An insistent summer sun seemed grubby and illicit, pooling hotly on Nell’s stained miniskirt. Someone peering in through the heavily smudged windows of the tiny car could have mistaken her for one huge elaborate stain, or a pile of richly colored fabrics left sprawled on the seat in the sun. She managed to both slump disconsolately and twist her petite frame in knots at once, tapping a dirty-soled foot against the dashboard in that age-old rhythm of barely contained impatience. She’d already burned out all of the frays in her skirt, drawn pictures in the window dust and colored the tips of her lighters with a sharpie, and it was still too early to check her phone again. So instead she picked absently at the oddly radiant grime caked beneath her fingernails - a combination of stale glitter glued in by old acrylic paint and layers of general muck. The picking didn’t really do much, besides move said muck from nail to nail, actually - but for about a millisecond it kept her from going insane. Maybe even a whole second, if you counted the time it took for her to be pissed off that shiny nail detritus was the most complex distraction she could handle.

Meanwhile, the humidity was rising to dangerously infernal proportions. The solid inch of flaking rust and freshly mildewed upholstery weren’t improving matters any, so there was a constant sneeze-y edge to her breathing. Nell could feel her skin opening up moistly, like old wet leather or a pouch of stale tobacco imbibed with vitality by means of an apple slice. The thick soup that passed for air was suffocating. Everything was suffocating. The scent of azaleas and honeysuckle should have been pleasant, but instead every breath was acrid and smelled faintly burnt. Suggestible as ever, her fingers twitched reflexively in the direction of her cigarette case and she attempted a token resistance to impulse before giving in. The metal was smooth and cool, and she closed her eyes for a moment to savor the sensation before releasing the catch mechanism with practiced ease. The result was not overly encouraging:

Two pristine Camel Filters, half of a Kool she’d bummed from that kid on Decatur last night, a torn rolling paper that had gotten damp at some point and what appeared to be the tattered remains of a little girl’s hair ornament.

Truly, an embarrassment of riches… A wry smile played at the corners of her mouth before twisting into a grimace of pain. She could feel her body starting to tense, mind flickering between amusement and despair. Her breath caught fast somewhere in her chest, until she was wheezing in time with the stuttering staccato of her heartbeat, a hideous grin forcing itself out and birthing a desperate kind of laughter. It wasn’t funny, really it wasn’t, but now she can’t stop laughing, hysteria warring with the lump lodged in her already raw throat. Clearly, a cigarette was preferable to the sudden clarity of coherence, so Nell extracted the nub of a menthol to ignite. Shit. Her hands shook slightly as she fumbled with her lighter. The fog had been receding since her last shot, her self-imposed state of profound delirium giving ground to a cold and absolute awareness.
So, chain-smoking. Meditating on how the thin papery tube felt on calloused finger pads and the way nicotine made her lips sting ever so slightly - until the ritual of smoke and no thought eased her back into a more customary level of abject anxiety. “3:45”, was all her smug phone had to say on the matter. Time was clearly coming to a complete halt and no one gave a fuck, so just smoke and stare at the rearview mirror without really seeing anything at all.

She noted disinterestedly that her hair had started to dread again. Habitually bleached it into a sullen, straw-like submission and dyed whimsical colors, it was currently a blue/green cloud of tangles that might have been curls in a previous life. It was getting uncomfortably long for summer in New Orleans, tickling her sunken collarbones uncomfortably when she couldn’t help but squirm in a neurotically awkward parody of patience.

She flipped open her cheap plastic phone for the umpteenth time and checked the clock. 3:47. Nine whole minutes since she’d called him, which meant she had least eleven more nauseating minutes to murder before she could try Disaster’s phone again. IF she didn’t want to just blow her wad now, and gamble that he was for real “on his way”, which she was utterly unable to anticipate or calculate. A faint taste of copper flooded her mouth, a worrying signal of how long she’d been gnawing on her own cracked bottom lip in frustrated “strategy” - as though any mother fucking thing wasn’t equally as likely with that crusty fucking loser - no telling exactly how long her eyes had been fixed vaguely on the ugly burn mark right above a rapidly-fading carebears sticker on her dashboard. Her piece of shit Geo-Metro must litter literally hundreds of orphaned stickers each sticky summer, throwing a kind of dada-ist spin on her usual trail of glitter, more glitter, and the lingering scent of strong patchouli laced liberally with jasmine. Nell thought that the jasmine tended to soften the other, lending a sinuously ethereal note to balance the musky oil. Less hippy, more gypsy - and god FUCKING damn it, where the FUCK was Disaster? Wrist flick, screen unlocked: 3:51.

New Orleans in July was hell, for sure, and her dope man was late again.

 
**************************

DUNdedadada-DUNdedadada-DU-

And…bitch buttoned. Again. Nell’s poignantly hot little broken smile was really starting to get to him. The bitch had been blowing his phone up all day, his iPhone‘s lock screen displaying “sad fucking junky face” for hours now. Hours upon hours.

The self-styled gutter punk known as ‘Disaster’ gritted his teeth and barely managed to suppress a wild urge to break his phone, while also managing not to fuck up the meticulous operation he’d been engaged in when she’d called. Again. Long, delicate fingers carefully scooped each dose of heroin onto his scale, then neatly into tiny baggies. They, in turn, entered the convoluted realm of pockets and nooks that was his military coat. Vintage, great stuff - which he’d patched to shit, of course, and then worn through ten years of drug deals, riots and rainbow gatherings. It not only had pedigree, it had enough pockets that most, check it, most cops actually gave up before checking it thoroughly. Or even getting anywhere near where Disaster stashed the good shit.

DUNdedadada-DUNdedadada-DUNde-

Fuck! Disaster secreted the rest of his drugs into The Coat, and took a deep breath. Fuck, he’s told her time and time again: if he doesn’t answer? Well, then - He. Is. Out. Of. Shit. Or re-upping, or with the fucking cops! No, he didn’t like torturing sad little drug addicts. The urge to break something, possibly her, flared again, but passed quicker this time. It helped that he had less of a temper than he generally liked his customers to assume. Sure, he was tall and weird and strong and loved NIN and mindless destruction as an abstract concept, but frankly? He disliked having to fuck people up personally, especially since there were so many eager little street kids in NOLA, all acne and dirty hoodies with pockets full of smilies and paraphernalia. They all wanted to be on the For Real Dealer fastrack program and were willing to spill a little blood in the pursuit of that dream. How american! How patriotic, really, so who was he to deny them? And less actual head-breaking he had to do.

Either way, he didn’t want to feel violent towards the chick at all. Fuck, he liked Nell. Honestly, he actually did, not like most of the pathetic fuckers he took money from. In fact, he really, really liked her - enough that he hadn’t beaten her to death with that stupid fucking violin case she thought was so fucking clever instead of a purse. Well, and it was clever. Clever and weird and intricately detailed - she’d spent an entire 48-hour period of dope sickness hand-painting a network of vein-like ribbons in a myriad of volatile colors, neatly interspersed with odd bits of old welsh poetry. OK, it was gorgeous, gorgeous and unique in a way that sucked poor saps in with its’ unbidden intimacy. Nell sucked in interest and esteem and love in like an imploding star, and occasionally she even managed to radiate that same love and light so intensely that her brief moments of glory could somehow outweigh all traces of the miasma she usually swam in.