Antidote

C

The cops are chasing us—a carload of them. They are chasing us with their shiny black guns, aimed at us like a parody of arms-where-I-can-see-’em. Ramy and Hamada pass me all the heroin we’ve purchased a mere half hour ago; about ten grams. Cause if we get caught, the fact that I’m a girl is going to stop the cops from searching me. Yea, right! Then my panties are bulging with the plastic-paper wrapped drugs and Hamada—cursing fit to impress the meanest thug—is soaring down Ring Road and into Road 90. We don’t look behind to see if they’re still following. We just keep running because we can do nothing else. High, wryly amused and barely aware of the gravity of the situation, all I’m thinking is what funny timing this is, happening just six hours before my graduation ceremony…

But that part comes much later.

D

Further back. Flood-light in the kitchen. Three am. The refrigerator yawns fluorescence on the ceramic tiles. The refrigerator purges neon beams on my tapping foot. The refrigerator tattoos my face on the parallel window: a mirror-world of possibilities. I look at my archaic face and think crow’s feet. I think nasal-labial fold. I think I’ve wasted too much money, time and product because in that vague breath of treacherous light, I am all crease and wrinkle and antique. I wish to desiccate my history, push it under a stern microscopic eye, sharpie the flaws like a plastic surgeon tracing skin, wash vigorously, tumble, dry, fade, dilute it, then paint it by hand, turn it into the picturesque—as compact as a pocketbook, an antonym of life.

I cannot sleep. I cannot eat. I cannot sit still. I feel my blood sing in its veins. There’s a hum in my ears, quivering in my bones. A bee’s buzz rising like a sun or a lighthouse or a conflagration. In my mind a thousand voices bark wishes, demands and ideas. No two want the same thing. I want to do everything. Be everything. Become infinity. The one the earth quakes for. I want to move to a new country. I want to pack my car with bread and cheese and wine and music records before driving to the country-side to finally see the village our fathers grew in and told us stories about since we were kids. I want to write a book. I want to bake my mother a cake cause she’s such a lovely woman. I want to grow my own fruits and roll my own tobacco. I want to cultivate a taste for caviar, because it sounds so fancy! I brim with ceaseless, source-less excitement. I roam the house all night, like a watchful sentinel. I have conversations with the cat. I call my boyfriend, Ramy, a hundred times promising it’s the last time to tell him some small tidbit I just thought up. He is often cranky because he has work in the morning but it just feels so damn important for me to tell him this or that now now now.

But that, too, comes later.