Ah, the coke. If #2 could take it back, turn the other way when a dealer first offered her a hit on a shift, would she? That first zip of energy. The confidence of holding a straw, the comforting script of ritual. The thump of her heart and the lightness of her body. The way the nights blurred by in a frenzy of flirtation and vodka and little bumps in the ladies’ room, the surge of energy thrumming through her limbs, the thread of her pulse pulled a little more taut. She felt proud that she could keep up her figure—proud even when her shift supervisor would come and fit his hands around her waist, the fog of his breath on the back of her neck.

No. Even now. She wouldn’t trade it. Not those nights when everyone seemed to be laughing together. When she could feel men watching her, wanting her, and she could hold herself just beyond their reach. She would be more careful, though. She wouldn’t, the night when no one was holding, take the barback up on his offer of speed. She wouldn’t let the speed slide into pills. She wouldn’t get so high that she tripped during her shift, crashing on the marble floor with a full tray of drinks. She knocked her tooth so hard on the rim of a beer mug that it fell out and she felt it slide along the slick pocket of her cheek. Her mouth filled with the taste of blood, and once she sat up, she spat the tooth into her hand. She stared at it for a minute, thinking it was strangely pretty, this little piece of her. She probably had a concussion, along with the sweet buzz of the speed, and it made her thoughts tilt in strange ways, but she had been mesmerized by the bizarre beauty of it, the swirl of blood on her skin, the hard white square at the center of her palm. The next morning she was fired for being high on the job.

If she could do it again, she wouldn’t pick up a needle after she was canned, wouldn’t feel so relieved that heroin came cheap. When she got clean, like she did in ’96, ’98, ’03, ’07, she would stay that way. Leave town, go to school, learn a skill that didn’t involve moving through dark places, handing out drinks, leaning over so men could get a better look at her breasts before deciding how much to tip her. She pictured herself in an office filled with plants and sunlight, the smell of paper and ink. But school would cost money. And what to do in the meantime? She was like everyone else: the grind of daily life, so many bills to pay.