Chapter Thirteen
By Wednesday Jenny's period had ended. She and Joe had spent the time after rehearsal with Carol the evening before and slept with her that night, culminating in a long loving fuck between Carol and Joe, Jenny mostly audience to it, but she felt a bond strengthening between the three of them, especially between Joe and Carol. They worked before the lovemaking on the collaboration between Joe and Carol, their accepting Jenny's feedback a welcome surprise for Jenny and even for Carol, though for Joe he'd already witnessed her intelligence. Perhaps most surprising was Carol's accepting Jenny's feedback on the choreography.
Carol's period arrived Wednesday morning, Jenny letting her use the few pads she still had. But it meant Carol didn't stay with them after rehearsal, which meant Jenny would try heroin for the first time.
Taking a shower after rehearsal, bringing a cup of water with her, she borrowed another of Joe's t shirts as a mini dress and watched Joe set up her shot. He put in a little more than half a bag in the spoon, closer to two-thirds, and enough coke to give her a speedball. She tied up using his red plastic tie, her virgin veins not quite popping out as much as his, his being more obvious than most he'd been told, but he managed to find a vein and pulled blood into the syringe to insure it had been hit.
"Oh fuck," she reacted to the rush. Just "Mmm" to the second plunge. The third was the last.
She was okay, stoned actually but didn't feel like hurling while she watched him fix himself with his syringe, but when he finished cleaning the works up and they laid back, she bounced off the bed.
"Use the garbage can," he advised.
He wiped her mouth with a hand towel and handed her a can of Coke which he'd opened for her.
The heaving ended fairly quickly.
"You're right," she told him. "It didn't bother me. Let's go out."
"Smoke a joint first?"
"Okay."
Like a lot of drugs making you spacy, like LSD for instance, or opiates, he found Marijuana accentuated the state. Walking didn't reveal it so much, she just enjoyed it, but when they stopped at a bar in Tribeca, she started nodding off.
"Wow," she said after a long nod. "It's like I'm here but in a dream."
Joe chuckled and explained, "Johnny the other day was nodding into his stuffed fish. I'd ask him a question and he answered it without being exactly conscious."
"Yeah, I get that," she giggled and began another nod.
He mostly resisted his nods, being protective.
They decided on rum and cokes and finished the one before heading out of the bar. They continued heading south, a leisurely, most enjoyable walk until they reached Battery Park and looked out at the Statue of Liberty.
"You been in the statue?" she asked.
"Not for years," he replied.
"Want to?"
"Hmm, not really," he decided. "Another time?" Getting stoned can be solipsistic. He could be social, and even felt less like a wallflower at parties, though more going with the flow rather than being demonstrative like he could be in the few times he got drunk. But being a tourist, taking in sights in special places of observation didn't suit his state of mind.
"Okay," she smiled.
"We could ride the Staten Island Ferry?" he suggested. Being windblown crossing New York Harbor sounded fun. It would be cool but they were dressed for it in jackets and jeans.
"Let's," she grinned.
The water, the sharp, briny wind, the density of sea gull cries, the natural, architectural and historical majesty of the harbor surrounding them awed and thrilled them until the coolness felt cold and they escaped inside.
They strolled Staten Island, the last of the boroughs for Joe to encounter, not going far from the Ferry dock, deciding to eat at a lively pub, fish and chips for Jenny and shepherd's pie for Joe, shared and enjoyed, with a stein each of stout adding to their fullness, and they hadn't felt at all hungry, Joe deciding they should probably eat something for dinner.
The sun set behind Manhattan, coloring the background of the insanely and richly dense towered rock, the largest twins the least interesting architecturally but the most impressively looming in the end, the natural, reddened illumination becoming man made in the twilight and darkness, a complex pattern of squares emerging out of it, of windows lit from behind, presuming the presence and activity of innumerable and unknowable people.
They decided to take a cab home, coming to the end of their energy, which Joe remarked on once in the apartment: "I used to feel energized by heroin rather than subdued by it, different from cocaine which mostly feels enervating. It's a sort of intensity propelling me forward. It's like sharing it with you brought it back."
"Glad I could help," Jenny giggled. "Is there more?"
"Why not?" Joe agreed, thinking as much as it being a continuation as it was a getting rid of the supply, ending future temptation.
He put in the remainder of the dope, a bag and a half, or closer to a third, adding coke to it after a brief internal debate, the intense rush winning over the milder one, and pulled in less than half as far as he could tell of the liquid to inject into Jenny, finishing the rest in his arm.
"Mmm," Jenny sounded her approval.
They seemed to take hours making love, at first a lengthy sixty-nine, and then Joe taking the missionary position, slowly fucking her, gently kissing her or gazing at her in appreciation. Hours at a pleasurable plateau, where the friction didn't exactly accentuate the dope high but rather combined with it harmoniously. Neither achieved orgasm until the end, when his thrusts suddenly became quickened and harder and his hands worked her nipples and her hand rubbed at her clit and somehow, after all that time, they actually arrived at the peak of pleasure simultaneously, the rush of it becoming much more intense than the rush of the coke had been when injecting it, somehow getting past the dulled senses of the heroin to a place of profound pleasure.
"Wow," they both judged the moment as simultaneously as the orgasms had been and chuckled at that simultaneity.
Not long after, Joe moving off Jenny and onto his back beside her, they passed out.
"Hey," Joe heard. "Wake up."
"No!" Jenny muttered.
"It's good I got here early," Carol chuckled. "You still have time to shower."
"Fuck you," said Jenny, but got up, put on Joe's t shirt she'd worn the day before, and rushed off to shower.
"Hey," Joe smiled at Carol.
"Long night?" Carol smirked.
"Something like that."
Carol handed him a glass of cranberry juice, which he drank down, and she kneeled on the bed and gave him a kiss after. "Sleep if you want. I just wanted a kiss without your stinky breath."
"Selfish bitch," he chuckled before pulling her into a longer kiss. "I guess I'll get up."
"It's going to be a long day," Carol reminded him.
