A Scanner Darkly

“Jeez!” he said to the back of her. I know it’s Donna, he thought. She just doesn’t flash on who I am, that she knows me. Scared, I guess; scared I’m going to hustle her. You got to be careful, he thought, when you come to a strange chick on the street; they’re all prepared now. Too much has happened to them.

Funky little knife, he thought. Chicks shouldn’t carry those; any guy could turn her wrist and the blade back on her any time he wanted. I could have. If I really wanted to get her. He stood there, feeling angry. I know that was Donna, he thought.

As he started to go back toward his parked car, he realized that the girl had halted, out of the movement of passers-by, and now stood silently gazing at him.

He walked cautiously toward her. “One night,” he said, “me and Bob and another chick had some old Simon and Garfunkel tapes, and you were sitting there—” She had been filling capsules with high-grade death, one by one, painstakingly. For over an hour. El Primo. Numero Uno: Death. After she had finished she had laid a cap on each of them and they had dropped them, all of them together. Except her. I just sell them, she had said. If I start dropping them I eat up all my profits.

The girl said, “I thought you were going to knock me down and bang me.”

“No,” he said. “I just wondered if you …” He hesitated. “Like, wanted a ride. On the sidewalk?” he said, startled. “In broad daylight?”

“Maybe in a doorway. Or pull me into a car.”

“I know you,” he protested. “And Arctor would snuff me if I did that.”

“Well, I didn’t recognize you.” She came toward him three steps. “I’m sorta nearsighted.”

“You ought to wear contacts.” She had, he thought, lovely large dark warm eyes. Which meant she wasn’t on junk.

“I did have. But one fell out into a punch bowl. Acid punch, at a party. It sank to the bottom, and I guess someone dipped it up and drank it. I hope it tasted good; it cost me thirty-five dollars, originally.”

“You want a ride where you’re going?”

“You’ll bang me in the car.”

“No,” he said, “I can’t get it on right now, these last couple of weeks. It must be something they’re adulterating all the stuff with. Some chemical.”

“That’s a neat-o line, but I’ve heard it before. Everybody bangs me.” She amended that. “Tries to, anyhow. That’s what it’s like to be a chick. I’m suing one guy in court right now, for molestation and assault. We’re asking punitive damages in excess of forty thousand.”

“How far’d he get?”

Donna said, “Got his hand around my boob.”

“That isn’t worth forty thousand.”

Together, they walked back toward his car.

“You got anything to sell?” he asked. “I’m really hurting. I’m virtually out, in fact, hell, I am out, come to think of it. Even a few, if you could spare a few.”

“I can get you some.”

“Tabs,” he said. “I don’t shoot up.”

“Yes.” She nodded intently, head down. “But, see, they’re real scarce right now—the supply’s temporarily dried up. You probably discovered that already. I can’t get you very many, but—”

“When?” he broke in. They had reached his car; he halted, opened the door, got in. On the far side Donna got in. They sat side by side.

“Day after tomorrow,” Donna said. “If I can git ahold of this guy. I think I can.”

Shit, he thought. Day after tomorrow. “No sooner? Not like, say, tonight?”

“Tomorrow at the earliest.”

“How much?”

“Sixty dollars a hundred.”

“Oh, Jeez,” he said. “That’s a burn.”

“They’re super good. I’ve got them from him before; they’re really not what you usually buy into. Take my word for it—they’re worth it. Actually, I prefer to get them from him rather than from anybody else—when I can. He doesn’t always have them. See, he just took a trip down south, I guess. He just got back. He picked them up himself, so I know they’re good for sure. And you don’t have to pay me in advance. When I get them. Okay? I trust you.”

“I never front,” he said.

“Sometimes you have to.”

“Okay,” he said. “Then can you get me at least a hundred?” He tried to figure, rapidly, how many he could get; in two days he probably could raise one hundred twenty dollars and get two hundred tabs from her. And if he ran across a better deal in the meantime, from other people who were holding, he could forget her deal and buy from them. That was the advantage of never fronting, that plus never being burned.

“It’s lucky for you that you ran into me,” Donna said as he started up his car and backed out into traffic. “I’m supposed to see this one dude in about an hour, and he’d probably take all I could get … you’d have been out of luck. This was your day.” She smiled, and he did too.

“I wish you could get them sooner,” he said.

“If I do …” Opening her purse, she got out a little note pad and a pen that had SPARKS BATTERY TUNE-UP stamped on it. “How do I get hold of you, and I forget your name.”