Limitless

I sighed again and said, ‘I don’t like banks.’ I handed him up the twenty-two five. He took it and put it into the inside pocket of his jacket. He walked over to my desk, turned around and leaned back against it.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘I want to talk to you about something.’

Here it came. I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. But I tried to play dumb.

‘You didn’t like the treatment,’ I said, and then added, ‘It was just a draft.’

‘Fuck that,’ he said, with a dismissive gesture of the hand, ‘I’m not talking about that. And anyway, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.’

‘What?’

‘Those pills I stole. Are you going to tell me you didn’t notice?’

‘What about them?’

‘What do you think? I want more.’

‘I don’t have any.’

He smiled, as though we were playing a game – which of course we were.

I shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘I don’t.’

He pushed himself up from the desk and walked over towards me. He stopped where he’d stopped before and slowly reached his hand back into the inside pocket of his jacket. I was scared, but didn’t flinch. He took out something which I couldn’t see properly. He looked at me, smiled again and then with rapid a motion of his hand released the blade of a long flick-knife. He placed the tip of the blade at the side of my neck and moved it up and down, scraping it gently against my skin. ‘I want some more,’ he said.

I swallowed. ‘Do I look like I have any more?’

He paused for a moment and stopped moving the knife, but didn’t withdraw it. I went on, ‘You’ve taken it, right? You know what it’s like, and what it does to you.’ I swallowed again, louder than before. ‘Look around you, does this strike you as the place of someone who’s taking the drug you took?’

‘Well, where did you get it from then?’

‘I don’t know, some guy I met in a—’

He jabbed the knife sharply against my neck and withdrew it quickly.

‘Ow!’

I put my hand up to the point where he’d jabbed me and rubbed it. There wasn’t any blood, but the jab had really hurt.

‘Don’t lie to me, Eddie, because – and make sure you understand this – if I don’t get what I want I’m going to kill you anyway …’ Then he set the point of the knife to just under my left eye, and pressed it in, gently but firmly. ‘And in stages.’

He continued pressing the knife, and when I could feel my eyeball starting to protrude, I whispered, ‘OK.’

He held the knife in place for a moment and then withdrew it.

‘I can get them,’ I said, ‘but it’ll take a few days. The guy who deals them is very … security conscious.’

Gennady clicked his tongue, as if to say go on.

‘I phone him, and he arranges a pick-up.’ I paused here and rubbed my left eye, but it was really to give me a moment to work out what I was going to say next. ‘If he catches a whiff of someone else getting involved in this, by the way – someone he doesn’t know – that’s it, we’ll never hear from him again.’

Gennady nodded.

‘And another thing,’ I said, ‘they’re expensive.’

I could tell that he was excited at the prospect of scoring. I could also tell that despite his heavy-handed tactics he would go along with whatever I proposed, and would pay whatever I asked.

‘How much?’

‘Five hundred a pop …’

He whistled, almost with glee.

‘ … which is why I’m out of them. Because we’re not talking dime bags here.’

He looked at me, and then pointed at the money on the table. ‘Use that. Get me … er …’ – he paused, and seemed to be doing some calculations in his head – ‘ … get me fifty or sixty of them. For starters.’

If I did end up giving him any, they would have to come from my stash, so I said, ‘The most I can get in one go is ten.’

‘Fuck that—’

‘Gennady, I’ll talk to the guy, but he’s very paranoid. We’ve got to take this slowly.’

He turned around and walked over to the desk, and then back again.

‘OK, when?’

‘I should be able to get them by next Friday.’

‘Next fucking Friday? You said a few days.’

‘I leave him a message. It takes a few days for him to get back to me. Then another few days to set it up.’

Gennady held the knife out again and pointed it directly in my face. ‘If you fuck with me, Eddie, you’ll be sorry.’

Then he put the knife away and walked over to the door.

‘I’m going to phone you Tuesday.’

I nodded.

‘OK. Tuesday.’

Standing in the doorway, and as though it were an afterthought, he said, ‘So what is this shit anyway? What’s in it?’

‘It’s a … smart-drug,’ I said, ‘I don’t really know what’s in it.’

‘It makes you smart?’

I held out my hands. ‘Well, yeah. Hadn’t you noticed?’ I was going to say something to him about his English and how it had improved, but I decided against it. He might get offended at the idea that I hadn’t thought his English was good to start with.

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘it’s amazing. What’s it called?’

I hesitated. ‘Er … MDT. It’s called MDT. It’s a chemical name, but … yeah.’

‘MDT?’

‘Yeah. You know, score some MDT. Do some MDT.’

He looked at me for a moment, dubiously, and then said, ‘Tuesday.’