Smoking crack on the bus

Puffy clouds and distant dragons.

I'm waiting for a bus with a man and woman who keep ducking behind a post to smoke crack.

At first, they give discretion their best shot — he holds up his worn jacket so she can crouch low. Then comes the lighter flicking. There's a breeze so also a fury of FLIK-FLIK-FLIK.

After a moment of silence, she rises billowing smoke like an imperious dragon, not giving a fuck who sees her. She doesn't even offer the man her jacket when it's his turn. He exhales, supremely satisfied. Untouchable.

Funny how brazen crack smokers can be. I never imagined I'd be smoking it behind the wheel on the highway. Or at a bus shelter on a sunny afternoon. Or just before a family dinner. Or right before going to the park with my dog, Luna — who I happen to be traveling to see right now. Until I did.

The bus is hardly full and the crack-smoking couple make straight for the very back. She's a vaguely middle-aged redhead in stained grey spandex. Her back bends sharply to one side, which accounts for the cane in hand. The other hand clutches a dirty crack pipe — the kind I used to spend hours scraping black and gold resin from, wringing out every last toke.

Only I remember what always came after.

There's hissing and bickering from the backseat. Doubtless he's getting paranoid. I wish I could turn around and tell them it's fine. Just enjoy.

But I know that's impossible. I'd be taken for an undercover cop or something. Sooner or later, they'll be convinced the whole bus knows. And the driver isn't taking them to Burlington at all — but directly to the police station. They'll spend the next hour and a half sweating, jaws clenched, angrily telling each other to be cool. Maybe they'll make a run for it at the next stop.

Someone's going to drop the pipe. And what a clatter it will make. When they pick it up, the only thing left to do will be to load it and smoke it. But they won't rise from behind the seats like mighty dragons this time. They'll be another shade drained, a little more jittery.

It won’t be like the early tokes. Late tokes don't bury the despair. They dig up all the fears and frictions of being an addict in broad daylight.

And sure enough, I smell it. They argue some more, louder this time.

“What did you do with it?” she asks.

“I gave it to you,” he growls.

An hour and a half until Luna drowns me in kisses.

This is the closest I've come to crack smoking since I went clean. And also the farthest.