Andrew Spiess

It seems to me that the trees are rising in the night and I realize that I may be having a panic attack so I call James who has a prescription for Xanax in order to ease his own anxiety issues. Nice enough guy anyways. Big metalhead, or maybe punk. Either I can’t tell the difference or there is no distinction, considering the similar way he speaks of both. He wears black shirts and has long straight locks and thick chops made of course dirty hair. I walk over there, crossing streets lined with awful houses and streetlamps, and each one I pass flickers and dims, leaving me in spots of shadows. Dry leaves crunch under my boots. The cold Midwestern wind resists me and bare tree branches reach out, vanishing at the tips. I hear an animal scream somewhere close to me, brush past rubbish and disappear. I stand where I am for a second, looking around, smoking a cigarette, and then move on.

I get to his house and let myself in through the basement door. The stale air inside immediately takes me. James sits on a couch. He looks at me and nods and mutters something but I don’t want to talk to him so much as get a glass of water, yet he seems happy to see me or at least to see somebody, as he is often desperate for human interaction, which I doubt that I can provide for him at the moment. He pulls a pill bottle out his left cargo pocket and tells me that he has more than what I was expecting, and at that point I was willing to talk, but I desperately needed a glass of water.

He shows me an eighty milligram pill of OxyContin, the old kind, one that you can grind into powder, which I hadn’t seen for weeks and as he hands it to me I am instantly overcome by how well I am able to breathe through my nose at the time, how strong and healthy my body has become as of late. And in a way, I could feel myself dissolve on the inside. I sit down next to him on the couch and pull the coffee table closer so I have a good surface to work on.

“Come on, Matt,” James says. “You’re going to tear up the carpet doing that. Fucking be careful.”

“Sorry. I didn’t think of that.” As I say this I wonder why anyone would install carpet in a basement, although this is where he lives. I suppose he wants to make it as comfortable as possible. James hands me a hose clamp and I bend it into an arc so I can grate the pill into a pile of powder, and the simple act of grinding, the scraping sound of it, induces a euphoria in me and I think about the past month or so, how hellish it was, the anguish, the way that my body sickens without this substance in my system.

And all the while, James is ranting about something that he thinks people don’t understand: “I’ll tell you about punk rock: punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and…and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies and the bodies and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds of young men who give what they have to it and give everything they have to it and it’s a… it’s a term that’s based on contempt, it’s a term that’s based on fashion, style, elitism, Satanism and everything that’s rotten about rock’ n’ roll. Of course, I can’t say that I ever knew Johnny Rotten, but I’m sure… I’m sure he put as much blood and sweat into what he did as Sigmund Freud did.”

I look him in his half-shut eyes as long as I can and ask him how much of this shit he’s done, jokingly. And for some reason, I can’t help but picture him re-shingling his grandfather’s roof, and also the effort he puts in to his job at the Honda dealership. He tells me about his family sometimes, about his father’s success. He says he’s on his way to his father’s efficiency. A practical man, a Jack-of-all-Trades, so to speak. A useful friend.

“I think it sounds like trash,” I say.

“Well, okay,” he says, leaning closer to me. “You see, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise is in fact the brilliant music of a genius, myself. And that music is so powerful that it’s quite beyond my control and when I’m in the grips of it I don’t feel pleasure and I don’t feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I’m talking about? Have you ever felt like that? When you just couldn’t feel anything and you didn’t want to either. You know? Like that? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I don’t say anything. Eventually I tell him that I’m meeting her later and he acts like this is typical, as if he knew I was going to say this or that I already had, which doesn’t make sense to me because I have not spoken to her in some time and he tells me to get out, possibly for ignoring him. As I walk out, I promise him I will pay him for helping me out probably in a few days.

“Fine.” He lets out a sigh the sound of Central Air, leans his head back, and closes his eyes.

…

The last dream I had involved Sarah. I don’t remember much of it. It had something to do with myself sitting up on my side of the bed, moving my feet to the floor and rubbing my oily face with the palms of my hands, sleep smearing my vision. Dazed from waking, I looked behind me and saw her lying there, deeply sleeping and serene, the curls of her auburn hair splashed over half of her face and on the pillow under her head. I can’t tell if it’s the trickery of my blurred vision of waking or something leftover from the night before, but I tried to focus on the living curls of her hair, coiling around her face and around the pillow, tickling her nose. There was another part that had to do with something I have already forgotten. I’m not sure when this dream occurred. Last night I dreamt of nothing.

…

I meet Sarah at a local diner over coffee and to talk because we haven’t talked in a while and I’m certain that it bothers her. I pull open the door to the diner and motion for her to go in first. We take a seat at a booth next to a family of a mother and two young boys. I watch one of the boys pour into his mouth a couple packets of sugar I was hoping he wouldn’t. Under the table, I pull out a bar of Xanax from a pack of cigarettes in my pocket that I took from James and squeeze it between my fingers.

“Can I get you anything, dear,” says Margie, the waitress, standing over the two of us as if she just sprouted out of the ground. I order a cup of coffee, as black as she can make it. Sarah asks for water with as much politeness as she can muster up.

“We should have gone to a coffee shop.” Sarah says. When she speaks all her teeth show, and I can’t help but think about how much we have in common and how she is so far out of reach. A warm sea apart. Earlier, she called me and I thought about letting this one go, but I brought my phone to my ear and said hello. Her voice the tone of a lovely violin. I imagined her breath smelled like sweet fruit. She always seemed like a stranger, more or less, but there was something between us, something that felt tender but uncertain. I felt like we both wanted to figure that out.

“This place is fine. I like it here. Don’t you think it’s comfortable, welcoming at least?” I want her to understand my sentiments.

“They don’t serve tea here.”

“It doesn’t matter because we need to talk.”

“You haven’t spoken to me much.”

I pause. “I haven’t been myself lately.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

I don’t say anything. Margie comes back with a mug of coffee and places it in front of me along with a small bowl of half and half creamers and sets Sarah’s glass of water in front of her and walks away without giving her a straw. I stare at my coffee, watch the steam rise and the thickness of it swirl like a puddle of oil, and as I fix my eyes on my drink that I have utterly lost interest in I know that Sarah is staring at me, trying to extract some kind of value from my face. I try to stay stern.

After about a minute of silence, Sarah repeats what she said.

I do not say anything.

And at this moment, a man that I’ve never seen before walks into the diner and recognizes Sarah sitting with me, and he takes a step towards our booth, a giddy smile stretching across his face, ready to greet her, but when he notices that she’s crying, his grin dissipates and he turns away, and as she wipes the tears from her eyes I eat the entire pill as fast as I can, washing it down with scalding coffee. She stands up, maneuvering out of the booth.

“Never mind. I might call you later.”

“Okay. Call me if you want.”

…

James tells me I owe so many people money, and so I’m losing friends, then he tells me that he likes my shirt and asks me if I liked a certain band, but I had never heard of them. James and I are a lot alike. His back is fairly straight. We walk the same stride. Our friendship has always involved the utility of drugs, and it’s not easy to readjust, so we try to distract and sedate and plug up the holes that belong to us.

Someone else sits in the room that wasn’t there earlier. He seems rough, with two lit cigarettes between chapped, peeling lips. “I’m holding this one for a friend,” he says.

A flash of stillness occurs. A balloon in the conversation. Everyone falls voiceless. We stop talking for a while and listen to the basement breathe through radiators, seemingly moving, almost alive.

The sun comes up, unwanted, and I am irritated. As I get high, I realize I am afraid of something I wasn’t considering before or maybe I just didn’t understand, and so I decide to leave. But the truth is there is no coming and no going. I stand up and do not look at the stranger or James, who was busy shuffling a deck of cards.

“This was a bad idea.” I told him, knowing that he might misunderstand such a vague statement.

“Yeah,” he said without saying goodbye or looking at me, and so I eventually made my way through his door and that was that. That moment was a failure. The next may be better.

Listen, you need to focus! Stop pacing aimlessly in your kitchen. Stop talking to yourself. You must find your wallet, your cigarettes, and your cell phone. You need to find a lighter. Get money fast. If there isn’t any money in your wallet, use your bank card at the ATM. Don’t worry about overdrawing if your account is low in funds; you can pay it back later when you get hired somewhere after submitting those job applications to the several restaurants around the city like you’ve been meaning to do. There is also a phone number on a strip of paper lying around for a bike messenger job that you ripped off the bulletin board at the Laundromat that you go to. Relax. Maybe the Laundromat is hiring.

Your wallet is probably under all the trash on the coffee table. Check under the magazines, ashtrays, and empty cigarette packs. Your cigarettes are probably mixed in with all the empty packs. Shake them all until you hear something rattling inside other than loose scraps of tobacco; search for something solid. There is a chance that you might find a single forgotten cigarette. Nothing? Nevermind. There’s your cell phone, under the photograph of your mother smiling and drinking iced tea on the patio back in California. Put that in a place where you won’t see it. You will not think about your mother. You will not miss her.

Call that guy Pockets. You should have his number. Did you see him a few days ago, or was that last week? Nevermind because there is his number. He told you he would front you again if you paid him back. He likes you. Don’t ask him for his real name even though you want to because it’s not a good idea to get too personal with people like him and it’s all just business anyway so forget about making friends for now. Just find your wallet.

Search under the couch cushions. Nothing but some pennies and plastic wrappers. Are those your cigarettes? You must feel so relieved. Now, find yourself a lighter. Move the couch and check underneath. Don’t put the cushions back because it’ll add that little bit of weight and you don’t want to strain yourself. You are too tired for that, and you don’t have time either. What do you see under there? Nothing but crumpled plastic bags, fast food trash, and cigarette butts. There’s a lighter! Reach for it and test it out. Is it empty? Shake it up. It must be completely dry. Forget it. Just find your wallet.

Look around on the floor. It’s that simple. This place is a mess. Everything you see belongs in the dumpster. And maybe you eat too much fast food. You should take care of yourself. You should vacuum. Make a note to clean yourself up and organize your belongings later. Is that the number for that bike messenger job? What is that tiny piece of red material behind it? It’s a portion of a pill. There must be at least twenty milligrams left. That’s all you need to balance yourself. Once this is in your system you won’t feel sick anymore. You don’t have enough to get high, which would be ideal, but at least you won’t feel this disease and depression that has been dragging the skin on your face down all night and causing your eyes and nose to leak like a sieve. Your bones won’t feel so hollow and fragile. You’ll even be awake enough to begin submitting job applications, and you should probably call your mother.

But you need a dollar bill and something to grind the pill with. First, rub the red casing off with some spit and a tissue. If you can’t find a grinder, find the closest Wal-Mart in your immediate proximity and buy some hose clamps. It works as a miniature grate to grind a pill into a pile of fine white dust. In order to buy these, you need to find your wallet. Buy several hose clamps for when you lose one, because you will lose one. You will lose them all eventually.

Remember: there might be a dollar bill in your wallet. Just relax. All you need to do right now is smoke a cigarette, but your eyelids are falling. Maybe you should make some coffee. You shouldn’t sleep even when you’re tired, when you’re too exhausted to function properly.