fantastic.
His phone buzzed.
“Don’t let him get high,” he read. “Well, great.” He dropped it back on the floor and readjusted himself against the bed, his eyes fluttering back to close like a final curtain.
I looked at his empty face before pushing myself unsteadily to my hands and knees. I crawled across the hallway as if I was wading through warm milk, pulling myself up to sit heavily on Greg’s bed. With glazed eyes, I smiled across the tiny hallway at Oliver slumped silently on the floor.
Maybe this island could be pretty sweet after all.
Then I heard it. Getting louder and closer.
Bam/slap, bam/slap, bam/slap.
Brendan Molloy writes, I am currently a senior at Rutgers New Brunswick and expect to graduate Spring 2022. I grew up in Montclair, NJ. Although I am studying Social Work at Rutgers, I have a passion for creative writing and specifically creative nonfiction. I believe storytelling is a beautiful way to relate our experiences and to learn from each other, and I hope to utilize these skills in my future career as a social worker.