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The Dealer

Gibson Culbreth

    The Container Store had just opened a month ago; it’s large, rectangular stature throwing sweet shade into the late July heat. At first London paid it no mind. She and Atticus were in the throes of love, playing house in their first dirty little studio together only a few blocks away from the Department of National Defense.
    Atticus guided her inside the store, lightly pushing her through the rows of shelving and boxes and carts. She had her hangover shades on and her sundress was strapless and slipping continuously and she just wanted to sit down and drink some water to make up for the bottle of wine they’d split for breakfast. She caught sight of herself in a disco ball patterned jewelry box and her stained, creased lips pulled up to reveal pink teeth. She moved her hand to her mouth and Atticus brushed past her, grabbing onto her wrist and tugging her along faster now.
    “Why’re we here?” She asked, glancing at the clerks whose eyes were peeled back like boiled eggs.
    “We’ve just got to get some tiny gift bags. That’s all.” Atticus was smiling, his purpled teeth gleaming in the fluorescent light. His hair was crazed, still un-brushed and tangled in the back from their escapades the night before. His t-shirt had a hole in the armpit and there was a stain on his jeans. London came into herself long enough to realize that the both of them looked atrocious, that the sales peoples eyes were glued to them so tightly because they appeared to be two mad people encroaching upon the territory of the ones with cash. Little did they know that Atticus had lifted some poor suckers wallet a few nights ago and they had some cash, so they could be people too.
    It took Atticus roughly twenty minutes to find the tiny clear bags for his operation that night. As they paid for the bags with an ostentatious fifty-dollar bill the clerk glared at the pair of them, closely examining the bill before begrudgingly accepting it into her cash drawer. She shot a look to London that was awash in pity and left her shivering all the way into the humid air of the city. She thought she could feel the building sigh as they headed on their way. At one point, maybe not even too long ago, she would have blended into these people and their real lives. She lost herself to a brief moment of memory. Of her mother taking her to a store similar to this one and trying to buy things to keep her books in for college, of her sister talking excitedly about visiting her and the Smithsonian and how normal her life would be if those things were the true things. But Atticus was pulling with his crazy hair and dirty hands and he smiled at her quickly like a camera flash and she fell into step beside him, because it seemed to her now that if she was not beside him she might just get lost in the tangled web of her own deceit.

    She went with Atticus as he bought weed. They went to a park and smoked the last two of their good cigarettes down to the filter and they waited. They sat side by side but did not touch, and they stayed quiet, listening to the forest of bamboo hollowly knock about in the wind around them. Atticus’s t-shirt was sticking to his sweaty back and London kept her arms clamped over her chest to stop any slippage of her broken down dress. She wished quickly, as the sobriety began to set in, that she had extra money for a new dress. A shiny new dress with good elastic, that wouldn’t fall down with her sweat, maybe one that fit her new slimmer frame. But she knew that the money they earned in this deal was for staving off the sobriety and keeping the two of them as alive as possible.
    Atticus was already starting to shake a little bit, and he had gotten deathly quiet. The bags under his eyes seemed to shun the pale skin around them and his sweat made his forehead gleam under his curls. He caught London staring; her eyes wide and listless and he forced a smile for her sake. He leaned over and kissed her quickly.
    “I love you, you know that right?” He placed his hand over hers, squeezing it.
    “I know. I love you too.”
    “I know that this isn’t ideal, but I’m really glad you’re here with me.”
    London could only grin like a silly little girl on a television show as the goopy sensation of love dripped through her limbs. A few moments later bamboo shoots began to pop behind them, underfoot of heavy boots. A guy, he couldn’t have been older than 25, stepped forward from the brush. He had a baseball cap down shading his eyes and he wore an oversized black leather coat. London could only imagine how warm it must have been under all that disguise.
    Usually London tried to ignore the drug deals Atticus made. She never asked him questions and she never needed to know details. That day though, since she didn’t want to sit in their apartment on their sweat stained mattress and wonder when he was coming back, she was mercilessly exposed to the reality of their problem. She saw Atticus take the weed and a bottle of pills that would keep them going for a while longer and she saw the guy take the money and count it, and hold it up to the sunlight to expose the water marks. And then they shook hands and the guy smiled at her, pearly teeth under a shadow and then he turned and left. Atticus pressed some white pills into her palm and she sighed, exhausting the breath she’d been holding since the cigarette ended. She placed them on her tongue, their chalky skin stretching across her taste buds and she swallowed.
    “What is it?”
    “Oxycodone.” Atticus popped two and they lay back in the grass, sweating and waiting for the pills to start working.

    Atticus was marketing to college kids, specifically freshmen who had no real idea of what they were buying and what it normally cost. The first buyer was a kid in a green striped shirt. For some reason that shirt had London convinced at first glance that he was a rugby player, even though she knew that rugby wasn’t exactly an American thing.
    The kid came into their bare apartment and stood with his head down, his hands in his pockets while Atticus rooted around the kitchen; looking for the coffee canister he kept their drugs in.
    “Hey there,” the kid said in London’s general direction. She was sitting in the middle of their mattress on the floor, a deck of cards arching across the thin sheet. She looked up at him, her vision slightly blurred and she nodded her head, hoping that he wouldn’t remember what she looked like and at the same moment wishing she looked better.
    “Aha!” Atticus sprang victoriously from the kitchen and London resumed her game of solitaire. The cards were swaying like flames below her fingers but she kept moving them around, shuffling and replacing them all the while trying to nail down the rules in her head. She couldn’t remember the point of the game, if they all had to be the same color or suit or if that even mattered. The harder she concentrated the lower the voices in the room became.
    As Atticus and the rugby kid were talking in the corner London suddenly felt violently lonely. She could feel the harsh judgment of her mother present in the room as if she were standing there, pointing to Atticus while he was handing this kid his weed and shouting “this boy isn’t good enough for you! I always expected better!” She shuttered quickly, pulling her eyes off the cards long enough to grab a plastic bottle of vodka they had picked up on their way home, out from under Atticus’s pillow. She unscrewed the top and gulped four burning, searing seconds. She stopped when Atticus smacked the back of her head. The last bit went up her nose, burning her eyes and nostrils.
    “What are you doing? That’s for later!” He screwed the top back on and slipped it into his back pocket. She could hear him apologize to rugby kid and shake his hand.
    London felt as though she were standing next to herself in the room, shaking her pale slumped shoulders on the bed and pulling at her hair in attempt to get her to look to her boyfriend. Her boyfriend who was so tall and lithe and beautiful and who was fucking her life up one pill at a time, one deal at a time, one hour at a time. She could still feel the stares of the sales people at the store, of the darkened drug dealer’s eyes, and of this kid burying themselves into the skin on her face like burs. She reached for the cards to smear them across the bed and then she lifted herself. The kid backed out the door as London launched herself at Atticus, catching him around the hips with both her arms and driving him back into the wall. He bounced off immediately, kicking out and catching her in the stomach.
    “What are you doing?” He grunted, trying to shell her off of his waist. She let go with her right hand to grab the bottle from his back pocket and he kicked again, this time trouncing her collarbone. She yelled out, one half hearted shriek while still clutching the bottle.
    She stood and ran, slamming the front door in his face and racing down the hallway with no shoes on, her feet slapping against the slick tile floor for a few moments before she felt his arms elapse her, grabbing onto her around the middle and tightening as he lifted her feet from the floor. He walked her all the way back to the apartment, kicked the front door closed with his leg and then threw her onto the bed.
    Once she was there he lay down next to her and weaved his arms tightly around her middle. She did not cry or move further into him but she thought, “this is my life. This is my boyfriend and this is where I live and these are the things we do and this is normal. This is my life.” And she took another drink of the vodka before passing it to him.
    “I know this whole situation sucks, but how else are we going to make money?”
    “We can get jobs.”
    Atticus’s breath was sweet and smoky and hot as it brushed against her ear. “I don’t know about you, but I doubt anyone would hire me. This is just a temporary thing until we can get our feet on the ground ya know? We’ll be ok. Are you worried?” He was stroking her hand, each of her fingers individually. He kissed the back of her neck and she could feel his forehead press against her.
    “Yes, I’m worried.”
    “I’ll take care of you London. I’ll always take care of you.” He raised himself up on one elbow and curled his face around to meet hers. “I love you, and I didn’t move here with you to get you caught up in a shitty world. Right now, this is just a means to an end. I promise it won’t last forever.” And then he kissed her, so tenderly that she almost forgot the bruise blooming on her collarbone in the shape of his shoe, that the rugby kid and the drug dealer in the woods got blurry and faded from memory and all she could see and hear was him and the love he carried inside of him, all for her. Just for her.



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