[Editors’ note: This is our last miCRo until September; we’re taking the steamy month of August off! See you in a few weeks with all new fabulous miCRo content…]
Assistant Editor Maggie Su: Reading “Drug Dealer: A ’90s Whip Reel” is like going from zero to a hundred in 450 words. Robertson uses sharp details like a Honda Civic “the color of hives or psoriasis” and subwoofers that thump “like a defibrillator” to move the reader through time. From cars to cocktail napkins to Hennessy bottles, these snapshots create a coming-of-age story rich with heart and heartbreak.
Drug Dealer: A ’90s Whip Reel
Honda Civic DX, Camellia Red. Not red, fuchsia. The color of hives or psoriasis. Thirteen-inch hammers. Baby rims. One snap of my first ride: Girl with pigtail braids, college T-shirt, whiskered jeans. Squinting into the sun, hand to my brow as if headed to the Gold Rush. Don’t go to jail, my mother says before I turn the key. Don’t go to jail.
Nissan 240SX, Platinum Ice Metallic. Limousine tint, five-star 17s. Dorm breezeway drive-by, twelve-inch subs thump my chest, every girl’s chest on the campus west side, like a defibrillator. He’s the brother of another RA. At his place, the cat gives birth on the linoleum floor. He cleans each kitten with a washcloth and names them Grace and Grace and Bob. He says, Don’t take your body away, in the trailer behind his mother’s house. Don’t take your body away.
Mitsubishi 3000GT, Passion Red. When the car comes to a stop, the rear spoiler lifts like a jet flap. In a Rafferty’s booth, he writes sixteen and three zeros and a dollar sign on a cocktail napkin, and slides it toward me as if I’m his quarterback and this—each X is a kilo—is my clutch play. On the way back to my apartment, corner of a rough street, some kid yells, Let me hold something. That night, he reaches behind his back and lays a silver handgun on my biology textbook. He nods to it and says, That’s a Ruger 1911.
Ferrari F355 Spider, Rosso Corsa. Racing red. I pose in my urban-camouflage minidress at the dealership. Last-minute twelve-hour trip to Miami. I stand up my mom and Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. When he claims he lost his cash, I max out my two credit cards and book a room at the Best Western. I step foot on South Beach, untie my bikini top, and hand him my camera. On the way home, while he sleeps reclined in the passenger seat, a cop pulls me over for driving alone in the HOV lane.
Honda Prelude SH, White Diamond Pearl. Leased brand new. Backed in to the first spot at the Kinkos where I run copiers overnight to pay for it. I haven’t seen him in a while. He asks if he can drive it; he’ll bring it right back. I find my car the next day, empty Hennessy bottles under the seats. All morning with him on my futon, and then I work a ten-hour shift. At midnight I drive by his house. Jennifer’s Toyota Camry LE V6 in his driveway. Light Blue Metallic, like sky. Like the clouds parting. He stands in his front yard with a gun and threatens to shoot me.
Kristin Robertson is the author of Surgical Wing (Alice James Books, 2017). Her work appears recently in Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, and Five Points. She lives and teaches in East Tennessee. Find her at www.kristin-robertson.com.
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