Hollywood Nights
Part Four
All wasn’t well though.
We loaded up our glasses and our mirrors and sat around the television consuming the Friday night sitcoms. Dan and the attack seemed like things of the past. You were even back to laughing over stupid shit with Howie and poking me in the ribs because I still had that concerned look on my face. I really started to feel better and tried to put it out of my mind too before you started vomiting. You were sick, suddenly and violently and it lasted for hours. You were so sick and we were terrified. We didn’t call the police for a reason; we didn’t want to call an ambulance for the same reason. Howie started stashing everything and you were having none of it. I tried to talk you into letting me call for an ambulance, you were having none of that either. I know now that it wouldn’t have made a difference, I know what its like. They would have admitted you and watched you die on a gurney and called it a drug related death and you would have woken up in a morgue freezer. You would have come home to me and what happened would have happened either way.
With no ambulance on the way all I could do was try to get you to sip 7-up and watch you sweat and shiver and fire stuff out of every hole. You finally fell asleep at about eleven and Howie and I went out in the living room. We paced around trying to figure out how best to proceed, we both looked at the coffee table and then back at each other and then back at the coffee table again. Sitcom timing with a four-line, snow blind finish.
The thing about Coke is, you don’t use it to escape a thing, the thing about coke is that it convinces you that you’re better when you’re using it. We were in a jam, a real pickle, we both knew we would be at our best, sharp and ready to tackle it if we were both flying high.
“Do any of the people you know have, I don’t know, training?”
Howie looked at me the same way you had earlier. “Do I look like someone who knows doctors or nurses?”
“No, I mean, maybe access to medicine or…”
Howie got in my face; it was the only time I ever saw him get angry. “Or what? Your girlfriend is in there dying, my friend is in there dying. We can let that happen or we can stash or trash all this and make the call, man.”
I looked down at the coffee table and started to nod along. Howie was right, of course he was. He had been shouting about calling for an ambulance for the last few hours, you were the only one stopping him and you weren’t there to tell him to calm down or think about our lifestyle before outting us to the authorities anymore. He was already walking over to the phone in the kitchen when you made the sound.
I never heard anyone die before, we had a family cat that got crushed by a car when I was about ten. I remember the sound it made as it laid out there, trying to drag itself onto the curb. The sound the cat made wasn’t just a cry of pain; it was wet and wavery. I never heard a death rattle before and I didn’t know what to make of it. I just knew that the cat was hurt really bad and I was already running out of the house over to it before my mother cut me off and told me to wait on the porch.
You were making that same sort of sound, it was wet and wavery, it was also like you were trying to scream while inhaling. That death howl was so loud, so anguished, so final, I never heard anything like it, not before or since. Howie and I were both locked in place. The implication of that sound seemed impossible, it couldn’t be, it just couldn’t, yet there it was and there we were. Howie finally got his feet working again and plodded slowly over to the phone in the kitchen. I was working equally slow across the living room and down the hall to our bedroom.
You were going to be on our bed, probably curled up and covered in filth. I was going to have to see you that way. I wanted to believe I would have the courage to charge on and touch you, to check, to make sure one way or another, but there was also still that kid who was so fucking thankful that his mom stopped him and made him wait on the porch. I didn’t want to see the cat like that and I sure as fuck didn’t want to see you like that.
You came out of the dark of the hallway, not staggering and grabbing at hand holds but gracefully gliding. You came out wrapped in a sheer black night gown with the faux fur trim, the one Howie called your fainting gown. Usually you wore it over the black slip that I always loved to watch you walk in but this time there was no slip. You smiled at me sweetly but you walked right past me into the living room.
You made a b line for the coffee table and grabbed one of the joints I rolled up that morning. Howie stood in the entrance way to the kitchen and I stood at the entrance to the hallway, both of us watching in disbelief as you lit that joint and ashed it in three long drags. We both kept our distance and observed you as you grabbed for the contents of the sandwich bag and poured out a single line long enough to measure with a school ruler before you snorted it back.
You were pale. As pale as skimmed milk. Not sweaty and sickly pale but pale like the moon is, otherworldly, radiant, mysterious, troubling. There was a river of drying blood and pulp, the stuff had run down your face and dried while you were laid up in bed, the flow started at your nose and ran down your face and neck and onto your tits and stomach. You came away from the coffee table looking like a messy eater at the donut shop who couldn’t decide between the powders or the jellies.