Dope Read Online Free PDF Page B

just to get hooked on booze or coke or pills, and I was trying not to let that happen. Instead I went to the closet and took down a wooden cigar box from the top shelf. Inside was a little bit of weed and a packet of cigarette papers. I rolled a stick for myself and lit it up. I didn’t worry about weed. You never got hooked. It just helped you sleep.
    I looked through the paper. There on page five was Shelley, a close-up of her head and shoulders, with her hands crossed right under her neck. She was wearing a pair of big earrings and a necklace and bracelet to match, all dripping with jewels. Paste, apparently, but it did look good. No wonder they’d let her take off with the bracelet.
    From the top drawer of the dresser I got a big black scrapbook and a pair of scissors and some glue and took it all back to the armchair. I looked through the scrapbook. On the first page was a photo of Shelley in satin shorts and a little checked top tied at the waist. It was from a crime magazine, her first modeling job. She was supposed to be the victim of the Pillowcase Strangler. Her hair was darker then and she was still skinny then, like a kid. That was over ten years ago. I’d been so proud of her when it came out that I’d nicked a solid silver key chain from Alexander’s for her.
    Next was a picture from Real Confessions. She was wearing a cotton dress and her mouth was open in a big scream. I didn’t read the story that went along with that one—raped by her neighbor, I think. After that were more pictures from magazines, her first few advertisements, and then some playbills from shows she’d been in. They hadn’t been big parts, just the chorus line or small roles without lines, like The Maid or Girl Number Two. Still, they were Broadway shows.
    Toward the end was an ad for a show at a supper club on the East Side. Don Holiday and his Christmas Magic. Shelley was a dancing elf. I’d seen the show and afterward I’d gone backstage. Shelley could only talk for a minute, though, because Don Holiday was waiting to take her out to dinner. That was the last time I’d seen her.
    I cut out the new photo and pasted it into the last blank page. Then I smoked a little more weed and went to bed. Tea might not hook you, but sometimes it gave you crazy dreams. That night I dreamed of Mr. and Mrs. Nelson chasing Jerry McFall around and around the big expensive rug in Nelson’s office. I stood off to the side, wondering when I could step in and tag him and claim my thousand bucks.

Chapter Five
    P aul had a big place on the Bowery that he’d had ever since the war ended and dope had become easy to get again. While the war was on and for a few years afterward the only way to get it was scripts; find yourself a croaker who’d write you a prescription for morphine or some other junk and then find a druggist stupid enough or poor enough to fill the script. But since then dope had flooded the streets again and the going was good, and getting better every day. I sure had picked a dumb time to give it up. A dumb time to get arrested and serve thirty days in the Women’s House of Detention doing cold turkey, two years ago now. I spent all of the war and the hard times afterward running around from doctor to drugstore and back again, and now you could buy the stuff on practically any street corner in Harlem and through plenty of easy connections downtown.
    It wasn’t the first time I’d quit. I’d gotten off dope plenty of times before, sometimes for weeks or months, once for almost a year. Bur this time, I was doing things differently. Like not using drugs, for example. That seemed to help with the quitting. And not being around dope and people who used it so much. That helped, too. Which was why I hadn’t seen Paul in two years.
    The Bowery was empty except for a handful of drunks scattered around, arguing about where their next drink was coming from. A man and a woman