Trois-Cents

Trois-Cents is a heroin dealer the narrator turns to during the period when drug use becomes the organizing fact of his days. Initially described as more or less decent, he is encountered through late-night calls, alley transactions, and introductions to people close to the narrator. The scenes give little account of his life beyond dealing, but make his practical importance clear: access to heroin depends on reaching him, while the possibility of credit depends on guessing how he will respond. His changing reputation is noted without explanation, leaving him as one recognizable figure in a drug economy whose relationships offer both temporary access and continuing vulnerability.

Identity and First Contact

The narrator finds Trois-Cents while living in a small apartment above a sandwich shop at Coventry and Mayfield. It is autumn, and his circumstances are precarious: he has no money, has sold his television, and is injecting heroin. Against that setting, Trois-Cents is presented as a relatively acceptable dealer, at least at first. The narrator’s qualification that this was before Trois-Cents became a bastard establishes a change in their relationship or in the dealer’s standing, but the account does not specify when it happens or what Trois-Cents does. The distinction matters because the narrator does not describe a stable friendship; he assesses Trois-Cents in terms of whether he can supply drugs and how tolerable he is to deal with.

Trois-Cents is introduced through a scene that makes his physical presence difficult to separate from the narrator’s blunt, unsparing account. At three in the morning, the narrator calls to apologize for the late hour. Trois-Cents is awake and says the narrator can come by. When the narrator arrives on Buckeye Road with Libby and Gilda, Trois-Cents gets into the passenger seat and turns to greet them. The narrator describes him as heavyset, persistently foul-smelling, and with breath like someone who had eaten feces at every meal. That deliberately repellent portrait sits beside Trois-Cents’s courteous greeting: the social ritual is polite, but the narrator’s attention remains fixed on the bodily unpleasantness of the man who controls access to heroin.

The Dealer in a Social Network

The Buckeye Road meeting is not simply a private transaction. Libby and Gilda want to accompany the narrator, and he introduces them to Trois-Cents; both women say they like heroin. They have been embarrassed by their earlier talk, while Gilda is tired of the situation, and the group decides that taking heroin will make them feel better. The dealer becomes the point where their discomfort is converted into a shared drug-seeking errand. The scene locates Trois-Cents within a small social network: he is not merely a name called by the narrator but a supplier whom the narrator brings into contact with the women around him.

That network does not erase the financial terms of the relationship. Libby later asks whether they can call Trois-Cents again and whether he might provide heroin to be paid for later. The narrator says he does not think Trois-Cents would agree, especially since it is very late. The exchange shows the narrator acting as an interpreter of the dealer’s likely boundaries. Although he can reach Trois-Cents by phone and has introduced him to his companions, he cannot assume that access will continue without money. Their familiarity is practical and conditional: a call may be answered, but the narrator does not treat that as a promise of credit.

Heroin, Money, and Repeated Access

A later encounter places Trois-Cents in the narrator’s dealings with Emily. During a three-hour stop, Emily says she wants to get high. The narrator takes her to meet Trois-Cents, and she pays for the heroin. They then go to Walgreens to buy syringes. The sequence is concrete and transactional: wanting to use leads to a meeting with the supplier, payment changes hands, and the pair obtains the equipment needed to inject. Emily is not simply told about the narrator’s source; she is brought into the encounter and pays herself.

Across these scenes, Trois-Cents’s significance comes from the repeated route he makes possible. The narrator calls him late at night, returns to him with companions, and brings Emily to him when she wants heroin. Each meeting takes place within circumstances shaped by immediate need, whether embarrassment, a desire to get high, or the lack of money that makes a request for credit tempting. Trois-Cents is not shown offering support outside the sale, and the narrator gives no evidence that he intervenes in the consequences of their use. His role is narrower and more consequential: he can supply the drug around which the narrator’s plans and relationships are repeatedly organized.

Change and Narrative Significance

The narrator’s early description of Trois-Cents as reasonably decent is qualified by the warning that he later becomes a bastard. Because the account supplies no incident explaining this change, it should not be mistaken for a fully narrated rupture or a specific act of betrayal. Instead, the remark marks how unstable even a familiar source of supply can be. A dealer may be accessible and comparatively tolerable at one point, yet the narrator’s label does not guarantee that the relationship will remain so. That uncertainty echoes the narrator’s position more broadly: he needs people who sell heroin, but need does not make them dependable or safe.

Trois-Cents also helps make addiction legible as a social and logistical routine rather than an isolated appetite. A telephone call, a ride to Buckeye Road, an introduction, a question about paying later, and a stop at a pharmacy all belong to the chain of obtaining and using heroin. The narrator’s need draws Libby, Gilda, and Emily into encounters with the same supplier, while money determines what can be asked of him. The account does not make Trois-Cents the cause of their addiction or offer a separate biography for him. It shows instead how his limited but recurring function—as a source to contact—connects private distress to an informal market, where repeated access can feel like familiarity even as it remains dependent on the next transaction.