Previous chapters:
Chapter One: Georgie
Chapter Two: Guns, Blurbs, and Steal
Chapter Three: Big Jugs and the Hairy Arm
Chapter Four: Sophia, the Pain in My Chest, Part 1
Chapter Five: Dead Man Under the Table
CHAPTER SIX - PART 1
Drunk John
THE STRANGER’S BODY LIES twisted into unnatural shapes and is partially hidden by the small table. He looks dead to me. He also wears a visor, so I don’t like him already. His mouth is frozen into a horrified scowl, the kind I’ve seen on dead cats by the side of the road. The irregular heaves of his chest rise and fall in a sickening mash up of grunts and screeches that combine to form the sound of ripping sheet metal. This guy snores like unbelievable, and he also looks a lot like Paul McCartney. Two nickels have been placed over his eyes which means that sleeping beauty either did it to himself before he passed out or someone else did it and is still in the house.
I cock my gun and back against the wall. It’s the best defensive position I can find.
“Come out! I know you’re in here! Come out!”
“Put that thing away!” Georgie yells.
I pause with the barrel up and my finger on the trigger and my heart pounding in my ears. There is no response. There’s nothing but the rhythmic nasal explosions from the dead man under the table until a low voice sternly asks, “Rockin’ the cargo shorts on your big day?”
Without turning around I know it is Justin, and there is something about hearing the familiarity of his voice, especially how it’s filled with such concern for me at a time like this, that nearly brings me to tears. I turn to see the miniature man in black combat boots, dark bomber glasses, jeans, and a t-shirt with an image of Satan raping Ben Bernanke above the text:
He takes off his tweed flat cap and pulls a cloth handkerchief from his back pocket. He wipes the smooth dome of his head dry and then tucks the cloth back into his pocket before running a hand over his scalp, stopping a second to pick at a raised brown spot before raking his fingers through the black hair that starts at the back of his head and hangs down to an inch above his shoulders. He wrestles the hair into a ponytail and then releases it and lets it fall against the back of his neck, breaking the long, thick strands into thinner ones that creep around his face like vines.
Justin must hold some kind of record for most melanomas because every six months he has to go to the doctor and have another one cut out. His life has become a real game of Whack-A-Mole, and each visit to the doctor’s office leaves another scar on his face. Sometimes the doctors have to cut deep. It was only a matter of time until they found a spot on the tip of his nose. That was the toughest cut of all. They tried to keep as much as they could, and maybe they could’ve kept more had they done radiation, but Justin didn’t want radiation or chemo because he was convinced his hair wouldn’t grow back in. Whenever I remind him that he went bald on top anyway, it usually leads to him not speaking to me for a month, which I hate. I remember the evening last year when he came home after the nose surgery, the way he slouched and hung his head and dangled his arms by his sides in a pathetic vision of bad posture. The bandage was already crusty and could not hide that something was missing from the end of his face. I told him to wear a fake nose like Humpty Hump from Digital Underground, that rapper who burned off his nose in a horrible deep-fryer accident. Humpty may have had a big fake nose, but he was still “getting laid by the ladies” if you believe the song lyrics, which I do. I tried to explain to Justin that in the sixty-nine his Humpty nose could tickle their rears, but he called the suggestion “unoriginal” and told me that I was “embarrassing him and myself by even suggesting it.”
“Jerry’s throwing a wobbly over this geezer under the table,” Georgie says.
Justin turns to me. “What did Prince Charles say?”
“I didn’t see your car.”
“That’s because it’s still downtown.”
“How’d you get here?”
He points to the man under the table. “He drove us.”
“You’re kidding.”
He smiles and shakes his head and puts his cap back on.
“Who is he?” I say.
“That is Drunk John,” he says proudly, “and I think you’ll agree he makes a fine addition to our crew.” He walks over to him and nudges him with his boot, but the man is unresponsive, except for the goddamn snoring. “Do you know that this guy can drive ten miles on autopilot? Simply amazing.”
“He’s about what I’d expect,” says Georgie.
“There’s no coke up in here!” a voice cries out from the top of the stairs. The owner of the voice repeats himself using different inflections and accents, mimicking different TV show tunes.
“THERE’S no COKE, UP in HERE!” The Price Is Right? “There’s no coke up IN here!” Three’s Company?
His footsteps are like thunder as he descends. I look up the stairs and I see him all blindingly white, from the blonde hair that sprouts from under his white Nike golf hat, to his swim trunks, to his cadaver pale skin, to his teeth that are so white he must scrub them with bleach. He holds up his right hand with the palm out and pinky and ring finger down. He jumps from the second step into a fruity little tap dance on the tiled entryway and says, “I mean, you’ve been cleaned out, Daddy. Your secret stash is gone.”
Justin looks at Georgie. “That’s all right,” Justin says with a superior grin. He turns to Fruity Pants and says, “You can take care of it, right?”
“Cocaine is more abundant than water in this town,” Fruity says.
“Indeed,” says Justin. “Just don’t let the filth catch you washing your car with it. Right, mate?” Justin takes off his sunglasses and winks at Georgie.
“The filth. That’s right,” says Georgie. “Sorry, but charlie’s for sharing. You know I brought all that other stuff with me from England.”
“I do,” says Justin
Fruity Pants hangs from the doorway molding. “I’m losing my mind, yo!”
Fruity Pants, who I’m told is named Gilder, is a commodities trader. He’s tall—as tall as I am, but skinny—and he’s very white, and his lips are spread into a perma-grin, a wide kind of mouth that rises at the corners. He says that bonds are a loser’s game and that I should go long on social networking stocks.
“Communication is key,” he says. “Anything that increases communication technology has the sort of longevity you want in your investment portfolio. It’s all about vision. It really is.”
He dives into Justin’s chair and reclines with such force that he puts a gash in our wall with the top of it. He arches his back and extends his legs and drums the arms of the chair to what I think is supposed to be Wipeout. The dude is coked out of his mind, and his bathing trunks have no lining so I get the added bonus of seeing his sparsely-haired ball sack.
“People will always want to communicate with each other, and they will always be willing to pay for that communication.” He invites his cock to the party. I’m glad it’s tiny.
Gilder owns a house in Avalon, New Jersey and an eight hundred thousand dollar townhouse in Society Hill that he bought for six hundred thousand dollars. I learn all this in the two minutes since I’ve met him.
“It’s all about communication,” he continues. He opens a small bag of potato chips he finds on the floor and smiles.
“You know what you do when the chips are down?”
Ball sack, potato chips, ball sack.
“You eat ‘em.” He smiles again and rummages through the bag and extracts three perfectly shaped chips that he places into his mouth with the care of a surgeon.
He is shameless, sitting there grinning and chomping on chips with his balls hanging out. If only they weren’t so eye-catching. If only they had more hair, or no hair, or didn’t look like a victim of Chernobyl who needed a bone marrow transplant. I don’t think I can stop looking at them.
“Ants!” screams Drunk John from under the table. “Ants! Crickets! Shit birds!”
“That dude is off the hook,” says Gilder, laughing. “I love that guy.”
“Are there ants under there?” I ask. We did have an ant problem earlier this year. I got rid of them by having the exterminator come and spray inside my house twice a week. I think I impressed him because he finally told me that I was done and actually refused to spray more. “Buddy,” he said, “I love the business, but you’re not planning on having kids, are you? If so, I think Ripley’s Believe It Or Not should witness the birth.”
“There’s probably nothing under there,” says Gilder. “He yells out random shit when he’s hammerlicious. It’s hil-arious.”
“Should we take him to a hospital?” asks Georgie.
“I’ll fix him,” says Gilder.
Gilder crawls under the table and I hear whispering and laughter, but I think they’re both his. He looks out from under the table and gives a thumbs up. “He’s good. He’s diamonds.”
“Gentlemen,” says a commanding voice. It’s Justin, who stands in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. He walks slowly toward us until he is in the center of the room. The room gets quiet. It’s about to begin and my heart pounds. Zarathustra speaks thus:
“The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that if you increase the number of constraints in a closed system, you will increase the amount of order in it. That result is intuitive, but it also says that you will necessarily increase the overall amount of disorder everywhere else. Similarly, when you overly constrain a society, when you create thousands of ineffectual, meaningless and illogical laws to try to provide the illusion of order to placate the citizenry, all you do is increase the amount of chaos for everyone, and chaos is dangerous. That is why it is no surprise that all of the airport scans, predator drones, and indefinite detention provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act from our government have made us less safe instead of more. It has not curbed the number of terrorists infiltrating our country, but has only increased it. It has increased it so much that a terrorist cell has taken root, not in New York or Washington, but right here in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, in the shadow of Valley Forge National Park where George Washington’s army wintered in 1777.
“You may be skeptical. You may tell yourselves that what I’m about to say can’t be true, but Jeremiah and I—over the course of nine months of observation and monitoring—have concrete proof that our next door neighbors are part of a terrorist cell that is planning a big attack in Philadelphia. Think about it for a second. If you do, you’ll realize that this location also makes sense. There have been major terrorist attacks in Boston with the Marathon bombing, New York on 9/11, and Washington D.C. on 9/11. Draw a line from Boston to Washington and ask yourself what major, densely populated and historically important U.S. city has been skipped? Philadelphia has flown under the radar for a long time, but no longer.”
“What’s the proof?”
This was asked by Drunk John, who has partially crawled out from under the table. His hand is raised like he’s in school.
“You don’t have to raise your hand, bro,” I say.
“Jeremiah, why don’t you enlighten my favorite drunkard.”
“Really? Your favorite?” says Drunk John.
I’m not ready to speak. Justin should’ve given me a heads up. I don’t really understand the need to answer because everything is so obvious.
“Go on, Jeremiah,” says Justin.
“Well, they’re from Saudi Arabia,” I say. My voice sounds like it’s trembling even though I don’t feel nervous.
“That’s your proof?” asks Drunk John.
“I also never see them,” I say. “I’ve never seen their faces in over a year living next door to them. They don’t want me to see them. I always hear them through the walls talking in that language, always angry voices, always. They’re no doubt shouting ‘Death to America!’ or something.”
“That proof is for shite,” says Georgie.
“Tell them about the router log,” Justin says.
I forgot about the router log. It’s our main piece of evidence.
“The router log is the smoking gun,” I say. “It will remove any doubt you have in your minds.”
“I need another beer,” says Drunk John. “Can I have one of those Golden Asses I saw in your fridge?”
This fucking guy is killing me.
“Don’t interrupt me,” I say. “Go get a beer if it will shut you up.”
“But I thought you wanted us to ask questions,” he says.
“Yeah, fine.” He’s really pissing me off. “Anyway, about six months ago I bought a new wireless router.” Gilder is rocking his body to a song in his head and Georgie is staring at a wall.
“Yo!” I shout. Both look back at me. “When I hooked the router up, I forgot to set up the security, so anyone within range could connect to our wireless and get free internet.”
“Minor oversight,” says Justin.
“But it had a silver lining. Whoever connected to us, the history of every site they visited was logged in our router log. It took a little work because only the IP addresses are recorded, not the domain names, but I was curious, so I started poking around. Guess what I found?”
“Porn sites?” says Gilder.
“Yeah, but in addition to the porn sites.”
“Afghani snuff videos?”
“Yeah, but linked to the Afghani snuff videos,” Drunk John says.
“There was something linked to Afghani snuff videos?” asks Gilder. “I always thought of them as a dead end.”
“I found jihadist websites,” I say.
I run to the kitchen island, take a piece of paper out of the drawer, crumple it up into a ball, and run back into the living room and throw it at Georgie. I want him to see this is hard data printed on paper.
Georgie flattens out the paper. I talk directly at him. “Those are the IP addresses, and those are the domains they’re mapped to. You can go up to my computer and type them in and see for yourself. They’re ISIS websites. Jihadists websites, websites that teach sleeper cells how to build IEDs out of high pressure cookers.” I may finally be getting through to him.
Georgie stares at the list and furrows his brow. “Wait, you told me that you’ve visited sites like these,” he says, waving the list. Georgie has an amazing memory for someone who’s piss-drunk and coked-up most of the time. “How do you know who visited these sites? How do you even know Hairy Arm et al are the ones who connected to your router? That boy is in front of the computer all day: you don’t think he pays for his own internet? And if he’s a terrorist like you say, why would he risk discovery by connecting to someone else’s network who can do exactly what you say you’ve done and find him out? And didn’t you say that you’ve been looking at jihadist websites to get into the minds of terrorists? How do you know these aren’t all you?”
“Because of the MAC addresses.”
“What are MAC addresses?”
“Numbers that uniquely identify network cards in computers and phones.”
“There are only one set of numbers on here, mate.”
He’s right. I never upgraded my firmware which would’ve given me more information. I guess some of what’s logged could have been me, but not all. Certainly not all.
“Where are they?” he asks again.
“I guess they’re on the other piece of paper.”
“Hmm. This plan’s so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.”
“What?”
“This conversation is over,” says Justin. “It’s time to get ready.” He looks at me with an intense look. He’s not happy. I gave a horrible presentation.
“All right,” says Justin. “The plan calls for distracting our neighbors with some female entertainment.
That’s not right. That wasn’t the plan at all.
“Gilder, I hear you’re Mr. Strip Club,” he says.
“No, I’m Mr. Bachelor Party.”
“What’s the difference?” asks Drunk John.
“About two grand.”
“What I mean is, you’re in charge of getting women for tonight,” says Justin.
“From around here? The pickin’s will be slim.”
“I don’t care. These guys have never seen a naked woman. They’re not going to be picky. Get strippers that don’t have penises, and we’ll be good.”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on. That’s the reason you’re here. You’re Mr. Bachelor Party.”
Something’s wrong. The plan was to go over and neutralize them. Each and every one of them. Justin won’t look at me. He’s ignoring me. I don’t want to question him in front of the others, but this has to stop. Justin stuffs five Gs into Gilder’s hand. It’s not going to stop. Gilder looks like he’s thinking it over. “All right, I’ll see what I can do.”
“No, you have to promise me that you’ll get women for tonight.”
“Excuse me,” says Drunk John from the kitchen. “Who ate the cake?”
“Me and Georgie ate it,” I say. “Why?”
Gilder looks even paler. “Oh no, hermano,” he says. “That wasn’t for you.”
Justin walks toward Drunk John who’s holding the cake. Justin has a strange grin on his face.
“Did you make it?” I ask Drunk John. “No offense, but it was the worst cake I ever had.”
“Daddy, that’s a whole lot of bad medicine right there,” says Gilder. “Please tell me you didn’t eat a whole piece.”
“A quarter of the cake is gone,” says Justin gravely, but still with that little grin.
“Dude!” says Gilder. “Make yourself throw up. Right now.”
“Why?” I say.
“That cake was something for next door,” says Justin. “In addition to the strippers, we baked a cake with an ounce of enhanced salvia superskunk.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Justin turns to Gilder. “Tell Jeremiah what that means.”
Gilder paces around the dining room.
“I was in Amsterdam four months ago,” he starts out, “and I went to a hash bar called Stones Cafe.”
“Fantastic place,” says Georgie. “I’ve been there plenty of times.”
“I made the mistake of going to the Anne Frank house beforehand, so I was looking for something special to lift my spirits. I went up to the counter—you know the one?” he says to Georgie.
“I do indeed. Was there a crazy Dutch geezer behind the counter who can roll a perfect joint with one hand?”
“The same, and just as crazy. So I asked him to give me something that’s wasn’t on the menu. I made up some shit like it was my birthday. So, he reached under the counter and came up with this.”
Gilder pulls from his pocket an elongated, cone-shaped piece of red plastic that looks to contain an expertly rolled joint.
“This, my compadres, is enhanced salvia superskunk, or ESS.”
“Fantastic,” adds Georgie. “They didn’t have that when I was on holiday last year.”
“It hadn’t been invented yet,” Gilder continues. “So the Dutch guy handed me a joint like this one and told me not to take more than one hit every twenty minutes, or else.”
“Or else what?” Georgie asks like a kid hearing ghost stories around a campfire.
“I asked that very thing, and I’ll never forget what he told me. He said, with a very cool Dutch accent: ‘Imagine Lewis Carroll fucking a Salvadore Dali painting.’”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
“It means,” says Justin, “that this isn’t the Age of Aquarius weed your late Uncle Groovy grew out in his tomato garden.”
“No,” says Gilder. “This is a bars-in-the-window, Roger Waters-style nightmare with hammers walking around and guys with no eyebrows and an angry judge with a talking asshole.”
“Let them eat cake!” yells Drunk John.
“Mate, did you experience anything like that?” Georgie asks.
“I did,” says Gilder. “I didn’t listen to the Dutch dude, and instead took three long drags in a row.”
“And?” asks Georgie. He’s on the edge of his seat. “What happened?”
“Yeah, what happened?” asks Drunk John. He’s back under the table and gives me a thumbs up.
Gilder looks around at each of us and says, “Five minutes went by, then ten, then fifteen. I felt a little high, but nothing more than that. I thought I was fine, I was even starting to feel cheated, until I went to the restroom and looked at myself in the mirror.”
“What did you see?” asks Georgie.
“I saw my face peel away exposing a baboon that shrieked at me from behind the glass.”
“On the level?” asks Georgie.
“Then I saw the entire room fill with water and I felt myself drown and die and then be reborn as a rose bush, all covered in flowers, and for each flower that a beautiful young maiden picked off me, I lived out five thousand lifetimes with her. Daddy, I lived hundreds of thousands of years in the span of twenty minutes, or roughly the time it took us to walk to Teaser’s.”
“Mate, we went to all the same places!” says Georgie.
“I took me over twenty-four hours to come down from that. I didn’t know where I was, who I was, or what time it was. And then for the rest of the weekend, even when I felt somewhat normal, I kept thinking there was always one extra person with us. I’d stand at intersections waiting for this imaginary dude to cross the street. I’d get one extra drink when it was my turn to buy a round and then search the bar for this phantom companion. Hombres, it was fucked up.”
“That sounds like a wild ride,” says Georgie. He turns to me. “I can’t wait!”
“You dumb bastard,” I yell at Georgie. “You finally did it. You finally tricked me into taking drugs.”
“Me? Dumb?”
I pace around the room. I need space. I need air.
“So, if Gilder had that experience from three tokes,” I say, “what does that mean for us? How much was in a slice of that cake?”
“Who cares,” says Georgie. “Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
“There was a lot of it in that cake,” says Gilder. “Make yourself throw up. I’m serious.”
“No way,” says Georgie.
I run up the stairs and into the bathroom. I jam my index and middle fingers down my throat and start retching in the toilet. Nothing comes up. I try it again. Nothing. I try it a third time and do manage to bring something up, but not much. My stomach was pretty empty when I ate the cake. It’s probably already in my intestines.
I wash my mouth and hands in the sink and go into my room. I’m freaking out a little bit. I’ve never done any drugs much less something hardcore like this.
I hear Drunk John’s voice echoing in the stairwell.
“It’s a shame that Amsterdam is known for drugs and prostitutes,” he says. “That tiny place invented modern banking, the slave trade, and conquered Africa. They controlled vast resources of gold, silver and diamonds. Few countries have affected the modern world as much.”
I nominate @harpooninvestor and @kat1977.