It is Black Friday, the day After Thanksgiving.

I have broken up with my girlfriend in Washington because of a post-Thanksgiving dinner altercation involving cooking (my lack thereof), unfulfilled clean up obligations (mine, again), my insistence on watching the Detroit Lions play football (a very bad thing, indeed) and my general anti-holiday attitude (profoundly negative).

Thanksgiving ended on a very sour note.

Specifically, with a drumstick thrown in my general direction (a permanent grease stain and slight indentation forever marking the impact site on the wall) and a loud “fuck you,” also directed at me.

Gobble.

Gobble. Gobble.

Gobble. Gobble. Gobble.

I am not decent holiday material, especially when my top priority is making a dope run up to New York City on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

For today, the breakup is blessing; it greatly simplifies the post-holiday dope run to New York. Were the girlfriend and I still together—which I suspect we will be again by next weekend—I would be forced to lie terribly about my whereabouts or, even worse, battle the Black Friday consumer masses with her to go Christmas shopping.

I grab a taxi on Seventh Avenue outside of Penn Station and tell the driver I need to go to East Harlem. He looks in the rearview, shakes his head and turns west in order to start the long ride north through the sluggish Midtown traffic.

Forty-five minutes later—after a horrendous uptown trip through horrible holiday congestion that makes me wish I’d taken the subway—I’m standing in the cold at the corner of East 123^rd and Lexington, waving at my dope go-between Sal.

Sal is standing in front of the bodega where the old Dominican guy I buy much dope from—I only know him as “Papi” and he, in turn, calls me “Papi” too—does business. A fairly straight looking white chick with short brown hair is standing with him. Even from across the street, it’s easy to tell she’s pretty.

Sal sees me and screams, “Yo, Bobby! Yo!”

He runs across Lexington Avenue.

“Yo, I tawht youz wasn’t comin’,” Sal says, locking me in a big junkie bear hug full of relief that the source of dope and/or dope money has arrived. “Papi wuz wonderin’ where youz at too.”

“Traffic sucks,” I say. “It’s the Friday after Thanksgiving.”

“My mutha wuz bummed out youz couldn’t make it fawh dinnah yestuhday,” Sal says. “She wanted to meet youz, Bobby.”

Sal invited me to Thanksgiving dinner with his mother in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, but I declined. Now, in retrospect, given the wretched disaster of my own Thanksgiving, it might have been a good idea.

“Maybe another time,” I say. “It was nice of your mother to invite me.”

“She appreciates what youz do fawh me,” he says.

Sal’s mother thinks he works for me. Ours is a telephone relationship—when I call, she cries and tells me what a hopeless slime Sal is. I listen, make sympathetic sounds and offer words of support and encouragement.

Me: “Is Sal there?”

Mother Sal: “Youz just missed him, Bobby. I gave him anutha ten dollars an’ he left. He thinks I’m made ah money. I can’t take it no mawh.”

Me: “Deep down, he’s a good person. I suppose he’s doing the best he can.”

Mother Sal: “Thank youz fawh workin’ wit him. It’s good he’s got sumtin’ bettah to do than just go to the meth clinic awhl the time.”

Me: “Sal’s got a good heart.”

Mother Sal: “Yeah, the drugs gottem’ awhl messed up.”

A truer statement has never been uttered.

“Maybe youz can come fawh Christmas,” Sal says.

“I’m supposed to be with my family,” I say.

“Youz is comin’ up fawh Christmas to be wit yawh family in Jersey?”

“Yeah, my girlfriend’s supposed to come too.”

“Yo, dat would be great, Bobby. I wanna meet her.”

That would work well. She threw a drumstick at me for not helping with Thanksgiving dinner. She’ll shoot me if she finds out I’m shooting dope and hanging out with guys like Sal in Harlem.

“We broke up last night,” I say.

“What happened?” Sal says. “I tawht youz guys was tight.”

“She’s pissed that I didn’t help with dinner.”

“Dat’s bad, Bobby. Youz know dey like youz tah help wit dinnah. She’s gonna be pissed fawh a while.”

“Is Papi around?”

“Yeah. He went inside the stawh fawh a minute. Youz still want five bundles?”

“I want six. What brand does he have?”

“Murder One,” Sal says.

“Is the Murder One still good?”

“I wouldn’t let youz buy it if it wasn’t no muthafuckin’ good.”

The girl who was standing across Lexington Avenue with Sal is watching us.

“Who’s your friend?” I say.

“She’s a custahmah,” Sal says. “She’s a bankah from Westchestah.”

A banker?

“What’s she, a teller?” I say.

“She ain’t no telluh, Bobby,” Sal says. “She’s, like, a kawhpawhrate loan offisuh.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I ain’t kiddin’ youz. She works fawh one ah dem big banks. Chase Manhattan awh sumtin’. She comes on the weekends.”

“No shit.”

“Really. She skawhs a bundle awh two fawh the week every Satuhday. Youz wanna meet her? If youz like her, maybe youz could fuck her befawh youz go back to D.C. Youz got rubbahs? I got sum if youz need’em.”

Sal shouts, “Yo, Karen! Yo, Karen, com’ere!”

She crosses Lexington Avenue.

“Karen,” Sal says. “Dis is Bobby. He’s like my brutha.”

I nod and say, “Nice to meet you,” like we’re standing in line at a deli being introduced by a mutual friend.

“Bobby,” Sal says. “Dis is Karen. She’s good people.”

Karen shakes my hand and says, “Nice to meet you.”

I look across the street and see our Dominican dealer standing at his payphone.

“There’s Papi,” I say.

“Youz want me tah get the stuff, Bobby?” Sal says.

I hand Sal six hundred dollars in fifties.

Karen stares at it.

“Youz want me tah get yawhz too, Karen?” Sal says.

“Sure,” she says, also handing him money. “A bundle.”

“I’ll be back inna few minutes,” Sal says. “Just hang out. I gotta go wit Papi tah get the bundles. He ain’t holdin’ dat much shit. But be careful. TNT’s around.”

Great. TNT is the Tactical Narcotics Taskforce, plainclothes cops who ride around in unmarked cars and taxis and do jump outs. As in, jumping out of cars and arresting you.

Oh well. No crime in standing on a Harlem street corner with a chick.

Sal walks back across Lexington Avenue. He says something to our dealer. The Dominican nods. They walk north on Lexington Avenue.

“You come up here a lot?” Karen says.

“Every now and then,” I say. “I’m from D.C.”

“You’re from Washington? You come all the way up here for dope?”

“Every couple of weeks. Or a friend of mine comes up.”

“I come on the weekend and get enough for the week.”

“You work for a bank?” I say. “What do you do?”

“I’m a loan officer in Westchester.”

“Cool,” I say. “I’m a reporter.”

“Really?”

Sal returns with the drugs as we chat about dope, Harlem and work. There is no way to detach from him and go off with the female banker junkie, so we grab a livery cab and head back downtown. Many, many dozens of blocks worth of slow traffic later, we arrive at the Hotel Pennsylvania, a massive lodging on Seventh Avenue that’s anonymous and right across the street from Penn Station.

“I ain’t nevuh been tah the Hotel Pee-Yay befawh,” Sal says as we enter the huge and busy lobby.

It may, in fact, be the only hotel to which Sal has ever been that doesn’t rent rooms by the hour.

“We’ll be fine here for the afternoon,” I say.

“It looks like it kawhsts a lot,” he says.

“I’ve got it covered.”

“We could go to dat place on 27^th where we went last time.”

The place on 27^th Street Sal is referring to is a “short stay” hotel (with “stays” being as short as it takes one to get off either via drugs or exchange of bodily fluids) infested with crack whores in which we’ve smoked crack and shot dope.

“Don’t this place kawhst a lot?” Sal says. “We could probably buy anutha bundle with what we’re gonna spend.”

“Keep your voice down,” I say.

“Sawhry. But, what’s this place kawhst? A buck fifty? That’s anutha ten, fifteen bags ah dope awh a shitload ah rock.”

“Lower…your…voice. We’re in the middle of a hotel lobby.”

“I’m sawhry. I ain’t loud am I, Karen?”

“Yeah, you are,” she says.

“Awhls I’m sayin’ is why spend money here when youz can spend it on dope an’ rock?” Sal says.

“Lower your voice!” I growl. “The whole goddamned hotel can hear you.”

“Awhright. Awhright. Jeez, Bobby, sumtin’ botherin’ youz?”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “This will be my treat. It’s the holidays. Merry Christmas. You guys wait here while I get a room.”

I approach the desk and get the room without any problem. I pay cash.

Sal and Karen are waiting for me. I hold up the card that opens the door. The room is on the tenth floor.

The elevator up is packed. Sal, Karen and I crowd into a corner. When Sal starts to say something, I cut him off and ask him to wait until we get upstairs—the last thing I want is a discourse about dope in the elevator.

The room is on the Seventh Avenue side of the hotel, overlooking the Garden.

“Yo, Bobby, dis is nice,” Sal says, flopping into a chair near the window.

Karen takes off her coat and sits on the bed.

“I’m glad we have someplace decent to hang out for a while,” she says. “This is great.”

I take my coat off and sit on the bed near her.

Sal gets up and turns on the TV. He puts on All My Children and retreats to his chair holding the remote.

“Do you have to put that on?” I say.

“I love Awhl My Children,” he says. “I nevah get to see it cuz I’m out in the aftahnoon.”

I take out a bundle, my teaspoon and a syringe, and fix myself a shot of dope. Karen snorts a bag. I go into the bathroom and shoot up, happy that I find a vein without turning myself into a pincushion.

I’m buzzed when I exit the bathroom. Sal looks at me hungrily. No words needed. I hand him a bag and he asks me for a syringe.

I know what’s coming. Watching Sal shoot dope is a horror. After years of injecting heroin, he can hardly find a vein.

He sits back down in the chair by the window. Ten minutes later, he’s standing in front of me saying, “Fuck. Cocksucka. Shit. Muthafucka.”

“Maybe if I go into the crappah,” he says. “Youz guys is making me nervous.”

He goes into the bathroom.

He is still cursing. Things are slamming.

Karen sighs and says that it would be great if we could rid of him and hang out alone.

The cursing and thrashing noises stop. I knock on the bathroom door.

Sal says, “Yo.”

I go inside.

Dear God.

There is blood all over the floor. The hotel towels are stained with blood that he’s been wiping up.

It looks so bad, I’m afraid he’s going to die from blood loss.

“Hey, Bobby,” Sal says. “I got the shot off.”

I shake my head and say, “It looks like somebody got murdered in here.”

“It ain’t nuttin’,” Sal says. “I’ll clean it up. Gimme a minute tah get awhf.”

“What the fuck happened?”

“I had a hard time.”

“Christ.”

“I got it. Don’t worry. I’ll clean it.”

“We’re going to have to get rid of the towels or the maids will call the cops.”

“Fuck ‘em. They ain’t seen blood befawh?”

I have an idea.

“After you clean up, you want to go back up to 123^rd for rock?” I say.

“Rock” is the magic word. Sal’s eyes light up.

“Youz guys wanna go all the way back there?” he says.

“If I give you fifty bucks and subway fare, will you go?” I say.

I know that giving Sal money and expecting him to come back with crack is an exercise in futility. The only things he will come back with are excuses for not coming back with drugs:

He was mugged.

He got beat.

He ran into somebody he owed money who was going to kill him unless he paid up.

A very aggressive New York City pigeon pecked his pocket and flew off with the money.

Etc.

Fuck it. Karen has suggested getting rid of our Third Wheel. Giving Sal money for drugs is the best and fastest way to lose him.

“Yeah, sure,” Sal says, taking the bait. “Maybe Karen’ll come wit me.”

“No,” I say. “I think she wants to hang here.”

“Okay. Whatevah.”

I hand Sal sixty dollars.

Five minutes later, Sal is on his way out the door, leaving us to enjoy the Hotel Pee-Yay in peace for the rest of the afternoon.

Robert Guskind has been writing for a long time. An award-winning Washington-based journalist and contributor to major national magazines and newspapers, he now lives very close to Manhattan, where he continues to write, shoot photographs and work on a book based on his travels and experiences as a reporter and formerly disreputable dope fiend. He is all better now and is a regular contributor to Cherrybleeds.