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Once Is Enough

Bob Strother

    Reba had been clean for two years when her husband Todd brought home the coke. It was balled up in the corner of a plastic sandwich bag and tied off with a yellow twist-tie.
    “Brian gave it to me,” he said, his eyes sparkling with mischief. He held the baggie between his thumb and forefinger, waggling it back and forth in front of her like a small, forbidden treasure.
    Her eyes followed the coke, a terrible combination of fear and longing causing her pulse to quicken. She tore her gaze away and turned to set the table for dinner. “I thought you two were discussing how to liquidate your dad’s estate. How did drugs come into it?”
    Todd shrugged. “We were doing that, but you know my younger brother; he’s always been something of a free spirit.” He dropped the baggie into his palm. “And he knows I’ve never tried anything.”
    “Neither have I,” Reba lied—she had to, didn’t she? Todd knew nothing of her former life—“so there’s no reason to start now.”
    Todd moved up behind her and slid his hands around her shoulders. He still clutched the baggie in his hand and the feel of it against her skin was almost hot. “According to Brian, having sex after coke is pretty damn terrific. So it’s kind of like a gift for both of us.” He nuzzled the skin of her neck. “How about it, honey, want to try some?”
    Reba swallowed. “The lasagna is almost ready.”
    “Just this once?” Todd persisted, pressing his lips to her ear. “If we don’t like it, I promise we’ll toss the rest of it. Turn off the oven; the lasagna will stay warm.”
    She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out. What could it hurt? Just this once? It’s not like I’d even know where to get the stuff anymore. She felt the warmth from Todd’s body spreading to her own. “Okay,” she said, “just this one time.”
    An hour later, she lay on her side in the bed, resting her head on Todd’s shoulder, her body still tingling with the last of the rush.
    “So what’d you think?” he asked.
    Reba let her fingers play over the fine hair on Todd’s chest. “I don’t know. What did you think?”
    “Well, the sex was great, but it’s always great. I mean, I liked the feeling okay, but it’s not going to replace Johnny Walker Red for me. Besides, booze is probably a lot less expensive.”
    “Uh-huh.” Reba slipped out of bed and pulled on her robe. “I feel the same.”
    They chatted over plates of heated-up, slightly dried-out lasagna, and then Reba watched as Todd retied the top of the coke baggie.
    “So,” he said, grinning, “should I flush this down the commode like they do on TV when the cops are pounding on the door?”
    Reba managed a smile even as her heart stumbled. “I don’t hear any pounding. I think the kitchen trash can is good enough.”
    While Todd showered, Reba cleared the table and took the evening’s garbage out to the city-supplied refuse bin. Then she returned to the bedroom, a small package of white powder tucked safely in the pocket of her robe.

.....

    She waited a week before dipping into the baggie again—just a little toot to elevate her mood, nothing serious—then five days before the next time. Within three weeks, her meager supply was exhausted. She toughed it out for a couple of days, then sat down with her checkbook. Todd provided her a household budget of three hundred dollars a week—enough for groceries, gas, and a few incidentals, but not much else. How much could she take out and still get by? An hour later, she stopped by the ATM and got a hundred bucks in twenties, then nosed her Accord toward the interstate and downtown Memphis.
    The Southside was still seedy—bars and strip joints languished under sputtering neon signs, homeless people camped in the alleys, flanked by derelicts huddled in doorways, eyes vacant but somehow watchful.
    Reba parked at the curb next to a two-story brick building with beer signs in the window, and Paradise Room emblazoned over the entrance. It hadn’t changed much in two years, at least not on the outside—same red door, same torn green awning with A Gentlemen’s Club scripted on the sides.
    Four years she’d worked here as a dancer: three sets on stage every evening, lap dances between sets, sometimes a little something extra in one of the shadowy back rooms. It hadn’t been all bad. She’d liked it in a way—the music, the drugs, the excitement. Living a life where every emotion was almost too intense to bear. There was a heady quality to that kind of action, but it was also dangerous. You got strung out and burned out. Girls died young, or found themselves alone and desperate with no place to go.
    She’d been one of the lucky ones—saw the darkness at the end of the tunnel and managed to break away. She’d cleaned herself up, got a day job waitressing, and, ultimately, found Todd.
    So what was she doing here again? Did she miss it—some element of that old life—the euphoric soaring sensation of the coke? She hadn’t wanted those thoughts to reappear. She’d escaped, after all, had a so-called idyllic life in the suburbs. But they’d come creeping out when Todd brought home the baggie of coke, the same way a rat waits for things to get still and silent before it shows.
    Reba got out of the Accord and headed for the red door.
    The club’s interior was the same as she remembered, dark and musty, smelling of stale beer and cigarettes. No crowd this time of day, a lone bartender under feeble orange lights behind the bar, polishing glasses.
    She walked over to the bar. “Is Rusty here?”
    The bartender looked her over. “You looking for work?”
    “I’m just looking for Rusty.”
    He shrugged. “He’s in the back office. It’s—”
    “I know where it is.” She found her way past the juke box, down a dimly lit hallway, and knocked on the door.
    “Yeah?”
    She pushed the door open and walked inside. The bar’s owner—a tall, owl-faced man in his sixties—sat behind a cluttered desk tapping on a laptop computer. He glanced up, gave her a blank stare, and then slowly raised his eyebrows as recognition dawned on his face.
    “Fawn,” he said, rising, “long time no see, sweetheart.”
    “It’s just plain Reba now.”
    “Whatever; it don’t matter. You kept yourself nice. What’s it been, a couple years?”
    “Something like that.”
    “You thinking of coming back?” he asked.
    Reba shook her head. When she spoke her voice was raspy, like sand driven by wind against a window. “I just want to buy some cocaine.”
    Rusty raised his palms. “What—you think I’m a drug dealer?”
    “You always kept a stash for ... girls in need, didn’t you?”
    He stared at her for a moment, then opened his desk drawer, pulled out a half dozen glassine packets, and dropped them on the desktop. “Are you in need, Fawn?”
    “I have money,” she said. “I’ve got a hundred dollars.”
    “A Franklin won’t buy you much these days; you been out of touch, sweetheart.” He got up and came around the desk. “But, hell, Fawn, you don’t need money.” He stood very close to her, bourbon on his breath, and ran a finger down her cheek—his smile as cruel as an open cut. “The way you look, you never did, did you, honey?”
    Reba looked over at the packets, glistening snowy bright under the desk lamp, a siren song in clear plastic. Just this once, they murmured, a sultry rhapsody of promised bliss. She closed her eyes, felt the pulse throbbing hard in her throat, and said, “Not this time, Rusty. Not anymore.”
    She turned and hurried from the room.

.....

    Reba arrived home later that afternoon to find Todd standing at the kitchen sink, eating a muffin left over from breakfast.
    “We have plates, you know,” she said, laughing softly.
    “This is more efficient, fewer dishes to wash.” He popped the last bite into his mouth and mumbled, “Where’ve you been?”
    “I went by to see Brian.”
    Todd turned to face her. “Brian? Why? I thought you didn’t even like Brian.”
    “I don’t, particularly, but it was business.”
     “Huh? What business could you possibly have with my brother?”
    Reba slipped the plastic, twist-tied baggie from her purse and dangled it in front of her husband.
    A crease appeared between Todd’s eyebrows. “Coke? Are you kidding? I thought we didn’t care for it.”
    “No, you didn’t care for it,” Reba said. She sidled over, slipped her arms around his waist and pressed her body against his. “Actually, I found it extra exciting when we made love afterward.”
    A grin cracked Todd’s face. “You were pretty animated, now that you mention it. I suppose you doing a little coke every once in a while wouldn’t hurt.”
    She felt Todd’s body responding to her closeness. “You’ve got half your dad’s estate coming soon. We could have sex more often,” she teased, “if you added a couple hundred a month to my household account.”
    “I could do that,” Todd whispered, “for the right price.”
    Reba smiled, took his hand, and pulled him toward the bedroom.
    Trailing along behind her, Todd said, “I guess having a brother who’s a source isn’t such a bad thing after all. I’d hate to think about you trying to buy drugs on some shadowy street corner.”
    She clenched the baggie tightly in her palm. “You don’t need to worry about that, sweetheart. I wouldn’t have a clue where to look.”

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