VIII

A Change of Pace

Tony Drury fears the demon most when it says left is right, bad is good, inside out. So he fears the warmth welling inside him in the midst of pain; out of nowhere he wants to stand and be counted. This too could be the light before the dark, an ambush of deceptive hospitality—the day glitters. The Tooth Fairy is here, touching her wand to thin air, and everything is good. Well, not everything, but enough for now. Don’t press it. Pain eases. Anguish ebbs. He knows this feeling can’t last without help.

It comes on casually on a park bench in the shade, like an old friend wandering by, one who doesn’t chatter so much but has a feeling to share. Together they stride up the hill from Benito Juarez. He leans into it, out from under the tall trees and teeming aviary, up from another dream and out for the daily milestone, first beer. He arrives, steps up, sits, drinks and arrives again at life on earth. Simple truth is that stale air and tepid beer don’t make it good to be alive, but things aren’t all that bad either. He sucks a lime wedge for its healthful benefits.

The barman is called Pancho, because he can Oh, Ceesco to Cisco’s Oh, Pancho. Ha ha ha ha … Alejandro Pacheco Guitierez doesn’t care what you call him. He pats the thin yellow hairs left on his head, pasted down since 1960 so the few left won’t get away. He caresses them. He reads the paper with his good eye, catching up on world events, national news, local developments. His dead eye drifts while he pokes a finger up his nose, pulls out some hairs and preens them as well. Tony Drury wants to ask as drinkers will, about the why and wherefore of life. And how can a man grow more hair out his nose than on top of his head? He doesn’t ask because he knows the answer or at least Pancho’s answer: No se. He laughs, imagining Pancho’s head covered with nose hair. Pancho looks up.

Resting the paper on his knees, he holds a nose hole open with two fingers while twirling the clippers round the rim with his other hand. Slow and easy through two passes, he feels for stubble and goes back in for the buff. He pauses to make change for a tourist. He looks around, sees nobody and asks if Tony wants a head-cheese burrito and some cold fries but backs off when Tony goes green instead of giving a smart ass answer. So he shrugs and slumps back into the news and nose hairs, leaving Tony to recuperate. Today is a humdinger, twenty lashes and salt. But from adversity comes strength and sometimes light. Kensho calls it omniscience, a knowing why without asking. Marylin calls it channeling. She would act out. Kensho would counsel stillness and receptivity. It’s all the same; accepting today in a life of days. Kensho prescribes oneness with moments such as this one and the next.

Nobody here talks much of God, except when the bells clang on Sunday morning, and you roll over and think, Oh, God. Yet Tony Drury knows the moment and in it knows God exists, for God invented beer. God blesses us with the miracle of rebirth. God teases with another beer, but Tony knows as well the ins and outs of gluttony and the dues of sin.

So he leaves the bar and slogs back to the hacienda he calls home but doesn’t believe it, especially today, with no lovely hostess, nothing but Kensho sitting on a plank on two bricks in the courtyard with his eyes closed. Each soul finds its way on a day like today, when funk is a thing to work up to. Maybe that’s why it seems unnatural for a man to feel as good as Tony Drury feels. The sirens fade. The flogging softens. Purgatory blurs back to the conceptual. Something is dawning. At least it feels that way. Upstairs the corridor flows with a warm breeze. Slanting sunlight draws him to the shady side, escorts him to the bedroom. He sits on the bed, looks here and there and in a minute is clipping toenails, a tedious task in any mood but productive, a certain use of time, and what a good thing to have done.

He digs under the overhangs, works oogies out the corners, thinking of a new bar for tonight, someplace untried in awhile, since another night at home could be tragic. He feels so good he laughs. That’s scary. Hot, hungover, sweaty, unwanted, clipping toenails and pulling jams on a funky afternoon with the three amigos bearing down: youth, vigor, spirit. He knows it’s only homeostasis, deity of drunks who are born again. It pulls us from the muck with brief symptoms of health.

He piles nails and debris neatly, since Heidi could show up any time, good mood, bad mood, and either will turn worse if she has to ask, What’s this stuff all over the bed? He scoops them up and dumps them in the toilet and takes a leak. A mosquito naps on the curtain, a big one who would sneak under the net and buzz all night in his ear and make him slap himself in the head. He leans over for a two-handed smash, careful not to piss on his foot.

Bam. Easy—he never woke up, the mosquito. Flicking the corpse into the drink he wonders what karma this mosquito is working out, getting smashed, dumped over a pile of toenails and pissed on. Then again, what difference do toenails and piss make if you die quickly in your sleep? Maybe the mosquito is blessed, and Tony Drury is a cog in the blessed machinery. This too he knows as another wave rolls over, a dangerous one for a man in this condition. He thinks: I am in a terrific mood. Maybe he thinks the mosquito died for his sins. Hard to say, but a man can easily imagine his own hard luck reduced to a speck as he watches it spiral down and out.

Dulled pain is a delusion; he only feels good in comparison to the living death suffered all morning, which includes most of the afternoon on the modified schedule. Then again, he definitely feels better. He sits on the bed and waits for better yet, knowing the tables can turn. They usually do. Unnerved, overheating, fearing the law of averages, he opts for free will. For what is destiny without the living willpower of the destined? Maybe this lift is a freebie. Maybe he paid in advance. Maybe nature allows this brief interlude so he can cut the crap and deal with the gift of life. Maybe he can seize an opportunity for once and make something of it. Maybe the snoot man is in, and maybe he can get a few more hours out of this feeling, and maybe then it will last forever. Sure it’s stupid, thinking drugs can change a good feeling or a bad feeling for the better. But Tony Drury does want to be happy for a long time or a short time.

He picks up the phone to dial out, and somebody’s on the line—he beat the ring, which plays into this day of sudden knowing, nature, destiny and good feeling.

Francis Lees is known as Whippet. She doesn’t seem to mind, but she never uses the nickname on herself. “It’s Francis Lees,” she says.

“Who?”

“Francis. Francis Lees.”

“Whippet?”

“I was hoping you would answer. I was hoping you were home. I want to … well, I want to ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

“I hope I’m not bothering you.”

“Not yet.”

“I hope this is a good time. Not a bad time. I hope I didn’t catch you in the middle of something, you know.”

“It’s the best of time. It’s the worst of time.”

“Well. It’s about sex. It’s personal. Most people don’t like talking about it on the telephone, I mean, unless they’re doing it on the telephone. But I don’t mind, if you don’t mind.” She waits for him not to mind. Her voice rises in fibrillation, hinting clitoral massage.

“I don’t mind.”

“Is Heidi there?”

“No. I don’t know where she is. Riding, maybe.”

“That’s okay. I want to talk to you. I need a favor.”

Sexual? Whippet? And me? “Go on.”

“Well it’s hard to explain. But it’s not. I think … I think I’ve reached an impasse. I think we’re about the same age, and I have a feeling about you. It’s not necessarily a good feeling. But it’s not a bad feeling, either. That’s the important thing. I think you understand things. I know you find me sexually attractive.”

Same age? Sexually attractive? She tested his compassion. She’s at least older than he is, and she isn’t called Whippet for nothing. Famous for her size, miniature, her pale grays and uncertain flesh tones fit her mousy stature like the gift of camouflage in nature. Her clothing matches. Tony told her once that she looked good, like she’d gained some weight in the neck area and on the elbows. She smiled and said thank you. She looks like a recovering anorexic with regular relapse; whatever feminine curvature she reclaims is soon lost. She blankets herself in sweaters, jackets and jodhpurs in all seasons. Bony haunches suspend a ghostly ass in some seasons. In good times her ribs flesh out with marginal swelling on her chest. Her neck can lose its creases, and by lightening the tint of her rodent hairdo, she looks nearly healthy.

“I’m looking better than ever,” she says. She pauses to catch her breath, and so he can imagine her looks.

“You sound better,” he says.

“I’ve been on a high-calorie diet and a work-out program. I gained twelve pounds.”

“Twelve pounds! Boy. Where did you gain it?”

“Oh, you,” she laughs. “Listen. I could really like you. I think I could fall in love with you.”

Wha?

“I don’t want to come between you and Heidi.” Sure thing. “I honestly do not want a romance right now. That’s why I wanted to talk on the telephone. You know how it is in person, seeing each other’s eyes, touching and everything. I don’t want that.” She pauses again. He senses her difficulty, straining past second digits.

“What do you want, Whippet?”

“This is embarrassing. But I want to know if you’d like to have sex with me. I mean now. Before dark. I know it’s sudden. I want it to be our secret. Men can handle that easier than women can. You know, sex right now, just stick it in there. And I know you can handle it. I shouldn’t like you, but I do. I think you’re the only man in town who could handle something like this on my terms, you know, with discretion. I think you’re the only man I could handle. I mean, bear. I mean, you know.”

Maybe he’s supposed to say sure, come on over, I’ll do you up. Or maybe she’s braced for rejection, what she knows about men. Maybe he can be honest without being cruel. But how can a man who’s always horny gently reject a woman so homely, if she knows? Stuck between tact and compassion, he wants to help her through her trouble without adding to his own. And it is trouble, small trouble perhaps, but no smaller than the acorn Lao Tzu attributed to the mightiest oaks and greatest troubles. He feels trouble surely as knowing the oak grows mightily and the mosquito got flushed. “What time is it?”

“I haven’t had sex with a man in five years. I’ve been married twice and have a daughter fourteen who lives with her father in Philadelphia. I had this thing in high school with men, well, boys. I didn’t like them, but I wanted them to like me. I hated it when they touched me. They all tried. But I found out that if I put my hand in their pants and you know, released them, they could relax and be nice. For a little while anyway. That was a long time ago, and they all told their friends, and I had all these thirty-minute dates, and it was silly, and I never let a man touch me until my first husband did. But that’s … I don’t know. He was the worst of all. He’s not the father of my daughter, thank God.”

He needs a drink, a short one.

“She calls last night and wants to know, ‘Mommy, can I get pregnant giving blow jobs?’ Can you imagine? It just makes me think I need to see something. I mean, my daughter needs me. She looks to me for advice and experience, and frankly, well, I don’t have it. Well, I do, but I need to … you know, see. And, frankly, Señor, I think you’re the man I need to see it with. I need this, Tony.” Faint praise ripples her troubled pond. Whippet is confused and wants to share, yet her plea is much sweeter than Heidi’s bid for romance: Boy, your dick is bigger than I thought it ’d be.

“You hardly know me.”

“A woman can tell.”

So can a man. Tony Drury knows what a woman can tell, with the rules, standards, sanctions, crimes and punishments. He knows woman politics, woman agenda—Whippet hates football, pussy jokes and men. What else is left, once you censor the male of the species who just wants to have fun? She wants him all right—balls on a platter. “I’m not sure I understand,” he says.

“It’s simple. I need a man, now, you, for sexual relations, with respect.”

How many women can he call with the same lovely request? It’s not fair. “Whippet I … I’m flattered. But I … I don’t …”

“You knew all along.”

“Jesus. It’s a bad day.”

“Are you contagious? I will expect you to wear a condom. It’s your responsibility to bring one. I will suck your penis, so I will not floss before you arrive, and you may not come in my mouth.”

That’s it; loony as a burro on locoweed. “I don’t know.”

“You know. You’ve known all along.”

“Whippet, the complications.”

“I know. If we fall in love, complications go away.”

“Love conquers all?” He laughs, but he stops, because you shouldn’t tease a loony. They grant you face value, and this unstable woman grants greater value than anyone has done in awhile.

“I believe it does,” she says. “Don’t you?”

“It’s a bad day. I got, you know, distiller’s flu.”

“Don’t worry about that.” She purrs, “You come over and get naked. I’ll fix your flu.”

“Whippet. I got to think this over. I can’t just jump right in, not like that. I’m not that kind of man.”

“Ha!” She knows about Tony Drury but likes him anyway, the need is so great, the fit so good, and she’s talking carte blanche on a blow job. She hones in. “You should see my breasts now. You really should.”

“I would like to see your breasts, Whippet. Frankly, I’d like to feel your breasts, perhaps touch nipples with you. I promise to think of that and you and call you as soon I can. I have to balance this out in my mind.”

“In your mind? Do you think jacking off all those guys didn’t teach me how? Do you think I don’t know a lip lock from a tooth clench?”

“No, no. Whippet, please. Stay sentimental. I don’t think any of those things.” Nuts. Four-star, bonafide brain-whacked. Here she is dealing tension, resentment and demands, and he only picked up the phone. Maybe he brought it on himself. He wouldn’t mind a look at her breasts. He doubts he’d want to feel them, but he conveys an open mind. “Whippet. I want you to know that you’ve given me quite an erection. You have. You. I would love to have sex with you …”

“Good. I’m coming over there.” She hangs up.

“Whippet!”

No mas …

He dials for drugs, wondering if she really called. Or is this another dream? The phone didn’t ring. Did it? The cat naps on the bed. His mood is still happy as a cartoon lark’s on a cartoon fence in a cartoon meadow under perfect blue skies whistling Zippity Do Da for no reason in the world; and yes, the pharmacist is in. They will meet in twenty minutes at the bar.

He looks both ways out the door and steps into daylight briskly as a businessman with appointments to make, goals to ponder, commitments to keep, deals to finesse, until he stops at the corner on a reflection—lip lock? How long could that take? A minute or two?

He turns back but in two steps turns again like Curly Joe with one foot nailed to the floor; whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop … Forever and ever is the answer.

God exists in special moments so that we can know what to do. We learn this today, and this is a moment of one such, he thinks. “Thank you,” he says. Thank you for this wisdom in the wasteland of my making, the tundra of my choice. His stride widens, walking with God.

Cisco laughs. Tony hasn’t told him but only asked if he thought Whippet filled out lately. “Whippet? What the hell you poke your nose in that bush for?”

“I didn’t. I’m only asking.”

Cisco calls for rum and sodas, testing rum and soda as a potential theme for the evening. “Whippet craves the same as us. She’s been getting it on with Suey for a long time now. That’s why Suey split from Lawrence. Alcoholic my ass. He kicked her out. Said he didn’t mind her gnawing the bone, except when it interfered with the home life, meaning she wore herself out on Whippet, got headaches at squisheroo time. He threw her out.” The drinks come. “Besides, Whippet’s got her eye on Marylin these days on account of Marylin not getting it nowhere and looking so sad. Whippet likes that. She knows who caused it and who can fix it.” They sip, contemplating sadness and its cure. “I’ll tell you what though,” Cisco says. “You get down with Whippet you get the only filly in this town old Chuckeroo didn’t leave tracks on.” He laughs. “She told him he had penis envy and she didn’t. It was pretty good. Not that I mind Chucky, except for him getting first dibs on the snatch. But shit. I suppose … Shit.” At bottoms up they contemplate tolerance and first dibs. Cisco turns and asks, “Suey got to you, didn’t she.”

Tony blinks. “No.” But Cisco knows. Tony says, “Hey …” But you can’t explain to Cisco that you were drunk or it was late or she was sad or it was right there in your lap. Cisco knows that stuff. Tony shrugs.

“It’s cool,” Cisco says. “You don’t have to lie. Not around here. Not with old Ciscoroony. It’s like, you hang out in a place long enough … I fucked Suey. She’s a fine little woman.”

“You?”

“Yup,” Cisco shrugs. “It was late. We were drunk. She was sad.” He calls for another round and pulls Tony by the sleeve down the hall to the stalls beyond the trough. They squeeze into the back stall and lock the door. Cisco dips into his sample bag with his mini-shiv. “You know for years I couldn’t see what good one of these little fuckers could do you.” This with the blade on Tony’s septum. “I’ll tell you Tony, you got to relax with this pussy business. Suey. Heidi. It’s all the same. You get weird about it, man. Old Chuck don’t give a shit. He’d be fresh-fucked and half-tanked by now. But you, carrying on about how somebody thinks somebody looks. You could take a lesson.” Tony knows what Cisco means, that it doesn’t matter who has whom. Cisco chuckles, scoops another for old Tonyroony and three for himself before folding up and walking out. Tony follows a few steps back.

Back at the bar they sit. They wait. They groove and drink and have another line on a plastic menu with another drink and wait for things to pick up.

Heidi arrives hard-ridden looking the better for it, relaxed, forgiving. Tony doesn’t ask if Kung-fu-chicken is still doing his potted-plant number in the courtyard. Instead he says, “Hi, sweetness.”

“Hello, stranger,” she says, stopping to kiss her worthless lodger. They make up that easy, like tension was only a bad idea. Let Cisco get between that. Whippet stands nearby with her riding crop looking hardly ridden but also wet. Her smeared lip gloss twists against the pain and rejection contorting her smile. Whippet? Lip gloss?

Tony sucks Heidi’s lip and says, “Hi, Whippet.”

“Whippet wants to ride,” Heidi says.

“I know,” he says. “I can tell.”

“You filled out,” Cisco says. Whippet pulls her jacket tighter, then lets it fall open. The hurtful smile eases into a smirk: no wrinkles below the neck, no freckles, no sun damage or birth control splotches, only a soft blue mesh on translucent skin.

“How did you do that?” Tony asks.

“Do what?” Heidi asks.

“It’s private,” Whippet says. “Tardiness is rude.”

Heidi smiles, “Everyone’s entitled to some privacy.” She agrees that rum will be good for a change and allows that late is often better than never. Whippet mumbles malediction but goes along with rum. And then there were four, sitting, drinking, no need for small talk. Heidi leans into Cisco. “You guys got blow?”

“Why are you pressing me?” Tony whispers the other way.

“I need this,” Whippet says.

Cisco nods. “Yeah. You want some?”

Heidi will not dignify such an insensitive question, but she laughs. She tells Cisco something or other of needs waiting fulfillment. Cisco nods. Tony cranes, but issues to the east preempt his eavesdrop. “I need things all the time,” he whispers to Whippet. “I can’t make demands on others. Consider my feelings for chrissake.”

“What the hell,” Heidi says. “It’s the weekend.”

“It’s Thursday,” Tony corrects her. “Isn’t it?”

Whippet softens. She looks down. “I’m sorry. You’re right. God, I hate it when these macho fuckers strut around like pole-vaulters.”

“It’s uncouth and insensitive, and you know me.”

“Yes, I do. It’s why I want you.”

“Whippet, please.”

“It’s an experiment.”

“What if you want it regular?”

“I’ll get a boyfriend. Don’t be like the rest of them.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s too early for that.”

Cisco leaves for inventory and Heidi makes three. “Too early for what?”

“Just discovering we’ve been less than nice to each other,” Tony says.

Whippet takes his arm. “Don’t you love him?” she asks and waits with Tony for an answer.

“Sometimes I do. Sometimes he pisses me off.”

“They all do that,” Whippet says, taking off her jacket, billowing her blouse, releasing a few buttons to cool off and show off. Still a string bean, she looks like a healthier string bean. Her chest looks white as snow, cold and untrodden with two baby moguls east and west where snowshoe bunnies stick out their little brown noses and twitch their whiskers. Heidi watches Whippet and then Tony, perhaps catching on. Tony watches Heidi, avoiding Whippet, who also watches Heidi and then Tony. “Feel them,” she says.

“Not here,” Tony says. His gaze at Heidi is a plea: This wasn’t my idea. Back to Whippet he says, “It’s not nice for adults to feel each other up in public.” Heidi waits and watches.

“Be discreet,” Whippet says. “The way I’ve seen you be.” Heidi arches an eyebrow. Tony doesn’t move.

“Go on,” Heidi says. “I’ve never seen you discreet.”

He proceeds but doesn’t want to. He feels Whippet’s chest, tweaks her little nipples. “What night is this?” he asks. Heidi doesn’t smile. Whippet makes noises, high-pitched and unstable. “Excellent breasts,” he says, withdrawing carefully.

She grabs his wrist. “Just a little more,” she says.

“Whippet.” Heidi to the rescue. “Later. We’ll work something out for you later. Okay, now?” Whippet sighs big and breathes hard. Heidi is patient. “Whippet, what?”

Whippet droops. “I don’t know. It’s time, I guess. I like him.”

Heidi slurps the dregs from under the cubes as if seeking insight there. She comes up with, “We all like things, Whippet. We can’t just … step up to the hot buffet. Can we, Tony? Yeah, Pancho! I’ll have another!” Pancho brings three more. They sip into an evening of thoughtful format, drinking more and letting things unfold, reflecting on life and the hot buffet. Tony rubbed Whippet’s nipples while Heidi watched. It will be retold for a long time. It will become memorable in the retelling. It will color the social fabric in town.

“Double dating, hotshot?” No one turns. Suey climbs the stool beside Heidi and orders a drink. So does Cisco, just back. Suey eyes the scene and says, “I’m in.” Cisco won’t have to work this crowd.

A few more rounds go down slowly, because seasoned drinkers take time to find the feeling. The feeling is what sets them apart from the rabble. Anyone can rough it, kill a pint and scratch the itch. But would that be nice? Or mature? Or cultured? No; better to approach the thing like Kensho in a courtyard. Drinking slowly you gain more time for maximum return.

With a snoot jag on deck, tonight can make history or at least separate itself from the nights. Because a night this primed this early with toot to spare is infused with potential. You can feel it in the air, from the warmth in your being to the numb in your nose. The yellow brick road looks mopped and waxed. Good friends playing together on an evening so young has the feel of meaning. When the bathroom gets tedious, Whippet says Heidi’s place would be better. Tony says, “Nah! Just toot it off a menu.” He demonstrates, explaining, “Be cool.” So everyone has a toot off a menu in the unique antic a night like this one can acquire. The evening will be referenced as the one when we tooted off a menu at La Mexa.

But for now the sobering realization is that a lively crowd tooting off a menu is uncool, possibly dangerous. Suey counsels discretion, making discretion a co-theme with rum. So everyone takes another turn in the bathroom, staying cool, avoiding danger, lining up like a bladder-control support-group. Settled at the bar again, all twitched up with nowhere to go, Tony says, “Well. This is it.” Nobody argues. “This is what happens,” he says. None respond. “This is what happened to us. This is what became of us. Any questions?”

“Yeah?” Cisco asks. “What happened to me?” Whippet orders a drink. Cisco says come on, he needs to move, plenty drinks at the liquor store on the way to Heidi’s place, bottles full of drinks. “Fuck this one drink at a time and paying for singles when they all pour from the same bottle.”

“But,” Tony points out, “Heidi hasn’t invited us over for a party.”

“Since when did that bother you?” Suey asks.

“You’re invited,” Heidi says, “but I have to finish my drink.” So it’s new drinks for those gone dry to get through the wait, then drinks for those gone dry while waiting for drink alignment. They sit. They stand, mull, chat and drink. They wait like spores in a bog, enjoying the moisture. Eight o’clock could be twelve or six; the hours melt like cubes in a forgotten drink. Ashtrays fill like hourglasses.

“This is two nights running,” Tony says. “Wait. No, three.”

“What?” Suey asks.

“Ah. Nothing. Fuck it,” he says.

“Yeah,” Cisco says. “This place …” He shakes his head and sums it up, but he doesn’t mean this place in the larger sense. He squirms in immediate confinement. Cisco doesn’t doubt the big picture. He only needs refraining from time to time. He’s seen a few bite the dust. They had to leave. No, he only needs more comfort for tonight.

The toot revives like an old family remedy: add toot, liquor and nicotine to eight hours and let it sit. Skim thoughts from surface. Add more liquor and toot to taste, reefer optional. Stir. Serve with loud voices and hell-raising good cheer. If it doesn’t set well, move it.

The stroll to Heidi’s house in the cool night air under the stars is a setback. Tony stops. “I’m done,” he announces with a sad smile. “I don’t want to be a party pooper, but I don’t want some drinks and smokes and toot. Not tonight. I can’t.” He looks glum and beat. “I’ve had it. I want to lay down.” He looks at Heidi apologetically, like an old dog who can’t keep up.

Cisco steps near and lights a smoke. He’s seen it before. He gives it a minute, so it can pass. Heidi looks down. Whippet stares. Suey runs her chops on a change from rum back to tequila. There, all better. They walk again more slowly. Tony laughs. His companions laugh too, now that his spirits are up.

In no time it’s Heidi’s with ice, rum, wine, beer and some tequila for backup. The party troupe comes in loud, lighting up the hacienda. Kensho flits from one perch to another. They hear him. They know he’s around and find him in a chair in the dining hall with a glass of water in low light. Cisco sings, “Oh, Kenny boy, your Irish eyes are smiling.”

Tony sniffs the liquid. “What? No saltines?”

“It looks like another festive occasion,” Kensho says.

“Fuckinay,” Cisco confirms.

“I like this man,” Whippet says.

“It won’t work,” Suey says. “He drinks water.”

So the evening cranks into yet again, one mo time, another round better than the last. Kensho says he’s heard of cocaine but never tried it. What? He could have announced his betrothal or the priesthood or a terminal disease. Never tried cocaine? He gets advised, re-advised and duly advised on what it can do for you, what it takes. He’s mostly advised that nobody uses cocaine like they used to do, it’s so expensive and taxes the body and ruins tomorrow and makes you talk bullshit. Kensho ponders cost/benefit.

“It’s a pay in advance kind of deal,” Cisco says. “Then you pay as you go. Then you run out and ask for an advance. Then you run out again and look down the barrel at your balloon payment.” Cisco arranges his opening lines with generosity and care.

“How do you know about balloon payments?” Suey asks.

“Used to be a tycoon,” Cisco says, sucking up a woolly worm through a rolled bill. “Trust account. Escrow. Litigation. Default.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Suey says. She takes the bill.

“You still use it?” Kensho asks Tony. Tony blushes, flattered at the recognition for prudence.

“Yes. I know the price and I pay.”

“Why?”

“Like you say, I let go. Sometimes I let go more.”

“I will try it, please, if you don’t mind.” Kensho has his usual audience for his reappraisal of life, his selfless embrace of the secular. Snorting like a seasoned dope fiend he ponders and asks, “Shall I go again?”

“First one’s for free, Kenny,” Cisco says. “Then you pay, too.”

Kensho says yes, he understands. He goes again and smiles again, feeling nothing again, except for a distant voltage. “I only loved meditation after a very long time of forcing it,” he says. “I wanted to move but sat for the clock. Finally it came to me that when I felt the most confined was when the best meditation could begin. I couldn’t release my restlessness until I had restlessness to release.” He stares back at everyone staring at him. “It’s a blessing. See? Restlessness is a place to start from. An abundance to let go of. Does that make sense?”

“Just like the man said,” Cisco says, taking the bill and honking enough drug to make a lesser man nervous.

“What man?” Kensho asks, not yet realizing that words on drugs are not bound to meaning.

“It’s the most he’s ever said at one time,” Heidi says. She deals glasses and pours rum over ice.

“But it doesn’t mean I should generate the restlessness,” Kensho says. “This is confinement to something else.” He sips his rum. “All the monkeys swing at once.” He looks around. “Here I am talking bullshit. I don’t know about this.”

“But it’s fun, ain’t it?” Cisco asks. “Besides, that’s how you always talk.”

Kensho smiles. “Fun?”

“Yeah, fun. You know, yip yip yip motherfucker.”

“What a cowboy,” Suey says.

“I do?” Kensho asks, earning nods all around. Thoughts stack up on his brow and he asks, “Can I try it again?” All howl at Kensho’s witless joke, and the party officially begins. It comes to nothing and takes until daylight to arrive, when the drug can no longer confine weariness. In the meantime, Suey seeks affection from Whippet, or maybe Cisco. Whippet wants Tony, or possibly Kensho. Tony visualizes peace with anonymity, and Heidi is simply restless. Cisco sees it on her and glares like a torn on a chickadee. She stares back in self-defense, Tony thinks.

Then Whippet clearly wants Kensho, and so does Suey; ménage would be acceptable if not for Whippet, who fears confusing the issue. Tony raises a toast to Kensho, who is unlike the rest. Whippet wags her head and doubts she can use a man who needs so much instruction.

Cisco says he’ll, uh, you know.

“You’ll what?” Tony asks.

“Or explanation,” Whippet says.

“You know,” Cisco shrugs. A lull settles for a minute, then gets blown away.

Sometime late, down to bare metal, Tony shows jokers and spades. He announces against the easy grain of inebriate good cheer that he has trouble. Heavy heads loll south for more. He confesses hostility. A mumble rounds the table in a single slur, a shared commiseration over life and hell. Kensho asks why. Tony shrugs, “I could say I don’t know why, but I do. It seems so obvious. I can sit with friends and talk like a normal person, but I’m not normal, not that I want to be normal, but I’m not stable. I’m not in control. I could be cracking up. I am. It’s the repetition. And I suppose it’s something else. It’s making me crazy. I mean … crazy.”

Kensho nods at the big, crazy picture, and he smiles, fitting in with a secular crowd at last. “Every morning I got up at four,” he says. “I sat for one hour, just sat. Then breathing exercise, one hour, then stretching exercise, thirty minutes, then development exercise for ten minutes, then chores for thirty minutes, then self-massage for ten minutes, then two cups of tea, one biscuit, brush teeth, comb hair, bathe, prepare for training …”

“So what? You were in a rut.”

“Not a rut. A … A …” Kensho stares off at a sparrow winging for the horizon.

“Hey.” Cisco brings him back.

He slowly scans the table. “I forgot where I was.”

“You are here,” Cisco says.

“No, I mean, where I was.”

“Oh, you mean about brushing your hair and combing your teeth?”

“Oh. Yeah. I hated that. The more I did it, the more I hated it. Maybe I thought it was a good meditation. Maybe I needed it. Then I needed a change.” Kensho watches the bird circle the kitchen. “I changed. I accepted what I knew for a long time. I hated my life. I couldn’t believe that. But I did hate it. Acceptance felt good. I still hate it, those things I did for too long. I can’t stop some of them. I love them, too, some of them. But they’re poison without change. Change everything. I spent years getting strong. But I got weak. I’m weak now, but stronger.” Kensho is done.

Heidi asks where would be good to try, as if the where can cure the what. “Maybe Vera Cruz,” she says. “It’s big, but it’s funky.”

“Too funky,” Cisco says. “It ain’t groovy. It ain’t what you think.” Suey says she misses the ocean. Cisco says he can’t swim. Kensho asks what’s wrong with this, right here. Heidi says nothing is wrong with this, right here, except for riding conditions. Whippet says she misses the city. Tony says he misses the city too and its chance encounter with something to make your brain tickle instead of ache. But then it can make you ache often as not, the city, like everywhere.

Another silence stretches another minute, and it’s time for more refreshment, into the heart of the night.

Heidi moans, Whippet watches, Kensho ponders, Suey snorts, Tony stews, Cisco gets down to where he lives, holding the bottle bottoms up like a liquid-filled Christmas bulb, lighting the cozy little room with brightly colored bubbles. Soft glows capture the spirit of the season. Then he turns red and has a hard time breathing. He looks both ways like before crossing. His friends wait, amused, expecting him to keel over dead. What an event that would be, a certain part of history. But the crisis passes. He only gasps the humorless laugh, fuckinay. Besides, Cisco dropping dead on overdose would be soon forgotten, it’s so predictable and he’s so unknown.

“So what?” Tony says. “That’s the trouble. Let’s take a poll. Let’s figure out what time we’ll turn in, if we don’t die first. Anybody dies, bets are off. Let’s take a poll. What time will we turn in, what time do we wake up, what time will we have a few drinks?”

“You got a problem,” Suey says.

Kensho says, “We will sit.”

“You sit,” Tony says. “Sit for me. I got a problem. Don’t worry about Suey. She’s got it wired.”

“Yes.” Kensho scoots out and staggers to his plank.

“Sit,” Cisco says, head wobbling. “Sit, Kenny, sit. Now stay. Ha.” Cisco can’t lay down or fall down, but he’s done.

Kensho sits, eyes closed. Tony scoots out but holds on until his legs go straight and the body stacks properly above them. “Still life,” he says. “Fruit with no bowl.”

Suey moves, lining out a little booster so she can begin again and get a load off her chest, because she doesn’t have it wired and resents the innuendo. She has problems too but chooses to spare her friends the major dump when they’re having fun. Tony laughs in scorn. Suey doesn’t care. Her diatribe articulates a matrix of personal complexity; she’s been thinking about shit. Fecal matter, that is, like turds are flowers and this is the Orchid Club. She says she had the toothpaste shits all day and had to squeeze the shit out like toothpaste but she could never get the tube empty, not really empty. Then came a record twenty-three incher that hit the back wall and broke. Nobody can avoid a break unless you maybe pad the seat so you start out higher up. The record is hollow, she feels, since she broke off and laid out another nine-incher easy as pie.

“Was it twenty-three on the nose or like twenty-two and five-eighths?” Cisco asks. “I mean, did you actually get your tape measure wet?”

“I don’t know.” She snoots another snoot as the ring of souls for the wax museum melts around her. “I’m going outside next time.” She says the record should be broken, not the record breaker. She swigs more sauce and laughs to a new head of steam, third wind, way past complexity. She says she doesn’t know why, but she loves a good shit story. “You know how you get weak in the knees after about a four, four-and-a-half pounder? I got on this carrot-juice thing once, turned everything yellow, me, my eyeballs, my shit. I laid out about a six-pounder, talk about altering your consciousness. It felt like surgery or something, everything rearranged. I had to lay down and I’m thinking, ‘Jesus, I was full of shit,’ and I had to take another shit, about a eight-pounder! Jesus. Did I feel strange or what?” Another bolt from the bottle gets her farther out on the shitty limb.

Cisco turns slow as a poker player. “You know how hard it is to imagine you squeezing off a giant turd?”

“That’s why I’m painting you a picture—like today, I got so hot and tired, having my period and all that. I didn’t have to shit but I dump about a three-pounder. That’s some shit, you think about it …”

“Wait.” Cisco sits back, rolls his eyes and says, “Let me think about it.”

“I mean you watch the guy weigh out a pound of top sirloin, that’s a slab. You go three, three and a half pounds, that’s like …” She cups her hands over her stomach. “I think it changed my outlook. I had this dog, used to take a dump next door then run home and jump around and bark, he was so happy. That’s how I felt …”

“You wanted to jump around and bark?” Tony asks.

“Shut up. I’m getting to the good part.”

“How good can it get?”

“I felt so good, I got so relaxed I went in and took a nap and woke up feeling so good, I went in and took another crap, three, four pounds. It really made me wonder. Just how full of shit can you get?” She pours another slug. She’s gone too far, out to where the trouble brews, where problems hide like goblins under the bridge.

“A good shit, a good nap, another good shit. It couldn’t get much better,” Tony says, laying his head down.

She sways and moans. “It’s like … You can’t know when you’re not full of shit anymore. It’s always …” She pushes on with another swill, like she hasn’t reached the point. “Why is it you can change things, but they change back? It gets bad. Why can’t you not do anything and it gets good?” She aims for the back wall.

Tony says, “It gets good after you croak, and you don’t have to do anything. Just gets more perfect all the time.”

She breaks, turns to shit and becomes someone else, then something else. She sobs and trembles. “I can’t … I …” She covers her eyes and weeps. Heidi snores. Whippet moans. Cisco rolls to the floor. Kensho sits. “What I been trying to tell you,” Tony says.

The sun rises.