My buddy Richard’s in town and so is the shit he’s brought with him in large quantity from San Diego. A former blues club and soul food restaurant owner from Zurich, Richard has relocated to Mexico while he figures out what to do with the rest of his life.

The process is very much touch-and-go.

I’ve been back home in D.C. for only four weeks after spending the previous six months living at Richard’s place in the Baja California. It’s a cool house perched on a cliff above the Pacific, south of Tijuana and north of Rosarito Beach.

I went to Mexico to get away from dope and write a novel with Richard about a reverse immigration future when gringos are flooding Mexico from California. The only problem being that we wrote one 1,500-word short story loosely based on an antique dealing junkie chick from L.A. named Lauren.

It was a good short story, especially in the way it succinctly captured the foul underbelly of gringo junkie life south of the border. But the rest of the trip turned into a strung-out nightmare of high-octane black tar heroin and high-quality cocaine.

The Baja California is not a good place to which to repair if you are trying to stop using drugs.

Richard and I were not on the best of terms when I fled the Baja for my old life back in D.C. because the problems in Mexico were growing in number and variety.

Money problems.

Drug dealer problems.

Domestic problems.

Women problems.

No more credit at the bar down the road problems.

Cocaine-induced psychosis (his, not mine) problems.

My ex-, upon learning of the ugly domestic scene in the Baja, invited me to crash at her place.

Now, however, with Richard in D.C., staying at a hotel a few blocks from Dupont Circle, we’re best friends again.

Like brothers.

This is because of the shit.

Shit is the tie that binds.

Somebody smuggled the shit—Mexican black tar heroin—north through the border at Tijuana for him. Richard flew it to D.C. from San Diego.

“I’m here,” Richard announces on the phone.

I’m sitting at my desk in the newsroom at the magazine where I work.

“Everything’s cool, right?” I say.

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” he says.

“Good. How’s the hotel?”

“It’s okay. It’s a nice big room with a good view of the neighborhood. It should be comfortable. I feel a lot better about things than the last time I was here.”

The last time Richard was in town he was trying to kick dope. I’m actually surprised he can stand to set foot in D.C. again. Spending three days in a cold sweat, throwing up and running back and forth to the toilet is the kind of thing that can turn you against a place big time.

“You want me to drop by?” I say.

I have a 5,000-word story due tomorrow and the entire office is moving to new digs in a few days, but the details of life can wait.

“Yeah,” he says. “Whenever.”

“Good,” I say. “I’ll be right there. It’s a fifteen minute walk from here.”

I take a cab and get there in five.

When I get to the hotel, Richard and I hug like brothers.

All of the bad blood of Mexico is forgotten.

“So,” I say. “How’s the dope?”

“I’ve got it,” he says.

“How much did you bring?”

“A couple of ounces.”

“Cool.”

Super fucking cool, in fact.

Two ounces of tar. A man can go into a nod for quite a few days on that.

Too bad I can’t afford to buy it all and that it doesn’t belong to Richard either. The dope is north of the border on consignment.

“It was easy,” Richard says. “Paco had some guys bring it over. All I had to do was pick it up in San Diego.”

Paco is Richard’s disreputable Tijuana contact, a minor member of a fairly significant dope operation. Paco provided the dope and had it transported via mule to San Diego. It’s a lot of trouble to go to for a couple of ounces of dope, but a new market is a new market.

And the Nation’s Capital is clearly a new market for Mexican Black Tar. We should have a Harlem-style dope line running from the entrance of the hotel where he’s staying right down New Hampshire Avenue to Dupont Circle. The white powder dope they sell in D.C. is baby laxative compared to Mexican shit.

“Can I get a shot?” I say. “I’m dying for it. Everything here is total shit by comparison.”

“You have money?” Richard says.

“What?”

“Do you have any money?”

“You’re going to make me pay for it?”

“It isn’t my shit.”

“After we spent all my money in Mexico on drugs? You won’t give me a hit?”

“I told you, it isn’t mine to give.”

“So? It’s one hit. Who’s going to miss it?”

“Fine,” Richard says. “No problem. You can have a hit.”

“Thank you.”

He goes into the bedroom. I hear him rummaging. He returns with something that looks like a goopy black golf ball on steroids wrapped in aluminum foil.

“You want any more of this shit,” he says. “You’re going to have to pay for it. I’m not kidding.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“The shit isn’t mine. Okay?”

“What about all the dope I bought for us in Mexico?” I say.

“This is a business deal.”

“You suck.”

“Okay, I suck. No problem. There’s only so much here for samples.”

“You’re treating me like a street corner drug dealer.”

As this exchange is going on, he’s cutting dope from the golf ball for me, making a small slice of sticky black tar that we called a cura—cure—in Mexico.

That’s because it’s the cure for everything that ails you until the cure, itself, starts ailing you. At which point, you’re fucked.

There’s something warm and comforting about sitting in a hotel room in Dupont Circle in Washington waiting to do a cura.

Richard gives me the cura. I turn to the task of melting it down in a teaspoon of water and drawing it into a syringe through a small piece of filter from one of my Marlboros. Richard turns on the TV. The remake of The Getaway is on TV.

I shoot up to Kim Basinger and settle back on the couch, enjoying the kind of rush I haven’t felt in weeks. I came back from Mexico with a Jones the size of Texas. There’s no way to keep it happy with D.C. dope.

Now, all that’s changed.

“Have you called anybody?” Richard says.

“No, not yet,” I say. “They know you’re coming. I figured I’d wait until you got here.”

“Well, I’m here. Why don’t we see what kind of business we can drum up?”

What kind of business we can drum up?

“Sure,” I say. “But what am I going to get out of this?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“What?”

“How can you talk to me that way?” he says.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to get screwed.”

“You think I’m going to screw you?”

Richard’s eyes narrow.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” I say.

“You won’t get screwed,” he says. “Don’t worry.”

“Well, then, can I have another hit?”

“Yeah, but only one more. I told you it’s Paco’s shit.”

“Jesus Christ,” I say. “I’ll pay for my fucking dope, okay?”

“We’ll work something out after we sell some. Why don’t you make some calls?”

“Yeah, okay,” I say.

Richard hands me another cura. I cook it up.

Phone calls? No problem. There’s work to be done and shit to be moved.

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.