Out of Orange: A Memoir Read online

  I called Phillip first. He was going to come over later. He didn’t care how big I thought my emergency was. It wasn’t big enough to have to explain it to Meg and blow her off. They had plans and that was that. He would be over afterward. I wasn’t about to utter the details of my drama regarding our criminal enterprise over the phone. I knew that would be sloppy and stupid.

  I sat staring back at Edith and petting her head. I pushed her off the laptop’s keyboard and realized she had been entering text into the word processing program I had opened before all this. I took a look at what her butt had typed. Perhaps I would find my answers there. All that she had typed was a string of the letters L and A, repeated for pages and pages. She had now officially done more writing than I had in the last couple of months. I closed Edith’s composition and turned off the computer before she crawled back onto the keys and curled up. I couldn’t sit there all night waiting to talk to Phillip. I would go batty.

  I started thinking about the worst-case scenario. If I had no choice but to go on another trip, I would need another cat sitter. This time I wanted someone to actually stay in the apartment with Edith and Dum Dum, someone who might be in a position to keep my babies if I never returned. It was time to start thinking about the long term. Mom and Dad’s house was definitely out of the question. I would have to explain why I needed them to babysit my girls. Besides that, my mom had conveniently developed cat allergies. I had recently asked her to babysit my kitties while I got settled in Chicago and she couldn’t help then. Edith flicked her tail hard once, as if she were responding to my thought.

  Edith and Dum Dum needed a good godparent. The cats had liked Piper and she was a cat person. Piper still lived in an apartment with a bunch of people and she might appreciate the “alone” time at my apartment. Piper would never let anything bad happen to my girls if I didn’t make it home. It was a long shot and I would have to tell her everything, but I could give it a try. I found her number still tucked in the pocket of the pants I had stuffed into my dirty clothes hamper a few nights before. I had been hesitant to call her without having something concrete to talk about. I no longer had simple stuff in common with anyone and I sucked at small talk. I had no reason to hesitate now though; Edith and Dum Dum needed a godmother and a house sitter.

  I called Piper and invited her to have a drink with me. If she agreed to be the kitties’ godmother, there were a lot of unusual details better explained in person. She wasn’t working that night, so when she agreed to meet me and asked where I wanted to go, I wasn’t prepared for such a simple detail to be so complicated. I didn’t want anyone listening to our conversation. She worked at the Brewery, so that place was out—too many busybodies interested in Piper there. I would have similar fans at Spoleto, so that was out too. Haymarket didn’t serve alcohol, so that was out. Besides, I certainly wasn’t ready to see Joan if she was at work. I picked the Hotel Northampton. I wondered if it was a mistake to meet her at a hotel for drinks. Especially since I think she thought I was making a date with her.

  Edith woke from a short nap on my laptop when I set the phone down in its cradle. Cats are professionals when it comes to power napping. She stood up and did a minute’s worth of yoga, downward-facing dog, then Halloween kitty. I expected her to hop off the desk and go about her very important business. Instead, she stepped off the desk into my arms and dug in. I was wearing one of my nice new knit sweaters from Paris but sacrificed it gladly when she started kneading. Edith was finally making up with me. She had not done this since my return from Chicago, and it signaled the truce I had been so hoping for. I loved her unconditionally. Though it was conditional, Edith loved me too and she trusted me. I could never abandon her, but leaving her in someone else’s care felt like that. She hopped down and headed for her bed.

  I had enough time to lie down for a little nap, take a shower, and get to the hotel. I wasn’t normally a nap person, but the call with Hester and subsequent call with Alajeh had sent my adrenaline through the roof. It had worn off quickly though, and I was exhausted, emotionally drained. I opened the windows in my room and crawled into bed with Edith and Dum Dum, closed my eyes, and dozed off. The next second my room was dark, Edith was gone, and I had no idea where I was or what I was supposed to be doing, but instantly I knew that it was something important.

  I jumped out of bed, checked quickly to see if the cats were in or out, shut the window, locked it, threw my clothes on and my boots, grabbed my helmet, and bolted out the door, then back in the door to get my cigarettes and lighter, then out and onto my bike, then off my bike, back in the door to get my keys, then I stopped, stood still for a moment, and did nothing. I was already late, and when I try to go fast, I end up going backward.

  Miraculously, though, I did make it in time to meet Piper. She had been late too, or said she had. I sat down at the bar next to her and ordered a drink. She ordered some big fruity frozen thing. I scanned the bar menu and instantly regretted having chosen the Hotel Northampton. Their food wasn’t very fun, just boring crap visiting parents would want. I was in the mood for pizza and suggested we go to a trendy pizza place up the street after our drinks. She agreed . . .

  But first, I had to get the reason we were meeting onto the table. I ordered a scotch, took a big gulp, and got right to the point. I didn’t beat around the bush at all either. I just came right out and told her what our little date was about.

  “If I begged, would you stay at my house for a while and watch my cats? I’ll pay you.” I wondered if that was overkill.

  “Maybe.” Piper looked puzzled. “When?”

  “I’m thinking soon, but not sure.”

  “For how long?”

  “Hmm. Maybe a week, but it could be longer.” It was a little premature to ask her about being their godmother. But my claim that it would be only a week assumed that if I did go, it would be a repeat of the last trip. “Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. So I know when to show up and what to pack.” She laughed at me like my not knowing this was crazy.

  “So you’ll do it!” I jumped off my stool and hugged her.

  “Whoa! Slow it down.” The expression she chose and her playful smile reminded me of someone I liked. I couldn’t remember who, but the smile was genuine and warm. “When you figure out when and for how long, you let me know.” Her expression turned serious again, if not a little condescending.

  “I will. But you’ll do it, right?” I didn’t even know this was going to be necessary yet. I just wanted her to say she would do it if she could. If I had someone who would do it, I could work out all the details so they could.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, probably not expecting what I said.

  “Paris. Maybe Africa.”

  She looked at me without saying anything for a moment. “You haven’t decided?”

  “No. I haven’t got an itinerary yet. I’m not even certain yet I am going anywhere.” I told her I was simply trying to make sure I had someone I could trust with my cats.

  “What are you going for?” I guessed Piper had heard the bullshit story that I worked for someone in Paris.

  “I’m a smuggler.” This sounded so much nicer than saying I was a drug mule. She didn’t laugh, so she clearly didn’t think I was joking, and she hadn’t turned to stone, which kind of describes what I imagined people might do when I told them. I had shared my secret with a few others by then, not just Phillip. Nobody I’d told had freaked out yet though. Everyone just thought it was cool. But this was the first time I would tell someone about the trap I thought I was in.

  Piper was slow to respond, but when she did, she didn’t seem to mind my occupation. I explained my predicament a little more, that I really hoped to figure out an alternative to going on another trip, and she was very sweet about it. She assured me that she would take care of the cats. She told me I was crazy when I offered to pay her, I didn’t have to pay her to do that, and she would stay at the house with them.

  I felt like I had made a new f
riend and it surprised me that I had misjudged her so completely before getting to know her. She was no snob. She was very sweet, quite possibly even a little shy. I felt like I could trust anyone who loved cats so much. I know, crazy, but that’s the way we cat people are. Piper listened to my adventurous tales and the unlikely series of events that resulted in my having the tales to tell. I told her I felt like something bigger than myself was at work in my life. It was all too unreal. She agreed completely, and I think she even bought into the idea; it would mean something bigger than her was also at work in her life. I had just made her my confidant after all.

  We went to eat pizza and ended up going our separate ways when Phillip finally found me and was ready to address the big emergency I had called him about. His sudden appearance and demand of my attention probably seemed a little rude to Piper at first. But I apologized for it and sent her on her way, telling her I needed to let Phillip know she was in the loop but that first we had to deal with the situation I had explained earlier.

  Phillip and I discussed my newly amplified fears and got extraordinarily drunk. One too many drinks while discussing our possibly unsolvable problem made it impossible for me to ride my motorcycle back to my apartment, but it did wonders to douse the fuse of my explosive emotions. Fueled by Dewar’s and sodas, Phillip and I came up with a great idea to save our own butts. We would find people who wanted to do what we had done and pretend we were the ones doing it!

  Phillip and I simply opened our big mouths up and spilled the beans to people we thought might be interested. When someone we told our story to responded the way Phillip had when I’d told him about my trip and wanted to do it themselves, we added them to a mental list of possibilities. Very soon, we had a small group of friends who knew our secret and wanted a chance to do what we had done. You know what happens to secrets. The first two people who wanted to give it a go were interested because of the adventure, a couple of people were bored adrenaline junkies, and a couple of others needed money. Everybody wanted expense-free travel. I think one was either a sociopath or suicidal or some combination thereof, so we stayed away from that one. What none of our new recruits were was poor, desperate, or stupid. They all came from good families, and that is what would make it so easy. No one would suspect any of these people to be drug smugglers. They came off as educated, privileged, law-abiding yuppies, because that’s what they were.

  Beyond the desire to go play outlaws and globe-trotters for a week or two, they also had to meet some basic standards, and of course, Phillip and I believed we were experts on profiling the perfect drug smuggler, given our vast experience of just one trip together. They had to be old enough to hold a job that would take them overseas or old enough to be traveling college graduates. We told them enough of the real story, the many un-fun parts, and the danger that Alajeh might be to scare them off. Though we would do everything we could to keep it from happening, if anyone did have to meet Alajeh, there would be no easy way for them to get out. If Alajeh found out what we were doing, he would have to meet them, and our hope of using them to do our work would be dashed.

  We explained that this last fact was why we were doing what we were doing, finding our stand-ins. We had both been like our recruits at one point, wanting to go on an adventure, make a little money, and be done with it. What we could offer them was a way to do that without making the same mistake we had made. If someone we did like was still eager to go, with all the negative information disclosed, we had a recruit.

  Most important, there were no threats made. As long as everything worked out, they were also free to leave us at almost any time they chose. Heck, we would even pay the change fee for their return ticket if they chickened out. We never thought too hard about failure; I guess we didn’t think it was possible.

  Phillip and I put our plan in motion. I was to take two of our volunteers to Chicago, pick the money up, escort them to Europe, pick up the drug-stuffed jackets, and put our friends and their nice new jackets on a plane back to Chicago. Phillip would leave Northampton a week after us and meet them coming into Chicago. He would deliver the drugs and get the payment, then pay our friends and finally send them home. A couple of weeks later we would do it all again, but with me in Chicago and Phillip in Europe.

  In this arrangement, Phillip and I would no longer have to smuggle drugs. We were only in danger of being busted for drug possession, and that for only however long it took to retrieve the drugs from our friends and hand them off to Alajeh’s folk. It would look to Alajeh like Phillip and I had taken two trips, back to back. He would at least stop bugging us for a minute. We had put a great deal of thought into this plan and we were fairly certain we had devised a brilliant escape route; on the way out we might make a little money and meet some adventurous people like ourselves, all while making everyone involved very happy. Sooner or later Alajeh would decide we had traveled so much that our odds of getting busted were too high. We couldn’t be his winning horses forever. We would be out.

  The best part was eliminating our own risk, except for that tiny little window of time when we were actually in possession of the heroin. If we made this work, we would be fine, even if it took a little while to completely exit. We thought we were genius escape artists, the fucking Houdini twins.

  This was our Mission: Impossible. There were a lot of variables to juggle that determined whether or not our seemingly simple plan could work, but we were motivated. Phillip and I were too scared to do it again ourselves. We thought that Alajeh could make us do it if he wanted to, and though he seemed to know we would not get busted, we were both convinced he was wrong. His repeated assertion that as long as we followed his rules, we would be taken care of, even if we did get nabbed by Customs, was not very reassuring. His rules included only two acceptable exits from his service. The first was going to jail quietly were he ever wrong about our not getting busted. The second was reaching an as of yet unknown magic number of trips taken. After that, we would be considered too high risk. How this sum was determined and by whom, I have no clue. I did know about an international flight watch list—that if you were placed on it, you couldn’t do the smuggling anymore—but I had as little insight into how Alajeh would have access to this list as I did the calculation for the number of trips it took to make the list.

  There was always the possibility that we were being ridiculous. Maybe Alajeh wouldn’t follow through on these perceived threats. Maybe it was all just an act, meant to play with our imaginations and maintain control of us. We had considered this, hoped and wished for it. But what if we were wrong? It wasn’t our own lives we thought we were betting with; it was my sister’s life and whomever Phillip had offered up as his so-called emergency contact.

  The most important factors required in order for this charade to work were that Alajeh never find out what we were doing and, at the very least, we had to break even and not lose money on the trips. Our friends knew better than to expose the operation to anyone if they decided to back out or got caught. First of all, what did the recruits know to tell? The name that we called him and country of origin. The name wouldn’t have proven very useful, since it apparently wasn’t even his real name. Second, if they were caught by U.S. Customs, they would be waiving their access to good lawyers and their fat bonus for getting busted and staying quiet. Yes, there was a bonus for that. It came from Alajeh and we hoped never to have to make that claim. If that ever happened, we would be in deep shit, having to tell Alajeh not only what we had been doing in secret but also that our stand-ins, whom he didn’t know about, had been caught.

  We knew there would be enough start-up cash for two airline tickets to Paris or Brussels and a modest stipend for living expenses for two. But three of us would be traveling, not two: Phillip or me with the two recruits. The modest stipend made a dent in costs, but we were not going to ask our friends to stay in the dumps that Alajeh’s stipends afforded. Phillip and I had to foot part of the bill for each trip, up front. This was part of the deal with our recru
ited friends. If all else failed, they would get the trip of a lifetime for free. Our friends would be risking getting caught and going to jail for a long time, maybe even as long as two years. That is what we had been told a first-time offender would face.

  I finally placed a second call back to Alajeh for trip dates. We had an excellent plan, two perfect candidates, and we were ready to go. We had four other equally qualified candidates in the batter’s box, also prepared, when Alajeh said “Go.”

  Until that happened, Piper, the kitties, and I hung out almost every day. She stayed overnight at my house sometimes, sleeping in my bed with me. There was no hanky-panky there, unless you count her and Edith or Dum Dum’s snuggling as such. Piper and I were becoming friends, but that is all. She had a much closer relationship blossoming with my cats. I had been right about her being their godparent. She was perfect for that job. She was a very intelligent and serious woman, she wasn’t interested in becoming a drug mule, and I assumed she knew better than to get involved with me. Nonetheless, she was rapidly becoming my good friend and that was exactly all I needed. I was trying to avoid a recurring theme in my life up to that point. I would break up with a girlfriend, go into a tailspin, and fall directly into a new relationship as bad as or worse than the one before.

  Piper’s presence in my life made it easier for me to manage the void. I had been a tomboy growing up and my friends had usually been boys. Interestingly, most of them turned out to be gay too. My mother once questioned if there was something wrong with our neighborhood. I don’t know, like perhaps it was in the water. But the point is, my friendships with girls were always complicated. It seemed like every friendship was based on one having an attraction to the other. It was rare to find a friendship where I felt there was a sort of equal ambivalence. That made it so much easier just to relax and hang out.

  Piper was fine with not being invited to participate in any capacity other than as my cat sitter. She had a very calming effect on me, not just on my cats. In telling anyone what I feared might be in store for me if the plan I had failed, it somehow felt less likely to fail. In fact, I started feeling pretty optimistic about things, like I had it all figured out.