An angry god had snapped his fingers in my skull, killing half my brain cells and traumatizing the leftovers. I opened my eyes and got lightning flashes across my vision. White fireworks that were regular features of my worst hangovers.
But who was I kidding?
I wasn’t hungover.
I was still wasted.
Last night’s session with Jim had run up my tab at Rick’s Bar like the counter on a gas crisis fuel pump. Jim and I had rounded off the night by doing a couple of lines of K in the fetid cesspit Rick calls a men’s room, and my world had taken on a muffled, comatose, “fill in the blanks” quality. I have no idea how I got back to the tiny rathole I leased by the Long Beach Freeway. It was a dump, but it was my dump, and most of the stains on the threadbare faux-Persian rug were mine, so I didn’t mind coming round face down on the raggedy red floor.
There was thunder to go with the lightning flashes, and it took me a moment to realize the cracking noises weren’t imagined. Someone was banging on the front door, no more than ten feet from my head.
“Open up, sir. Mr. Collard, we know you’re in there.”
I glanced around to see shapes at my window. My eyes wouldn’t focus properly, but the blocks of dark color suggested man-shaped lumps in uniform.
“Open up,” someone else said, rapping on the window.
“Yeah. Okay,” I replied, voice hoarse, throat raw.
Had I thrown up? I belched some bile, which burned when I swallowed. Tequila, rum, vodka, and bourbon had all featured in past me’s smorgasbord of drinks. Booze always convinced me I was invincible, and the more I drank the more invincible I became. I didn’t feel invincible now, though.
Left hand on the 1970s teak coffee table I’d found in a thrift shop, and I pushed myself onto my side. Right hand on the arm of the green corduroy couch someone over in Compton left in front of their house, and I forced myself up from the floor. The room whirled like a spinning top. Thankfully I wouldn’t have to do anything as complicated as get dressed. I was still clothed in my light jeans and a blue checked shirt worn unbuttoned over a black T-shirt, all crumpled and stained. I looked down at my bare feet and wondered where my shoes and socks were.
A mystery for another time, I thought as I staggered to the door.
The heat hit me first. For all the flaws of my rathole, at least the AC worked. Then came the blazing sunlight, which set the fireworks flaring behind my eyes, until they’d had a moment to settle to the new, brighter reality. The sky was blue, so blue that if you’d lain in the gutter and looked up at the cloudless, you’d have thought yourself in paradise. But from where I was standing, the place was purgatory.
Edgebrook Avenue lies in the shadow of the Long Beach Freeway. My home, a single-story, two-bed bungalow, had a tiny backyard that ended in a high wall that ran directly beneath the freeway’s edge. High above, a few yards to the east, thousands of vehicles raced past every hour. Apart from in the morning and evening when tens of thousands rolled by in ten-lane, nose-to-tail, slow-moving rush-hour frustration, the noise from the freeway never stopped, and it was a constant reminder of failure to everyone who lived on Edgebrook. Maybe I’m being hard on my old neighbors, but none of them liked me, so who gives a hot damn? About half kept their homes and yards in order and did their best to fight the pollution and malaise that clouded every waking day. The rest of us didn’t mind much about appearances, and our overgrown yards and derelict homes spoke to our busy-doing-nothing schedules. If pride was a sin, we had some devoutly holy folk living on Edgebrook.
My car, a twenty-year-old lime green Chrysler Sebring convertible with a soft top that didn’t work, was parked in my short driveway. I must have driven home from Rick’s. Not good.
Past me’s crimes weren’t my most pressing worry, though. Instead, I was struggling to figure out why two bored-looking mechanics in gray overalls had started hitching my car to a tow truck.
A sweaty red face filled my vision. The man who’d been knocking on my door. The lawman who was so eager to see me. He wore an LA County sheriff’s uniform and a bulletproof vest and looked sad and tired as he held a piece of paper in front of me.
“Repossession” was the only word I caught as he spoke.
I felt sorry for the guy. Imagine this being your job. Robbing from people too poor to pay, to enrich people too wealthy to care. And dressing it up as law enforcement. He knew what he was, and even in my semi-wasted state, I could see the self-loathing in his eyes. It was like looking in a mirror.
My pity was short-lived, and when my slo-mo mind finally caught up, my thought process became real simple.
Car. Mine. Stop.
I pushed past the sheriff and ran across my bone-dry, weed-infested lawn, fumbling in my pocket for my key.
“Hey, man, don’t,” one of the mechanics said.
He had the same weary look in his eyes as the lawman and turned with outstretched arms like a linebacker trying to block an oncoming rush.
To this day, I don’t know whether it was intentional or the luck of inebriation, but I stumbled and fell forward so my shoulder hit his gut, knocking him on his ass. I almost went with him, but my experience as a seasoned drunk meant I recovered my footing with a hop and skip that took me to the driver’s door.
“Stop!” the sheriff yelled, but freedom called, so I ignored him and yanked it open.
The other mechanic, a junior with a shaved head and a frame that hadn’t been turned soft by hot dogs and beer, tried to stand in front of the car.
“Don’t do it, man,” he said.
I jabbed the key in the ignition, turned, and the engine stuttered and died. The sheriff was almost at the car, so I locked the doors. I was drunk, possibly high, not thinking. Where was I going to go?
The young mechanic banged on the hood, and the sheriff slapped the window.
“Get out!” he yelled.
Spurning reason, addled by booze, with an instinct only to run, I tried the ignition again, and this time the engine coughed into life.
I threw the old Sebring into gear and stomped on the gas. As the car lurched forward, I spun the wheel and the front right tire bounced on the curb, and I raced across my lawn and met the road. My deranged plan had been to speed away, head south along Edgebrook, and lie low at Rick’s until who knew what? I hadn’t thought that far ahead. But my fantasy silver screen escape was to live only in my mind. In the real world, my slow reactions, intoxication, and general lack of competence saw me rip the bumper off my neighbor’s car, which sent me veering out of control across the street toward the sheriff’s liveried vehicle.
I tried to step on the brake but hit the gas by mistake, and the Sebring gave a final roar before it rammed straight into the sheriff-and-star logo on the driver’s door. The airbags failed to deploy, so I cracked my head against the wheel, and the world became even more hazy and distant. I fumbled with the door, but my hands weren’t working. In fact, my whole body felt as though someone else was in charge, so I gave up and just sat there for a few moments before I blacked out.