Bonnie and Clyde
I had been with many men before Nicky, but I had never really been in love.
Nicky treated me in a way no one ever had before. Almost every day, he presented me with some little gift or some special gesture that made me feel appreciated, valued. It might be a pair of earrings, it might only be a bag of potato chips, but he never came to me empty handed. It didn't matter the price, I knew that wherever he went, the thought of making me happy never left his mind.
The trouble was, after that first evening in his cabin, nothing made me happier than cocaine. Nicky enjoyed it as well, though not as much as I did, but he certainly enjoyed the way my sexual inhibitions melted away under its influence. I was available for his pleasure any time he wanted me. I sucked his cock for hours. I would awaken him in the morning with my mouth. I would blow him while he watched porn. I would give him road head while he drove around dropping off his deliveries of marijuana.
I gave him hand jobs in movie theaters. I made out with girls in bars for his viewing. He would, on a whim, bend me across the furniture and fuck me. He would feel me up under restaurant tables. Cocaine didn't make me love him or make me want to please him. But it did free me to express my feelings in ways I might never have done without it.
The early days of our relationship seemed almost like a fairy tale idyll. We were seldom apart, except for those few days when Nicky took roofing jobs. I enjoyed being the lady of his house, cooking for him, making the little cabin into our cozy love nest. All that summer I kept the house filled with the scent of wildflowers I'd pick in the surrounding meadows. When the weather turned cold, we would cuddle by the fireplace, sometimes holding and kissing each other for hours without speaking.
But it was not a fairy tale.
I can not escape responsibility for anything that happened later. It was my desire for coke, and his eagerness to fulfill it, that spurred Nicky to seek more income, and set us both on the path towards tragedy.
Nicky decided that he could bring in more income if he branched out beyond selling marijuana. Many of his customers did other drugs and he started asking around about contacts for other products to sell. Pretty soon he was doing a brisk business in pills of many kinds. I was anxious that my own appetites would be stoked by proximity to his new wares, but I found that, as long as I had access to coke, I wasn't interested in any other highs.
I usually drove along with Nicky as he made his deliveries. At first, each stop was like dropping in on friends, but gradually, as his network expanded and the amount of money involved grew, it all began to seem more like serious business.
One day, I was waiting in the car while Nicky made a delivery to a long time customer. When he came out of the house, he ran to the car, with a wide grin on his face. He jumped in the driver's seat, grabbed my head in both hands and gave me a big kiss.
"We are about to hit the jackpot, girlfriend!" he beamed.
"Why? What happened?"
"This guy, Billy, I know him from way back, he got busted on a burglary charge, and he's going away for at least a year."
"That makes you happy?"
"No, listen, he sells oxy. So, while he's away, I am going to take over from him. He gave me his contact, and he's going to take me around to meet up with his regular customers. Baby, he's bringing in, like, a thousand dollars a week."
"Makes you wonder why the hell he's pulling burglaries."
"Aw, that was over some old beef with a girlfriend or something. Broke in to get stuff he said was his, she said was hers."
The guy was making a thousand dollars a week selling oxy, but was going to prison because he wanted his game system back or something. That was the level of people we were usually dealing with.
"So who is this connection?"
"Some guy named Nate, from Rhode Island. He has some connection at a pharmaceutical warehouse, a buddy who works there or something. So, we are going on a road trip!"
I was giving Nicky road head on the freeway when, just over the Rhode Island line, he turned onto an exit ramp going much too fast, sped down the street into a shopping center parking lot, doughnutted to a screeching stop and came in my mouth.
I sat up and he handed me his phone. "Here, use the GPS. I don't know where shit is in Providence."
Nicky grew agitated worrying that if we were late, it might screw up his deal, but I navigated us to the meeting place, a clam shack on the South Side. We managed to arrive just a few minutes after the appointed time.
"Look for a guy in a red leather jacket," Nicky told me.
"Red? That shouldn't be hard to spot."
It wasn't. Nate sat in a booth at the back of the restaurant, drinking a cup of milky coffee. He waved and welcomed us with a friendly smile. He was a big guy, stocky and well over six feet tall.
Nicky and I slid into the booth and we all introduced ourselves. Nate waved over a waitress and ordered three bottles of Narragansett. We made small talk while we waited for the beer. He seemed quite warm, asking us how our trip was and if we'd had any trouble finding the restaurant.
"To new friends," Nate toasted, when the beer arrived. Then it was time to talk business.