2020-01-07 - Collect-Calling

The cigarette that Graham tossed out the window hit the ice-crusted curb and hissed to death, and he swung himself out of the car. "Let's do this," he said, ducking back down to peer into the cab before he closed the door. On the passenger side, it took some serious concentration for Andre to extricate himself from this little sedan. It wasn't Graham's car, just one of Felix's throw-aways, and Andre barely fit in the damn thing. It never failed to make Graham smirk, watching that giant man deal with a normal-sized world, watching him take the gum out of his mouth and look around for somewhere to throw it away.

"Just toss it," was Graham's advice.

But Andre was having none of it. "No, G-man, we have to give a hoot and don't pollute." He even picked up the cigarette butt, tossing both of them into the trash can at the edge of the property while they trotted up the driveway.

The house was a run-down piece of junk. 'Crack shack' was a totally fair way to describe the place, located a couple miles outside town. These shitty little ramshackle 'cabins' in the middle of nowhere were a dime a dozen around these parts, but Graham still hated dealing with tweakers. They were unpredictable and stupid. When he'd come by two days ago, they had run the barrel of a pellet gun out the window at him and tried to convince him that it was a rifle. Rather than get himself shot by a fucking pellet gun, he'd told them that he'd be back, stupid fuckers, and they better have the money then.

The chair he had kicked over in his frustration at the last visit was still knocked over on what passed for a porch when he and Andre approached the front door. The wood was full of spiders and god knows what-else, and the roof over it slanted badly, sagging in a way that concerned Graham a lot when he thought about the weight of the snow (and god knows what-else) was supposedly supported by that slumping thing over his head. He told himself to make this shit quick.

Andre was milling around in the snow behind the porch. He was entertaining himself by walking patterns in the snow when Graham banged on the front door. The curtains twitched and, briefly, there was a spill of blue light from the TV that was on inside the cabin. "Go away!" came the voice from within. "We told you to fuck off!"

Graham was unsurprised when the window slid noisily open, just a crack, and the muzzle of the pellet gun appeared again. "And I told you that I'd be back. So pay up or OW!" They had shot him! Those dumb fucking tweakers had shot him with a pellet gun right in the wrist, and that shit stung like a bitch! "God dammit," was his summary, and then he started kicking the door - which was surprisingly resilient. "Come open this!"

The next ten minutes were a blur. Andre busted the door down with one solid push. The person shooting the pellet gun squealed and tried to book out, and Graham wound up chasing him through a house that was full of so much god-knows-what-else that he could only remember the interior as a chaos of shit that was almost definitely going to cut him and give him lockjaw or AIDS or both. It smelled like dope, and he was pretty sure he heard at least three doors in the interior slam while he and Andre charged after that goddamn spunion.

After careening through this madhouse of tweaker bullshit, they stumbled out the back door just in time to see their prey diving into a shed at the back of the proper that was - and Graham wouldn't even have believed this was possible if he hadn't seen it himself with his own two eyes - even more fucked up than the house. He was just about to charge the door when a beefy hand caught him by the elbow. "Hold on, buddy. I got this."

Which is how Graham wound up milling around in the cold backyard of some crackhead's house while Andre busted down the door of the shed - "Sorry!" - and then proceeded to add about a thousand more apologies. He heard the smack of fists hitting what he assumed was a face, heard some things being tossed around in the shed, and only stuck his head in after he got told, "Hey, neat! Come look what I found, buddy!"

Stepping into the shed, Graham couldn't help but burst into laughter. The stupid tweaker had taken a couple of punches to the face, for sure, but Andre could have turned the guy into paste without even trying, and yet - he was sobbing hysterically. "Here, here!" he was saying importantly, holding up a plastic Ziploc bag full of money. But that wasn't the funny part.

The funny part was that Andre was transfixed by a whole shelf full of unopened toys - collector kinda toys, old Hot Wheels and He-Man toys and those stupid fucking Beanie Babies that had made people lose their minds for a few years. He was clutching an armful of these toys, some spilling over his reach, and grinning from ear to ear. "He told me I could have these," Andre announced joyously. "Look, this one would be good for Elise!" It was a mama-beanie and a baby-beanie, and Graham laughed and stuffed it into the pocket of his coat.

He also snagged the big bag of money and stuffed that in the pocket of his coat. Crouching down by the tweaker, he said seriously, "The next time you shoot me with your fucking pellet gun, I'm going to shoot you with my real one. A'ight?" He gave the guy a quick, friendly-seeming pat on the shoulder, then straightened up. "Cheer up. Only five more payments to go." A winning smile later, and he was ducking back out into the cold, trudging wide around the house to the car.

"Wait up!" Andre was shuffling along after him, having some trouble 'cause he kept dropping something… then bending over to pick it up… which made him drop something else. Then it was a ten-minute drive to the next house where someone hadn't felt like paying Graham, but he was pretty sure they'd feel differently about paying Andre.

For the entire ten minutes, he got told to "CHECK THIS OUT!" while Andre rummaged through his new delights.