EPISODE ONE: PORN AND OTHER THINGS

East to West

I watch the wet sand gradually sieve through the cracks of my toes as the tide rushes back toward the open sea before me.

The force of the sea’s mighty tug causes each toe—starting from my big toe to my pinkie—to sink into the sand as the tide rushes toward the shore; and every time the tide washes over my ghostly-white feet, the water climbs farther up my shins and shaves yet another inch from my height, and yet the only thing I can think about while I cradle Jimmy in my arms is what the car wash attendant said to me an hour ago—not how he said it, the tone of his voice shifting down an octave or the manner-isms that he displayed when he said it. What really bothers me the most was the quickness of the comment, a sneeze of a comment, as if the pudgy-faced jerkwad didn’t give a second’s thought about my situation—didn’t put himself in my shoes, didn’t even grasp what I had just experienced, the horror, the loss, the pain—then he spoke those words involuntarily from his little piehole, as if I was made of peppercorn or even worse, some kind of allergy. Peanut boy.

That’s all I was to him. A walking, talking peanut.

I can’t help but wonder: maybe he has a bad heart too.

Or, worse, maybe William was right.

Or maybe this is all in my head.

I curb my frustration and focus on my toes sinking farther into the sand below me.

The clouds partially eclipse the rising sun over my shoulder. The sun eventually breaks free—and the sight of the sun gives me a sense of clarity, similar to the moment I first returned to Topside: driving along the always-busy Sun Park Highway, then crossing the Joaquin Bridge into Topside, then, as I made my way over that steep hill of anticipation, the land opened up and a horizon of water was stretched out like a blue desert before me, as if it was welcoming me back to a place that I once called home, reminding me who was in charge now. I knew, at that moment, that it was one of those moments that I’d never forget.

I bask in the openness of the Pacific, as well as the warmness of the sun, as I shield my eyes with my right hand—Jimmy now held in the other—and gaze at the last beams of sunlight dampening over the gunmetal sky.

The clouds, as rich and thick as the froth that cakes the edge of the tide like the icing trimmed along a birth-day cake, blot out the sun in a minute-hand pace and finally, darken the sea with gloom.

A local told me the other day that these waters are infested with sharks around this time of year. She said that last year a high school girl named Deanna Wheeling (other surfers call her “Lil’ Dee” because of her elf-like stature) was attacked by a Tiger shark—“fifteen footer,” they said—while she was catching the break before a monster of a storm slithered its way around Mexico and made an unprecedented landfall through the southern half of California. They said waves were bad before the storm—bad, as in harmful—and the undertow, they said, was about as strong enough to drag the average man be-low, even if he was standing in at least three feet of water, but that sure didn’t stop Lil’ Dee. So they said. The shark pulled her into the sea—and apparently, she was much farther out than three feet—and then, after Lil’ Dee managed to escape from the grip of the shark’s jaws, the shark took a chomp out of her leg and swam away with a souvenir. Lil’ Dee’s name was in the papers, in the news, the headlines, all over the Internet like a deadly virus. She became a local hero around Topside—her name buzzing like a swarm of pissed-off bees throughout each bar along the beach—especially after she defied the doctors’ orders and hit the waves the following year. They said Lil’ Dee still comes out here every now and then—one leg and all—and surfs the break with a prosthetic.

Imagine that.

I listen to the song of the water singing in harmony; and for a moment, I can feel myself lying in my bed back home with my glazed eyes staring at the rickety ceiling fan spinning in circles overhead.

(I read in a self-help magazine—First Time, I think—that babies find comfort in the sound of a calm sea)

Must be the white noise or something.

The appearance of the water is soothing on my eyes as well, and I find comfort in how each wave scrambles past my body, as if the shore is the finish line; and then, once the waves make it across the line, they hurry back into the endless horizon, as if they have somewhere to be and I’m not invited. I like it here, in the water. I’ve always been drawn to the water. I think I used to like it here when I was younger. The beach. The feel of sand be-tween my toes. All of the sounds surrounding the sea. I used to like how the waves flowed like a breath. The repetitiveness reminds me of this one drill my gym coach, Mr. Sanders, used to make us do on the basketball courts at the end of P.E., sprinting back and forth across the court, each time going a little farther out. The farther you go out, the heavier your legs get. Your heart beats faster. Your breath gets a little deeper. I miss that feeling.

I turn away from the water, glance at the beach be-hind me, and observe a couple of other stragglers walking on the beach, including a jogger squeezing in some cardio before work; but I don’t pay much attention to them.

Instead, I turn back toward the sea and trudge for-ward until I’m about waist-deep in water.

As the water bobs all around me, I hold Jimmy closer to my sternum. I carefully remove the lid and clear away the clouds of ash, moving like these baby phantoms from the inside of the urn. Then, suddenly, a strange object catches my eye: a piece of metal glimmering like a nugget of gold within a mound of ashes. So clean and shiny, the piece of metal appears, as if it had been untouched by the flames of the furnace. I make sure to dry my pruned fingers along my sleeve before picking up the object. I hold the tiny thing close to my face, really close. The piece has all the right characteristics of a tooth filing, the hardness as well as the unusual round shape, but in my gut, I know the piece that I’m holding in my hand is not Jimmy’s tooth filling. He never had one; in fact, Jimmy had the teeth of an actor. I remember he had braces when he was younger. Had an entire mouthful of colored metal worn across both his upper and lower teeth like one of those guard grilles on the front of a truck. But that’s it. No fillings. The braces came off by the time Jimmy hit puberty. And by then, he was already on his way.

So, immediately, I’m way beyond intrigued. I’m floored as I realize that this very piece in my hand is everything.

It’s my story.

Most importantly, it’s Jimmy story.

I carefully place the metal fragment inside the breast pocket of my flannel shirt and embrace the cool breeze one last time by taking in a deep breath through my nose and tightly holding the breath inside my lungs before the creeping sensation of an impending doom enters my thoughts.

I tell myself it’s only a thought, like any other cloud in the sky, and this thought, like the clouds, will pass just as any other thought.

I exhale through my nose. Every thought in my head fades into stark blackness. I tilt the urn toward the dark sea below.

Right before I dump the ashes into the sea, I witness the car wash attendant’s face in the reflection of the murky water. He’s staring up at me—stupidly—and I’m staring down at him. His chocolate brown eyes are fixated on me as well, like a dead man vacantly staring at the sky above, the water behaving no different than flexible mirrors as they distort his face in varying cycles.

As I try to make sense of his face, the very thought of how we ended up here comes back to me…

I look around the beach.

Confused.

I spot a man standing alone at the edge of the shore. He’s much older than the car wash attendant—twice, even triple his age. Most of the sepia-like suit that he’s wearing has been readjusted on his hunched body. Sport coat draped over his shoulder, index finger gripped underneath the collar. His other hand remains firmly planted in his pocket. He’s also wearing his tie like a man who recently finished working a twelve-hour shift at a white-collar job. Something that involves cubicles and daily reports and a pest of a micro-manger. Both sleeves are rolled up to his forearms. His posture isn’t that weak, though, not like a typical elderly man who spends the early part of his days wandering away the ache of old age. I’d say he’s probably pushing eighty from the wrinkles and liver spots speckled on his skin; and he has a pink scar in the shape of a lightning bolt along one side of his face.

Why am I so interested in this old man?

Most importantly, why in the hell is this old man so interested in me?

I don’t know. Don’t ask.

The old man acknowledges me with a gesture.

I don’t nod back.

I turn toward Jimmy.

I’ll try again tomorrow, I tell myself.

I close the urn and walk back to the beach.

II

My appetite comes back to me by the time my jeans dry.

The past few days I’ve been scarfing down fast food in the musty confines of whatever car I can find and I can really use a decent meal—that’s what Grandma Backer would say: You look so thin, boy! You look like you can use a decent meal! As of now, my car—you may be wondering—is a squashed cherry of a car, the repercussions of a hunk of metal that’s been handed down by one delinquent after another. Besides a Toyota Camry or Prius, the Honda Civic F-Series happens to be one of the most popular vehicles in the Los Dementes area. So, as the kids at East Providence would say, “I’m mainstreamin’.”

I leave my new Civic behind and stroll down a questionable sidewalk next to Main Street until I come across another elderly man.

Unlike the one on the beach, this guy looks like a character one would find in an Ernest Hemingway novel that’s been updated—or dare I say, rewritten for my generation; his ring finger has the pale outline of a wedding band, which, strangely, is the first feature I notice about him, then the faded marks all over his body. I’d like to think most people carry stories in their eyes—you know, like that one saying, the eyes are the windows to the soul or whatever—this man, however, carries his in the tattoos along his arms: the name Nancy written in cursive over his forearm; a military emblem on his right bicep; a sword piercing through the armor of a scorpion on the inside of his left wrist, which—my first impression—is either militant or a brand of some kind of elite force that specializes in counterinsurgency or something of that nature. He appears much older than his lush hair shows, probably ten plus years than his age. His stony face is about as dry and craggily as a hand-me-down catcher’s mitt—one would say a smoker’s face, common to what The Trail may call “reverent masculinity” with his sleeve-less powder blue dress shirt, exposing a brier patch of chest hair.

(I read somewhere, not in The Trail but in Healthy Nut magazine, that too much sun can lead to damaging of the skin, which will not only make you appear much older than your present age—maybe that’s the whole point—but it will also make you a likely candidate for melanoma. That’s skin cancer)

I ask him if he knows any good places to eat.

“A quiet place,” I say, as I invisibly lasso in a trail of phlegm before it runs from my nostril.

He tilts his head in thought. I can’t tell whether he’s actually thinking about a good restaurant—a quiet place, as I told him—or wondering why I’m sniffling so damn much.

I follow with a higher tone, as if I’m posing a question without using the basic who, what, when, or where introductions of a question—“Non-touristy perhaps?”
He points to the end of Main Street, which is only a couple of blocks away, and straightens his ringless fingers into an arrow and aims them to the left—beachside.

“The Cove,” he suggests. “Just around the corner. Best fish in Topside. It’s a dive, though. If you don’t mind.”

I shrug, casually.

“I don’t mind.”

“Well, you’ll fit right in.”

“Thanks, man.”

I walk away before he starts small talk.

I don’t mind small talk; however, I’m afraid my stomach will probably do most of the talking.

III

Halfway down Main Street, I come across a group of wiry people—a weird mix of both natives and tourists, a likely pair which is common around Topside—being escorted from the Main Pier.

I keep my head and scout out the scene from the corners of my eyes. Four cruisers are idling in a parking lot. Sirens flashing, however, switched to silent. Cops aren’t saying much to the people, just guiding them away from Main Pier in orderly cop fashion while, at the same time, trying to maintain peace around the crime scene. Most of the spectators are more or less curious about all of the fuss, not fuzz. However, several spectators have their smartphones held steady in front of their faces, filming a couple of cops roping the entrance of the pier with the standard yellow CAUTION tape.

One guy—the surfer type who’s dressed in colorful floral pattern swim trunks and a red dri fit tee shirt—is having a chat with another cop who looks about the same age as the guy.

Together, they’re both laughing—and I’m extra curious as to why they’re laughing.

Cop joke?

Maybe the guy used to be a cop?

Possibly an ex-cop?

Don’t know.

I notice the cop is closely listening to the surferish guy while jotting down his every word on a notepad with a pen. Could be giving a possible statement. About what, I don’t know. I don’t get all worked up over it, even though I can feel a slight stirring in my gut, not from the hunger but an overall sense of unease in queue.

I remind myself that I’m in the clear. I’m okay.

I look around for any other activity. I don’t see any reporters or news vans yet, but I know any minute now, the entire scene’s going to be swarming with media vultures.

They must’ve recently found the body, if I had to take a stab at guessing.

IV

Before I grab a bite to eat, I decide to stop at an Internet café called Cyber Jaxx’s for a cup of coffee. I log into each one of my social media accounts, first starting with Twitter.

I type in my user name: CLUBHOPPER69*_*.

Ms. CLUBHOPPER69*_* is a smoking hot twenty-two-year-old stylist from Pensacola, Florida. Her real-life name is Penelope Swearinger. During the day, Penelope works part-time at Version Hair and Makeup. Her sign is Scorpio. Her dating status is currently SINGLE, but, as Penelope’s bio states, she’s “☺ always lookin 2 mingle ☺.” Penelope has blonde hair, blue eyes, tits like an established porn star—her hair is probably one of only two natural things about her, although she recently added purple highlights to her hair and got a tramp stamp of this cute fairy pointing a wand at the crack of her ass over the summer. She enjoys, like, “totally loves,” hanging out with her bffs on weekends, and she gladly calls herself the ultimate “Weekend Warrior.” Like some of the girls Penelope’s age, she has experimented with the same sex, but she doesn’t consider herself to be a bisexual. In her profile, Penelope also states that she’s a vegetarian by heart who—from time to time—eats fish (Go save the dolphs!!!) and yet, a lot of her pics on Facebook suggest that she’s quite a meat eater (no pun attended, lol). Her guilt-food is “peanut butter and jellies” on a waffle. Favorite bands are Blink 182 and Green Day, to name a few. She likes to shop at Victoria Secret, or as she calls, the “Secret.” She attends FSU, the “best university in the whole wide world,” where she’s majoring in political science. And, she absolutely loves to party. Like totally. She even has a Facebook page with over 40K followers—that’s 40K, as in forty thousand, all unpaid. I don’t even know a hundred people, including strangers. She frequently posts titty pics and selfies of herself standing in front of the mirror and tweets haiku poems.

In reality, CLUBHOPPER69*_* is not a party girl—at least, not anymore. And her name isn’t Penelope Swearinger either. It’s Penelope S. Shwin. She tied the knot one year after she graduated from FSU; and she recently had twins, two beautiful boys, Sonny and Wes, both named after her favorite TV show, American Rebel; and she’s living happily ever after in Helena with her newly strap-on husband, Chadwick, or Chad, owner of a gro-cery store which specializes in organic food. She met Chad during a skiing trip with her older sister, Darcy, in Montana. Chad and Penelope dated for a few months, then that was all she wrote. Literally. She deleted all of her social media accounts. The pictures remained, though, even the good ones. For example, you take a picture. It’ll last longer. That’s true to some degree. But you post a picture online. It’ll last forever—even worse, swallowed by the Internet, digested, then shitted out in the form of a pesky spambot. It’s amazing, not only how people put themselves all out there, but also how many people will FOLLOW you if you post a picture of your asshole.

Sebastian Capello, aka “Flip,” accepted CLUBHOP-PER’S friend request after the first five minutes she sent it to him, consequently allowing his so-called “secret admirer” to gain access to all of Flip’s PRIVATE accounts. Flip is from Newark, New Jersey, or what he tells CLUB-HOPPER, “Jurzee.” His grandparents migrated from Florence, Italy, to New York right before the original Godfather movies came out.

Flip’s mother owns a bakery in Newark and from the pics Flip posts on his Instagram, or what Penelope calls, “Insti,” she makes a really mean cannoli.

His father, formerly known as the infamous pro wrestler, “Speedo” Not Your Everyday Guido, is now retired. Speedo won the Light Heavyweight belt against “Tino Two Fingers,” held the belt for about a month until he lost it to the high flying Ukrainian, “Ivan the Incredible,” in a brutal cage match, which was considered one of the greatest matches in the history of professional wrestling (it was quite bloody—and I’m not talking about that fake shit either), then, a couple of years later after Speedo’s reign, like most wrestlers, he disappeared from the face of the earth. Flip never followed in his father’s footsteps. Most of the following he did was on the Internet.

That brings me back to Penelope Swearinger, aka CLUBHOPPER69*_*. She and Flip have been talking for a couple of days now, mainly about clubs, dancing, and Blink 182. They’ve been sending each other pics as well. Occasionally, she’ll send Flip a selfie of herself.

Flip will return the favor by sending Penelope rather suggestive pics of himself as well, including pics of him-self partying it up at the “Palace,” as he calls it, as in Crystal Palace, the nightclub formerly known as Daddy’s Playground before it relocated from Old Town to the New Town area.

CLUBHOPPER69*_* knows what Flip likes to drink, whom Flip hangs out with at the popular nightclub, what he does for fun on a daily basis, what time he likes to go “down the shore.”

Penelope basically knows everything about Flip, even down to his dick size.

As with Flip’s social media accounts, the exclusive nightspot is super-private.

Members only.

Except for women, not just any guy off the street can join the club.

On the outside, the club is heavily secured—and more than likely, doubled with security on the inside.

In order to gain entry inside the club without drawing attention to myself, I need an “inside man,” a guy who knows people.

CLUBHOPPER69*_* aside, even though Flip and I are nothing alike, we share similar stories in that he too fol-lowed his older brother out West.
His older brother is Shane Capello, a music producer who’s put out as many records as Dave Mathews Band has put out live records. Shane moved from Jersey to Los Dementes way back when kids were wearing Reeboks, gold chains, and listening to Boyz 2 Men.

Not too long ago, he invited Flip to Los Dementes.

Like me, Flip ended up staying.

I pull up Flip’s social media websites on the Internet: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—Insti.

I check his latest posts, then the time.

His most recent post was posted on Twitter fifteen minutes ago: He’ll be “chillin’ like villain” at a popular spot called Holes with his “crazy” crew this afternoon.
Next, I check out Flip’s Instagram page.

He posted a pic five minutes ago with his friend, Wilt, whose hair is like a dorsal fin.

“On the way 2 pic up Chemo,” the caption reads be-low the picture of the two in the car.

As I’m about to close Flip’s Instagram page, a cute twenty-something struts past the café and I grow a stiffy.

Her tits are like small funnels underneath her tight pink tank top, and when she walks by, they skip the hop-scotch.

I get back on the Internet, get halfway through typing the word titty- in the search engine before my stomach lets out a roaring bellow and I’m no longer melting in my chair.

I listen to my stomach, as I should, and my stiffy hides like a turtle’s head in its shell. I leave the Internet café with a sense of great accomplishment.

The Frog Gang

MY head is spinning from the caffeine by the time I arrive at the Cove.

The restaurant is packed, even before the antsy noon crowd arrives; and from what I gather, most of the place is occupied by the salty natives of Topside. Your every-day BINGO turnout minus sluggish reactions or dopey expressions; however, the only numbers being hollered out come from a sweaty behemoth of a cook reading numbers from orders on receipts rotating around a lazy Susan above the pick-up counter. Random bursts of laughter spread across the main dining area, sending me into a state of alertness, which doesn’t help with my momentary dizzy spell. Most of the laughter, I pinpoint, comes from a jolly party of five throwing back morning cocktails. They must be sailors. I find them to be strange creatures. Strange in a good way.

While I make my way past the vacant greeting stand with the sign that reads “Seat Yourself,” I search for my exits, of course, then, lastly, the restrooms—something I’ve always been prone to do whenever I find myself in a foreign environment. Once I’ve located the restrooms, I spot several curious eyes moving toward my direction like tractor beams.

The laughter is taken down a notch, which makes me wonder if my presence has anything to do with the subtle change in mood—wouldn’t be the first time—then, they ignore me as they always do and I ignore them.

They’re just objects, I tell myself.

I arch my chin upward and take one last survey around the place, hoping to find an empty seat. My eyes cross a booth with my name on it tucked away in the back of the restaurant. I don’t see any host or hostess in the area and therefore, I do as the sign states and eagerly grab a seat on my own.

A young waitress glides to the booth as soon as I enter. I wonder whether she’s going to ask me to leave or ask for my order. She’s holding a notepad, as well as a pen in her hand. I relax and greet her with a funeral smile. She’s a couple of years older than me, I notice as she hands me a one-page menu: food on the front, cock-tails on the back. She doesn’t have any noticeable college fat—at least none that I can see on her face—although it’s hard to tell what her body looks like under-neath the loosely fitted Guns N’ Roses T-shirt.

(I read in a magazine—can’t remember which one—that most young girls gain at least ten to fifteen pounds during their first year of college. They call it “Freshman Fifteen”)

The waitress tells me her name, I think, but whatever she says goes in one ear and out the other.

She waits for a response, the white of her Manga eyes slowly disappearing.

“Do you have shrimp?” I ask her before I draw any unwanted attention to myself.

She replies with a stiff nod.

“Best in town,” she replies, sounding as if she’s reading cue cards for an ad or something. From the way the volume in her voice spikes as if she’s doing a mic-check, I know the words not to be her own but someone else’s. Probably the owner, a colossal man frequently making pit stops at each table, making sure each customer is full and satisfied.

I go with the shrimp.

She asks me if I’d like the shrimp spicy and I tell her, “No thanks.”

Did I mention that I have a bad stomach too? Not like bad, as in evil, but bad, as in poor condition.

The waitress smiles as she grabs the menu. Her hand grazes mine during the somewhat awkward exchange, and I make eye contact with her.
In return, she makes eye contact with me.

For a moment, I feel blinded by the radiance of her bubbly blue eyes, as if I’m staring at the sun or some-thing incredibly bright, but I can only stare for a couple of seconds.

(I read somewhere that the color blue brings comfort to the human mind; however, I didn’t feel the least amount of comfort when I looked into her eyes)

I remind myself she’s only working tips. Maybe she has a boyfriend. Maybe she has a kid.

II

While the big guy’s frying my shrimp, I pass the time by nibbling on a couple of hushpuppies as I read through a couple of magazines. One of them being HOARDER, a magazine primarily about modern day artists who draw inspiration from the culture of older time periods such as the Seventies and Eighties, even Nineties. Another: Trucker By Heart, which doesn’t need any explanation. I skim through the trucking magazine. There’s a sweet spread in the front of the magazine called “Greasy Gals of the Month.” Each model has glam rock-sized hair and Junoesque-sized bodies. Basically, tall and shapely. Super-sized. I use the cuff of my sleeve and flip through the sticky pages until I come across a centerfold of an engine. I’m not talking about any ordinary engine. This baby is the crème de la crème of all engines, a Stower, and there’s no mistake as to why it rhymes with the word power. I’m not sure if truckers get off on this kind of stuff—I mean, clearly, they like their gals as American as Frito pie—but, somehow, I’m drawn to the metallic image before me. I can’t help but think of Jimmy.

I’m suddenly pulled from the pages by a strong smell, shrimp first, then coconuts.

I try to ignore the smells, both of them.

The waitress glances down at the magazine in my hand and smiles, as if she’s waiting for me to say some-thing.

“Here you go,” she says as she places the food on the table. “Enjoy your meal.”

I smile back, but the smile seems more like a nervous tick compared to hers.

I remind myself that she’s working for tips.

The waitress walks away, but I end up checking her out when she’s not looking. She’s attractive, I admit, especially living in a place that thrives off sun—despite the unusually bad weather—bad, as in unpleasant. Her skin’s smooth and creamy white, like a doll. My type. The backside of her body is toned as well, especially her legs, although it doesn’t look as if she works out or any-thing. I bet she stays on the move. Like me.

Then, as I always do, I point out her flaws from the barely noticeable sag of skin underneath her chin to the slight dip of her shoulders. I concentrate on each and every flaw, as infinitesimal as it may be—I’ve always liked that word infinitesimal (I think I heard my algebra teacher, Mr. Hall, use it once in a sentence. He used to be a sucker for long words)—and blow each one out of proportion until she ends up looking like a troll.

I down two shrimp and cool my mouth with a sip of ice water and block out the waitress, knowing there’s not a chance in hell she’s interested in someone like me—and if she is, I remind myself that not only is she not attractive, but she’s also working on tips. Why should I even waste my time on her? Plus, she’s carrying a soon-to-be chin underneath her already naturally formed chin, and she hunches too; and in ten years, that extra chin is going to be like a double chin accompanied by other soon-to-be chins. A chin of chins.

It’s nature.

And if there’s one thing about nature, you don’t fuck with it.

Never.

When you get older, you get colder. You get hairy. You get blubbery. You get ugly. I figure if I’m going to spend my time with somebody, she might as well look like a nine or ten before she turns into a four or five—at best.

I chase the remainder of shrimp with the glass of water.

Chew, swallow, repeat.

As I work my way through the third shrimp, I witness Anthony Foster’s face: his chin dipped in dark blood, his yawning mouth like the black hole of a cartoon drawing, his tongue leaping from the penciled blackness and then ricocheting pinball-style against the roof of his mouth. All of the muscles around my stomach become all weird and all, and send a wash of panic over my thoughts. I try to practice what William taught me and ignore my surroundings, including the unattractive waitress. I ignore the graphic thoughts, turn my focus to my breathing, and think about the sea and how it made me feel a sense of serenity, if only for a while. The sea suddenly stains it-self with a deep crimson red. My bad heart does this thing where it’s trying to escape from its prison. And I can feel each pound. Each quake. Each thud. Each ripple throughout my body. A pale reflection in the water is brought forth before me, revealing these demonic black eyes. The eyes slowly roll over white; and as the vacant face emerges from the surface, the shrimp dances around my stomach and by the time, the shrimp trek from my stomach, my esophagus is like Mount Everest. Cooks are yelling at one another: Needs more salt! A cook yells at a waitress: Order up! A heavy set man sits with shoulders hanging over the table like an offensive line-backer, sucking down raw oysters from a shell, the oysters sliding down the back of his throat, fellatio-like. Each sound, each noise becomes louder, deafening. Three seats over, a cranky lady coughs out a laugh, which sounds like broken glass, the involuntary guffaw causing her dentures to clap against her gums like the shells of a lighthearted clam. A skinny man with a beak of a nose sits across from what looks like his wife and displays a boyish smirk. The gesture freezes in my mind and my thoughts are telling me to smile more, don’t make a scene, like that one saying every concerned adult used to tell me when I was a child: “Poor dear, you should smile more.” Or, even worse: “It can’t be that bad, kid.” Yes, asshole. It’s that bad. A shy girl is complaining to her parents about how she’s not hungry and she’s pouting and I’m pouting too, and I tell myself over again to stop pouting, you pussy. Focus on the sea. My eyes turn to the glass of water before me and I see an imprint of a hand on the side of the perspired glass—and I think about that not-so attractive waitress’s witch-like hand and now her hand is sliding down my pants. Why didn’t you talk to her, you pussy? She was interested in you. I start to have trouble focusing on one thing as the shrimp makes its inevitable climb. Approaching the summit. All I see are faces all around me and the faces remain like snapshots in my mind. One still lasts for a couple of seconds, then another takes its place. An assembly line of stills, one after another. Focus. The sea. The sand. Seated in the booth behind me is an angry couple mum-bling to one another. They’re scraping their knives and forks along the glass plates as they pick through fried red snapper. The clinking sounds like some old school DJ scratching turntables and the sounds nibble away at my brain.

The clinking, the screeching, the mumbling, all of it coming to a rolling boil.

The sea. It’s red again. A red wave comes crashing down on me and the wave is overrun with a thousand barracudas gnawing at my flesh. The prickly sensation makes its way to my extremities, and I feel sick all over.

I try to swallow, but I can’t find any saliva in my mouth. I try to take in a deep breath, but it feels as if my lungs are deflated.

A layer of sweat swells over the surface of my skin, and the very tips of my hands grow tingly, as if my fingers are grazing that invisible fluff along the glowing screen of a TV.

The shrimp arrive at the summit.

Prepare for evacuation.

In five. Four. Three…

Before I reach one, I clench my jaw and exit the booth. I run to the last stall in the restroom. A person is drying a stain on his shirt underneath the hand dryer, but he remains nothing more than a blurry obstruction behind me. I vomit quietly too, years of practice. I keep my aim directly at the sides of the bowl—cla-clum-cla-clum. Then comes a round of dry heaves. I wait for the person to leave the restroom before I flush the toilet.

With my face now bloodless and my skin clammy, I exit the stall and wait until the facet water cools down before I splash my face.

I grab a paper towel from the dispenser and while I’m drying my face, I try to rub color into my cheeks. The color momentarily clouds into parts of my face before falling back to an ashen-like hue. The peach fuzz along the sides of my face stands up like goosebumps and be-comes coarse. The texture of the hair feels peculiar to the touch, as if all of my five senses have been displaced.

Suddenly, one of the stall doors squeaks open!

In the mirror, I witness two legs covered in dark slacks underneath the stall as the door opens like some sturdy wooden door at the entranceway of an old castle.

Focus.

He’s wearing caramel-colored wingtips; and he’s whispering, too, but his voice is barely undistinguishable, like a muffled cyclone buzzing from one ear to an-other. The noise zips behind me, forcing me to rotate around. I see nothing. I face the stall once more and it’s completely empty. Must’ve been the wind.

What else could it have been?

More curious about the noise than anything, I toss away the towel and walk over to the stall.

As I kneel down and glance underneath the remaining stalls, another door opens.

I stand up, only to find a local man standing next to the urinals.

I struggle to make eye contact with him as I cross his path.

“You okay, son?” he asks with a slack expression on his face.

I don’t respond.

Instead, I exit the bathroom before I can give him a straight answer.

III

The waitress makes a pit stop at my table. I know the look on her face. Seen it a thousand times. The paleness has a way of bringing out worried looks.

She asks me if I’m done eating.

I tell her that I am.

Then, she asks me if there was anything wrong with the food. She’s asking me this because I’ve hardly touched my food.

“No,” I say shortly.

She grabs the basket from the table, only a few shrimp missing, and most of the fries and hush puppies have been pushed and picked through from what may or may not have been a bird.

“Would you like a bag or something?” she asks over a distant rumble coming from outside.

I turn to the noise because that’s what it is, just noise.

Wilt cruises by the restaurant, windows down, the trunk rattling from the bass of what’s supposed to be music. Flip is riding shotgun, smoking a cigarette and checking out girls.

“Sir?”

Flip shoots a glance at the Cove, his eyes cross mine; then he flicks his cigarette onto the street.

I hear the word doggy- over my shoulder.

Baffled, I turn to the waitress.

I open my mouth to speak and whatever comes out doesn’t even sound like words.

“I said ‘Do you want a doggy bag?’”

“No,” I tell her. “Can I have some more water? Please.”

Her face melts into something slack.

I watch her walk away, but this time I don’t check her out. Too embarrassed. I tip the waitress half of what the meal costs, grab my bookbag, and slide from the booth. Everybody is giving me the same look the waitress was giving me just seconds ago. I can’t stand that look.

Hate it, actually.

IV

After leaving the Cove, I feel much worse than I did when I first arrived. My throat feels as if it has the diameter of a straw, and like my throat, my chest is discernibly tight, and my breathing is shallow. And, I’m pasty now. More so than before. Lately, I’ve been feeling this kind of way, like my body is a little bit bent out of shape, as if it’s all it knows anymore, being out of shape and misaligned, which makes me think if I’ve always been this way, even at birth when I was tugged from the womb. Can you even imagine that? Some slimy awkward thing—I mean, talk about given the definition of waking up on the wrong side of the bed—after being dragged from the darkness, slipping from the womb, all bent out of shape, like a twisted clothes hanger. I’d like to think that maybe one day I was a happy kid. Happy and carefree. Not a shiver in my bones or a quiver in my gut. A glad young lad. Now, it’s just a whole bunch of shoulds or maybes.

As I make my way past the strip mall, I feel another attack creeping up on me, like a masked stalker in the dead of night, and the notion of a sudden attack is as tiny as a crack in a windshield in my mind and yet, at any moment, I know that crack has a prerogative to streak across the windshield, resulting in more cracks, more streaks until the glass finally shatters. These are the classic symptoms of what somebody may experience during coronary thrombosis—in other words, the other kind of attack, heart attack, not panic attack. I know these symptoms not to be the warning signs of a heart attack. It’s just my body jonesing for a fix. So, I listen to my body.

I spot Flip and his crew hanging outside the popular donut shop, Holes, at the end of the Square.

As I head toward the group, I don’t make eye contact with them. I keep them in the corner of my eye. All four of them. They should be in class right now getting a college education, and so should I—if they ask. I should be studying to be a nurse or something in the field of medicine. Susannah said I’d make a good nurse, in fact, one “helluva nurse,” actually—her words—especially after putting everything on hold in order to take care of Jimmy.

I approach the group and get a better look at them.

Everything in my body relaxes, my stomach especially. They don’t appear too socially “misaligned” from the way they interact with one another.

Then again, a picture doesn’t lie.

I point out Flip, who, as suspected, happens to be the most vocal one of the group: slick dark hair; long side-burns that curl over his ears like the wings on Hermes’ shoes; some tattoos on his chest—don’t really care what they are—and he’s sporting an off black hoody covered in cigarette burns and holey jeans, an outfit that clearly contradicts his nightly attire, but I take it—more or less—as a trend or whatever he’s trying to bring back in style. He’s also sporting a metal chain stretching from his wallet to his front pocket. Grunge kids used to rock the chain wallet back in the day, but I haven’t seen any kids wearing them lately. Maybe Flip’s bringing it back in style.

I overhear Flip talking to Chemo in his hodgepodge of North versus West accent, each vowel rounded down from spending years around laidback Cali accents; and whenever the conversation becomes more heated, certain vowels are drawn out. Flip’s accent is hard to distinguish, to say the least, even when he uses phrases like “down the shore.”

When we share eye contact, Flip flicks his head in a nod and says, “What’s good?”

“Sup,” I reply.

I’m not sure about the correct usage of lingo these days, and I certainly don’t want to sound like a cop or anything. So, I use something universal and ask Flip and his friends if they like to party.

“You holding?” he says.

Not sure what he means, if I’m holding.

So, I keep it as vague as possible.

“Nah,” I say. “Just looking.”

He lets out a couple of croaking sounds from the side of his mouth and it’s supposed to be a laugh, I think.

“Oh yeah?” He cocks his head and holds it there for a minute, as if he’s striking a pose for the latest cover of Toy Gangsters. “You’re in luck. We lookin’ to party as well.”

His laid-back friend joins in, “You a nark?”

“Nah,” I tell him. “Are you?”

“A’ight, Rooty Tooty Fresh N’ Fruity,” he says. “No need to be all pushy—”

“—So, you trying to party or what?”

“Yeah, man,” Flip says as he turns to his other friends. “We down to party. So, let me ask: Where you from, Party Boy?”

“I’m from Philly,” I say confidently.

“No shit,” he says with another croak of a laugh. “Long way from home. I hear they have a shitty ass foot-ball team this year.”

“I think you mean Pittsburg, not Philly.”

“Thought it was the same thing.”

“Same state,” I tell him. “But not the same…”

Wilt, the tall one in the group, asks me, “So, what brings you all the way from Philadelphia to the Top?”

Top, he said, as in Topside.

“Vacation,” I say, “you know, a little R and R.”

The frog laughs again. The other frogs join in.

(I read somewhere in Finding Fit that the French eat frogs; in fact, they consider frogs to be a delicacy)

I block out the sound of their laughter and yearn to feel the warm rays of sun against the back of my neck, but all I get is a cool ocean breeze.

“What’s so funny?” I ask them, trying to be as kind as I can.

“Nah, dude,” Flip says. “Nuttin’. Just the only people who come to this shithole are either a bunch of old-timey fucks or lost boys running away from something. And you don’t look like an old-timey fuck.”

I don’t respond. Don’t have the words.

“So, lemme ask: What’s your poison, Philly?” Flip says, like a spokesman. “Uppers? Downers—”

“—I’m actually looking for some ah—some blow for tonight,” I say hesitantly. “An eightball perhaps. What-ever you can find is cool with me.”

“Okay,” Flip says impressively. “I know a guy who knows a guy who’s gettin’ straight with some snow.”

On the streets, cocaine goes by many other names: powder, sugar, coke, snow.

“But word is he ain’t gonna be straight till later to-night, like eight or nine…”

“Damn,” I say, disappointed.

He’s talking about Cue, as in cue ball. CLUBHOP-PER69*_* has seen many pics of Cue hanging around with Flip at the Palace. They’ve taken many selfies together, including one where Cue is standing like a Toy Solider with his bald scalp glistening like a disco ball as Flip photobombs him from behind.

I look around the donut shop. My hands start to shake a little, and it’s not until I look down at them when I realize they’re shaking.

I watch Flip’s eyes trace mine.

“…But you know what?” Flip says casually as he shoots a glance down at my hands. “I can find you some other stuff for the time being, if that’s cool with you. Now, it ain’t some, you know, Lois Lane, though, but it’ll make you fly. It’s like what I always be tellin’ these fools here…” he points his thumb at the other frogs and laughs again, “…it’s better than nuttin’.”

I’m not sure if he means nutting or nothing.

Right now, it doesn’t matter.

Pattern Practice

KERMIT and his merry gang of amphibians take me to the outskirts of Herald’s Point, the town north of Topside. The Point.

As with the other towns surrounding the Topside area, the Point is a spit of a town with a population dwindling by the season. It is a town on the verge of extinction. A town waiting on a meteor shower called inflation. Not too long ago, the town filed for bankruptcy. Once, I mean, before the recession which left many businesses crippled, the Point was thriving with tourists. There was even this one joint, Early Bird, a local favorite that specialized in Asian cuisine fused with Latin American. It was to die for. Seriously, I’d give my left arm for their famous Vietnamese-style tacos—basically, shrimp topped with radishes and a sweet chili sauce, all stuffed inside a soft corn tortilla, which, by the way, were made in house.

When I was staying with Jimmy at West Harleton, we tried out different places around the area, one of them happened to be Early Bird. We went one afternoon during the peak of lunch hour, which was a terrible mistake. I tried the Vietnamese-style tacos. Jimmy ordered the stick-to-your-ribs short ribs. He was a sucker for meat, especially the red kind. The restaurant was even featured in the magazine, Le Bon. The article drew in hundreds and thousands of restaurateurs and chiefs alike from all over the country on a daily basis, as well as star-pitcher for the Salamanders and his no-good little brother. I remember every time we used to go we make sure to arrive an hour ahead of the lunch rush. Early Bird eventually relocated to Los Dementes after the riots. Last I’ve heard the business is still doing well. Like most local businesses, like Early Bird, all that remains of these buildings are these gutted boxes vandalized by looters and tagged by rival gangs. Once, there was life and sta-bility in these buildings where the only motto was to eat well, be merry. There was nothing merry about these buildings anymore. Now, there was only rot and decay and the ghosts of a once modern world. The ones that are still scraping by just sit there like an unwanted child left to starve to death, a child unable to develop into its fullest potential. The beaches are unkept and riddled with garbage. They could almost pass as landfills. A while back, whistleblowers and finger-waggers pulled back the curtain of Herald’s Point, revealing a string of murders and unrest: waves of police brutality, unlawful deaths, cops using lethal force against everyday bystanders. The stories made the national headlines. People were slain, then swept under a rug as if their lives didn’t mean squat. Some of the people who died were inno-cent. Law abiding citizens. Good people who cared about their town. Just there. One minute, minding their own damn business. Then the next, you get the idea. Others were not so innocent. If there hadn’t been a clear-cut divide between the citizens and the cops, then the incidents in the Point were one of the many straws that continued time and time again to break the camel’s back. Nonetheless, cops were under heavy scrutiny by the media, by journalists, by whistleblowers and finger-waggers and social media organizations. The Point remained in the spotlight for a few months before the lights went out; and when they finally burned out, all that remained of the once eclectic town was a dead bulb that needed to be changed.

Nobody came around to change the bulb.

Nobody was really interested in buying a new bulb.

If the Point was a baseball player at bat, it struck out a long time ago. And the town stayed there at the plate. The game was already over. The stadium already cleared out. Yet, it was like the town was waiting for the umpire to escort it to the dugout. Somebody. Anybody.

“Take me to the batting cage,” said the town. “Let me work on my swing.”

Nothing.

Eventually, cops stopped patrolling the neighbor-hoods, the streets. They stopped doing anything, really; and the dauntless individuals who once cast a flashlight inside the dark closet of corruption had vanished into thin air. Like ghosts.

That’s when the Point started to run amuck with the homeless, the squatters, the junkies.

That’s when people stopped feeling sorry for the Point.

We ride farther inland in Flip’s hatchback, which, except for being a manual, shares the same amenities as Fred Flintstones’ footmobile—and I thought my Civic was a P.O.S.

Flip rides shotgun while I ride bitch. For about five minutes, he rambles on about this fine-ass “hippie chick” who stood him up the other day. The hippie chick’s name is Sage, although he doesn’t mention her name. She’s more of a hipster. And she didn’t exactly stand Flip up. Instead, she gave Flip an open invitation for him to pursue her further.

Sage attends HPCC—that’s Herald’s Point Community College. Her major is currently UNDECIDED. Most of Sage’s classes suggest that she has a particular interest in art history. Doesn’t have any social media accounts, except for Instagram, which is a private account.

She and Flip were talking about cars on Instagram after Flip posted a selfie of himself standing next to a Porsche 911. Sage made a comment about how she’d like to cruise the Strip with Flip and then she followed the text with a series of emoticons, which I’m not going to list.

And that was it.

II

The houses on either side of the street are shrinking smaller and smaller. I can’t help but notice more junk scattered on the front lawns, from the cheap play sets to cheaper and broken play sets to even cheaper and rustier play sets that look as if you’d need a tetanus shot before playing on them; and the way Dale Earnhardt here is driving, I start to question why the hell I got in this prehistoric box on wheels with these four lowlifes to begin with. The driver, Wilt, doesn’t talk much either. When-ever he does speak, he speaks in similes. For instance, it’s “cold as shit” in here or that girl is “ugly as shit.” I put the name inside the filing cabinet upstairs for future use. I’ve noticed that he doesn’t have any social media accounts, either—at least none under the name Wilt. He doesn’t act like the social-networking type, Queen of Hashtags like Flip here, although he has appeared in the background of the various pics that Flip has posted on Instagram. Like an extra in a movie scene, miming something or mouthing words.

Wilt: the name could be significant.

Right now, it means shit.

As Wilt takes another turn—this time more care-fully—Flip tells me he’d be driving right now but pigs took his license after his third DWI—pigs, Flip means, as in cops, and I take offense to the comment, as the son of a former cop. I swallow my frustration in front of Flip and it goes down like a charcoal. I know Flip doesn’t know any better. Somehow, I get the feeling that being locked up is the least of Flip’s worries.

A couple of blocks before we arrive at the dealer’s crib I can feel my stomach starting to eat itself.

I try to concentrate on something else like the grains of sand between my toes, anything other than eating frogs or puking all over the bald one’s lap to the right of me—I’m not talking about a shaved head but bald, like Cue, as in head-like-a-bowling-ball bald—Chemo. I know. I don’t care much for the name either. I wonder if the kid’s really sick—and if he is, it’s not funny—or if he’s just scalping his head because it’s the bad thing to do—bad, as in sick, as in you know what I mean—and if he is, I want to laugh in his face. I’ve noticed, like Wilt, he doesn’t have any social media accounts. He’s a vlogger who runs a video blog on “Conspiracy Theories & Phenomenons,” which could make for an interesting conversation. He has over three thousand subscribers; however, he doesn’t call them his “followers;” instead, he calls them his “disciples.” But whatever.

I glance at Chemo without being overly suspicious and do a double take on the tattoo of a barcode on the side of his waxy scalp.

He glances at me.

I look to my left where a sickly kid sits with one of his legs bobbing up and down. I never catch his name, but it starts with an S, I think. He’s nobody, a “What’s-His-Name”.

Flip opens the passenger seat and lets out all three of us, including What’s-His-Name.

I stretch my legs in a discreet manner as I search for exits.

I do this only as a precaution whenever I find myself in the presence of aliens. Just in case anything goes down. Basically, whenever the shit hits the fan, I have an escape plan. There’s a front door, which looks as if it’s being held down by a screw and even that screw looks a little sketchy. I can’t figure out whether the owner of this dump—they call the guy the “Apple Ripper”—lives here or, like most homeless in the Point, just squats here. I’m more interested in the name, though.

“Apple Ripper?” I reply.

“Yeah, man,” Chemo says over my shoulder, “he’s an ‘eco-friendly’ muthafucka.”

“Dude gots the ‘best drugs in town.’ For real.” Flip steps aside. “Anything you want. The Ripper Man gots it, except for the stuff you’re looking for.”

I can’t help but think of what the waitress said at the Cove—the cue cards, the ad.

Flip shuts the door behind me, but the door doesn’t close at first. He lifts upward on the door handle, aligns the door in its proper place, and rams his shoulder into the door. It closes.

Then, Flip and I share a strange glance before he slaps me on the shoulder and says, “After you, Philly.”

I keep my guard up. Just in case.

III

I end up forking out forty bones for the drugs—bones, as in dollars. The Ripper man turns out being a squatter, as I suspected, the “eco-friendly” type. The man looks as if he hasn’t showered or shaved in a three months. The house is equally as filthy, as if it had had somehow grown this man from the dampness of the air, like a weed or mushroom and some kind of fungus attached to the house. His hair is frizzy, too, and balled behind his head in a bun, and he has the arms of a golden retriever. Both of his eyes are pinkish in color, as if he’s been battling a mean cold or some other sickness. And his breath smells like week-old kale.
Within the first few minutes talking to Apple Rip-per—most of the conversation based around the evil forces behind the government, how they’re eavesdrop-ping on us through our smartphones, tracking us like tagged animals, cataloging every click we make through our computers and whatnot and Chemo imposing his old ideas onto everybody else in the room (him and Chemo make quite the pair with their over-the-top paranoia)—I understand why they call him “Apple Ripper” from the homemade bowl, which is made from a black spotted Fuji apple. The center of the apple is hollowed-out; the stem has been replaced with a circular screen; a resinous pipe protrudes from the side of the apple. A couple of bright green buds with orange pubic-like hairs sit on top of the screen.

Apple Ripper asks Flip if he wants to take a hit from the apple.

I follow Flip’s eyes to the flaming red sore along the side of Apple Ripper’s mouth. The sore is so massive that it looks as if it has its own sore, like a sore of sores, a colony of sores.

Flip declines by saying “I’m still ripped from a minute ago.” Which makes me wonder about Flip and if he’s as real as he claims to be.

Apple Ripper asks me if I want a hit and despite that creature-thing on his lip, I willingly take one for the team. I expect Apple Ripper to be bothered by the fact that Flip won’t smoke his drugs. I know Apple Ripper’s trying to be a good host. I know Flip’s thinking the same thing I’m thinking: What the fuck is that thing on his lip?

Apple Ripper ends up selling me a half-ounce of swag, which looks like topsoil and smells like a Mexican’s asshole. He opens a rusty lockbox, holding a handful of bundles underneath mollies scattered along the bottom like old crumbs. He throws in a handful of mollies as well—ten of them, two for each one of us.

“On the house,” he tells us.

He thinks I’m a new addition to the crew. I keep my mouth shut and go along with whatever Flip tells him by mostly nodding, then repeating.

“He’s new in town,” Flip says.

“Yeah,” I repeat. “I’m new in town.”

“He’s from Pittsburg.”

I bite my lip and correct Flip, “Philly.”

“Same thing,” he says, waving his hand.

I glance at the mollies in Flip’s hand, and they’re a beigish-brown color—closer to the brown side. I don’t sweat it because they’re on the house. And I don’t have much of an appetite for mollies.

(I once read an article in Drug Culture that the whiter the mollies are, the purer they are)

I’ve seen mollies back East—not Philly—and they were about as white as aspirin pills. The brownish color can either suggests the mollies are old, which, more than likely they are (how old, is beyond my scope of knowledge—a month? a year?), or they’re from a bad batch (black market pharmaceuticals from Tijuana? Knock-off pharma? Who knows?).

Either way, I can’t help but wonder how many dirty hands have handled these mollies before they wound up in the hands of some stoner-squatter who smokes his stash with an apple. A spoiled pimple popper from the burbs? A lazy freeloader from the projects? Or, even worse, a shady doctor getting kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies?

Anybody can make drugs if they acquire the right ingredients and, of course, have the quality time to make it. Right or not. You never see a junkie asking for a refund. The point: Without a maker, there’s no supplier.

Without a seller, there’s no buyer.

Except for a few mason jars containing a strange, murky liquid scattered around the kitchen, I don’t see any laboratories in this rat’s nest; and Apple Ripper sure looks more like Mad Hatter than Mad Scientist.

It’s not Lois Lane, Flip says as he nods at the mollies, but “it’s better than nothing.”

Out of generosity, I break off two-blunts-worth—close to an eighth—and hand it to Flip.

He never says thanks. He just gives me a nod, which I guess is his way of saying thanks. I don’t expect anything more from Flip. I remind myself it’s just a finder’s fee.

IV

We leave Apple Ripper’s nest with a bag of weed and these so-called mollies and cruise down Main Street. I ride window seat while Chemo now rides bitch. Not even an hour spent with these lowlifes and I’m already moving my way up from bitch to window. Burnouts can be your best friend when you’re holding. I remind my-self that I’m not one of them, even though I’m riding with them.

Flip and I decide to match each other’s share. Sort of. I put in more, but I don’t make a big deal about the matter. We pass the communal weed to Chemo, who grabs a Bone Thugs and Harmony CD from the floor mat, dusts off dry stems and seeds left behind from a previous roll, and pulls out a new box of Garcia Vega’s from his oversized pocket.

As Chemo gets to work on the blunt, I check out the hot girls in bikinis strut their finely shaped tanned bodies they’ve been working hard on all summer—maybe some of them working too hard. Borderline anemic. Vampiric almost. Ribcages showing. I believe Chemo’s been working on his rolling skills all summer as well. He puts the final touches by running a long line of saliva along one end, then twisting the end into a sharp point. He acknowledges my disgust and says to me, “It’s all good, Philly.”

He takes his lighter and waves the flame underneath the saliva-drenched blunt without burning it, which makes the blunt crisper and easier to smoke.

Chemo does the honors and lights up the blunt.

Since I’m the one supplying most of the weed, Chemo flips around the blunt, sticks the lit end into his mouth, and gives me a shotgun. The smoke shoots out from the other end like a fissure in a scolding steam pipe. I manage to suck in most of the thick smoke, while the rest oozes past my cheeks like strands of white air. I swear I nearly lose a lung from the massive hit.

By the time I get done coughing, the saliva in my mouth is like water and my tongue acts like a dam. I crack open the door and spit as Wilt approaches a stop-light.

“You a’ight there, Philly?” Flip says amusingly as the others laugh at me.

“Yeah,” I say and sit back in the seat. “Good—”

Once the cough settles and the fire in my chest eases into a steady and yet tolerable burn, the knot in my stomach loosens and the pain goes away.

Chemo takes a couple of more drags, then passes the blunt to Wilt, who takes a hit, then passes it to me.

I take a couple of hits, blow the smoke from the crack in the window, then keep the cipher going by passing it to What’s-His-Name sitting next to me.

V

We smoke the blunt down to a roach, then Flip suggests that we hit up Main Pier. He says it was crawling with broads earlier—and cops on top of that, but I keep the “cop part” to myself. He also claims to have some serious cottonmouth as well, and he says he can use a drink. I can really use one myself, something cold and refreshing, but I don’t bring it up. Instead, I tell them I have to get going and that I got things to do. I make sure to leave Flip an open invitation without the emoticons or what-ever by making a hint that I don’t have any plans tonight. Flip gets thinking and I know exactly what he’s thinking.

Once an addict.

Always an addict.

As Wilt drops me off at the popular donut shop, I place the stash back into my bookbag and just as I’m about to zip it up, I hear a voice over my shoulder, “Nice piece…”

The pain in my stomach comes back like a bull. I look down, hoping Chemo isn’t talking about my revolver. But he is. Shit. I notice the red handle protruding from the side pocket. I look back at Chemo, his eyes still attached to the revolver as if he’s never seen a gun before—not in real life, that is.

I say the only word that comes to mind: Thanks.

Then, Chemo begs, “Lemme see it.”

“Maybe some other time,” I tell him.

I know there won’t be another time.

Some other time is my polite way of saying: “No. You cannot see my gun, you piece of shit.”

“Come on, man,” he replies in a state of betrayal, as if we’re now good buddies and I’ve let him down. We shared a shotgun, which isn’t considered a blood pact from where I come from.

He looks at me, not saying a word.

“Sure why not,” I say under my breath. Then, I make myself clear: “Don’t do anything dumb like shoot your-self in the face.”

“Chill, Philly,” Chemo says excitedly. “It’s not like I haven’t handled a gun before.”

Liar.

I grab the revolver, turn it upside down—the barrel now facing the floor—then hand it to Chemo.

Then, I go over the specs with Chemo and the others in the car. Not for bragging rights. I make them respect the weapon because the weapon sure as hell doesn’t respect them—that was what Thomas told me when he caught me in the act of stealing the revolver: Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum; Model 629; a “four incher” with stainless; N-Frame; double-action; six round cylinder; open sights; adjustable rear; and last but not least, made in the America.

He fondles it, then aims it.

“That’s dope, man,” he says.

Flip hollers out from the front, “You mind?”

“Sure, man,” I say. “Whatever.”

Chemo refuses and continues to fondle the revolver, as if it has a soul.

Then, Flip snatches the revolver from Chemo’s hand.

“What the fuck, Flip?” Chemo yells out, his face slack and all. “You could’ve blown my fucking head off!”

I wonder if Chemo has even held a revolver before, knowing that the chamber is empty—even if he has seen a revolver before, I’m surprised he never checked the chamber.

“Relax, fool,” Flip says, grips the revolver, and aims it gangster-style in the air. To this day, I still don’t under-stand why people hold it like that. Flip, however, is no gangster. A clubber, maybe. But not a gangster. Not even a shade of one.

From the way Flip studies the revolver, Flip is some-what experienced with the weapon—despite the way he holds it like all the wannabes do in the movies. He opens the empty chamber, then closes it. He inspects the barrel next, then tests the weight.

“Not bad,” he says, bobbing his head.

Flip rotates around and hands me the revolver, handle-first.

“What’s up with the tape?” he asks, nodding at the red tape wrapped around the handle.

I closely watch his eyes trace the large crack running down the side of the wooden handle.

“Better grip,” I tell him.

I place the revolver back inside my bookbag.

Flip nods again. “So, what you planning on doing with it?”

I shrug.

“Nothing,” I tell him. “It’s just for protection.”

Wilt asks from the driver’s seat, “Protection from what?”

“Yeah, man!” Chemo says abruptly. “This is Topside. Not Sedgeville . . . although, Old Town might give Sedgeville a run for its money!”

A couple croaks of laughter bounce around the car.

“Old Town?” I say, as if I don’t know the place.

Remember, I’m the idiot.

The out-of-towner.

Meet Philly.

“Richport, man,” Chemo says. “The err-Port.”

I act as if I don’t know what he’s talking about.

“About ten minutes inland,” Chemo tells me. “South of New Town. Don’t let the name fool you. It ain’t a port.”

“Yeah,” Wilt says. “It ain’t rich either…”

The inside of the car starts to sound like a swamp and before I get nauseous, I concentrate on the sand between my toes and how good it feels.

Flip lets me out, which helps loosen the knot in my stomach.

Before I walk away, Flip pulls me aside while the others remain inside the car and tells me about a club called the Palace. I act as if I know nothing about the Palace. Then, he says that his “boy” will be there—his boy, as in Cue, his hookup. I have no interest in this person, but I play along.

I tell Flip that I’m down to hang out later.

He asks me if I know where the “Dunes” are located.

I shake my head and tell him, “Nah.”

He runs his hand along his chin and puckers one side of his mouth like Elvis and asks me if I know where Grier’s is located.

Again, I shake my head and tell him, “Nah.”

Remember?

I’m the idiot.

The out-of-towner.

Philly.

Then, Flip tells me to meet him at the same Chevron that we passed earlier—the one right before the Taco Bar—at nine.

Not sure why he doesn’t include the other frogs in the conversation. Except for Wilt, I haven’t seen the others in any of Flip’s pics from Crystal Palace, which makes me wonder if he’s ashamed to hang around them. I would.

Flip goes on to say, “And there’ll be harder stuff there, too. Lois Lane,” Flip tells me with a glint in his eyes.

I don’t know what Flip’s up to, but I know it’s some-thing.

Chasing the Sun

I’M still pretty ripped when I part ways with my so-called “new pal.” I’m high but not too high. I’m relaxed but not too relaxed. I’m just right.

I park myself on the side of a local clothing store along the Topside Boardwalk, still high and all. I pull out Chemo’s wallet from my bookbag and sift through the contents of the wallet as if the wallet’s some kind of a treasure chest. I come across two Trojan condoms well beyond the expiration date—in fact, three years old—a rusty Pepsi bottle cap, which appears about as old as my parents. I passed a pawnshop a couple of stores down. It could be worth a couple of bones? On the other hand, an item like this could have more of sentimental value to it.

I decide to keep the bottle cap for the time being by placing it inside the small pocket inside my pocket, the pocket’s pocket.

Then, I search through each sleeve of the wallet. I can’t find any credit cards, which isn’t a surprise. Chemo doesn’t strike me as a kid who has credit nor an address. The only cards I find are coupons: one being a FREE SUB at Sub Shop and the other a coupon for HALF-OFF ANY PAIR OF SUNGLASSES at Sweet Tee’s.

I glance over my shoulder and read the name of the store behind me.

Sweet Tee’s.

Hey, what do you know?

I dig some more and come across twelve dollars.

I pocket the cash and coupons; then, as I’m ready to toss the wallet in the trash, I find a pack of matches. I pull out the matches from the side pocket of my bookbag and compare the two. I wonder if the matches were put here deliberately. For my eyes only. A higher power at work. Another sign. I don’t know. I’ve never really been the type of person who believes in coincidences. I believe people have an uncanny way of looking for certain things even when they’re not really looking for certain things, if you know what I mean. I’m talking about looking on like a subconscious level. I guess, in order to achieve that, you must have an open mind about every-thing—open, as in free from fear or judgment. Maybe it’s just the weed talking. Whatever it is, it means some-thing. I guess.
Except for a couple of matches missing inside, the pack is the exact same as Chemo’s: pink pack with a stencil of a Bettie Page-wannabe gal blowing a kiss through voluptuous vermilion red lips. The name of the club reads: LEATHER N’ LACE. I lose myself in the image; then, next thing I know, I look around and I’m no longer standing outside Sweet Tee’s…

I’m on the edge of Main Pier and Anthony’s face appears in front of me like a bad memory. Again, the horror drawn all over Anthony’s face like the twisted scribble from a disturbed child’s imagination, both of his fearful eyes shaking in their sockets as he presses his right hand against the laceration in his neck, the blood bub-bling from the corners of his clenched teeth, the word bob escapes his mouth in a bubble of blood, then the bubble suddenly pops and the tiny droplets of bright red blood splash over his chin and I can’t help but think about Jimmy and how he went out, his face, the horror, his face, the horror.
Hours before Anthony’s neck found itself at end of my needle, he was like a rock star doing whatever rock stars do backstage. I guess Anthony was more of a burnt out than fade away type of rock star. He was taking one shot after another of Patrón in front of naked single mothers shaking their flabby tits and spreading their cellulite-ridden legs for him; and if it wasn’t the booze, then it was doing pencil-thin lines of blow off the strippers’ cleavages, then motorboats and slapping himself silly until his gums were as numb as the relics of war; then more shots, this time sucking them up from the strippers’ bellybuttons; then dancing like an idiot; then ob-noxiously singing songs by the band, Foreigner; then more dancing; then more celebration. If I didn’t know any better, Anthony looked like an individual who didn’t carry a single shred of remorse in his body.

But I remind myself that Anthony was no man. I’m sure at least one person will miss Anthony. He lived in a two-bedroom condo with his mother, Clementine Whitaker, off La Guardia Drive. After Anthony’s father passed away from old timer’s, she changed her name back to her birth name, Clementine Oleander Whitaker. Those who know her best called her Ollie. However, her son, Anthony, kept his father’s name, Foster. Now, they’ll have an eternity to catch up on all of the times his father smacked his mother around in front of him, all of the times he failed to show up to the important events in Anthony’s life, like school plays, recitals, his first soccer game, birthdays, even marriage. Anthony followed in his footsteps and filed for a divorce six months ago from his wife whom he had been married to for seven years. Call it the Seven Year Itch. Call it whatever you want. An-thony was a gambling man who had debt up to his eye-balls. He was a loser. A thug. A disgrace to the human race. Not only that, he was a major accomplice to at-tempted murder. Except for the other members of the Circle, he didn’t have many friends. Clementine may be one of the few who’s going to miss Anthony, her sweet Tony, the innocent one who’d never do any harm, although I sincerely doubt it. He was lower than a prawn. He made prawns look like stouthearted hunters reigning on the top of the food chain. Mighty warriors.

Anthony Foster was food for prawns.

I pocket the matches and toss the wallet in the trash and as I try to rid Anthony from my thoughts, my high starts to wear off a little.

I block out Anthony and proceed down the board-walk.

As I get about halfway down, I pass a majestic band of circus freaks entertaining pedestrians. I decide to stop and watch, as I’ve grown accustomed to doing.
The group is different from last time. A man covered in tattoos and piercings sticks an actual sword down his throat, then balances the sword inside his body without touching the sword. He removes the sword from his mouth, and I’m left in a state of awe. The blade remains the same way it did before he stuck it down his throat. Th guy even shows off the sword to the crowd. Even lets some booger-flicker touch the edge of the blade with his boogery finger.

Next to the sword-swallower stands a short Indian man with arms crossed in a glass display case. His face and body is completely covered in hair. The only skin showing—from what I can see—comes from the back of his eyelids.

The sign in front of the case reads, “Wolfman,” but he looks more like Chewbacca.

I hang around the freaks and watch them perform their acts for the crowd—or “tricks,” if that’s what you want to call them. I don’t realize that the crowd has dis-sipated substantially until I glance over my shoulder and find myself alone with the freaks. I end up talking to one of them during the intermission. He goes by the name, Nile, like the river, but his stage name is the Human Snake—says a movie-like poster next to him: “The Human Snake: He ssslithers, ssstrikes, and bitesssss! Ssssee for yourself at the Townss Sssquare!”

Most of his body has been augmented. He has scales covering his entire body, from head to toe, and he’s wearing these yellow reptilian-like contacts. Turns out Nile’s actually a charming fellow, despite his outward appearance or the stage name or poster or the fact that he’s literally a walking, talking snake—I wonder if the owner of the freak show, an eccentric man with sallow skin worn tight over his face and a curly black mustache that looks as if it could be found at a local flee market, is looking for a new addition to his show. I don’t know any tricks, but I’m always open to learn.

I ask Nile what brought him to Topside. He lets out a resonant laugh and points to the freaks behind him. They laugh as well. From the synchronization of their laughs, I can tell they’re a tight-knit group.

Nile asks me where I’m from.

I tell him, “Just visiting from Philadelphia.”

“Get outta here!” Nile says.

He has a British accent—I think—or it may be Jamaican. It’s somewhere in the mix, elegant yet friendly. I guess you can tell a lot about people from their accents, how they talk, what words or gestures they use when they talk, where they’ve traveled, the people they’ve met along the way.

I feel a strange comfort in Nile’s voice. I can’t help but wonder what he thinks of my voice. It’s not the least bit Southern, but it certainly isn’t Northern (most of the posers I knew who were originally from the Carolinas didn’t even have Southern accents, mainly because most of the other kids like me, either from the West or North, tend to rub off on the drawl and refine their dialogue).

We talk more about Philly. Nile tells me his fiancée is from a borough outside Philly called Rockledge, but I’ve never heard of the place. But, of course, I act as if I do and nod my head a lot and say with maybe too much exaggeration, “Yeah! Rockledge! I know a couple of dudes from Rockledge!” Nile tells me his fiancée ended up leaving him and taking all of his money, and I muzzle my laugh.

I keep calm and talk to Nile for a little bit longer until another group of tourists pass by. I’m aware that he’s considered to be on the clock, but the guy in charge of the show is laid back and looks as if he doesn’t mind the freaks interacting with the public; in fact, I think he encourages it.

I say goodbye to Nile and follow the growl of an angry stomach.

II

I make my way farther down the boardwalk in search of something to eat.

I pass a strung-out musician playing an acoustic guitar and crooning about peace and love or something like that in front of a trendy record shop called Outfits.
When he’s not paying attention, I reach into his open guitar case and grab a wad of crumpled ones. He looks as if he’s jonesing for a fix, but I’m starved and I have to eat. Otherwise, I’ll get a headache, and if I stand around here much longer listening to this clown, then there’s no doubt about it that I’m going to get a headache.

Before he discovers the case devoid of loose pocket change, I’m already scoping out the menu at a concession stand called the Amazing Pretzel. It’s not the Golden Corral. They have hot dogs, corn dogs, popcorn, and, of course, pretzels. Very simple; however, the pretzels are far from simple. They have these specialty pretzels: plain, salted or unsalted, savory or sweet, cinnamon, mild or spicy—basically, a flavor for every country in the world. They even have an Indian-themed pretzel with a chutney dipping sauce.

There’s a sign out front: “Best pretzels in the world!”

I order the cinnamon pretzel, pay the cashier, thank her, and then leave.

I’m back on the boardwalk, minding my business and eating my pretzel when all of a sudden I hear the ding of cowbell next to me and before I can make sense of the noise, all of the blood charges through my veins and my body feel almost electric. I’m lying on the ground, half of my uneaten pretzel on the ground, as well. I look up, only to see that same girl who I passed in the Galatia the other day. She catches the gasp in the palm of her hand as she kneels downward. I notice some of her stuff has fallen onto the ground, as well. One item grabs my attention: an open sketchpad with some strange penciled drawing of a winged creature of some kind. She immediately closes her sketchpad the moment I lay my eyes on it. Then, she stuffs it back into her satchel. We finally share eye contact, both of our eyes locked in a sort of trance-state. Her face is put together like a poorly, dis-proportionate painting of a portrait. She’s multiracial too, as in black, but she’s not really black. Her hair is rather short enough to question her sexuality, and she dresses as if she’s into Phish or some jam band like that; yet, underneath the many layers of raggedy clothing, the girl takes good care of her body. If I had to guess, she looks a few years older than me, too young to be a tween, too old to be on the wrong side of twenty. I’d probably say twenty-one, if I had to put a number on it; but the girls today look much older than their age.

(I read somewhere that the hormones they put in milk or other dairy products make certain features on a girl’s body look a lot “bigger”)

The sudden bump somewhat ruined the rest of my buzz, but I still have a somewhat decent high and I don’t want to come off as another burnout from the Point.

“I’m really sorry,” she says after the shock has worn off. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I say and she helps me to my feet.

“You came out of nowhere,” she says as she dusts off some of the boardwalk grime from my shoulders. She points at the pretzel on the ground. “Sorry ‘bout the pretzel…”

I pick up the pretzel and dust it off.

“No worries,” I say. “It happens.”

“Lemme guess…” she says flatly, “…Amazing Pretzel?”

I turn to the stand not too far away.

“Yeah,” I say and then hold up my smashed, disfigured pretzel. “That’s right. Not so amazing anymore.”

The comment draws a laugh from her, and when she cracks open up her mouth to laugh, her teeth are white and vibrant like a TV commercial.

“I’m really sorry, sir,” she says again. “Lemme buy you another one.”

She called me a sir.

Ha!

“No,” I tell her. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. Really.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Really.”

I try to think of something else to say. I have nothing, nada.

Then, she breaks the awkward silence, “Maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all. You know, I read somewhere that hydrogenated oil can be bad for you,” she says. “I read that it causes Alzheimer’s…” she trails off, “…or something like that…”

“You read?”

She shrugs, as if it’s her natural response.

“Sometimes.”

“I read too,” I say. “Well, I used to…Periodicals,” I emphasize. “You know, magazines.”

She tightens her lips together. She turns away in thought, as if she’s thinking about responding but can’t find the right words to continue a conversation.

“You like to draw, huh?” I say and point at her satchel.

“Now, where would you get that idea?” she replies with what sounds dangerously close to sarcasm, but I don’t know the girl well enough to know what a sarcastic response would sound like coming from her.

One side of me is tempted to ask her more questions about herself, including the drawings in her sketchpad as well as that used whatever store where she works. Other side is tempted to walk away. I don’t have the time or patience for her; however, I get the feeling that she feels the same about me.

“So, what—”

“—I gotta run,” she says before I can even finish my train of thought, “Sorry. Again.”

Three times she’s sorry.

Not once do I get the impression that she means what she says. She walks away while I search the ground be-low me once more, making sure I didn’t drop anything during the collision. I glance down at the limp pretzel in my hand, then toss it in the trash. So much for that. I look up and the black but not really black girl is gone. That’s twice now she’s done that to me.

READ EPISODE TWO