The Dramamine had hit her fast behind all that wine. She picked up four more Stelazine tablets and swallowed those with more wine. Like Dramamine, Stelazine had an antinausea effect; it would keep her from puking. Plus, it could really make you blotto. She looked at her pills: her cache of Librium, glossy black and green capsules—five hundred or more; Valiums in blue; Xanax all pearly white; red and gray Darvons; Ludiomils in good-morning-sunshine orange; tricolored Tuinal in red, redder, and baby blue; drab brown Triavil in the 4-10 proportion; there were pastel orange methadone diskets (just two); some chalk white meprobamate in the generic—wipe-you-out-for-sure; multicolored Dexedrine spansules, passionate purple Parnate; there were her Nembutals, and the sea green, let’s-do-the-job-up-right Placidyl gel caps (Baby Dills)—the pills and capsules suddenly became an object of immense beauty, a treasure. It was better than unearthing a pirate captain’s sea chest filled with glittering gold doubloons, shimmering jewels: emeralds, rubies, diamonds, and chips of anthracite coal—better because pills did things. Drugs altered sensations. They could alter the worst sensation—permanently. They would do so…presently. All you had to do was swallow. What a relief to commit. To finally end it. She felt the richness and depth of color of the pills down to the roots of her hair. Pills so beautiful they made her hurt down to the roots of her hair.

Maybe it was the wine. No, really, it was the pills hitting home. Taken with wine on an empty stomach, they probably dissolved in seconds. She would have to make fast work of the cache and after she asked him what his plans were, she began swallowing the various pills and capsules with wine, ten at a time. It was like working on an assembly line and her hand began to tire. She got down thirty and had to rest a moment. She poured another glass of wine and was quickly back at it. This was her job. Her last job.

She heard the Zippo go off again. He was smoking. Thinking. There was too much of a dead space. He didn’t know what to say. He was trying to psych her up and was out of gas himself. He didn’t realize that he had made the final act possible. She was proud of herself. Your friends do sometimes come through. “Isn’t that some bad shit at the refugee camp in Zaire?” she said merrily. She grabbed at the pills as the colors suited her mood.

“Yeah, bad. But if I’m laying in the gutter shitting and puking my guts out—and I have laid in gutters and done that, baby. Nobody comes along—no foreigner comes along with an IV tube to save my black ass. I ain’t even expecting it.”