Blue Seven Mainline

Note: first draft of a WIP. Sharing because I felt froggy.

 

Chapter One: Her. Noah. Blue Seven.

I found Her in the arms of Big Dick Bryan. I was drunk, of course, as I’d been trying to get ahold of Her for two weeks now, and we’d planned to meet this weekend. I knocked on the door to Conrad’s little garage apartment behind his grandpa’s house. Conrad answered, eyes half-mast, a mirror with powder on it in his hand, threatening to fall to the floor as he fell asleep standing up.

I lifted the tray, moved Conrad gently to one side, and saw her there, passed out on Big Dick Bryan’s lap. I don’t want to tell you what she looked like. That would spoil it. She looked like every girl that ever broke your heart, and she had their names too. You can do that much in this collaboration between our imaginations, because even if I told you her name, or described her face, you’d put your own on her, sure as shit. So, I will call her ‘her’ and leave it at that.

I could have let it end there, walked away, hopped in my Toyota, dragged its broken undercarriage two hours back to my apartment in Champaign, away from the shithole of my hometown.

But I was drunk, I was wearing Her too-small black glove on my left hand, and as I would have fervently assured you that night, very much besotted with said girl in Big Dick Bryan’s lap. So, I did what anyone who’d been dating her for two weeks should do: I walked over to the couch where Big Dick Bryan was, Conrad reaching for me like a zombie as I went, and likely falling over in the attempt. Bryan turned his lizard’s gaze on me-lizard, bird, I don’t know, he had a big nose, glasses, and looked like either one, they’re related, right?

I said something I no longer recall, but I know Big Dick Bryan said, “Go ahead. You can try.”

With his permission, I bent down and picked up the woman sleeping in his lap then proceeded to carry her limp form toward the door like a monster from a 1940’s film.

But she woke up, and as her eyes opened, I seemed to wake to the reality of my behavior. I turned my head to Big Dick Bryan who smiled, and, of course, it didn’t touch those lizard eyes.

I looked back to her. Her eyes still unfocused and glazed, she looked confused. Maybe she was drunk too or was on Conrad’s smack. I set her down, horrified-of what I’d done, where I was, that Conrad’s mirror would fall and waste all of that sweet powder, that I would fall too and ask for some, maybe lick it off the goddamn concrete.

I rushed outside, slamming the door behind me. The windows of the garage apartment rattled.

I ran as fast as I dared in my drunken state, past the shed where I thought for a moment I saw a tall, dark, thin man—

—Too Thin—

and noticed vaguely that there was a scribbled message running the length of the shed: “Don’t call him Billy.”

I screamed, repressing this terror from my childhood.

“Conrad?” Conrad’s grandpa said, poking his small, withered head out of his back door and swiveling it back and forth. A dog barked in answer, followed by another. It was around midnight, and the moon was full. I could hear Big Dick Bryan’s laughter following me back to my car. The undercarriage dug a trench through the gravel of the drive as I backed out. I reached down and grabbed the fifth of Canadian Superior which had been rolling around underneath the passenger seat, raising it up to my mouth and ignoring my surroundings.

I had rules then, standards, no junk. I could carry girls out of smack dens against their will, but no heroin, no sir, uh-uh.

I took a drink as hot tears spilled down my cheeks and The Velvet Underground told me how Candy’s come to hate her body over my speakers. The undercarriage dragged, and I bit my tongue as I backed into the buzzing streetlight across from Conrad’s house and sped away, back to my parent’s house.

I ran a thumb around the black circle on my chin, but I dared not think of what had made me feel that circle always, or why I felt it there more when I was all fucked up.

My parents lived in a better part of town than Conrad, but only about a block away from houses with cars in the front yard. Randy down the road would fix anything for a case of beer, while Bill Williams charged cash and wouldn’t get to your car for three years. I scratched past both mechanics’ houses in my Toyota. I parked in my parents’ front yard-Randy and Bill would have been proud—and swayed and stumbled my way to the back door. My parents weren’t home; they were in one of their ‘we’re trusting you’ phases because I was not in one of my ‘mainlining heroin’ phases. Funny how that works.

For some reason I thought I needed to take my missed dose of Wellbutrin, as anyone who is used to taking medicine for years does—but I’d gone off the white pills with the elephant engraved in one side when I’d met Her. She’d become them, which is why I tried to carry her away from the man she was fucking.

I struggled with the key at the back door, drunk eyes sliding off the bullseye every time I got a lock on it.

“Use the force, Luke,” I slurred to myself, then sniffed. I’d forgotten I was crying, completely focuses on being a bit less drunk.

I got the key in, tried to turn, but … it wouldn’t go. I tried again-maybe it was just old, bent up a bit.

Nothing.

“God fucking damnit,” I said, and then my phone started buzzing in my pocket. Jeans. Tight ones, though not quite emo-boy tight. Why did my sober self never have the forsight to wear something sensible for my drunk self?

Finally, I got my hand in my pocket and fished the phone out, flipping it open on my chin. I didn’t even attempt to read who it was.

“Mr. Ezra Luca?” said a voice, a man’s voice, dusky and worn down with cigarettes. I pulled out a pack of Parliaments I couldn’t afford, lit one and sat down on the log bench my dad had made inside a small triangle of mulch. On the log was carved ‘T & L’, their initials. “Mr. Ezra Luca? Am I speaking with a Mr.—”

“Yes,” I said, pushing cigarette smoke out with the word. “Who’s this?”

“Hello, Mr. Luca. We’ve been trying to get in touch with you regarding your sister.”

“My … sister? What about my sister?” I said. “Who the hell is this?”

“You see, Mr. Luca, your sister has started to … how should I say it—push through.”

Push through?

“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s wrong with—”

“She needs your help!” the voice said, differently than before, a whispered scream. The line clicked. I held the phone out and saw that the little green phone was gone from the screen, and now there was a little red phone.

My sister had never needed my help. Noah Luca never needed anyone’s help. I wanted to write it off, assume it was a drunk friend, maybe Big Dick Bryan trying to fuck with me, but … for some reason I was unsettled by it, like after watching a good horror flick when you believe in demons for a few weeks after, running back to bed after pissing in the middle of the night.

Somehow, I managed to dial Noah’s number. It rang for some time, and I decided I deserved another cigarette. The wind blew, rustling the leaves of the gumball tree. One of the pointy fuckers fell right on my head and I dropped the phone.

“Shit!” I said.

“Ezra? Ezra?” I heard Noah’s distorted voice saying from my phone’s speaker.

I picked up the phone. “You ok?” I slurred.

“Are you fucked up? Where are you?” she said.

“No. Noah, listen. Are you alright? Some guy called. He said … ah, damnit, what the fuck did he say again?”

“Who is it?” I heard Bruce, Noah’s husband asking, sounding groggy and bewildered as all hell, and whenever Bruce spoke, I got the feeling he was judging me, thinking I was some kind of great idiot.

“It’s Ezra. He’s fucked up,” Noah said, trying to whisper.

“I’m not—forget it. Listen, hey—hey, Bruce, is Noah ok? Anything … strange goin’ on?”

There was a small pause.

“Everything’s ok here,” Noah said, her voice strained.

Bruce said, “He’ll be fine, Noah. We have lives.”

I clicked the red phone button, my face getting hot.

I ran through the list of friends that could have made such a call to me. There were many, and I don’t mind saying many were shitty, but who cared enough? Maybe Huge Anus, but he wasn’t the type to do some unsettling shit like this, concerning one’s sister.

My head was cloudy, and my throat hurt, and I realized my fourth cigarette in a row dangled from my bottom lip.

And she’d been in the lap of Big Dick Bryan.

My tongue throbbed. I walked to the Toyota and grabbed the whiskey, taking a long, eye-burning snort before falling asleep on the trampoline behind the gumball tree.