Occasional Words from the Resistance

…from the desk of R.E. Vanella.

 

I know a guy who’s got a lot to lose

A pretty nice fella, kinda confused

Got muscles in his head ain’t never been used

Thinks he owns half of this town…

Starts drinkin’ heavy gets a big red nose

Beats his old lady with a rubber hose

Then he takes her out to dinner Buys her new clothes

That’s the way that the world goes ’round

 

That’s the way that the world goes ’round

You’re up one day, the next you’re down

It’s a half-an-inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown

That’s the way that the world goes ’round

 

I was sittin’ in the bathtub countin’ my toes

When the radiator broke, water all froze

I got stuck in the ice without my clothes

Naked as the eyes of a clown…

I was cryin’ ice cubes, hopin’ I’d croak

When the sun came through the window, the ice all broke

I stood up and laughed, thought it was a joke

That’s the way that the world goes ’round

 

That’s the way that the world goes ’round

You’re up one day, the next you’re down

It’s a half-an-inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown

That’s the way that the world goes ’round

 

–John Prine, That’s the Way That the World Goes ‘Round

 

….

 

It’s not clear how much time had passed.  There was a brief period during which it was funny.  This lasted roughly between 90 seconds and an hour.  The next phase was itself a series of phases.  Each of the remaining three coming to some realization that Nathan was in trouble, but each conclusion was reached separately, sequentially, independently, and while all together in the same room.  Nathan was not simply passed-out, unconscious, spaced, sleepy.  He was inanimate.  An it.  His chest was not showing the hint of heave.  Not even the tiniest flutter of a lip. Or eye twitch.  This was potentially, bad.

 

James’ fear came first in this phase.  Coincidentally and seemingly from open air he felt an emotional twist, déjà vu about something that never happened.  He had his eyes closed and was consciously dreaming about skiing. Then without remembering he had decided to open his eyes James sights his friend and colleague Nathan knotted in a heap on the toffee berber.  Inert as a pile of dirty laundry.  That was what James thought, verbatim.  Inert as a pile of dirty laundry.   He interjected tersely but timidly like a very distant crack of lightning: Hey, Steph, is he alright?

 

Both Steph and Laney continued to sit opposite James, cross-legged on the floor about three-and-a-half feet away, the width of the coffee table around which three were sitting and one laying.  Through a dust of candlelight and TV flicker in and otherwise dark room the ladies cut a nearly symmetrical form.  They faced each other right knee to left knee and vice versa.  James couldn’t quite tell if their knees were touching, but he imagined they would have because each woman was rubbing the opposing one on the thigh just above the knee.  Steph’s right hand on Laney’s left knee and her left on Laney’s right.  Laney was the mirrored reverse.  What may have had titillating overtones was counterpoised by the fact that Laney and Steph were presently discussing at high volumes the inhumane treatment of swine on factory pig farms.  Hey, Steph, is he alright?

 

James was being mostly ignored all evening.  The only attention he did get was due to the fact that he was anchoring the rounds.  See, the procedure by which a group of people finish all the cocaine is as follows: The anchor, in this case James (and historically, traditionally James), will prepare each round of lines on a suitable surface (prepare = pulverize chunks into powder, cut, separate and surface = mirror or dinner plate or the table itself).  This evening he would prepare four lines, one for each participant including himself, on a black plate every seven to nine minutes from 9pm until whatever time it was then.  The anchor is the anchor because the anchor does the last line of the round.  Hunter Thompson wrote you can turn your back on a person, but you can never turn your back on a drug.  The anchor could be trusted to separate, as equitably as humanly possible, the cocaine for each round because as the anchor he’d have left for his turn the remaining line nobody else did.  In the parlance of degenerates, you cut a baby bump it’s on you to carry.  And if there are two truths about these plunges into darkness, it’s these.  You can’t trust anyone and there’s never enough.  Hey, Steph, is he alright?

 

So some more time passed.  James sat still and tried to stop thinking.  Steph pulled back from Laney and slowly slithered to her feet.  Then while continuing to discuss some bar fight she was in in Atlantic City last year she marched to the bathroom, drama trailing in her voice, a shout melted to a whisper into the shadow up the hall.  At least the conversation had shifted quickly from gestation crates and tail cropping.  That’s maybe a third truth.  Many sudden abrupt changes like Miles’ horn on Bitches Brew.  There was a faint scratch and the bathroom door clicked shut.  Laney, still crossways from James but facing where Steph used to be, pressed her hands flat to the carpet, lifted herself slightly keeping her knees beneath the table top, spun 90 degrees counterclockwise, and casually lowered herself eye-to-eye with our anchor.  Hey, Steph, is he alright?

 

What’s left J?  Can’t be much.  Why don’t we get a quick one in while Steph’s in the toilet and Nate’s passed out.  Quick one? Heh. Blow, I mean. Damnit. We’re not having sex right now.  I mean she’s had enough anyway.  Stephanie.  I mean with the coke.  What the fuck was she talking about going to that baptism in the woods at night.  Is that even a real thing, like a religious thing?  My god I won’t eat for days. Can’t even think about food.  Is it too late to call him?  Did you hear Riley got another DUI, the prick.  I mean we tried to help him, right?  After he was living at Chloe’s.  Did she go back to her husband?  So dumb.  My maxilla feel like ice, like a frozen face.  It’s cool.  My nose is an icicle filled with snow.  What is this music?  Sounds like Digweed but more progressive housey and less trancey.  Who turned it down?  What the fuck is Nathan doing?     

 

James’ face finally came into Laney’s focus through the foggy flame-lit cloud that hung in a dim dome above the tabletop.  Laney immediately saw his confused terror.  Not paranoia.  Not abstract fear.  Not lost-in-space.  Acute terror.  Is he dead?

 

I don’t know.

 

Some moments later Steph wandered back out into another world.  Looping behind James and hopping over Nathan she plopped back down on the carpet.  Noticing now Nathan motionless beside her Steph nudges his calf with her socked foot.  Then kicks harder.  The other two are silent now.  There’s a noise that resembles soda-pop fizz coming somewhere from the direction of Nathan’s throat.  In the bolt of panic Steph turns Nathan’s head and there seems to be a small bubble on Nathan’s right nostril that looks like children’s paste.  So, as if in installments, first James, then Laney, finally Steph, came to understand the gravity of the thing.  Somewhere in the immediate vicinity there was a quick blast of car horn followed by some sort of siren.  The next phase is happening now.