13

Whenever I think about it, I always feel like I am being asphyxiated.

The light, the noise, the incessant chanting of the new year’s eve crowd counting down the final seconds: “Ten!...Nine!...”

Four months earlier I was painting. All in ink, the long strokes pulling against vellum so gently they make no sound. A piece of me not knowing what to do beyond each consecutive second, each second wearing me down into that place I knew so well. I poured over that painting for hours with the manic energy that caused it. I rolled that painting up and put it into a tube along with the wad of twenties that comprised two-hundred dollars, to cover my half of the operation. On the tube I wrote the word, ‘shortcake’.   

            She was called Shortcake. She was this fiery redhead with the voice of a toad because she constantly smoked.  She bartered with her family for a ticket to the rave so she could party with me and Hepp.

Hepp was this feisty bitch. Hepp was the kind of raver that you’d want to have your back on a late night in downtown. She used to wear profuse amounts of carefully applied makeup, it would darken her face to the point that it exhibited this fantastically burlesque character. I liked to imagine that she became someone else when she wore the various layers of multicolored and fluorescent eyeliner. Her chest was heaving as we soaked up the last moments of the year. Her expression matching my own as her dilated eyes gave me a nod of approval while her chest inflated with each deep breath.

“…Eight!... Seven!...”

The crowd roared around us. I give Hepp a thumbs-up unable to even shout out the corresponding numbers . I feel a hand gently touch my shoulder and slip away.

“…Six… …Five!...”

I look to Hepp and the expression on her face is sheer horror. I don’t remember hearing the rest of the countdown.

I turn around and Shortcake swipes at me her hand postured like a claw, her eyes are wild black pools as she falls to the ground in a shock of convulsions. Foam bubbling out of her mouth involuntarily, her body erupts into tetanic convulsions. I can see Hepp screaming at the top of her lungs and hearing nothing but the bass of electronic speakers.

When I lived in Beverly Hills  I told people I was a waiter. I told them that I worked at a quaint little café off of third and Fairfax by the farmers market. I would take the train twice a week into downtown where I stayed on the border of west LA.

In LA the helicopters kept me up at night. I would go on long late-night walks where I would look at gated houses and juxtapose them against the homeless that slept in heaps between the buildings four blocks south.

Somewhere along the way the audience screams “Happy new year.” I hear fireworks in the background, Shortcake is twitching like she is being electrocuted on the ground each person looking on in terror as an involuntary participant in this horrible séance. I jumped forward and grabbed a water bottle out of this guy’s hand. I put my leg under her head trying to get her body sit still, the whites of her eyes skitter at the ceiling wildly, she hard as a rock as her hands flail around striking me in the face. I’m certain she thinks she’s being attacked. I dump the cold water on her face and her body goes limp like a marionette having all its strings cut.

That night it was a breeze bringing the 220 pills through the gate. The security guards always like people that know the routine.

When I think on it, I couldn’t tell you why I gave it to her. I gave it to her. I don’t give anyone anything. I suppose it was out of some sense of pity, even after blood

money had been paid weeks ago, I guess I still felt sorry or something.

           

            Shortcake’s little body jolts back to life in a system of convulsions. I feel like the conductor at a tragic opera. I hold her through the shaking and dump my own water out on her again I feel it instantly through my pants. Her body goes limp again, this time longer.

A deep sense of having no idea what to do pours through me.  

Hepp calls out to her. Her eyes are black rivers of mascara bleeding from her face.

I feel for a pulse from Shortcake’s throat. I look up and shake my head. Hepp’s face erupts into tears.

“Brit…” Hepp pleads.

“I don’t know what to do.” I say. As soon as the words leave my mouth I feel a tidal wave crushing down on us. The tears come so viscerally I scream out.

Somewhere close Lachesis is drawing a thread.

There is a swarm of flashlights. Men shouting out commands, When I look to them I see fear in their eyes. I see pity. I see the humans behind their suits. Their mouths open as if in mid-sentence with nothing to say.

I hoist Shortcakes body from the ground and feel the eyes of the room on me. She feels impossibly heavy and I struggle to carry her. Right as I get her off the ground her body jolts to life in convulsions; she goes stiff and I fall to the ground still holding her. Like before, she goes limp. I make an attempt to get water from a bystander but feel a hand at my shoulder.

“Chesh…Chesh…” Her voice comes out raspy as ever, “…Stop pouring water on me…” Her eyes are immense black pools that can’t sit still.

“I am r-r-r-o-ling so hard.” She snuggles in close and kisses me oblivious to anything around her. She makes a puzzled look at my face,

“A-a-re you okay?”

A part of me tries to laugh but can’t, “I’m doing fine.”

“O-o-oh okay…” She rests her head on me as If I were a stuffed animal that she won from a carnival.

“-You got ‘er bro?” The VIP concierge urges me up out of the crowd.   

  Flanked by security and paramedics and a whole entourage of onlookers we charge up a hidden service stairwell. At the top doors open with a mechanical sound as the cool January air washes over us.

“You probably saved that girls life tonight.” A paramedic later expresses. His tone is so congratulatory I want to crawl under a rock.

I don’t know what to say. I feel like it was more of an act of a desperate drug dealer than of a heroic bystander. I feel like an idiot being congratulated by this med student for something he’s probably done several times before. My hands tremble trying to hold a cigarette. I watch Hepp and Shortcake walk off into the night.

The security guards let me back into the rave.  I tell my best friend what happened, explaining the whole thing in detail, unable to judge me he shrugs and gives me a hug.

“Fuck-it dude, let’s party,” he starts moving to the beat before the words are out of his mouth.  

We dance early into the morning. People come and go, they take photos with us and trade kandy. After the music stops an after party is in full effect at the hotel where my fellow dealers will greet me like family, my girlfriend will draw me a bath as we count money. We march as a proud and conspicuous tribe through the city streets. I pause and take a breath under a large Ficus while I wait for my people to cross the street. The tree’s roots seem to fracture the concrete effortlessly, its trunk looks like a gigantic whale and I am left wondering how much oxygen they produce. Their immense branches grope the sky and their leaves tingle in the morning breeze, backlit by gentle blue light.