Antonio and I look out the windows of the Ebasco executive dining room. A thick fog obscures Lower Manhattan, as the last gasps of the winter was strangled by a spring breeze from the south. We have finished with serving lunch and wipe the silverware clean. The Spanish waiter surprises me with a small ball of black tar.
“Opium?”
“You ever try it?”
“Never.”
Lots of punks used heroin. I hadn’t tried that too.
“It’s not a killer like smack.”
“I don’t know.”
I had first smoked weed with Tommy Jordan and John Gilmor, driving back from Nantasket Beach. I sat at the Hingham lights for five minutes. Two weeks later with Thomas Welby some Acapulco Gold blew my mind. Basically it was the last time I got high, since every time after that I was chasing an unattainable high.
“Thanks for the opium.”
I wrapped the small ball in paper.
If I was doing it, I was doing it with one person.
Alice.
LATER
On the Staten Island ferry. There are only a few passengers. I chased the dragon on tin foil in the men’s room. I feel it immediately
On the Staten Island Ferry
The first time
I’ve left Manhattan
Since Boston.
I can’t see anything of Manhattan.
The fog follows the ferry’s wake.
The harbor air
The sea
Beyond the Verrazano Bridge.
The gray water darker than the gray air.
The world a maze of opaque sameness.
The ferry approaches St. George.
The passengers disembark
Return to Manhattan on the same ferry.
A fog horn sounds our departure.
The wooden dock enveloped by gray.
Fifteen seconds later we are lost in it.
After reaching Battery Park I called Alice, “Are we going to dinner?”
“Are you alright?” She didn’t want to make a scene in front of her father.
“Yes. Are you mad at me?”
“I was last night. Not now.”
I attempted to explain last night, but it was futile over the phone and we agreed to meet at 7:30.
At dinner before her father arrives, she says that she isn’t really interested in my writing, “Everything is in that journal. Secrets. Not for anyone to read. None of it is finished.”
The way she said that sounds like she has read it, but she is right.
My journals have no purpose.
“I’m sorry if I’m jealous.” We both were, but most of all me at myself.