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Writer
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Boston
Gender: Male
Posts: 27
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The Black Card
Hey, everyone. Haven't been on in a long while. Ever have those spells, when you're just busy and tired and you don't feel creative? Now my mind's racing again.
So this is the beginning of the beginning of something. Just wondered what anyone thought. Thanks!
When the phone rings Valerie Lewis minimizes her web browser, the rectangle box on the task bar reads, “restless legs syndro…” It’s almost dawn.
“Hotline.”
“I got your number off some website. I can’t sleep.”
“Would you like to talk about it?”
Valerie maximizes the browser. This guy is like all the others. A whine bag. Like most addicts, more than willing to share his story. Just once though, she’d like to share hers. But there aren’t hotlines for hotline operators.
“So I said, ‘Get off my back. Sobriety is not worth it.' I’m just as miserable now as when I was at my bottom.”
Valerie minimizes the browser again. Now the task bar reads, “hotlines for hotline o…”
“How long has it been?”
“Five years.”
Valerie quotes her cheat sheet, “Keep your sobriety first to make it last.”
Shit, she thought. That sounded a little hollow.
“What?”
“Um,” Valerie air-ties a noose around her neck. “God will never give you more than you can handle?”
Nothing.
“There is no chemical solution to –”
“To a spiritual problem?” The man snickers. “Try again.”
“This too shall pass?”
“Wow, you really suck at this.”
“Hey, now. 'Easy does it.'”
Dial tone. Valerie takes her headset off. The truth is, she didn’t always suck at this. She used to be one of the best. Out of twenty-odd operators, she was one of the few the nonprofit paid. For almost five years she really felt she made a difference. Then, inexplicably, she wasn't effective anymore. She tried talking to her friends in the program about it. Most women recommended more exercise, a few men recommended sex. Neither seemed right.
Valerie needed cheering up.
The next few calls depressed her even more, though. A single father counting out change from his daughter’s piggy bank, a high school girl asking how to be sure you’ve been raped, an old man describing sex with a passed out coke whore. I was never like them, she thought. Never.
Another call.
“Morning. How can I help?”
“Oh, it’s early where you are, too? Figured you’d be in California or something. Or God, even India.”
“We haven’t outsourced social services just yet.”
“Hallo! My name is… Beverlee. Please state your drug of choice and I am very sorry with you.”
Valerie winced.
“What’s on your mind?”
“Well, I am newly sober. Very newly. Again. And I just got home from BARK and already I feel like relapsing.”
“No wonder. That place is terrible.”
“You know it?”
Valerie looked at her cheat sheet pinned to the cork board above her monitor. She didn't use it in the beginning, but now it helped. STEP 3: Ask caller about their habit.
“Um,” she took a breath, “what’s your drug of choice?”
The caller seemed to be about as present and willing as Valerie. A television droned through the line, soft and monotonous.
“Listen,” the caller said. “I should just go. This isn’t what I need.”
“What do you need,” Valerie wanted to know.
“Fuck it. I don’t need a sounding board, I need dope.”
“Wait!”
Valerie expected a dial tone.
“Yeah?”
“Wait," Valerie breathed. "Don’t.”
“Stop. Police. Murder." The caller was making a rustling noise. Valerie could hear draws being pulled and pushed, opened, shut. His voice sounded playful now, "You know something?”
Valerie didn’t. In fact, then, she knew less than nothing.
“The only reason I’m not high right now is because I’m broke,” he muttered. “Nobody trusts me with money.” The sound of a door. Coat hangers scraping against a pole. Metal on metal. Pockets being turned inside out. Coins falling. "Hello? Aren’t you supposed to-”
“I have money. Cash”
Valerie bit her fist. Before she could hear anything she unplugged her headset from the telephone receiver.
She needed a drink. And although it wasn't her preference, a drink helped the cravings, sanded the edge. But she was in recovery. People in recovery don’t keep stocked liquor cabinets. They keep books on their nightstand. They keep telephone numbers and business cards. They keep mp3 players and gym memberships.
“One day at a time,” she said. The clock on the computer screen teased: 7:24 AM. “Only a day. After that, I can do whatever I want.”
Valerie sat on the edge of her bed, looking at her lap. She massaged her knees, her shins.
She looked up at the computer. WE DID NOT FIND RESULTS FOR: “hotlines for hotline operators”. She turned the monitor off.
It was too early, she thought. For anything. So she watched dawn drool into her bedroom. First through the chinks of her roman shades. Down the sill. A streak on the caramel carpet. First blush was telling, she thought. The streak on the floor expanded, illuminating dust, a stain. It inched toward Valerie's toes.
She remembered a quote from her first sponsor, a self-righteous bible thumper. "Backsliding begins when knee-bending stops." For Valerie, knee-bending never began.
Her second sponsor: When all else fails, follow directions.
The cheat sheet: Easy does it.
The caller: Fuck it.
Ten minutes later Valerie sat on the edge of her bed again. This time she had on sneakers. And sunglasses. Holding her car keys.
Valerie didn’t think of her last meeting. She didn’t think of the last time a newcomer thanked her for support. And she didn’t think of all the people, good and bad, she successfully talked out of relapsing.
She didn’t think of anything. She just fingered her black hair and smiled.
Then the phone rang.
It was the caller. She trusted him. He reminded her of a kid she went to high school with. Or a guy she dated. Or worked with. A cousin. They would meet for "coffee" and consider pooling their resources.
Half an hour later they were in an ATM vestibule together.
“Shit,” she said, tapping the screen. “Usually lets me go into negative.”
“That’s what you meant by money? A negative balance in your checking account qualifies as money? Shit, we should just rob some old lady or something. First person who walks in here.”
“Shut the fuck up already,” she said. “And you look too nice to rob anyone.”
“Listen, lady,” the stranger began.
“Stop calling me lady. We’re about the same age.”
Valerie shoved her bank card back in her wallet. The caller invaded this personal space, too.
“What about that one?”
“What one? Oh, that’s not even a credit card. I don’t think. And it’s not activated and I don’t have the pin.”
“Let me see.”
Valerie looked at her partner in crime. He was light skinned, with dark features. She figured he had some Spanish or something in him. Pretty, she thought. For a junk bomb. He looked like a good guy, too.
“Here.” Valerie took out the black card. She’d had it in her wallet for months now. Maybe longer. She never knew what the hell it was. Just another non-solicited piece of junk mail. But she kept it.
“Wait,” she said, pausing. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Well, you should. You asked me, like, five times on the way over here.”
Valerie didn’t remember.
“It’s Poppy,” he said and took the card. He flipped it around in front of the light on the cash machine’s screen. It was black. Jet black, with no signature bar, or discernable magnetic strip. No numbers. Nothing.
“This,” he looked at Valerie, “is weird.”
She held her purse against her stomach and shrugged.
Poppy flipped the card around, shaking his head. He put it in the machine’s mouth anyway.
The welcome screen blinked: ENTER PIN.
Valerie said, “No clue.”
“Well, what’s your other pin number?”
“Yeah, right.”
“Like I’m going to try and steal your card. To do what, pay your bills?”
Valerie edged past Poppy. She covered the key pad with her body, squatting a bit.
Beep, beep, boop, beep. Enter.
She stepped back and stood next to Poppy. They were a team. Facing the unknown.
The screen faded to black. It made a sound. A couple beeps and it ejected the card.
It fell on the floor. Next to Valerie’s heart next to Poppy’s gut.
Then a scratching sound. Blink.
FAST CASH?
Last edited by skullfire : 08-03-2006 at 03:04 PM.
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