Tonk’s face in the window.

Even now, just saying it creeps you. You saw his face in the window, the very first time you snuck a puff out of Tonk’s pipe. Saw his face, even though you could hear him snore-groaning on the floor, face-down on a stroke magazine, Brown’n’Busty. So that his nose and mouth were mashed against the glistening 54-TRIPLE of the African-American model in the photo. She was on a beach, wearing a one piece pulled down so the straps hung at her hips and her massive breasts. Tonk liked what he called “the dusky belles.” Which was not the point. The point was that he could not be on the floor, with a hand on himself, snore-honking, and also outside, looking in through the glass. Two places at once. It happened other times, too, like when you could see his scabby white legs sticking out of the bunk, with a pillow over his head, and knew he was going to be crashed out for seventy-two hours. Or when you knew he wasn’t coming back till he made bail, after being popped at a chemical warehouse, asking for anhydrous ammonia. Nobody used that stuff, except on farms, for fertilizer—or to make speed. And Tonk thought maybe he could pass for a farmer in the middle of Cleveland. “Shop-owner Isadore Tutman told police, ‘I remember thinking, there’s no mud on this fellow’s shoes. Plus he stinks like a stoat. That’s when I decided to call the police.’” But Tonk got out, he always did. Maybe the people in jail didn’t want to inhale him any more than you did.

It was a jolt, seeing Tonk outside at the same time you heard him snoring inside. Worse, the peeping Tonk had that “I know what you want little girl” leer on his face. Because he did not know what you wanted. If he did he would have left, or never slept at all, even one day a month, because he’d know your secret get-to-sleep fantasy of wrapping a gun in a towel and holding the gun out behind an open umbrella, like you’d seen in movies, so you wouldn’t get brain-sprayed when you put the gun right against his temple and pulled the trigger. You’d also seen that in the movies—brains looked like cookie dough.

It’s too much. You have to say something. You woke Tonk to tell him what happened: you’d seen him—in two places at once. And Tonk slapped you without a thought. “That’s for stealing our shit and smoking it! Look at you!” He curled up his wormy lips. “Don’t tell me, you saw my face in the window…” Even speeding, you knew enough not to speak.

Tonk picked up the guitar, which was the worst thing ever. The thing you wanted least on the planet. His friend Fishoil was still there but Fishoil didn’t seem to notice. Fishoil didn’t notice anything but the drugs on the table. He never stopped looking at them. He talked once a night. “Face in the window,” Tonk crooned. He fancied himself a songwriter. He’d been working on one song—which happened to be called “Face in the Window,” for as long as you could remember. It was the only song Tonk knew. You hated it. Still hate it. But its spores live in your head, like auditory mold. The only song he knew on guitar. Words and lyrics (C, D7, F). “Face in the window/There’s a you-taste in my mouth…I loved your love slit more than hell loves sin.” That’s as far as he got.