When Angie indulges, she becomes the de facto leader of her uncle’s domain, and everyone else, like minion, cowers on the side lines. In this faze, she is invincible and tryannical and she will not be stopped.
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In the immaculate yet sparsely furnished lobby of a Park Avenue condominium around 9 p.m., Tuesday April 14, 2009, three doorman hover in the corners while I head straight towards the elevators. A doorman behind a large desk intercepts me and phones to announce my arrival to see Angie Callabrian 37.
She is sitting among dilapidated and new pieces of furniture in her uncle’s apartment. A conversation between him and a close family friend erupts the moment I enter the spacious abode. Complements – “You look like Ivana Trump” – fly my way as I sit on a plush couch with feathers coming out of the arms.
Angie reclines on a lounge chair adjacent to the couch with a card table in front of her. “This is where the magic happens,” she jokes. She jumps up, and frenetically paces the room. “I can’t take it anymore, I want these people to leave.” She’s referring to the repairmen working on her uncle’s television. Eventually, a family friend and the repairmen leave, and Angie’s eyes demonically light up, as she scrambles to her cell phone to call her dealer. She counts her money, and gets her paraphernalia together as she awaits the arrival of a stash. A crack pipe, a cup of water, baking soda, and a small spoon are arranged on the table.
“I have to have to meet the dealer around the corner in five minutes,” she says, reaching for a jacket and umbrella and then skips out the door. Then five minutes later, a torrent of energy in the entry way – among photos of family friends and starlets that emboss the walls – is Angie, her face, beautiful, her smile, glistening.
With stash in hand, she throws a brown crumpled paper bag on the table. She rubs her hands together, and before barely taking her coat off, she spills out the contents, in little plastic bags, on to the table. Her uncle, accustomed, and equally displeased with the situation, hides out in his bedroom; her boyfriend, Joe, the perpetual pot smoker, mutters under his breath, his head hanging low, he nods with disapproval. When Angie carries out her ritual, she becomes the de facto leader of her uncle’s domain, and everyone else, like minion, cowers on the side lines. In this faze, before indulging, she is invincible and tryannical and she will not be stopped.
Surrounded by half-used cartons of Newport Lights,and several Coors Beers occupying available around her, she tears through the little baggies, and counts the solidified, amorphorous shaped pebbles on the table.
“That cheap bastard,” she said. “I give these dealers good business, and, yet, I always get gypped.
To enjoy the crack in its purest form, she adds a drops of water, baking soda, and crack cocaine, and cooks the contents with a lighter. Like a chemist, after about a minute, once the contents discontinue bubbling, she scrapes the remnants of the spoon and retrieves the putty like substance that’s left over. She explains that she has had to dig out the contents with a penny because, for some reason that wasn’t clear, the cooked crack became compromised. With some ashes, she places a dollop on her makeshift pipe, consisting of a mini-Smirnoff bottle with a piece of tin foil at the mouth, with holes poked in, and a piece of a drinking straw taped on one side and a small hole on the opposite side. As if in some spiritual trance, she methodically holds the lighter to the top containing the coke; her chest swells as she deeply inhales, the chamber generously fills with billows of languidly drifting smoke, all to be swallowed up voraciously by Angie.
The contentment on her face is telling,her yearning quenched; her eyes wide, euphoric: She has discovered Shangri-la at the end of a stem.
“This shits, not the best, but it’s good,” she says, choking on the smoke.
As the ritual continues, the stench has filtered throughout the apartment, and with windows shut, avails no fresh air for the living space. A thick grey plume clings to the air and to Angie’s perspiring face. She smokes one rock after another. And like a chameleon with each preceding inhalation of the narcotic, her facial features become distorted and animated, uncontrollably. Saliva occasionally drools from the side of her mouth; at other times she shifts her jaw from side to side, crossing her heavily made up eyes; the mascara, running, she appears almost disturbed. A verbal stream of nonsensical jabbering at a frenzied pace accompanies each inhalation, her words are almost undecipherable. One moment she relates about her world travels, and at another, her most recent surgical enhancement.
Within an hour, and a half, has stash has dwindled to a few forlorn crumbs, and without hesitation she picks up her cell, frantically dialing one dealer after another. She will not be thwarted.
“I know some of the best crack dealers in town, but some of them are almost impossible to get a hold of, or want too much for their shit,” she says aloud. “This guy I just called delivers the stuff without a long wait, but the problem is with his stuff it’s a crap shoot. Sometimes It’s weak, and sometimes, it’s good, but right now he’s the only one I can get a hold of.”
As she awaits his arrival she takes klonopin to slow down her rapid heart beat. “Once I ran to the emergency room because I thought I was having a heart attack,” she says. “I told the emergency staff that I had taken Klonopins, and an aspirin to prevent a heart attack while I was smoking crack. They just laughed.”
The phone rings. It’s the dealer. She has to meet him around the corner. With no jacket nor umbrella this time, she hurries off. In a few minutes she bustles back through the door, out of breath, and desperate for the next fix. Hurling a paper bag on the table, it’s only seconds before she ignites the flame, and repeats the ritual. As redundant and pathetic as it may seem to outsiders, for Angie, it’s about reaching a plateau of satisfaction and peace of mind. The pipe has become the core of her existence. She sits on her chair for days, and weeks doing nothing else but trying to satiate her need.
It’s now 5 a.m. the next day. Her beauty radiates despite the worn makeup, though she looks weary, the fire in her eyes, gone.
She needs more.