Thursday night, 11:49pm continued…
Before he could make a sound, however, two small white baggies - one from each barrel – fell from the gleaming shotgun and bopped him on the forehead. Crowe had wanted to say “What the fuck is that screaming?”, but the advent of free narcotics had erased the entire recent past from his mind. Coming to his knees, he swiped one sweat-shirted arm across the ashtray and beer can still life on his glass coffee table. Then he looked around the room miming a drug-chop motion, imploring anyone within earshot:
Any you guys gotta’ card? Credit card?...No? Ah…
***
Friday morning, 1:47am
Jeff was struggling:
We uh…We oughtta mamllamugh…mmm…Wh…Wh…Whu…Whummizurzel…
Crowe could always tell exactly how fucked up Jeff was, because his stutter grew more pronounced as drink and drug demanded more and more of his brain function. Crowe hadn’t heard a coherent thought command his friend's breath since they'd blew up Nad’s tv, and that seemed like years ago. Crowe himself was watching his neighbor David, staring, really, although neither man was aware of it. David just happened to be the place where Crowe’s eyes had settled, and so Crowe heard the Domincan when he mumbled:
Sucio…Sucio.
David Rodriguez, Crowe’s next door neighbor and principle cocaine provider, also had a fairly reliable extreme inebriation tell: He began speaking exclusively in Scarface:
Sucio…Sucio…Punta. Her womb is so poluttesh…Palutesh. Suicio…
David didn’t limit himself to scenes from the movie. Although he could – and often did - recite the entire screenplay to anybody who’d listen, David felt he was at his best when actually narrating whatever was happening around him in his weird sounding, Dominican impression of Tony Montana’s signature Cuban patois. He was fully engaged now, and Crowe didmn’t even attempt to get a word in:
Ju white boise…Ju white bois ju nuthink. Ju got nothink. I bury youse cockarocka. Bury you cokarocka…
David made his living harvesting money from Crowe’s school mates by the bushel, selling really long nights to practically every single person Crowe had ever met at Gold Coast High. The fact that Crowe had graduated almost two years before seemed to have no effect on DR’s trade. Gold Coast continued to manufacture coke monkeys by the thousands, and Dave served as many freshmen as seniors.
Say khhello…Say Khhello….Khhhhhhhell…o…Say khhhhell…
DR found his own Scarface impression to be so funny and spot on, that the silly bastard could hardly make it through a quote without falling out. Tonight he was the only dude in the house who wasn’t hallucinating fiercely, and still his own hilarity had unmanned him. Crowe felt his own guffaws coming on when Jeff broke in:
Uh…Two sclabs each…And that was…Two. Two? Hours ago. Four hours. Four. And then how much David…?
DR, still muscling through the hilarity attack, attempted to croak up the word “two”. Jeff understood:
Two eightballs?
The Domincan nodded emphatically, smiling a toothy, bright-eyed smile:
What I tolt ju wha bois? What I tolt Ju?? Ah? Ah? I bury you cockrocka ju….Ju say Ghello to my Li-ew fren…My li-ew fren!! Ah? Ah? Ah.
Crowe thought DR had been there a few hours, Jeff thought only 45 minutes. Either way, three heads on two balls seemed, to each of them, vaguely impressive. They couldn’t voice their approval, however, as the narcotics coursing through their synapses had temporarily quieted both Jeff and Crowe. For a while there was almost complete silence as the three of them exchanged sketchy coke-glances and smacked their lips.
Jeff nodded with pursed lips to indicate his appreciation, spoke:
One of us needs to…
But before he could finish, An amazing scream rose in the apartment. This time, un-drowned by Pink Floyd, the wail proved gut-wrenching. Raspy and failing, the fractured exclamation set off seismic disturbances in the guts of Crowe and Jeff, just in time for the most vivid hallucinating of the evening.
***
Friday morning, 2:38am
They finally got him into Crowe’s car, but because the thing was full almost to the top with furniture and clothing, they were forced to dump Nadet in the trunk. For a while, they’d set Nads down on the grass by car while Crowe combed through the black 1998 Camry trying to Tetris-up some room for his thumb-less friend. It was pointless, and it took a loooong time. DR and Jeff were supposed to be taking care of Nads but instead they were freaking out:
What the fuck is that? Is that an ant? A fucking ANT? There’s a fucking ANT on his fucking, whoops, it went in his mouth…Did you fucking see that?!
Ju crazy mang, I bury youse…hey! That IS an ant!! It’s a whole line of them marching in this dude’s mouth…
Eventually Crowe gave up, announcing:
Fuck it dude. Just in the trunk is ok. Hospital’s only right over there…
He was pointing – Jeff noticed – in the exact wrong direction. However, Nads was looking rough and he hadn’t made a sound since the scream in the kitchen. Despite the extreme intoxication of everybody involved, an attempt on the hospital was in order. They flung the drained Nads into the trunk and made cautiously for the ER at Providence General Hospital.
***
Friday morning, 2:58
Arriving at the PGH ER Crowe couldn’t help but feel proud of himself. The roads to the hospital kept rolling up in front of him as if he were driving on wrapping paper, but his keen intellect and nano-second reflexes had carried them through. Now, with the day all but won, he wouldn’t just charge ahead. Crowe had learned all he needed to about leap-looking back at the apartment. This time he’d leave nothing to chance. He’d stopped the car in the middle of the street, holding up all emergency room traffic, including ambulances, at 200 yards distance from the glass front door. Then he shut the car off, and watched. Crowe saw doctors and patients buzzing around through the glass, but they looked small, and - to Crowe -like frogs. David had elected not to make the ER trip, but Jeff was narrating enough for both of them:
I see people. Doctors? No…Are those…Are those frogs? Fuckin…Is that a fucking frog??
The ER - land of cops and doctors, nosy nurses, and the possibility of getting arrested under florescent light – had never been Crowe’s favorite place. He caught a look at his frazzled, sweating self in the rear view, then looked over at Jeff, saw Kermit the Frog eyes, and Hulk ripped shirt, and decided that neither one of them could go in. Nads would have to walk to the ER.
That’s when all the cars stacking up behind them on the street started yelling and beeping at the same time. A booming voice rose from out of it, strong-sounding, tall, and mean:
Move that shithead, or I’ll break ye fuckin’ face! This is an emerg…
A chorus of voices from other cars chimed up. In an instant, Crowe felt that everybody in the world was reprimanding him. The voices got louder and angrier, and before Crowe could make a sound in protest, Jeff threw open the passenger door and darted, top speed, away from the Crowemobile. The sight of his friend’s terrified flight threw Crowe into total immobility. He heard phantom noises that sounded like passenger jets, bullet trains, and missiles flying towards him. The creepy sounds were blending with the horn beeps and insults. They were all blowing and spinning together to form a dragon. Crowe saw the beast taking shape in the air and was overcome with worry: Obviously the Crowmobile couldn’t handle a creature of this caliber. It was much too big! The car was blowing up like a balloon. He could see the doors bulging, hear the rivets popping, and he became almost psychotic with crazed laughter. Laugh-tears water-falling down his cheeks, Crowe marshaled all his strength, reached into the glove compartment, grabbed a baseball sized rock, opened his door, and flung the rock in the direction of the mean-sounding voices. He heard a loud crash as he ducked back behind the driver’s seat and gunned it away from the scene quick-fast, taking a second to notice that Jeff was somehow back in the passenger seat. Crowe meant to drive to across to the other side of the hospital, eager to put the beeping and throwing of rocks behind them, but the acid was upon him in a complete way. What he perceived as a masterful example of tactical evasion, was in fact, a ½ mile creep going the wrong way down a one way street, during which Crowe saw millions of tiny UFO’s in the sky right over his car.
Eventually they found a parking spot, right behind the ambulance whose windshield Crowe had done in just minutes ago. The driver was standing by, waiting for the police to arrive.
***
Friday morning, 3:30
They parked. Both of them jumped out of the car, walked identical paces to the trunk, and were secretly impressed by the naturally occurring choreography. Neither gave voice to his amusement. Instead, Jeff said:
Ok, you ankles, me wrist. Capeesh?
Jeff was starting to gain some confidence. He’d reached that most awesome part of voluntary hallucinating and was talking in great, well-annunciated streaks, as if he were narrating a documentary:
Three hours, thirty minutes, the body becomes used to the shaky drama of Lysergic-ness. The sensation is like falling, only it seems to last forever and instead of reaching a terminal velocity, you make yourself aero-dynamic with hands above head in a superman position and keep going faster. You can see through people, and into the hidden purposes behind translucent small talk. This is the period of tripping that snagged Doc Ellis no hitter, the sensations the seeded an entire counter – culture in the wake of the Korean Conflict. A heroic dose of good, clean, strong can actually change a man’s life. Not in a vague, emotionally ambiguous way that pizza, beer, and unexpected anal sex with a stranger can change your life, but in a deeper, more personal way. Acid – at least for the first few times one takes it – can create a crystalline new window in the McMansion of existence.
Crowe hadn’t reached this point yet, and so when it became apparent Jeff had solved his, Crowe was jealous. He immediately began plotting nasty things to do to his friend. In the meantime, he grabbed Nad’s ankles. Crowe and Jeff were amazed by how much Nads weighed. Removing him from the trunk was like trying to lift a full sized cow that’d been halved in a guillotine and wrapped in cheesecloth. Not helping matters was the fact that the one two three count got all fucked up because of the drugs. Crowe was thinking go on three count, Jeff assumed the beat after the three count. Amazingly, and inexplicably (except for acid) they were both planning to throw the unfortunate Mr. Nads broken glass and broken macadam of the Visitors Lot.
AhhhOhWatchit!
Crowe said it, but by the time either of them realized what was happening, it was far too late for preventative measures. Instead, the acidified duo could only watch as their mistakes bore fruit. There was a perfect moment there: Jeff and Crowe with .12 gauge pupils, the inert form of Nads swinging, pausing frozen in mid-air like Dick Fosburry after a perfect flop.
Whoahhh!!!!
Jeff exclaimed as Nads hit the pavement. Crowe’s failure to launch created a whip-saw motion. When gravity realized Crowe had hesitated in his letting go, it took revenge by snapping Nad’s upper back, neck, and head against the pavement. Crowe said:
Youch
Jeff said:
Dude…
Nads said nothing.
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