I blacked out and when I came to I was flat on my back on the sidewalk outside a bar on Lincoln Avenue. I was laughing insanely, so hard and deep my stomach ached.
Shit like this happened. I was used to coming out of one wherever. I wasn’t panicked at all. I got up and played it off like I was supposed to be there.
Close by was Scott, cracking up too. He was sitting crossed-legged with his head down and long black hair everywhere. I walked toward him and he looked up. His left eye had already begun to swell. I helped him up but he couldn’t stand. He swayed with his shoulders slumped forward and arms hanging low.
We stood facing each other, cracking up, and I kept laughing even though he looked seriously fucked. There was blood coming from his left ear and dried blood in it and down his jaw. His tie-dyed shirt was torn from the collar down, almost completely split open, hanging on by a few threads at the bottom. I looked down and saw that I was also only wearing a t-shirt on a December night in Chicago. I couldn’t feel it.
“You cool?” I asked.
“Believe it or not, Parker, but I’ve never felt better,” he yelled.
“Remember anything?”
“No,” he laughed.
“Any idea what’s happening right now?”
“You mean that I’m talking to you?”
“Yeah.”
“No fucking clue, bro.”
The wind blew hard. A yellow cab went by, too fast to see if anyone was inside. Water filled my eyes, the wind, laughing. I blinked fast and saw wet yellow streaks. Scott took off his shirt and stared at it like why the fuck am I wearing somebody else’s shirt, then tossed it on a parked car. I looked inside the bar. Three guys in North Face jackets were in the front window watching us, drinking beers, like we were an exhibit in a zoo.
I checked myself for anything. All I could see were some scrapes on my hands and arms. I couldn’t feel a thing.
“Where’s Greg-O?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t. Never did, really. Greg, just like me, had a tendency to wander off. I’d go to bars, from bar to bar to bar. I had no idea where Greg went.
“Was he with us?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
We stood there looking at each other idiotically, both hoping the other would remember what happened. But me and Scott, we’d never been the ones who filled in the blanks. The people who could do that had been gone.
“I’ll call him,” I said.
“Good thinking genius.”
“Right to voicemail.”
“Let’s get the fuck outta here,” Scott said fast and quiet, and suddenly, I sensed it too. It could have been anyone, and knowing us, we could have done anything to piss them off.
*
Scott and Greg’s apartment was covered with hard brown cat food, the little pebble looking crap. All the floors were, anyway. Three empty bags, big ones, were exploding out of the kitchen trash. Also, they didn’t have a cat.
Scott, a puker, was puking in the bathroom, making room for more.
I pissed in the kitchen sink and then poured a glass of House of Stuart. I tried to remember what happened, when this run started. Yesterday? Probably. Maybe even the day before that. But right then I couldn’t even be sure what year it was.
*
The doorbell rang.
This drunk asshole Stanton showed up and rang the doorbell like someone was paying him to do it, a few times a week I guess. I don’t know how often it was exactly. I didn’t live there. But ever since Scott and Greg moved in that October, Stanton would beat the shit out of himself with booze and then come by and beat the shit out of the doorbell.
Sick of all the ringing, I went out to talk to him one night. I had a beer for myself and one for him. A peace offering. Scott was behind the front door with a Louisville Slugger. Sometimes things with us turned quickly.
“Sarah’s not at her home?” Stanton asked again. Shaped like an egg with a military haircut, he wore jeans and dress shoes, a plaid shirt with marinara stains.
“I told you, man,” I said, “she doesn’t live here anymore.”
“You-uh, you wouldn’t,” he mumbled, trying to look into me for something like truth. But he couldn’t, his eyes were glazed and wandering, and there wasn’t any to see. “You’re not lying, you wouldn’t be lying at me now, would you?”
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” I lied.
Cars crawled down Halsted Avenue. The traffic light turned colors. Down the block, a couple was smoking in front of Halsted Tap. I lit another one. Offered one to Stanton. He didn’t accept or decline it. A woman in a fur coat with a pug walked passed. The pug yapped. Stanton didn’t hear, or care, his eyes kept wandering around me, like I was the only thing in the world he might be able to trust was real. I hated this responsibility, but loved that someday I’d be able to take advantage of it.
“Wheres Sarah go? I betsy went out gets shitface and hook up, fucksing slushy beesh.”
Our beers had been empty. He’d chugged his. He kept bringing the bottle to his mouth and drinking air before realizing it was empty. Thirty seconds later he’d forget again and drink more air. I couldn’t tell who wanted another one more, which was a weird feeling for me.
“Do you know time Sarah comes home?”
“She moved, man. My buddies live here now.”
“Who are you anyways? Sarah’s newest boyfriend? We’re on a break only. She’s coming back for me, hate to break it to you.”
“You guys belong together,” I lied to him, because obviously he’d been slaughtered by too much truth lately.
But he couldn’t hear anything.
“Can you please, please, please, oh please where she is? I just wantsta talk. I need her please.”
Next time he showed up he said he’d never seen me before. I believed him.
The time after that Scott opened a front window and pissed on him from their second floor apartment.
From then on, we were pretty sure he came by for us.
*
So the doorbell was ringing, and Scott and I were ignoring it.
“What the fuck is wrong with Greg?” I asked, pounding the table.
“Huh?” Scott said. He was holding a Budweiser bottle to his eye and drinking another. He’d put on a new tie-dyed shirt that looked exactly the same as the one he tossed.
“I said,” I screamed, “I wonder what the fuck is wrong with Greg.”
“I heard you, asshole. I just don’t know what you fucking mean.”
“The cat food, Scotty. I wonder why he bought cat food and dumped it all over.”
“You think there’s a reason?”
And he was right. There was a reason but whatever it was would make you pray to forget as soon as you heard it.
“Wanna smoke a bowl?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He finished off his beer and then unscrewed the cap of the one he was holding to his eye. His normally dark face was green and purple and white. I couldn’t look at him. His face made me sick and angry. I wanted to throw my glass at him, finish the job. I drank off my shitty but wonderful Scotch and then poured another so I could be again.
“Did you check his room?” Scott asked excitedly. “Maybe he’s in there.”
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“You’d have to pay me a lot of fucking money to go in either of your rooms.”
“How much?”
“Five million.”
“Would you take,” he reached into his pocket and then threw a bunch of crumpled bills, mostly singles, and a few quarters on the table, “this much?”
“Yeah, I would. I’m poor as fuck.”
“You’re not poor.”
“I’m a pizza delivery driver.”
“Yeah, but you’re not poor. You live with your mommy.”
“Because I’m poor.”
“That makes you rich. You don’t pay rent.”
“Neither do you.”
“I’m still a student.”
“When’s the last time you went to class?”
“Three years ago?”
“I think once you miss three consecutive semesters,” I explained, “you’re no longer in school.”
“I haven’t graduated yet.”
“That’s nothing to be proud of.”
“You haven’t graduated either.”
“But I’m going to class now. I’ll finish this year. You’re a sixth year sophomore.”
“Fuck college,” he said, and got up and headed for Greg’s room, which was off of the kitchen. “I’m a student of life. Of the world. A lifelong learner. I’ll never stop learning, Parker, because learning’s the key to being a successful human being.”
Scott came back with a giant crooked smile and a baggy full of pills.
“Give me some of those,” I said, “I have a headache.”
“It’s not aspirin.”
“Who the fuck eats aspirin?”
“People with headaches.”
“I have a headache and aspirin’s not enough.”
“Do you even know what these are?” he asked.
“No.”
“X.”
“Like I said, give me some.”
“How many you want?”
“Two or three or eight.”
He put a few in my open hand and I popped them in my mouth without looking.
“Wanna smoke a bowl?”
“Yes,” I said while I chewed.
*
Greg came home later with a dog. Some kind of mutt. It was scrawny with short legs and brown shaggy hair and a long pointed snout.
Scott and I were standing in front of the TV playing Mario Kart on N64.
I looked at Scott and he shrugged like this was a regular occurrence. And it was. Played out in different ways, it was the same shit every time.
“You know you bought cat food?” Scott yelled at him.
And we both cracked up, high-fived.
Greg stomped through the apartment, smashing cat food into smaller pieces, pulled up in front of Scott. His thinning blond hair was disheveled as always and he was wearing a tan trench coat that was too big for him and swept the floor behind him as he stomped. He looked up at Scott and said, “It’s the same stuff, bro. Plus, I didn’t know yet,” as he nodded his head up and down. “You better write this down, buddy boy,” he suggested, but he kept going, waving his arms above his head as he talked, before either of us had a chance to get a pen and paper. Not that we were going to. I looked around Greg at the dog while he rambled nonsense that I didn’t listen to.
“Rick Parker, just make sure Sergio does not leave the premises. That’s. All. You. Need. To. Do. You got it!?”
“Who’s Sergio?” Scott asked. This was my question too, but he beat me to it.
“Sergio Augustus Verde III.”
“The King of Zimbabwe?” I asked.
“You’re not funny, Parker.”
“I think you are,” said Scott.
“Thanks, brother.”
And Scott and I high-fived for the four hundredth time since we started playing Mario Kart.
Greg ignored us, was in his room for five minutes, then left the apartment. Scott and I went back to the game. The dog ate some cat food, then crept in the living room and jumped on the couch. I went over and patted its head and checked its tags.
“Maggie,” I said.
“Who?”
“The dog’s name is Maggie, not Sergio.”
“Do you think there’s a guy named Sergio tied up in Greg’s room?”
I shrugged. I was too busy petting the dog to go look.
*
The wind made the windows rattle, the sound of cold. We weren’t. The heat was blasting, pouring out of the vents. Scott was smoking a blunt with Stanton. I was in the kitchen making beer soup. Maggie was somewhere.
Stanton came in for another beer. “What happened to your head, bro?”
“Huh?”
“The back of your head,” Stanton said, “it’s all messed up. There’s blood in your hair. Go take a look.”
“I can’t see the back of my head,” I explained.
“You can see it with two mirrors.”
I stared at him and took a bite of a carrot and said, “I don’t even have one,” then dropped the rest of the carrot in the boiling Old Style.
*
Stanton was passed out on the floor, snoring. Scott and I argued over who let him in or if it was possible that he broke in or if Greg let him in or left the doors open, those were the options. The argument was ongoing with long breaks when we forgot how to talk. We were sitting at the dining room table, playing Monopoly. Both of us were cheating. UNO cards and Oreos had become involved in the game. Winning was impossible. At one point Scott had seven hits of ecstasy on Boardwalk, which should have won him the game eventually, I was pretty sure at the time, but then it wasn’t seven anymore. The game could have gone on forever.
“What if it was Stanton and his friends who beat us up?” Scott asked.
“Maybe,” I said, because really, anything was possible. “I don’t get why he’d beat us up and then come here.”
“To cover his tracks,” said Scott. “It’s a great alibi.”
I shrugged, had a hard time lighting another cigarette. I was shaking all over. My eyes were twitchy. I constantly felt like I had to piss out an ocean but I’d go to the bathroom and nothing would happen. Scott’s eye was swollen shut. Around it was every color. The drugs added more colors and made his face look more deformed and I couldn’t feel a thing for him.
Maggie barked. Scott had locked her in Greg’s room. This was after she took a shit or puked or both in the living room. Scott cleaned that up by using one of Greg’s socks as a glove and tossing it out the window. I’m not sure what he did with the sock.
*
I was lying on the kitchen floor petting Maggie.
“What the hell’s that pounding?” Stanton yelled from the living room.
Scott went on hammering.
Stanton, now standing in the kitchen, rubbed his eyes. “What’s he doing?” he asked somebody.
Scott held up the Ziploc bag he’d been hammering and made an expression like isn’t it obvious.
“You guys are insane,” Stanton said. He went to the fridge and sighed and wiped sweat from his forehead and then grabbed a beer. “What happened last night? What time did I get here?”
“I think you beat us up,” Scott accused.
“Why would I beat you up? You guys are my friends.”
“Friends?”
“Yeah, Parker over here kept me out of jail one night.”
“Rick Parker? That Rick Parker,” Scott asked pointing the hammer at me.
“That cop was about to arrest me, remember Parker?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you talked’em out of it. Told’em you’d get me off the street, take me home and make sure I didn’t leave again. That guy ate up everything you fed’em. He trusted you.”
“When was this?”
“Two weeks ago. You really don’t remember?”
“Where were we?”
“Over in Wrigleyville.”
“What were we doing in Wrigleyville?”
“I invited you guys out. Scott didn’t show. You were pretty loaded, man.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. We took some shots and then I got in an altercation with that guy who claimed I bumped into him and made him spill his drink. Remember? We took it outside and there was a cop driving by. You talked to’em and gave me a ride home.”
“I believe you,” I said.
“So somebody else beat us up?”
“Yeah, dude, I wouldn’t beat you up. You guys are awesome. You invited me in, a complete stranger, and gave me shots and beer that night I was so messed up about Sarah. I’ll never forget that.”
I looked over at Scott and he looked at me. “Breakfast is ready to blow, Parker.”
But then Greg slammed open the door, pointed at me and said, “I need your help, now.”
“Maybe later,” I said.
“No—NOW!”
“Maybe earlier, I could do it then.”
“Parker, this is serious business. The most serious business there is. Think about it. What does every living thing need to grow and continue a life? Nutrients, vitamins, carbohydrates. Lots of milk. Salads and phosphates. Electrolytes. If you don’t, you end up a midget or worse.”
“Like you?” Scott laughed.
“You could shrink, it’s possible. Living things, they get big and they get small. It works both ways, buddy boy. A living thing really can shrink. I’ve seen it happen before. A few times. Shrink and die into nothing. You could take a pill and get these things, that’s possible. There’s prophesies that one day we’ll just take a yellow pill or a purple pill, or one of each, to get the proper ingredients we need to thrive but until then it’s a free for all. A science experiment run amok. Trial and error. It’s imperfect but that’s the way it works. We’ll get the equation right, eventually. Somebody will. Eggs help, if you have access. I never heard of any egg eaters having trouble. Same with beans. Beans’ll do it. Once this guy told me that the food pyramid is a big government conspiracy and the real truth is you only need two of the nine food groups, but it’s big business. Hard to take down all at once. Right? Most of the grain and fruit dispensaries in this country and most countries in the western hemisphere are mafia-run enterprises and they pay off the government to tilt the food pyramid in their direction. You see, it’s the manipulation of supply and demand? It’s not the fastest way to make a buck, but long term? Forget about it. They’re swimming in billions. Trillions possibly, with the way inflammation is these days. That’s why there’s an unnecessary spike in certain directions that doesn’t match the research being done in these areas. So you can give your money to these crooks, that’s fine. Nobody can really look at you for this like it’s your fault. It’s your body, you own it, do with it what you want. It’s completely your decision but don’t think you have to. I’ve never heard of a Mafioso showing up at someone’s house with a gun, saying, hey there, wise guy, I hear you refuse to eat cantaloupe. You could eat bark and grass for all they care, and some people do, but it doesn’t matter. The average American family eats twelve loaves of bread a week, at least. They’re doing just great without you.”
I heard Scott behind me snort.
“I made soup if you’re hungry,” I told him.
“Come with me already.”
I followed him out back to the alley. Outside it was cold and dark gray and I couldn’t tell if it was morning or late afternoon. Near the staircase was a grocery cart with two giant bags of cat food, four gallons of milk, and maybe twenty Gatorade bottles.
“You see how small that dog is?” Greg asked as we carried one of the bags in.
“Yeah.”
“It’s not too late. Just give me a few weeks, Parker. That’s all I need.”
Scott and I helped Greg empty the bags of cat food. Greg set bowls all over the apartment and filled them with milk and Gatorade.
And that night, that day, went on for a while. It’d been going on for a while already. For the past decade, plus a year or two, since we were twelve (when we spent all our time in parks and alleys smoking Greg’s dad’s pot and drinking alcohol we stole from our parents), it’d been going on, and it wasn’t stopping anytime soon.
*
Years passed, three or four, before I saw Stanton again. He came up to me when I was standing on the corner of Sheffield and Fullerton, by the Whole Foods. I didn’t recognize him at all, and barely remembered who he was, but his name clicked. I’d been using it in bars ever since I’d stopped using my own. It sounded made-up, so it was a stupid name to borrow, but I went on using it anyway.
“How’s Scott and Greg?” Stanton asked like we were all old friends. “You still see’em?”
Scott had moved to Portland, with the rest of the jackass wannabe hippies. Greg was either in a mental institution or rehab or had just gotten out of one or the other again. We loved each other still, but had all folded too tightly into ourselves to be friends. Maybe we never were friends. Maybe we all just dealt with the way we hurt the same way and from watching too much TV were fooled into believing you need to get fucked up with other people. You don’t, you can’t. It’s an outrageous lie. I don’t think we ever really did anything together. A lot of the time we just happened to be in the same room doing the same things.
What we did have was a long history. I knew those guys existed and so I knew that I did too and I knew something was fucked up with them the same way there was with me and I loved them for this but couldn’t do a single good thing for them but stay away. I would not pick up Scott’s 6:00 AM calls. I would not let Greg make amends or cry for money to buy just one more dose.
“I see them all the time,” I snapped, trying to show him how offended I was by the question.
“Hey, you gotta minute? Can I buy’ya a drink? I really owe you a drink.”
An outbound Red Line L had just let off another big crowd of well-dressed and uncomfortably hot people. They were passing us, on their way home from work. Stanton, wearing a gray suit, was one of them. His tie was red and powerful-looking. He was holding a black leather briefcase. His hair had recently been cut.
Me, I’d been wandering and sort of looking for my car but mostly wondering if this day would ever end.
“Parker?”
“Yeah?”
“Wanna grab a drink and catch up? It’s on me.”
“You can’t tell anyone.”
“What?”
“You can’t tell anyone.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“If we have a drink,” I whispered sternly, “it stays between me and you.”
He laughed like I was joking and patted me on the shoulder and then put his hand on my wet upper back as though guiding me to start walking. But it was the money he had to buy booze that moved me.
*
We went to some bar in Lincoln Park with Michigan State flags out front and Michigan State memorabilia on the walls inside, a bar I’d been to before but couldn’t remember ever being in.
“What’ll it be?”
“Tequila.”
“Jeez, on a Monday?” he asked. I didn’t answer. “For old time’s sake, right?”
“Yeah, sure. Fuck, man. For old time’s sake.”
I checked the room again. The same four people were there, two men down the bar and a middle-aged couple at a table near the front window, nobody I knew or could ever know. I grabbed my shot glass and checked behind at the closed door before lifting it and tossing the tequila down, slid the shot glass far away from me.
“Another?”
“Sure,” he said. “I needa beer for this. You wanna beer?”
“Let’s make this one a double.”
Stanton was married, not to Sarah. A few months ago he and his wife had bought a condo. They were thinking about kids. He was in finance, though I didn’t know what that meant. I looked at him while he told me all this and all I really wanted to know was what about me made him think I gave a shit.
“None of my friends understood, but you did. Look, I’m glad I never got Sarah back. We were all kinds of wrong for each other. But it wasn’t like everybody said. We were wrong for each other, I admit that much, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love her. And Parker, I didn’t love her just because she was my first and we were eighteen when it started and I was a fat kid who was invisible to girls in high school. I really did love her. Part of me still does. I don’t think that ever goes away, you know?”
I looked at him.
“Sorry this is, uh, you know, hitting me hard,” he laughed. “I don’t really drink like this anymore.”
“Like what?”
“Never mind,” he said, shaking his head. “But you and me, Parker, we’re kindred souls. You knew exactly what I was going through. You’d been through it. You were the only one who didn’t think I was a loser for being so desperate to get her back.”
I wanted to punch him in the throat. I wanted to tell him I’d fucked Sarah in a men’s room stall so he’d hit me. It killed me that there were people like Stanton out there who thought they knew me, whether or not what they thought was true. I didn’t want any of it to be true, even if what they thought was better than the truth. I wanted everything I’d done to be forgotten. But you can’t get around the past, it never stops happening.
“What about you?” he asked.
“Huh?”
The door opened. I turned around and looked. I calmed down some and ordered the next round.
“What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, come on, Parker. I’m sure a guy like you has lots going on.”
“Don’t say my name so loud.”
“What?”
“I said, don’t say my name so loud. Don’t say my name at all.”
“Why not?”
“I told you, I can’t have anyone find out about this.”
“About what?”
“About this,” I said.
“I’m not following you.”
“If you need to call me something, call me Harrison. But don’t say my fucking name again, asshole.”
“Are you OK?” he asked nervously.
I didn’t answer. I was looking behind me at the door again, hating that there wasn’t anything I could do to make it stay shut.
Will Radke is from Oak Park, Illinois. His fiction has appeared in Knee-Jerk Magazine, Spelk, and Chicago Literati.