It is late at night. Your body is screaming, “I need it. I have to have it. I’ll do anything to get it.”

You check the billfold of your wallet: Five dollars.

Not enough.

You open the glass jar where your wife throws her pocket change. Eighteen quarters. One dime. Six pennies. Total cash on hand: Nine dollars and sixty-three cents. Still not enough.

Silently … surreptitiously … you tiptoe to your wife’s purse in the living room. You unzip the main compartment, delicately fish out her wallet, and remove two tens, five twenties, and six ones. Then you replace, re-zip, and reposition all that you have touched. New total: One hundred and thirty-five dollars and sixty-three cents.

You return to the kitchen and put sixty-three cents back into the change jar. You check your pockets for your car keys.

Quietly … ever so quietly … you exit the backdoor of your house. Anticipating your midnight excursion, you had parked your car down the street, in front of Jerry’s house. When Jerry is in the same grip of need as you are, he parks in front of yours.

Ever since … what was his name? When you asked, he just grinned evilly, shook his greasy head, and snarled, “Call me Mr. Fry. Yeah. That’ll do, because I’m your fry guy.”

You choke back a knot of fear.

Fry. Isn’t that another word for die? As in execute. As in electric chair?

Fry.

And is that why Mr. Fry disappeared? Is that what happened to him? He’s been gone now … how long? Ten days? Two weeks? Jerry found a new supplier last night. As of tonight, he will be your supplier, too. Another guy on another street corner in the same sordid section of town.

You accelerate slowly, your car tires barely whispering over the pavement as they distance you from your safe suburban home. The engine purrs. The wheels turn. Your body’s cravings overcome your sense of caution. You drive faster. Your mouth is awash in saliva; your heart is racing; your palms are sweating on the steering wheel.

Fifty-Second Street. Forty-Third Street. Thirty-Ninth Street. There it is. Up ahead: The intersection of Thirty-Eighth and Third.

You can smell it through your pours. Anticipatory ecstasy floods your body. You pull over to the curb.

A skinny man with a pockmarked face motions your forward; he is smarmier and greasier than the last. You roll down the window. He shakes his head. You open the driver’s side door and get out of the car. He motions you forward again.

“What am I getting into?” Your mind protests feebly as you think back to the days … just months before … when only the dealers, suppliers, and distributors paid the price. Then the activists started to scream. Then the laws started to change. Now, users get arrested, too. Bank executives. Bus drivers. Stock brokers. Surgeons. Politicians. Actresses. Kids in college. All of them. All of us.

You follow him down a narrow alley, and feel a wallop of need in your gut. The dealer stops, turns, and says just one word: “Order?”