Chapter Thirty-Three
-- May, 1981
Rolling Stones – “Emotional Rescue”
It was a bitterly cold afternoon as Nick came out of the rambles. He was dressed impractically, clinging to himself through his jean jacket, trying to stay warm. He had lost so much weight that the clothes now hung off him. Sniffing up a storm, he looked for an open alley. When he found one, he slid in next to a dumpster. Time was he could have waited until he got upstairs to shoot, but that was a while ago. Cody had kicked him out several months earlier, only letting him up on rare occasions after he had caught Nick trying to steal his record collection. There wasn’t even anything worthwhile in it, but he had been desperate. As it stood now, it took at least a half hour of begging to get Cody to open his door and Nick just didn’t have the time. Maybe when he was on uppers.
He talked to himself absently, his face ticking, as he fished in his camo slacks for a useable syringe. “Where are you...” he said to no one.
The first was caked with blood. Not that one, he’d probably throw a clot if he used that one. He flung it across the alley.
The second was brand new...
Then he remembered, the guy in the park gave it to him with the junk. Nick wondered what was wrong with it. But not for long.
He had nothing to tie off with, so he removed his jean jacket and knotted it around his bicep. What was left of it.
God, it was freezing...
He pushed the stopper. He was long past the days when he felt anything good. Now he just laid immobile until he was sure his heart wouldn’t do that knee jerk thing it sometimes did. He fell asleep, squinting into the sun. There was a refrigerator box a few feet away, but he chose the hard concrete.
**
“I was visiting my brother and he said you might be down here...” The voice was familiar. But she was standing in the sunlight, so he couldn’t see.
“Who--” he asked, trying to block the sun from his eyes.
Sheila squatted down so Nick could see her better. “It’s me, Nicky. It’s Cody’s sister,” she said, taking his hand.
Nick smiled dumbly; not high, but not sober either. “Sheila... s’that you?” He tried to laugh, but it came out as just a couple intakes of breath. “God, you got so big!” he beamed.
Sheila ignored his wording. “Come on, can you stand up?” she asked, trying to pull him to a seated position.
Nick helped, but just barely. “You used to make me grilled cheese. D’you remember?!”
Sheila positioned herself under one of his arms, the beginnings of tears in her eyes. “Try to stand, okay?” She got him to his feet.
“Where we going?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“I live around the corner, you remember right?”
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Nick nodded in hushed tones like it was a secret. “Oh yeah, you got a niiice place...”
Sheila guided him into her swank and marbled apartment. It was cold and sterile with clean lines but became much warmer with people in it. Nick hobbled over to the couch as Sheila crossed to the kitchen. She made him a bowl of soup. It was about all he could keep down. She tried not to hover as he ate.
When she returned from cleaning up the stove, Nick was standing by her open bedroom door, staring at her mattress. It had been weeks since he’d been able to sleep on one.
“Go ahead,” she said. He appeared reluctant, but slowly crawled onto the bed. Kicking his shoes off, he closed his eyes and slept.
For seventeen hours.
When he woke early the next day, Sheila was just getting ready to go to work.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” she said, stopping by her bedroom. She had slept on the living room couch the night before.
Nick struggled to sit up against the headboard as she tentatively took a seat at the end of the bed. “I want to propose something.” she said.
“Okay,” Nick nodded, as if she needed his permission.
“As you know,” she began somewhat lamely, “we’re in the middle of a recession. Federal deficit’s skyrocketing. There’s the highest unemployment since the depression and that tax cut didn’t give the economy the supply side kick it needed--”
She saw from the look on his face that he had no idea what she was talking about. She started again. “You could stay here, you know? You could stay here even after you were better. You’d have a place to sleep that wasn’t outdoors and I could make sure you were eating.”
“I haven’t been hungry much these days...”
“I know, I know, but you could spend your days painting. Doing what you love.”
“I can’t remember the last time I painted...” he said, staring out the window.
“Just think about it, okay?”
She started to leave when Nick turned back to her. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch.”
“Everybody wants something. You know that.”
Sheila chose her words carefully. “I guess I’d just ask that if you need money, you come to me first. You don’t have to go to that place anymore...”
“Why are you doing this?”
“This apartment... it’s too big for one person. You’d be saving me having to find a roommate--”
“If you’re lonely, you can’t buy a friend.”
“It’s not that,” she said.
“Then what is it?”
She thought long and hard before speaking. “You showed me kindness when no one else in the world did.”
In the silence that followed, Sheila added quietly, “I just think we can help each other.”
Nick thought it over.
“Okay,” he said, after a while.
In the mornings, she would leave him money and when she got home at night, they would have dinner together. He used to make a show of cleaning up the living room, a nod to earning his keep, so he wouldn’t feel bad about going out afterwards to score. He thought about stealing her stereo or television, but could never get out the door before the guilt set in.
It went like that for weeks. Soon, he was spending less on drugs and more on groceries for the two of them. Simple recipes he could assemble easily enough. They began to settle into a platonic pattern that worked for the both of them.
Until one day when Nick was getting out of the shower and didn’t notice that Sheila had come home early...
He took his time getting dressed.
**
They were married in the fall at Calvary Episcopal. Mere minutes before the wedding, a boozy William took Nick aside to express his reservations. He threw an arm around his youngest son. “You know, I see a lot of myself in you.”
Nick nodded, gratefully. His father leaned in, confidentially, his breath near flammable. “But I wouldn’t be doing my job as a father if I didn’t say something. She’s a sweet girl, Nicky, but... I think we all know you can do better.”
Nick stared hard at his father for a long time before replying. “No, I can’t.”
He married Sheila under a floral arch.
At the reception afterwards, his best man, Cody, gave a cringe-worthy best man speech. “Some of you may know that when Sheila was younger, Nick used to call her doo-doo face.” Nick buried his face in his hands as Sheila blushed in her strapless gown. Some guests laughed, but most just shared in the uncomfortable tension that Cody had created.
“But sometimes,” he continued, “‘doo-doo’ face... has a way of becoming ‘I do-doo.’”
The laughter was polite, if somewhat awkward.