Orange Pill, Yellow Wrangler

by Nick Rees Gardner

Scott Rodgerson

Mary

I’ll tell you about the time I cheated on Mary and she died.

She had this polkadot of a nose I’d kiss before I lifted her hair and she ducked into a line.

Blink her blown pupils.

I don’t honestly know if she’s dead or alive, but after her seizure, not a word, not a text, and somehow it’s easier to believe she’s gone for good because that way the guilt can rush me and dissipate, instead of stringing me along.

She used to string me along.

She’d wink at me and walk away.

First time we kissed in high school, Flame Day, where we celebrated sports and mocked humanity, she said, Hold my hand and when I did, her palm shocked me, a jolt. I said, What the fuck? And she held up the buzzer.

We didn’t stop searching for that jolt.

Now my calls all go to voicemail.

Voicemail is always full.

I want to tell you I cheated with the Jeep Girl, but she was hardly even real, a figment I floated with for a couple hours’ drive before it punctured and farted off.

I want to say it doesn’t feel like a lie.

Mary took forever to get ready so I’d crank Linkin Park in the car and build my irritation into rage and then Mary’d slide in on the passenger side and say, Punch it Chewie.

Every single time.

Like each day she was born into a different world that loved her and I loved her and the world loved us both.

Until it didn’t.

Now I lie in our empty bed.

I call until the battery dies.

The Jeep Girl

Twenty miles from the Suboxone clinic in Toledo and Mary’s zonked open-mouthed beside me and she lets out a wookie snore and I’m like goddamn asshole to the yellow Wrangler all up on my tail and I’m like three open lanes because I-Seventy-Five just gapes in front of us nothing anywhere around but Mary doesn’t care and I think wake up and say look at this shit but nothing not a stir so I brake check the bitch behind me which makes Mary’s slumped head nod and I crank down the window to give the driver an undeniable middle finger like look at this fuck you fuck you fuck you when the Jeep merges and matches my speed and I see this woman wave at me a hurricane of hair in a lowcut bloom of supermodel boobs and waist and I see her Miss Ohio smile before she blows me a fucking kiss and takes the exit but now I float and I listen to her whisper the kind of low talk after sex those words between only us and god like I love you and I want you and that was fucking good and we have this house by the lake and it’s Tom Petty rocking in the Wrangler and we innocently hold hands and neck and in this daydream I get my kicks motoring a lawn mower around the yard.

In this dream I can afford a lawnmower.

Cold beer on the porch at night.

Lakeside kisses with the moon on the rise.

Mary

Once Mary told me she was pregnant, but first she asked where I saw us in five years.

I said, five years, how about ten?

I was working on a come up but it was gonna take some time.

There was an evening I stayed up late, waiting on Mary, so I crunched off chunks of Xanax and gnawed my nails to blood.

I said, Let’s think fifteen years.

Rent overdue, bills to catch up.

She said, What if I told you I was pregnant? And I was on my feet before I even realized.

We smoked but she dropped her smoke.

She laughed herself backwards, tipped over the chair.

She said, Your face, your fucking face!

And I texted her as I waited, as I nibbled myself in anxiety, but she never did reply, only hustled in wearing Cracker Barrel blue, a bundle of stamp bags in her hand and we overdid it, maybe, because the good shit went too fast, lolling, neckless, boneless mass.

I said, If we scrimp and save, maybe twenty.

We didn’t have any money.

I didn’t ask her where she got the dope.

Sometimes she’d come home haggard, hit the shower and scrub forever, and I’d lie there naked, hard, and wait, and wait, and wait for her to never come out, until I drifted off.

She said, Not now. Not now.

She said, Why can’t we just cuddle? Just hold my hand?

The Jeep Girl

So I follow the yellow Wrangler to Circle K where she parked at the curb and the doors roll closed behind that angel of a Jeep Girl and I park my Buick at the fuel pump while next to me Mary stirs and mumbles herself awake and I draw out my debit card and think when it ticks up close to seven dollars I’ve got to cut off the pump and then I think eight more hours without a hit and it’s gonna be gravel in my guts and sweats and shakes and restless legs so what’s really the point and why am I even thinking about the Jeep Girl or some other soberer life and at the same time I wonder what’s taking her so long like maybe she’s waiting for me and planning our escape and I imagine a simple scene of pancakes in the breakfast nook and Mary says where are we and wonders do I need anything before she goes into the store and I wait and wait and decide whichever woman comes out first is my ride and for once in her life it’s Mary armed with Funyuns and Gatorade and the pump reads seven thirty five which means overdraft and the truck behind me honks.

And there’s the Jeep always driving away.

Suboxone

Dime-sized septagon stamped with a sword to defend against the shivers and shits.

An orange pill, little blue bottle.

The doctor wouldn’t fill the script unless her piss was opioid free and sometimes Mary would be in there an hour waiting down the line in the boarded-windowed stripmall next to Doctor Luckey’s Cheap Vasectomies, a headshop, and then empty windows. And sometimes it would be even longer because the doctor would say Mary was positive for dope.

Sometimes Mary had to beg.

It tasted like its color, medicine, chemicals, and powdered tangerine, the opioid agonist chewed or sucked and then nothing nothing nothing.

She got in the car, tossed the bottle in her bag, and said, let’s fucking go.

Ten, fifteen dollars per pill, sickly sweet, head leveled.

She said, Punch it Chewie.

A thrum that melts like sugar on the tongue.

Punch it.

While we craved the vinegar of heroin.

The Jeep Girl

The road’s nothing but a glint of sunshine and it’s not even that when I lower my shades.

Mary

I’d like to tell you we loved each other.

Her hands were strong and on the way home she pinched my neck till I squirmed and soon the agony cut to relief as she pummeled my muscles to dough.

I said, I love you.

She said, Is everything okay?

Her fingers crawled along my shoulders, clawed at straps of wasted muscle and I thought about the Jeep Girl, our house, the simple totem of the mailbox, act of picking up the mail.

Mary said, How’s that feel? and her fingers dug in, blanked my vision to red, and I was like okay. I’m good. Stop. Fuck. Stop.

But she didn’t stop.

When I looked, her body clenched and shook and I sped to the hospital while she foamed at the mouth and writhed against the belt that I unbuckled at the drop-off. I heaved her from the seat and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t get caught.

And I didn’t love or hate her then.

I didn’t anything her at all.

Heroin

Each time the needle pricked my skin, I felt that pinch of dread. I used to do this thing where I’d load up a shot and wait and wait until my body shook with want. And then I’d wait some more. And my nose would run and saliva would pool in my mouth.

The future’s clock ticks like this: Dread. Hope. Dread. Hope. Dread. Dread. Dread.

Heroin

I’d like to tell you we can be normal and beautiful again, but now I’m nothing but a dapple of track marks, the Jeep’s driven off, and Mary might as well be dead.

The day I chased the Wrangler was the day I dreamed of impossible cleanness, all those particles of future that, day by day, pinprick by pinprick, I can make disappear.

Me

The part of me that still thinks I killed Mary keeps driving by her parents’ house, keeps calling them till the cops come. The cops say to leave it alone. They say, Rehab, Death, or Prison. And I’m like, I know, I fucking know. Because those are the options. And if Mary asked now, I’d say, Five years? Clean time, savings account, a two story house. I’d say, Yes, I’ll hold your hand.

I’d wait for the jolt.

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Nick Rees Gardner’s writing has appeared in Epiphany, Atticus Review, Ocean State Review, and other journals. His novella, Hurricane Trinity, is forthcoming in 2023 from Unsolicited Press and his book of sonnets about opioid addiction and recovery, So Marvelously Far, is available through Crisis Chronicles Press. He lives in Ohio and Washington, DC.