Arianna

I walked into the living room and saw Arianna on the couch, surrounded by dope and paraphernalia, with a gun in her lap. I was hungry, so my brain didn’t register it. It’s amazing how the needs of the body can overcome the fears of the mind. The sight should have sent me into immediate shock, for I had been robbed at gunpoint just a few weeks before in my home.

But I was hungry that morning, so Arianna’s gun slipped my notice.

“Got any food?”

“Maybe.”

Arianna said it like she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything. She never seemed to, at least. Everything she did was detached; she said everything as though she was somewhere else. This always made me a little nervous, and I was never sure if I could trust her. She was just so cold.

I thought it was because she did so much dope. Or because she sold drugs. All the drug dealers I knew, especially the women, were tough, cold, and distant. I was never quite sure if it was a survival trait or a result of being robbed and scammed all the time.

I found a stale slice of chocolate cake on the counter. I grabbed a fork and headed back into the living room. I sat down to eat, and Arianna handed me a bowl of dope. I blew thick, white clouds of chemical smoke from my mouth and soon my belly felt full of cotton and all thoughts of food floated out of my head. I was still hungry, but as long as I was this high, eating would be impossible.

Suddenly, Arianna picked up the gun from her lap and pointed it at my face. I sat, staring down the barrel, feeling as if I was stuck in some surreal B-movie.

“Do you know Thumper?”

I had no idea who or what Thumper was, and I was high enough to not really care. My mind flitted to thoughts of Bambi but didn’t feel like a joke would suit the moment, considering she was pointing a gun at my face.

“No, I don’t know Thumper. Should I?”

“Ryker and Stephen never introduced you to Thumper?”

I once read that the air smells metallic after a gun has been fired, and I vaguely wondered if the metal I smelled in the air was from the dope because good dope sometimes smells vaguely metallic too, or if I was hallucinating and Arianna had already shot me. I pictured myself on her living room floor with blood and brains oozing out of my head.

“No, I’ve never met Thumper.”

“He didn’t send you here?”

I shook my head, still looking at the gun, not Arianna’s face, unsure of how to react. I decided I wasn’t dead yet, that Arianna was still trying to decide what the truth was. Did she believe me? All I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to see the look on her face if she decided to shoot me. She stared at me and I stared at the gun in a tense, never-ending silence.

“Good.”

She lowered the gun.

“If I find out you’re lying, you’re dead.”

She put the gun under the couch cushion beside her and we started smoking dope again. It was as if she had never held a gun to my head and never threatened to kill me. Arianna passed the pipe to me as she began to tell me the story of Thumper and her husband.

“It’s hard for a lot of people to understand the love that I had with Loki. It wasn’t a typical doper relationship.”

She swept her arm around, indicating the apartment we were in.

“We made a lot of money together. It was easy to pretend to the outside world that we led normal lives. Our parents could come over and see our beautiful home. They never questioned us too much about what we did for a living.”

She took another hit and leaned back as she blew a cloud toward the ceiling.

“It was like a never-ending honeymoon. We rarely slept and spent all of our time together.”.

“You didn’t fight?”

“No. I know that’s unusual. But Loki and I rarely fought. We could be high for weeks on end and we still loved each other. We had so many amazing moments and conversations…”

I found it hard to believe her. Doing dope and not sleeping or eating for weeks at a time tends to make people super grumpy and paranoid. Maintaining a normal relationship was impossible.

“What happened to him?”

A flash of anger crossed her face that sent a shiver down my spine.

“It all changed when we met Thumper. Not at first. At first, he was just a typical dope fiend. He showed up with some friends and wormed his way into our home. He started staying here a lot, but he brought new business so we didn’t mind. But then Loki and I started bickering when he was around. It was a sign, although neither of us saw it in time.”

Arianna looked away, and I thought she wiped away a tear. But I wasn’t sure. She was a stoic woman.

“I should have believed him.”

She steadied herself with another hit.

“Loki told me he had a bad feeling about Thumper. He said he thought Thumper was hiding something. We got into a fight that day, one of the worst we ever had. I told him he needed to sleep, that he had been up too long and he was getting paranoid.”

I took a hit myself and passed the pipe back to her. But she didn’t want it.

“We took a break from the dope and slept for a few days. Thumper broke into our place and woke me up by grabbing me and tying me up. He wasn’t alone…”

She looked at me and took a deep breath.

“His friends tied Loki up. They gagged him so he couldn’t speak. Then Thumper went on this crazy tirade about how he worked for the Mexican Mafia and how they were pissed at us for taking business away from them. He said they sent him to us.”

She half snorted.

“A big Italian guy working for the Mexican Mafia. Crazy, right?”

I set the pipe down on the table, not really wanting to know what she was going to say next.

“He killed him. Hung him right there.”

She pointed to the ceiling.

“I watched Loki slowly die in front of me. And there was nothing I could do.”

The hatred that filled her eyes sent a shiver down my spine.

“Thumper said I was next if I didn’t repay the Mafia. He stayed with me for the next six months, eating my food and taking a portion of the profits. I couldn’t do anything. Then, one day, I woke up and he was gone.”

I didn’t know what to say so I picked the pipe up again. Not because I wanted a hit, but because I was uncomfortable and needed to do something with my hands. Why was she telling me this?

“Nobody’s seen Thumper for years. Some say he’s dead, but I think he’s still out there. I feel him out there somewhere. If you ever see him, you tell me, so I can kill him.”

I couldn’t believe that I was smoking dope with someone who had something like that really happen to her. I thought stuff like that only happened in movies. We sat in silence, with a stale slice of chocolate cake on the coffee table, and the shiny tip of a gun peeking out from under the couch cushion.

I wondered what Arianna had been like, what Loki had been like. Were they nice? Were they open, caring, and fun like the party kids I usually hung out with? Did Arianna go out places before? I sat on that couch wondering, and I would spend many more hours wondering, imagining. But I would never get an answer.

A few months later, I heard that Arianna was murdered while I was hanging out with my friend Ryker. To this day, I still wonder if it was Thumper.

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