Despite what happened, I told Liv that we had enough heroin to last us weeks. I’ve always been a good liar. We got to Spain two months ago, debt-ridden, in a caravan stuffed with heroin, before selling the van to buy more drugs and moving from beach to beach on foot. Today, we’re in a small cove somewhere near Motril, technically on our way to Alicante, but I know that I won’t make it past Almeria. I’d kill myself before going through those withdrawals again.
Liv pushes her head into my chest as she twists in her sleep, and we’re wrapped around each other, writhing like snakes as we slowly shed our sunburnt skin. She rarely sleeps this well. Our tent is pitched behind a set of sloping dunes, and I’m hoping nothing more will go wrong. There’s been enough fuckery for one week.
Two days ago, Liv took a liking to a traveller we met on the road and invited him to stay with us. Somehow, the worst part wasn’t that they fucked in my sleeping bag – it was that he left her during the night. I didn’t have the heart to tell Liv that he took the drugs. She spent yesterday cocooned up in that sleeping bag. I coaxed her out with the last bit of heroin I had - I always keep a little bit in my shoe - but then that was it. I don’t know how to tell her.
The tent walls shake in the half-light, and sweat-borne condensation drops down on top of us. Someone is knocking on the tent. A man’s face stares back at me when I unzip the door, with sallow skin and a heavy brow. He speaks Spanish with a staccato, machine-gun-like frequency. We’re used to getting kicked out, told to move on. They don't like our kind here, the Irish, the homeless or the addicts. Maybe just the last two. His dark eyes flicker onto and away from the array of spent syringes populating the tent floor. All week, we’d been shooting up like rich uncles in tweed. Looking at the needles, I’m only reminded that we have no drugs left.
He beckons me towards him, and before Liv can wake up, I follow, slipping out of her embrace to crawl awkwardly through the doorway. My bad hip groans in protest when I stand. He speaks again, and again I don’t understand. Seeing this, he switches to English.
“You must come”, he says, in a gargled approximation of the language.
“No trouble, please. We can move on soon.” I look back at Liv, head resting softly on her shoulder while she mutters in her sleep. She went manic the last time she woke up alone.
“Come!” He points to a small red wagon overflowing with loaves of brown bread, bottled water, and tubes of suncream sitting on a patch of sand a few metres away.
Frenzied, he bundles together loaves of bread, bottles of water, and two bottles of suncream, all in a white cloth.
“No, no, I’m ok.”
The man places the newly made package on the floor and hands me a white pamphlet, with Jesus will save you / Jesús te salvará, written at its header in bold capitals.
“Christ, not again,” I say, throwing the pamphlet into the sand.
He picks it up and gives it to me, pointing at the photo of Jesus on the cover. Again, I throw it on the ground.
“I’m done - finito, fucked, spent, terminé, críochnaithe, however you want to say it”, I say and give it back to him. “Why would I need saving?”
The man shakes his head, then points back to the tent, resting his head on his hands as if he is sleeping.
“Liv? Shit, Liv, yes - si.” I give him a big thumbs up. “Si, I’ll take everything. Mucho gracias.”
“I come again tomorrow.” He smiles now, showing bright white incisors.
Liv rubs the sleep from her eyes. Heavy knots of hair frame a face that has long been bereft of colour. I’m not necessarily attracted to her, which works perfectly, since she sure as fuck isn’t into me. Sex stopped being of interest to me a long time ago, but no one wants to die alone.
“Where were you?” she asks.
I hold out the bundle of supplies.
“Good morning to you, too.”
Colour quickly returns to her face. A cautious smile forms from the wreckage of a mouth, and a young woman almost looks her age.
*
The day passes slowly. I lie on the sandy floor of the tent, not asleep, but not fully awake either. As usual, Liv is gone for hours, swimming in the Mediterranean or stealing stale croissants from bins. If this were a normal day, she’d crawl into my arms, damp and satisfied, and the evening would be spent letting needles tell us everything is alright with the world. But it isnt. I reflexively check the bag in my sock and confirm what I already know – there’s nothing left. We’re in rural Spain, and we don’t speak the language; there’s no way that we’ll ever manage to find more without getting to Alicante, which will take days or even weeks.
The bundle of supplies is smaller than it was in the morning; one of three loaves has been eaten, and two bottles of water are missing. In the space below where one of the loaves was, a pamphlet sits untouched. That Spanish bastard snuck one in without me knowing.
“Jesus will save you”, it says. Sceptical, I pick it up and flick through it. In between bible verses and motivational quotes, it advertises the local Catholic community centre’s offer to house the homeless, if they help out with gardening and promise to stay off drugs. If I can get Liv to agree to go, then I can die without worrying about leaving her alone. I’m too old to go through withdrawals again, but maybe she can have a fresh start. Jesús te Salvara, I repeat, mantra-like. Jesus has given me a way out.
*
She gets back later than usual, a wild happiness in her eyes.
“There were so many fish today. This little blue one, which looked like Dory, swam next to me for ages. I can’t believe you never come swimming. Also, I found us some pastries. I ate the doughnut - I hope you don’t mind - but I saved you this pecan-looking thing.” She says, pulling out a tightly wrapped wad of brown paper.
“That’s really great, Liv, thank you.” I sit up to look at her.
I eat the pastry slowly, careful not to spill any on the tent floor, and try to savour this moment - before I ruin it.
“Listen, I have to tell you something.”
“You’re not gonna kill yourself, are you?”
“What? No, why?”
“You’ve seemed a bit down recently, is all. And after the whole thing that happened in Malaga…”
Our first night in Malaga, I jumped off a bridge. I planned on drowning myself, but both drunk and high, I mistakenly picked a bridge that went over the dried-up Guadalmedina river. Instead of hitting water, I landed in a tree, coming out alive, with only a few bruises and a twisted ankle. Liv calls it an act of god. I call it pure stupidity.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine. I was just fucked up, is all. It was my mam's birthday, you know that.”
“So what were you gonna tell me then?” She crawls towards me before resting her head on my shoulder.
“Do you want to do this forever, Liv?”
She recoils, and her mouth straightens and purses into a shallow line, adding unlived years to her face.
“I’m sorry that I’m happy. Is that what you want to hear?”
“We can’t - I can’t do this much longer.”
“Don’t start this again. You haven’t taken anything yet today, have you? Christ, look at you, you’re shaking. You know how you get when the shakes hit.” She firmly grips my shoulder.
“Liv-
“Fuck you. Get the needles ready. I’m not talking to you til you’re high.” She crawls around, searching for the black string bag we used to keep our drugs in.
“There’s none left.” My voice is hoarse.
“What are you talking about? There’s loads of it, we won’t run out for months.” She’s throws a loaf of bread past my head , frantically looking for the bag.
“I just wanted one more day.”
“Where the fuck is it? Where’s the bag?” She screams, her voice sharp and cutting.
“The guy you slept with took it all when he left.”
Silence falls and she freezes, almost suspended in time. Her mouth hangs open - a passage to an empty place.
“You lied to me?” She collapses inward, and for the first time, I see how frail she really is. Her knees bent, head tucked inwards, torso contorted, she barely looks human.
“It's too late for me, you know that. I’m fifty years old, and I feel eighty. I’m not doing the whole withdrawals thing again. But you’re not even thirty, you could still be ok.” I hand her the pamphlet, showing her the advertisement. “You always believed in god.”
“And you never believed in anything.”
*
It's the light that wakes me up. It pierces my eyelids and drives a direct line through my skull, preempting the headache of all headaches. Liv leaves in the early morning, a blur of angry tears and sharp nails; I force the pamphlet into her back pocket as she goes. Bereft of my normal methods of numbing, I lie still and close my eyes. Sweat streams down my body while my mouth gasps for air I don’t want.
Eventually, I drift back asleep, and time and reality become fluid constructs.
Bare feet on a frayed purple carpet, I’m sitting on a cracked leather sofa. A man on the floor stares placidly at the ceiling, childlike wonder in his eyes. My cousin’s next to me, fastening a silver buckled belt around my bicep.
“Relax,” he says, with a sharklike grin. “You’ll thank me later.”
I wince as he pulls the belt tight.
“Trust me, this will be the best you’ve ever felt.”
And he’s right. With the push of a thumb, brown liquid flows into my forearm -- light streams through boarded-up windows, and expands, and grows, and illuminates the room; it comes from inside me somehow, growing in warmth and ecstasy before I close my eyes; it's all inside me, waiting to come out, it always has been.
There were always spaces needing to be filled - left by an angry Father, an unforgiving mother, or nature's cruel intent. First, it was spite, then women, then drink, then both, some coke from time to time, and then heroin. It didn’t seem like a big jump at the time.
Later, the Spanish man finds me, a ball of veritable misery. He sits me up, ignoring my attempts at resistance, then feeds me water and bread. The withdrawals merge with the pain of Liv leaving me, the symptoms of each indistinguishable from the other. I ask him about Liv, and all he can do is shrug.
“Is she there? Did she come?” I repeat.
Once more, he shrugs.
He leaves before I can get a proper answer.
*
The Spanish man comes back the next day. He finds me soiled and broken, endless pain racking through my body. I ask him about Liv, and he looks away, not making eye contact. He cradles my head and slowly trickles water through my cracked lips. The old highs have twisted into an unforgiving knife, endlessly flaying me. Again, I’m brought back into the vestiges of memory.
“Feck yous anyway”, I say as the crowd around me dissolves. Alone in a smoking area, I take rapid drags from a dying cigarette. A woman in a puffer jacket trades me a bag of tar for my watch. She doesn't realise it’s a fake. The bouncer waddles over and tells me its time to go.
“I’m not doing any harm am I?” I protest.
“Do you think I’m an idiot? I’ve just seen you buy drugs” He says, as spit flys from his upper lip.
Into a temple bar alleyway, eyes never leaving the floor, my feet know where to go. Leaning against a postered wall, I start to prepare. My lighter is in my pocket, where’s my spoon? No – wait, on the chain around my neck. I take the needle from my bag, and all there’s left to do is remove my belt. My breathing slows as I anticipate the coming release. Shit, there’s someone here. A woman, a girl even, sat on sodden cardboard. She holds her head between her elbows, as if bracing for impact.
“Oh, sorry, I’ll go,” I say, already turning to leave.
She’s seen the needle in my hand.
“Don’t.” She stands up. She’s wearing a pink hoodie with rainbows and a pixelated cat printed on it. She can’t be more than twenty-five.
“This is not something for someone like you to be seeing,” I say.
“You don’t think I’ve seen it before?”
When I try to walk out of the alleyway, she stands in my way.
“Haven’t you ever heard of sharing?”
My vision darkens, my brain rejects seeing any more – I can’t go through this again. I’m left staring at the half-dark tent ceiling. Giving Liv her first hit of heroin might be the worst thing I have ever done. Again and again, I’ve ruined her life.
*
Lying close to death, the Spanish man shakes me awake.
“Girl came,” he tells me.
