Hollywood Nights
Part Two
Howie and I were on the couch, just like always. He was anxious so it was his turn to get up and let you in. I guess it’s stupid but I still miss Howie too. There was nothing special about the guy besides he was the first person I ever watched die. He was also harmless and funny, which was why he was still sleeping on our couch three months after the party he showed up for. We never showed him the door and I’m not sure we ever would have.
We started locking the doors in those last few weeks, triple deadbolts and no one ever touched the closed curtains. If it wasn’t for the weekly visit from the gardener and our daily trip for food and booze the rest of the block would have assumed we finally moved out. The reality was, we stopped throwing parties and finally committed to living a constant party. The record player ran night and day, the television blared in the room we set up for it, back when MTV actually played music videos. “Two spoiled trust fund brats and their goof off couch smurf.” Howie was drunk and deep in that existential staring contest he would get into with the ficus by the front door and you were completely snow blind. I was well on my way to wasted but I remember you coming out of our bedroom and staring at him and I on the couch and blurting out that line. We all started laughing so hard.
None of us were living in denial, the booze started getting delivered because we couldn’t be bothered to keep walking down to the bodega and back again two or three times a day. You went from going to see Dan once every few weeks to once a week to once every other day or so. Your mom started leaving these winsome and sad messages on the answering machine and my family lawyer started sending warning letters to the house.
A few nights after your zinger about who we were it was my turn to be drunk and introspective. You and Howie were doing rails as long and thick as your pinkie finger and I looked over at a coffee table covered in all our nightly needs, “This is going to end up with one of us in an ambulance.”
I wasn’t trying to get real or scare any of us, it just hit me all at once. The amounts of it all, how none of us were ever sober anymore. The letters from the lawyer and how sad your mom sounded as she begged you to call her back or come home. How no one ever came asking about Howie at all. Our couch smurf was there to break the uncomfortable silence after my declaration. “Maybe it will be two of us at once, do you think they give group discounts in detox?”
You laughed, not as loud or as long as a few nights before and then you came over and sat next to me and put your hand on my knee. “We all know who’s taking that ride babe.” You reached over and grabbed my drink off the coffee table and stuck it my hand. “Now take your medicine, you bought the ticket.”
That night was the end of mopey me. Not because I stopped waking up to your mom leaving those messages on the machine or because I woke up with the clear purpose to go join a program. That was the end of mopey me because I cut back on the booze and started doing those pinkie finger sized lines with you and Howie. A few weeks later and there we were. Howie was fiending so he went to let you in. We had our secret knock, the one we devised to make sure that if the cops were with whoever knocked the rest of us would know to stall and flush anything we had. That’s the real truth of coke paranoia, it comes on slow and steady and by the time you’re fucking sure the birds are circling you’re standing over the toilet bowl at 2am and asking your significant other to come and help you make sure you didn’t just shit out a secret federal listening device.
I’m thankful speed wasn’t on the menu for us back then, because that combo is so much worse, you’re calling them in to check and they’re cranked out and happy to start sorting for you. You know you’re done with drugs when…but not back then though, not us.
When you knocked, it was hard and fast, I could tell just from that knock that you were fiending too. Hearing that knock made me thankful that you were still worried about driving high. The only nagging idea that got me worse than having the cops and paramedics carting one of us out of the place was having you go to make the all-important pick up from your dealer only to have you never come back.
You pushed past Howie and dropped your purse on the table by the ficus plant. You never, ever left your purse by the front door. You also always stopped to lock the deadbolts behind you, we all did. Howie and I both knew what was in your purse. Howie even stopped to look at it like a carnival prize he was shooting for and lost as you stepped past him with a handful of fast-food napkins pressed to the side of your neck. I had to double time it to cut you off as you reached the kitchen sink.
“He fucking bit me!”
You looked at me and I turned and looked at the magnets on the fucking refrigerator. I couldn’t even register much less deal with what you said to me as you tried to peel the layers of paper napkin away from your neck. I didn’t do well with blood, not back then. You tried to pull the paper away and it stuck to the wound and made that awful, sticky pulling sound and I gagged. I was worried and angry sure, but more than anything I was just fucking grossed out.
I was still looking at the front of the fridge when I motioned at your wound. “What do you mean? Dan…bit you?”
“I mean…he fucking bit me! I went to make the deal and you know how he is! I had to go in and have a few drinks first, like always, and we were watching that stupid show with the British guy who talks while rich people show off their bullshit and he just leaned in and fucking bit me!”
Call it white bread, call it that upper middle-class upbringing of mine but I looked over at the phone hanging on the wall next to the answering machine and considered picking it up.
Hello, police? Yes, I want to report a crime. My girlfriend was picking up a sandwich baggie full of cocaine and a freezer bag full of pot and her dealer bit her on the neck. Yes, the neck. I don’t know, maybe he watched too many late nights with Elvira!
