Foil

‘Do you know what I’d really like to do now?’
Gina looked up when Craig spoke. They’d both been reading magazines. It was the first time in three weeks she’d seen him reading a magazine, and very intently at that. Strange, as it was a woman’s magazine that Sasha had given her on the beach. She’d not bought any on this trip, only books. Only a few seconds earlier she’d thought, and not for the first time that evening, how odd it was to be at different ends of the bed, not speaking, almost intently engaged in an exclusion exercise.
‘What?’
‘I'd like to go and get some more heroin.’
Not what she’d expected him to say at all. She was rather hoping for something simple, like ‘I’d like to get on the bike, go to Chicken Corner and get some chips and salsa’. Or, even better ‘I’d like to lick your sweat off you’, like he’d announced a couple of nights back before diving into her.
She wanted to say ‘Why? Why do you need that shit. I thought you had been cleaning up. Aren’t we fine as we are? ‘
Instead, she simply said ‘Where do you have to go and get it from?’
‘The other side of the island, about ten minutes further up from the harbour.’
‘Oh, that will take you an hour or so then.’
This came out rather matter of fact, as she’d hoped. Hoped that her worry would not transpire. It must be around 9 o’clock. Pitch dark. The track was treacherous, winding and steep. Charming by day, from every crest of a hill you looked out on the bluest sea below, but at night it was a grey snake coiling through cliffs. Very likely he’d never have considered going there if she’d simply suggested, ‘Do you fancy going to the harbour for a drink tonight?’
Gina was also worried about the other risk. The one most inherent to buying drugs: getting caught. And the fact that he’d been drinking beer and vodka since sunset. She’d helped on that front, but it was the odd sip, she never had a bottle to call her own. He would be easy for the police to spot and stop for a check - they were always looking for a quota of westerners to show that they were doing their job. Oh well, let’s not think about the worst and let’s stop being mother, she was not responsible for his life after all.
‘You sure you don’t’ mind baby?’ he asked.
‘No it’s fine, just don’t hang around there when you got it, come straight back’.
Such big lies said so simply, so easily. Sure I mind the man I fell in love with to have revealed himself as someone who needs drugs to move his life along, someone who prefers drugs to my company, to me basically. She could have said it, as he was still looking at her, like a little naughty boy expecting unquestionable complicity and approval. But she didn’t.
‘Go on then, I don’t mind, you go.’
It would be nice after all to have the room to herself, to not feel the awkwardness of being ill at ease together. Only a short time ago it wasn’t like this. Only three weeks ago when she’d returned from Laos to hook up with him for the second time since they met, this room was a sanctuary, filled with easy chat, laughter and comfortable silences. Then she’d left him to go and travel in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Carpa, the adorable puppy they'd rescued from the poison meted out to all strays on the island, stirred on the floor. Awake now that ‘daddy’ was going out, maybe he’ll go to Chicken Corner and get her some treat, like most nights.
Craig’s face lit up as he played with the dog, teased her, pulled her this way and that, while he searched for another packet of cigarettes.
He bent down all lovey-dovey to kiss her while he rifled through clothes to find his money. Gina wondered how long he’d been thinking of going to buy the stuff before he came out with it.
‘How much are you getting? Please don’t get much.’
‘Well I have to get half a gram’s worth, the guy won’t sell me less than that. I thought you wanted to try some baby.’
Oh god, she’d said that the night of the full moon party, 48 hours ago, when she was high on her first smidgen of acid. After saying a resolute ‘no’ to drugs for years and years, this had seemed the right situation to try everything. She’d felt safe with him. He was an occasional user, with a job he loved and responsibilities awaiting him back home. She was the one drifting for a few months, her break from years of working. So this was not the time to say ‘But seeing how ill you’d been when I got here, how thin you’ve become, how distant, it’s hardly a great advertisement……for trying heroin.’
A short answer was required, she opted for ‘Yes, but you know me, I’ve never done it, so just a little bit will be enough…’
‘Sure baby, I’ll look after you.’ He replied lighting the umpteenth Marlboro.
It was kind of heart warming to see him so excited, like a kid going to get ice cream. In his blue faded shorts, the ever present flip flops that had damaged his foot arches, cigarette dangling from his mouth. Eyes shining under the floppy black hair. His tanned chest gleaming in the soft light cast by the weak bulb.
‘Take a shirt, you’ll be cold on the bike.’
‘No, I’m alright.’
She couldn’t resist a ‘ Be careful’ though, always thinking like a mother somehow.
She remembered how in the beginning he was being very careful with his money, she’d thought he was a bit tight even. Now he wasn’t any more. Maybe a large invoice had been paid back home and hedonism had taken over. Besides, there really wasn’t anything else to do there but drink to while away the time. He wasn’t interested in trips to other sides of the island, to see caves or waterfalls or to go diving.
‘No Carpa, you stay here, stay inside with me. He’ll be back soon.’ She said to the puppy wagging her tail by the door.
She heard the sound of the red Honda revving up outside. Craig saying goodbye to the guesthouse workers, always winding down under the tree outside. In a few short hours they’d be up again to get breakfast ready. Then he was gone.
Gina had an hour to kill. Best not to worry and definitely not to look at the watch. Best not to think he had a way with falling off his bike. Like that time in Chiang Mai when he'd split his forehead open and wouldn't let her play nurse much with her virgin first aid kit. She wanted to use those high tech butterfly stitches, he wanted the scar instead. He liked it and perhaps would later tell a more interesting story about it.
She couldn’t’ read any more now. Was all over the place, couldn’t sleep. Nowhere to go. Wished for a phone. She would phone a friend now if she could, but what would sh says? ‘Hi, we are in paradise but for him something is missing. Will it always be missing?’ So she talked to Carpa instead ‘How ever did we end up giving you such an ugly name? We started off with Harpo and Groucho , then Carpo perhaps, till we found out you were a girl! I’ll look for a pink bow in the market tomorrow. That will make you pretty.’
Then she got up and looked around the small room. Looked at his bag, then inside it and found his notebook. The one he was writing in the morning they met in Bangkok a couple of months back. She had been waiting for a taxi to take her to the train station. He was the only other person awake at dawn in the grey light of the garden. So good looking and unexpected that she’d stared at him till he smiled quizzically. She remembered how he’d spoken first and his voice seemed to belong to the pillow next to her in bed. Now she looked at the blank pages. How disappointing , he hadn’t written anything at all since then. When they met he'd told her he was always up really early 'to write'. Well it was 6am when he’d said this and he was indeed writing. That's what attracted her to speak to him in the first place. He'd just arrived from Canada for a break from the merciless snow. She'd left London three months earlier, intent on missing a European winter in its entirety. So far so good, she'd forgotten what a cold day felt like. And what a cold heart feels like too.
Right now she remembered that in the time they'd spent together since, neither of them had got up early, ever and she'd never seen him write. The notebook was in a state, covers falling off, corners all warped. It’d been around for weeks, unused. He hadn’t written anything since the notes of longing he’d made for his birth mother. He’d recently found her, but she had not agreed to meet up with him yet. He’d read them to her when they hooked up again a few days later. She’d felt fortunate never to have had to search for that love too. Oh yes, a few pages on she found a paragraph written after she’d left him the first time. By then they were in the hills in Northern Thailand.
‘You go on ahead, I’ll find you later at the swimming pool.’ She’d told him handing him the pool bag. He’d noticed that only his stuff was packed in it and had murmured softly ‘Don’t be long’. He lingered whilst they both fought back tears and then set off on his bike. He told her later that when he got to the pool, he’d not even swam, he’d taken a valium, fallen asleep in the sun and woken up at sunset, knowing she wouldn’t be there. He had marked her absence by taking more pills to get through to the next day. By the time he’d got on the bus to head south to the beach, she was already in Laos, in a hurry not to get hurt by love again. She’d left a note. ‘I know your birth mother abandoned you once and you had no explanation for 30 years, so you may be a bit sensitive when people disappear and this is to tell you why I am going.’
Gina bet his first thought on reading it had probably been ‘How f……..considerate of you, how dare you compare this to being given up for adoption?’
‘She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone’ he had written. Then he described her as supercilious and talking in clichés. She thought she must look that word up. Should really know the meaning. Probably did. It was disparaging anyway. Oh but he went on to say ‘I love you I love you I love you Principessa’. What a relief, he was using her little nickname. A wave of tenderness wrapped her up briefly, all that had been written weeks ago now. A couple more blank pages later and there was a list of names. Girls names. Must be lovers/girlfriends. Typical of men to make lists. She read aloud ‘Janine, Martha, Susanna.’ She recognized a few he’d talked to her about. Quickly scanned it to find her own name. Afraid there’d be others after hers. After all, she’d left him alone for three weeks on that beach full of the most temptingly attractive travellers in Asia. Her eyes blurred, oh my god, there was a name after hers. It was Sasha’s name. That’s not so bad, she knew they’d had a thing.Besides, there was an arrow pointing Sasha’s name to the previous page. Yes it happened a while ago, as he said, though she was already with her boyfriend Tony by then. Craig had said it was after a night out and they’d both taken stuff and got home and well, she’d asked if she could give him a blow. Gina had laughed, laughed a lot. ‘Really? Sasha asked you? Oh man, do you really expect me to believe that? Next you’ll tell me that she practically begged to suck you off. It’s ok, that was then, I don’t care about your past’. She remembered he’d never really asked her much about hers. She was relieved about it then, now it seemed a sign he didn’t much care to get to know her. There was nothing to do then, she kind of wanted to memorise some more of those names, that old habit, research, but though that was something a younger Gina would have definitely done a few years back, not now. Nothing to do then, but lie on the bed and wait. Actually straighten it out a bit, tidy up. He was always tidier than she was. All his belongings were mostly in his rucksack. Hers were spread all over. Well, she had more stuff. She vigorously swept the sand off the floor. The bells on her oriental bracelets were jingling wildly. Craig loved her musical bracelets, said he could always tell when she was ‘coming.’
The mosquitoes were lying low. The fan was on constantly, mostly to cover any sounds coming from the road outside. She wondered if anybody walking past on the path could hear the voices and noises inside? They certainly could, but after a while you didn’t think about how exposed you were, in your little hut on stilts, two windows, one door, a hammock on the porch. At home she could never live in a shoebox. But a shoebox by the sea was heavenly somehow. She almost went outside to stand next to one of the surrounding huts to hear any talk going on inside but didn’t. She waited some more. After a while she heard the sound of the motorbike coming back and parking. Carpa yapped happily. ‘daddy’ was back. Craig came in beaming both his ‘women’ a smile.
‘Mission accomplished?’
‘Yeah, got it here’ he said patting his pocket.
She wondered if he’d had a toke already to check it when he bought it. It was 11 o’ clock by now, shouldn’t have taken that long to get there and back.
Now he was excitedly busying himself putting the rest of his money back into his usual hiding place behind a roof beam. Then he sat cross legged on the bed, leaning on the wooden edge at the bottom of the bed and went straight into separating a small quantity of heroin on the cover of the magazine. Helpfully Gina said ‘Bad place to leave that honey, do you know how easy it is to knock it over from there?’
‘It’s the only straight surface in the room…… I’m not getting on the floor to do it.’ He replied.
She actually thought of doing that, knocking it over. To see his reaction and if he’d really hate her for it. But it wasn’t the last little bit, so he’d probably have just gone ‘Fuck fuck fuck baby, be careful!’ And hopefully not miserably scramble to try and salvage it from the wooden floor, full of gaps, you could see straight into the ground below. He hid the rest in a tiny parcel, behind another beam. Gina had no idea of quantities. How much is how much, how much do you need. No idea. The lines looked like lines of coke. A couple of those would be just the start of an evening for most of her friends back in London.
'Are you taking this shit so you can avoid dealing with me, so you can shut me out?'
That’s what she really wanted to ask but in fact thought that no, that was needlessly self-persecuting. It’s the whole world that addicts don’t want to deal with, not just you, masochist moron. Glad she cleared that one out, catching her paranoia and swiftly chucking it out of the window.
Craig did a line. Intent, a crisp new 500 baht note rolled up.
‘What’s the difference between snorting it and smoking it?’ Gina, forever inquisitive, couldn't give up asking questions, ever.
‘It hits you faster when you smoke it.’
‘So why are you snorting it then?’
‘We’ll do both, start slowly, make it last longer. Here, your turn. Be careful. Don’t blow on it.’
‘Gaaads, leave it out, I am not that clumsy.’ She said taking the note from his hands.
She did her line. New drug, new wait. You never know how long before it has any effect and even when it does, you are not quite sure when that started. Plus, some times there is no effect. She remembered that time in Holland, twenty years earlier, with Lou and the band. They were all doing coke and she tried it too. Had no effect at all and she’d not tried if for years after, telling proudly anybody who offered any ‘It doesn’t do anything to me, don’t’ need it.’
‘How you feeling baby?’ With a cheeky smile, he leaned over to kiss her.
‘Fine, not much though…’ Gina hadn’t even noticed she’d slumped further into the mattress, on the pillows laid under the window. She was looking outside, at the fronds of the trees stirring in the breeze. The rains had started, there was wind every night. It meant fewer mosquitoes feasting on her lovely brown body. She could hardly move, but she could still think ‘Why is he over there? Why isn’t he close to me? What’s he doing now?’
From behind the tapes, sunglasses, alarm clock, bottles and candles on the shelf at the top of the bed, he reached to get the aluminium foil from inside a cigarette packet. The other day he’d told her off for throwing some foil away.
‘Baby if it’s not in the bin outside, it means I haven' t thrown it away. Ok baby? Don’t tidy up please.’
‘Ok, sorry honey.’ She ‘d replied like a kid on mummy’s ‘bad days’.
That had been strange, being told off. Like for setting the wet beer bottle on the blue sarong he was lying on at the beach. He’d also been very particular about keeping it absolutely straight and taut and brushing off any stray sand getting on it. Every time she turned or wiggled on hers, of course she got some sand on his.
‘Sorry honey’. ‘Oops sorry honey.’ ‘Oh shit honey, didn’t mean to do that.’ She’d apologised.
‘Baby, you know, when I am cleaning up I get very finicky.’
Gina had noticed the ‘when’, suggesting a cyclical regularity to the… well, what else to call it… habit. She’d stifled the instant put down that came to her lips ‘No I don’t know honey, never went out with someone cleaning up before.’ She had settled for ‘Mm, yes that tidy Virgo side of yours gets extreme honey.’
It was a relief to make jokes about star signs, most guys hate all talk of star signs, professing ignorance followed by contempt. It was best to make a joke of it and not dwell on how they'd both mostly lied on the one sarong only, his, last time she was here. So yes, if he was going to take heroin again he was going to become fastidious about things like that. What else had she read about it?
Craig was now putting some heroin on the foil, sitting on the floor using the bed as a table. He took a lighter to it and told her when to inhale. He wanted her to go first so he could guide her. It wasn’t easy, you had just seconds to get it right and not waste it.
‘That’s my boy, he looks after me.’ she thought.
She remembered the opium in Chiang Mai. Finding it had been totally accidental. They’d gone biking in the hills and found a village, they were just walking around, looking at the same-same souvenirs and the beautiful valley stretching below. Colourful gorgeous children had stared at them till they were approached by an ancient looking man. He invited them into his hut and offered what any tourist who wasn’t buying girls or boys was getting. Craig smoked it to check it.
‘Do you want some baby?’ Craig had asked her then.
‘No thanks, don’t know how to use that pipe thing’.
She asked the old man and his wife permission to take some photos inside the messy shack. She took one of the corner, with the fire going and the black pots and pans, but didn’t have the guts to shoot the corner with the bedding. Everything looked extremely bare. The wizened man had then been in a hurry to get them out after Craig bought some. No chance of romantic lying on velvet cushions and pretending to be Thomas de Quincey then. With hindsight, maybe Craig was precisely looking for drugs, that’s why they’d ‘stumbled’ on the village. That would have been – oh - a couple of days into knowing each other. Seamless. Made it look like it was just part of the holiday ‘fun’, not something he wanted at all. More like ‘We are in Northern Thailand, so we must try opium. That’s what they have around here.’
Unbelievable. There’s a death penalty in the country and they were just playing with it. Gina had it in her bra on the ride back. They had waved and smiled at the guards on the entrance of the national park. All Thais looked friendly, even the ones with machine guns.
Now she was ready to inhale.
‘Careful baby, careful, the foil burns easily and then it stinks.’ He cautioned.
It seemed a faster hit, or maybe just adding to the first one it seemed faster. She felt her body go limp instantly. Her head was there. Sharp? Not sure. A smile on her face, a very wide smile. She watched him preparing his hit, all excited anticipation. . Yeah, this was all fun. Nothing sordid here, nothing like the movies where people are always poor, miserable, ugly and the rooms always squalid. Craig gave her a big adoring smile.
‘I’ve never seen anyone as together as you on drugs, are you sure all this is new to you?’
‘It’s because I have no dark side, so there’s nothing weird gonna come out of me.’
‘Yeah, I can see that, you look so lovely, so chilled’. He said as he went over to the corner where his bag was.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘My camera.’ Came his reply.
She wanted to say ‘No don’t’ , but her voice was slow in passing her lips. As .he took a picture of her, she felt spread like honey stuck to the bed. That’s how she felt, glued to it.
Eventually she managed to move her arms to reach for hers and take a picture of him lighting another hit.
‘We’re even now, we've both got evidence of misbehaviour' and she giggled.
‘Do you want another one baby?’
‘Mmh not now, maybe later.’
More than anything she wanted to reach for the tape recorder. ‘In the interest of self-indulgent documentation of my life, I want to remember what shit we’ll talk about, I know I won’t remember otherwise’. Like she didn’t remember all the things they’d said on acid at the full moon party, when she’d been ‘talking’ to the Disney cartoon characters that were endlessly appearing in front of her and Craig was being ‘followed’ by a sinister agent called Frank. She was sure they had said meaningful stuff that now was lost. Then again it had seemed the storm that night had raged on for hours, but later they’d found out it had been over in twenty minutes. Gina knew he objected to this little mania of hers so she left it on the shelf, playing music through the tiny speakers, the same music they’d heard for weeks, no new tapes to buy on the market stalls or nothing new that didn’t sound wobbly and stretched.
He came over and laid next to her. No energy to touch each other, no energy and no will.
'This shit is good' he said.
Gina barely nodded ‘Yes.’
'Want some more vodka baby?' he asked clinking glasses.
'No, otherwise I won't know which effect is which.'
God, her brain was till hers, typical Gina matter of factness, nothing blurred yet. Like she was doing some research. Another thought hit her hard. 'There will be no more love and no more sex though, what a shame.’ She’d read/heard enough about heroin to know it dulls your libido to zero. A touch of paranoia came back. That’s why he did this, to avoid being close to her. She tried to chuck it away again with ‘addicts don’t want to be close to anybody…it's not just you…and his mum gave him up, that’s why he needs the stuff.’
Instead, she was surprised to hear herself say 'This shit is good!’
He nodded in agreement, stretched by her side.
She didn't have any strength to take her clothes off, but she knew he did, he must be able to function on this shit, he was used to it. She was about to ask him to pull her shirt off her, but suddenly there was no need to take off anything, it was enough to just lie there feeling the air from the ventilator skim her skin. Not asleep. Listening to the music, paying attention to the lyrics. After a while they became unbearable. They talked about love, all of them, it seemed, even the instrumental tracks. She couldn't listen to them. A simple thought was crushing her and it was beyond paranoia. The love that lived here for so few gorgeous days and nights had been burnt in a small square of silver paper. There was still some left, it would still be here for a little longer till she fell asleep. Tomorrow it would most certainly be gone. She didn’t want to fall asleep now.
‘Do you mind turning the music off?’ she asked.
‘Sure baby.’ He replied, a few inches from her face but sounding as far as the next monsoon.
Once again she reflected that her mind was still quite sharply. She noticed this drug did not open her mind, it did not delude her into thinking exceptional thoughts, perceptive thoughts. It didn't make her taller or stronger or bigger. It just nullified everything. She considered what kind of loser wants to take something that blasts you into nothingness, into feeling nothing. 'This is not the drug for me. ' was the refrain going round her head. But when he said 'Are you ok baby?' she answered 'It's sooo niiiccccce.’
'Do you need anything?'
'No, I'm ok, Time has stopped.'
Then she was surprised to think a silent 'Leave me alone now.’
She looked at Carpa, long asleep on the bed, nestled between their legs as she always was, with her tiny head resting on her paws. Gina felt she didn’t know Craig’s thoughts, fears, hopes, ambitions and desires anymore than she couldn't know the puppy's thoughts. Worse, she couldn’t know even her own thoughts, didn't know where they were, where to find them inside the cotton wool in her skull. She didn't know anything. And it was nice. Like being alive, but dead at the same time. Now she thought 'I want to switch the light off, just leave the candles burning,' but some other part of her brain instantly replaced this with 'It doesn't matter.’
Craig was lying by her side, eyes closed, a satisfied grin on his handsome face. His breathing was even and his skin felt warm next to hers. He seemed floating serene in the silence, as far away as Ko Tao, the next island across that incredibly welcoming sea. Gina had suggested a few times going to check it out but then had stopped asking. Now there was no time left. In three days they would spend seven hours on a ferry ride, the first leg of a long journey heading back to different land masses . Perhaps people were always just like these will-sapping islands, perhaps heroin had nothing to do with it. Gina thought she was telling Craig all this, like they always talked into the night, but realised that no words had come out of her mouth. It was fixed in a blissful smile and she closed her eyes to gently drift away too. Weightlessly ebbing and flowing like the night-time tide.