All or Nothing by Jesse Schenker

Author:Jesse Schenker
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

Fond

* * *

Fond: The roasted bits of meat left at the bottom of a pan when sautéing at a high temperature.

I knew I had hit bottom, but I didn’t know how to climb back up yet. My body needed drugs to survive, and my brain didn’t know any other way. I had already surrendered, but before I could turn things around I continued to go through the motions of one more fall.

Less than twenty-four hours after returning from Orlando, Gibson and I were back where we’d started—broke, dope-sick, and desperate for cash. Gibson had disappeared hours earlier in an endless pursuit of crack. Meanwhile, I still had some stolen jewelry, tools, clothing, and other odds and ends we’d nicked, and I needed to figure out how to pawn them. I knew the jewelry was my best bet. On the streets even kitschy costume junk moves fast, and I had a couple of bags of big gaudy necklaces, brooches, and dangling earrings made of metal and glass. I collected my stuff and slowly opened the door, careful to look both ways. Instead of checking for cars before crossing a street, I was doing a visual sweep for cops before leaving our motel room. It had been hours since my last fix and the tweak was in full effect, following my every move. I needed to walk around and get out of my head.

I made my way down the street, past the cast of sketchy characters who inhabited the Florida night, until I reached the gas station. This was a favored harbor for derelicts, addicts, oddballs, and a group of teenagers who regularly loitered out front listening to music on their stolen iPods. The gas pumps, partially sheltered under a pavilion of cracked plastic and shorting fluorescent lights, never seemed to be working. The station owner, a squat Indian guy with a thick, neatly trimmed beard, was always calling the cops. They’d sweep in, bust up the crowd, and leave, but like clockwork everyone would come back as soon as the cops were gone.

My usual routine consisted of panhandling or talking to random strangers, basically doing anything to rustle up a couple of bucks. I spent hours sweating people for loose change or odd dollar bills that I could combine to buy a bag of crack. Over time I had become an expert at reading people. I was a cognitive contortionist, concocting a story that I somehow sensed would earn me sympathy with whoever I was talking to. On a typical night I’d come up with ten different versions of myself. To an overweight young woman, I was the gentleman, opening her car door for her and bombarding her with compliments that I hoped she would exchange for a few bucks and a hot meal. Other times I’d hone in on a soccer mom, telling her a heartbreaking tale of my abusive father who spent his days beating the crap out of my helpless mother and me. For a trusting old lady, I’d go into high gear, often overplaying the sympathy card.

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