It started because my boyfriend and I wanted to rent a scooter while on vacation in Myrtle Beach for the weekend. Except that we're cheap and not willing to pay more than $60. So we clipped a coupon and walked toward the seedier side of the strip, to a convenience-type store that rented scooters.
In a grungy little convenience store, we sign the papers for the scooter and go outside so the owner can give us a lesson.
The owner is really chatty and I'm trying politely not to stare at his teeth. He has a mouth like Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
He's warning us to be careful and he's talking about transients and drunks and I can't stop staring at those brown sharp little nubs in his mouth because they look like someone filed them down to vampire points in the middle.
I suggest that they take it for a test run just in case my boyfriend is a terrible driver. The owner says of course.
Just then, a fancy black car with tinted windows pulls up and a very tall, colorfully-dressed man exits from the back of the car. He's wearing a dashiki and he sidles up to us just as the owner is showing us how to lock up the scooter.
"Will people try to steal it?" I ask and the well-dressed guy flashes a huge smile and says, "They'll try to steal anything here."
The owner tells him he'll be back in a minute and the guy walks into the store.
"By the way, that's the biggest crack pusher in Myrtle," the owner says. He turns to my boyfriend and says "Ready to go?"
They hop on the bike and the scooter buzzes out of the parking lot, wobbling side to side and down the street. I watch them drive away with unease.
That guy's the biggest crack dealer in Myrtle Beach? I think, gawking at the fancy car. He was so friendly and normal looking.
I start thinking of crack and how crack addicts are always the scary ones screaming incoherently to themselves and shuddering with frenzied eyes and no teeth.
I'm not like a drug expert or anything but I meet a lot of homeless addicts in Philadelphia where I live.
Heroin addicts are kind of sleepy and dopey looking. They never seem particularly dangerous -- you just probably wouldn't want to leave them alone with your wallet. I guess coke addicts are kind of scary also but I'd say that meth users and crack addicts are by far the most desperate and the scariest.
Just then, the driver of the fancy car exits and gives me a slow wolfy smile. He looks like a soldier from The Wire and I find myself looking in the car for Snoop.
I'm alone with the biggest crack dealer in Myrtle Beach and his bodyguard and I'm going to be kidnapped, gang-raped and then human trafficked like in that movie Taken, I think to myself.
Then I realize that I'm off to the side of the building and not in sight of any security cameras and if they decide I'm worth kidnapping, there will be no video footage of the event.
"Do you know how long they're going to be?" the drug dealer is at my side asking me. "I need to talk to the guy about something."
"They're right there," I pointing wildly out to the invisible air. Maybe he won't take me if he thinks there will be witnesses.
"Can't you see them?" I said, walking backward to the front of the store where the security cameras are, "They'll be back any second now, you won't have to wait long."
A BMW pulls up and the drug dealer knows the occupants so they start chatting it up. I look around for possible weapons I can use should things start to look bad. The new guys see me standing there. One guy makes an appreciative noise as he notices me and I instantly hate myself for wearing such an adorable outfit.
I figure the safest spot for me is back in the convenience store.
I go in there, just standing there, as the girl at the counter wonders what I want.
"I changed my mind and I want a helmet," I told her and she gives me one.
I'm stalling.
"Can you help me put it on?" She does and that's weird and then I stand there, wondering how else to extend my stay.
"Are you from around here?" I ask her as she ignores me and rings up a customer.
It's getting crowded in there and I'm obviously in the way but I stay anyway until the BMW guys come in and then I panic and go back outside.
At this point, boyfriend and the clerk have been gone almost 10 minutes. I pick up my cell phone, dial 9-1. Just in case. I'm sitting outside on a crate next to the ice machine keeping a close eye on the drug dealer and his bodyguard as they loiter by the fancy car.
Finally, boyfriend comes back and I feel a flood of relief.
Except that he's missing the owner who originally was on the back seat.
"What did you do with the guy?" I ask him.
The drug dealer also wants to know so he comes closer.
"He got off, he's coming back now," my boyfriend says, fiddling with the scooter. The drug dealer is getting impatient so I tell boyfriend that we need to go.
We leave and I point out to my boyfriend that he left me in the company of dangerous strangers.
But I figure we'll never see them so it's fine until later that night when we're in the club dancing and we see the dealer with the dashiki.
"That's the guy!" boyfriend says, walking toward him.
"What are you doing! We don't want to hang out with him. He's a drug dealer. A crack dealer."
Boyfriend thinks about it and says, "Maybe he's got a VIP area or something."