Purgatory Blues (2013), page 8
“Here”, Andy said, offering Dennis his pack. “What’s not sitting right?” he asked while Dennis pulled a smoke free.
“Ah, it’s nothing, it’s just an itch in my brain right now, I’ll let you know if I need to scratch it”, Dennis said with a sly smile, lighting up his cigarette. “Fuck it, let’s get some drinking done, it feels like I haven’t seen you in forever, this is cause for celebration”. He began waving his arms at Lily the way someone flags down a motorist.
Lily ran over to the table and flashed them a big smile. “What can I get you fine gentlemen?”
“Where you been hiding this sweet young thing Andy?” Dennis asked, smiling back at Lily.
Andy knew Dennis was just playing but he did feel very protective of Lily. “Eyes over here Romeo”, he said to Dennis, “she’s taken”.
“By who?” Dennis asked with a frown, as though no other man could offer him any competition.
“By me”, Andy said with a deadpan stare, “I’m her guardian angel”.
“Stop it Andy”, Lily squealed, shaking him playfully.
“Tell you what Lily”, Dennis began, “why don’t you get me one of those fancy looking drinks you made for Andy and about a half dozen Jager bombs while I convince this guy to let me date you?”
“You guys!” She said, flattered and amused all at once as she skipped towards the bar.
“Nice girl”, Dennis said with a quick nod, a silent acknowledgement that he would respect Andy’s wishes.
“Yep, that she is, maybe if we were ten years younger huh?” Andy said with a little wink.
“Speak for yourself old man”, Dennis replied breaking out in to laughter, “the last chick I banged couldn’t have been much older than your Lily there”.
“She’s only twenty-one!”
“Oh my god! The chick I nailed was nineteen!” Dennis said with thigh slapping guffaws.
“I keep forgetting how morality was never your strong suit”, Andy said with a smirk, “but, then again, I guess we’ve both done some stupid things in days gone by. Remember that time with what’s her face?”
“Bro, don’t even go there!” Dennis said with a mock shock expression.
“How many times do I have to have to tell you? I didn’t know it was a date!” Andy said, cracking in to laughter. “Who leaves a girl sitting at a table with a bunch of degenerates like us when they’re on a date? Who does that?” He gestured, feigning disbelief.
“And I told you, it was a date. I just had a big day in the morning and I didn’t want to stay out that late. I thought she’d hang out for a while longer and then just go home. I didn’t know you’d take her home and fuck her!” Dennis countered, still slightly annoyed at the awkward but hilarious memory. “Still, I got there first anyway”, he said. It was his default excuse whenever they’d had that argument.
“You kissed her, I nailed her, I got there first”, Andy said, lauding his victory over Dennis.
“Bastard”, Dennis said playfully and looked away pretending to be hurt.
“You know, I think I actually might’ve went on a few more dates with that crazy bitch. What was her name anyway?” Andy asked, looking puzzled. “Lindsey? Lana?”
“Laura! It was Laura!” Dennis shouted triumphantly.
“Who’s Laura?” Lily asked having just returned without either of them noticing.
They looked at Lily, then looked back at each other and burst out into laughter. They high-fived over the table and were just about to bring their laughter under control until Lily asked, “whaaaat?” She gave them both a confused look and it caused them to laugh even harder.
“Guuuyyss!” Lily said, stamping her feet, thinking that they were laughing at her.
Eventually they were able to wrest control of themselves. “She’s no one sweetheart, we were just talking about old times”, Andy said, looking like tears would come to his eyes.
“Here you go Lily”, Dennis said as he pushed one of the Jager bombs toward her. He put another one in front of Andy and then raised one himself. Andy raised his glass as well.
Lily was looking around nervously, “I’m just checking to see if Ryan is watching”, she said, knowing that her manager might be paying attention at the most inopportune moment. Satisfied that he was not, she raised her glass as well.
“To?” Dennis asked.
“To Laura”, Andy answered with a smile.
“To Laura it is”. Dennis responded with a chuckle.
They all toasted to Laura in unison and drank down their Jager bombs in one go before slamming down the glasses together with a loud “thunk”.
“Alright, let’s not leave the job half done”, Dennis said enthusiastically as he spread out the next three glasses.
“Quick, before Ryan shows up!” Lily said urgently.
They all raised their glasses and Dennis made a toast, “here’s to Lily, the prettiest waitress I’ve ever seen”. He flashed her his most charming smile and gave her a little wink.
“Aw, thank you guys”, Lily said.
They clinked their glasses together and downed their drinks as they had before, slamming them down with the characteristic “thunk”.
Lily hastily snatched up the empty glasses and left the table after checking if Andy or Dennis needed anything else. She didn’t want to be seen favoring any one table. As soon as she was out of earshot Dennis took a big sip of Lily’s special cocktail. He put it down and Andy noticed a serious expression on his face.
“I missed you man”, Dennis said to Andy, “we all have”.
“I missed you too brother”, Andy said as he did a little fist bump with Dennis, “let’s not start braiding each other’s hair though”, he added, aware of Dennis’s penchant for emotional displays.
Dennis growled as he thumped his chest like an ape, “we are men!” He followed up with a fit of laughter.
The gesture that Dennis had made was not lost on Andy. It was comforting to think that even though he had made every effort possible to find oblivion, there were still those who wanted him to be a part of the living world. There were still people that cared. He only wished that he felt the need to embrace life and belong to it as much as they wanted him to. Unfortunately, the harder he tried to convince everyone that he was okay, the more empty he felt.
He lost himself in that thought until Dennis broke the spell, “Hey, you okay man?”
“Yeah”, Andy replied, “it’s just been a long couple of days is all. I think things will turn around by the time I reach the bottom of this glass”.
They spent the next few hours drinking hard.
Chapter 6
It was almost eight “o clock that night when Dennis finally dropped Andy at his car outside the bike shop. Not surprisingly, it was still there and it hadn’t been touched. Even the local hoodlums knew that if a car was parked outside Charlie’s store and he allowed it, then chances are you didn’t want to mess with whomever it belonged to.
By this point in the night Andy was stumbling like a drunken buffoon, motor skills shot to hell. Dennis was hardly in any better shape. They’d arrived in a cab that Dennis had paid for after he decided that it would be better to fetch his bike in the morning. He knew it would be suicide to ride in his condition.
There was a lot of hugging, they said “I love you man” a lot and they were generally the picture perfect intoxicated buddy couple. They said their slurring goodbyes as the cab pulled out of the parking lot.
Andy fumbled for his keys and finally found a viable way to enter his vehicle. Unbeknownst to Dennis, there was a rather urgent and ulterior motive for Andy not giving him a ride home after reaching his car. It was the same reason why Andy had decided to chance driving home on his own instead of using the cab that Dennis was in, not that he’d ever use a cab anyway. He was always fine to drive, or so he thought.
He wanted his medicine and he had to be in a position to get it. After all the alcohol, the need for it became almost irrational, but he never thought about it that way when he was drunk. He pulled out his phone and searched for his dealer’s number. He dialed and quickly cut many calls as he searched for right number. “Damn touch screens”, he thought to himself, not willing to admit he’d far surpassed the legal limit of intoxication.
There were five dealers that he called regularly. Each based on location and logistics. They all carried different product so it just depended on what Andy was in the mood for on any given day. Tonight he was in the mood for something from a man named Kingsley. It was called “Bolivian White”. It just so happened that Andy was near the neighborhood where the man operated. His mood, however, had less to do with it than the fact that Kingsley would deliver the fastest.
He dialed the number and Kingsley answered, “Wots up my brudder?”
“Hey man, I’m at the gas station at Charlie’s bike shop, send one for me”.
“Okay, I am sendin ‘im now’, replied the Jamaican.
With that, Andy cut the call. He loved the proverb “Don’t shit where you eat”, so Andy at least had the presence of mind not to have drugs delivered at the bike shop. Also, a lone car in a parking lot meeting another car in said parking lot was obviously an eye sore to anyone who might be watching. A gas station on the other hand wouldn’t be quite so conspicuous.
If he had been anyone else, delivery might’ve taken anywhere up to an hour, but Kingsley’s clientele were placed in order of importance. A call from Andy therefore took precedence over anyone else in the queue that night. He’d have his fix in under ten minutes. Five, if there was no one else in the queue and the runner was leaving from his home base.
He started up the car, he was seeing double, but he knew that all he had to do was make it to the gas station down the road and then everything would be fine again. Reversing and pulling out of the parking lot was done with the utmost care and precision, so much so that he hadn’t been concentrating on anything else but.
As he left the driveway a cop car cruised past ever so slowly, eyeballing the bejesus out of him. He’d been arrested four times before, twice for possession and twice for driving under the influence. The first time he’d paid a fine because it was just a little bit of weed, he was just a kid then. The second time he was lucky, it went down on the books as only weed because he couldn’t be prosecuted for less than a gram of cocaine. The DUI’s had both been within the last year.
Understandably, Andy was very wary of police officers. As far as he was concerned, they weren’t your friends. They were the enemy and nothing else. “Protect and serve be damned, they’re looking for excuses to fuck with ordinary citizens and play with their guns”.
He tried to keep his paranoia in check, but trying was just about all he could manage. He liked to believe that he was a student of human behavior, he figured that If he looked too stressed out, they’d know that something was up and pull him over. Turning in the direction heading away from them at this point was a fifty-fifty gamble. They’d either turn and follow him or think nothing of it and leave him be.
He decided to play it cool and head toward the gas station as planned, keeping a languid pace and not straying past the posted speed limit. As he neared the station he turned on his right indicator.
Even though they were ahead of him, they only flipped on their turning signal as they were directly in front of the gas station. “Sloppy drivers or did they suddenly choose to turn in there because I’m turning in there?” Andy wondered.
It didn’t matter at that point, they had no proof that he’d done anything wrong and they could see that he’d committed himself to the action. He could turn off his indicator and just drive on by, but caution told him to follow through…thinking that it would really look suspicious to suddenly deviate from his course. “Better to go on through” he thought. He guessed that they were probably stopping for lottery scratchers or donuts.
The parking lot wasn’t empty so that worked in Andy’s favor, there were a few other patrons filling up and picking up items from the quick-store. He pulled in to a bay, which was two to the right of the cops. As he unbuckled his seatbelt he heard the song “Little Green Bag” by George Baker start up on the P.A. system. He used the song to steady himself against his drunkenness. “A good tune makes all the difference”, he thought.
From that point on he did everything in slow motion, as if he were acting a part in “Reservoir Dogs”. He stepped out of the car and lit a cigarette. He did it just like John Travolta from “Broken Arrow”, all stylized and cool.
It gave him the chance to take a look at the police officers leaving their vehicle. They were old and fat. “Twenty-year men by the look of it”, Andy thought. “They couldn’t give a shit about some guy minding his own business. It’ll be fine as long as everybody keeps to themselves”. He hoped that they were jaded enough to know that harassing people for little things like alcoholism and possession was the kind of behavior akin to bailing water from a sinking ship with a tidal wave approaching.
They were saving their energy for when it was absolutely necessary. Necessary was defined as when people were watching and their indifference couldn’t slip by without being noticed. “These flat footed bastards just want to make it to retirement”, Andy mused.
After psyching himself up he swaggered toward the entrance of the quick-store, as he did he dropped his cigarette on the floor, scrunching it out with his boot. He didn’t even break his stride. The doors parted for him like a Jedi using the force.
He’d just taken two steps inside when he stopped. He felt everyone turn to look at him. He felt the cold breeze of the store air conditioning, he heard “Little Green Bag” continuing in the background…and he felt everyone staring at him. No one said a word.
He turned to face the two policemen. One of them was scratching a card on a counter top and the other was placing an order at the chicken takeaway place. It all happened in slow motion for Andy. “I’m fucked!” He thought to himself. He gave them a curt nod and mentally crossed his fingers. They looked away as though nothing was amiss and it was just another day on the beat.
As soon as that happened he suddenly heard the air fill with noise again. Change was being counted at a cash register, people were laughing and talking, pages were being turned at a magazine stand…the world went back to real-time.
Andy walked up to the guy at the counter and bought a pack of cigarettes, he was just doing it to buy some time. Conveniently, his phone rang as he was handing the attendant some money. It was Kingsley.
“Hello”, Andy answered nonchalantly.
“Di guy is der, you will see ‘im now’, Kingsley said.
“Okay, I’m just buying a pack of smokes, I’ll be out in a second”, Andy replied. What he didn’t say was “I’m just trying to throw off these pigs at the quick-store, I’ll be out to get my class A narcotics presently’.
He took his cigarettes and headed to the exit. He’d long ago realized that checking out the situation was always better than going in blind. This way he knew where the cops were, what they were doing and how long they’d be. They’d be inside for another five minutes at least but the exchange only took five seconds to make.
When he walked outside he saw the familiar black Hyundai immediately. It was parked next to him. Putting his change in to his wallet afforded him the opportunity to slip out the money for his cocaine. He neatly folded the bills and cupped them in his palm. It’s the same way you shake hands with the maitre d” when you want to be seated in a fancy restaurant ahead of the queue and without a reservation. Sneakily.
As Andy approached the driver’s side of his car, the window of the Hyundai slid open. In the dark of night the handoff was imperceptible. Their hands met for a half second and it was over. Andy got into his car and drove. He’d have to wait to take his medicine, he was sure that doing it with fuzz on the premises was just tempting the cocaine gods to smite him. There was another bar down the street, it was one he used to frequent and it seemed like a good option to see out the night.
The drive didn’t take more than three minutes. As he approached the parking lot he could see that it was quite full. On a Sunday night, it was where most of the staff from the surrounding pubs and restaurants went to party. They were open till two after midnight. It wasn’t just that it was the only place in the neighborhood that did so, it also happened to be the only pool bar in the area. “Sink the black” was synonymous with that part of town.
It wasn’t a particularly safe area though and that’s why they had a strong, electronically controlled gate at the front entrance to buzz customers in. Nobody could come and go at their pleasure. It was the kind of place that had at least one bar fight a night. Andy recalled that it was mostly jocks pumped up on steroids, thumping their chests over a game of eight ball or a mediocre girl who was playing one against the other. They were the type of guys who would fight about pretty much anything. With them, a dirty look could go a long way. Andy considered it to be small ball sack, big temper roid rage.
The staff behind the bar could see the entrance clearly from where they were, so when Andy hit the buzzer he got a big smile and a wave from Sharon before she let him in. Sharon wasn’t her real name but Andy liked calling her that because she reminded him of a young Sharon Stone from the “Total Recall” era. She was of medium height, slender and athletic with green eyes and blonde wavy hair…and to Andy’s mind, “perfect”.
When he walked in he was greeted by a plethora of voices. The crowd was full of smiles and arm waving all at once. His response was a rock “n roll stance, throwing up the devil’s horns with a loud ‘whoooooo!’
They were playing “No one knows” by “Queens of the stone age” on the sound system. Sink wasn’t a sit down and get served kind of place. There were six pool tables, about fifteen flimsy round tables to sit at and a bar counter. He gave Sharon his patented hand gestures from afar as he approached and then made his way to the men’s room.
