Crash

A half past a gypsy dance and a deck collapse we headed, drunk, to burger joint on Monroe in an old Jeep Grand Cherokee.  I had passed out about an hour ago and had to be dragged to the car.  I wasn’t hungry, but I really didn’t have a choice.  We pulled into the lot and noticed about six police cruisers parked.  Something about being drunk and in college makes everyone a little more ballsy so we go inside.  I stumble to the bathroom, and if I was stoned I would be paranoid right now.  Then I look in the mirror and find the word BALLS scrolled across my face.  Swastikas, penises, and smeared red ink covers my arms and legs.  Damn it, why didn’t they tell me about this before we walked in to a restaurant full of cops?  

It’s almost five in the morning when we get our food.  Someone orders me a burger, and the only thing I think is that I’m not going to be able to pay him back for it.  I have class in a few hours, but it is only as important as you make it.  There were three towny girls at this party making out with some hipster who probably road his fixie to the party, and now I am wondering if Maya is still awake.  I text her.  There is no response.  

I walk outside for a smoke.  The night is dragging on now, and for some reason everyone has ordered the entire menu.  I watch one of the police cars pull onto the empty street, only to be denied that certainty.  An eighteen wheeler plows into the drivers side, and the black and white is molded together in an instant.  Glass sprays to the pavement and the shimmer of street lights on wet pavement cascades down like a waterfall of sparks and crystals.  I exhale.  

~

At a truck stop in Valdosta I score some meth from a Mexican.  Its been four hours since Atlanta on two hours of sleep.  The gas came out above five-hundred again, cigarettes and a gram.  I smoke it in the back of the cab watching the smoke billow thick, then dissipates.  Breath in the crystal mix of rat poison and Draino, feel the pulse flow through my entire body.  

A half hour later I’m listening to something about an anal probing alien abduction, and imaging myself in the cockpit of a jetliner taking off from a never ending runway.  The reflectors stream together and disappear under the hood.  The CB crackles that there is an accident on I-10, and I decide to reroute around it.  Someone else crackles on about somewhere to find pussy in Perry.  I remember that I haven’t called my wife tonight.  Then I remember the papers.  

The truck rumbles down twenty-one fifteen minutes later.  I notice more cars on the road now, but I’m still flying.  The lights of the neon signs and street light flicker on the water droplets flung onto my windshield.  

I decide to light a cigarette and roll the window down an inch.  As I look down to flick the Zippo a slip of red and blue breaks the yellow and white reflections from my headlights.  I jolt forward, but don’t stop.  The sound of metal scrapping and glass shattering is muffled in my throbbing ears.  The next sensation is the cherry burning my thigh.  I piece things together enough to know I fucked up.  

~

I pull a car over doing fifty-five in a forty-five.  When I approach the car I notice two things.  One, the occupants of the vehicle are black.  Two, I can smell the distinct smell of marijuana.  One of our instructors had described it as “cat piss on a pine tree.”  I haven’t come up with a clever equivalent yet.  

“Do you know how fast you were going?” I ask. 

An obviously stoned face looks back at me, and responds,”Naw man, why don’t you tell me.”

“Could you step out of the car for me please.”  I radio in the code for backup.  “Look I can smell weed coming from this car, so I want you to be honest with me and tell me where it is.”

The guy looks down.  He looks nervous.  He looks fucked up.  “There’s nothin’ in the car man.”

“Don’t lie to me.  If you don’t tell me now, I’m just gonna get a dog out here, and he will definitely alert on this car,”  I say sternly.  “I can smell that shit on you.”

“Man, thats fucked up.”  My back up arrives, and we pat them both down.  

“I’m gonna give you one more chance to make this easier on yourself,” I lie, before we start searching the car anyway.

We find maybe a couple grams, cuff them both and take them to county.  The guy in the backs asks something about wether or not I am married.  

“It’s none of your business, but yeah.”  Then he goes into a rant about why I should go easy on him because he is married and has a kid or maybe it was two kids and he is going to lose his job, and I say that he should have thought about that before he went blunt cruising.  I cruise back downtown.  

The cell phone in the center console has been buzzing since two-thirty, but I’ll call back later.  The shift meets at five in the morning at a Whataburger.  Someone asks about my wife and that reminds me to call Sasha back.  I walk to my cruiser, and dial the phone.  She is drunk.  She is asking where I am, and I say that I’m on my way.  I spin the wheel, turning left.  Oh shit. 

~

I roll, and part my eyes to the streaming pink and purple bars of light coming through the glass.  His arm is still around my waist, and I kiss his lips.  The clock says nine thirty-five.  “Class starts in a half hour.  I have to get ready.”

He sighs and yawns, “Okay I’ll head out.”  As he leaves I hear him say goodbye to m roommate.  

The day moves slowly.  Lectures, lunch, someone calls, I head back to my apartment.  I hear about a party at some place I’ve never been, and decide to go with Kelly.  We get ready and head over.  It turns out to be a bunch of hipsters.  There is actually a band, and they are actually good.  I’m standing on the deck behind the house with about twenty other people when it collapses.  The whole thing happens so fast its hard to even take it in, but a coffee table slides into my knee, and I can almost feel something so I take another shot.  

Things move fast.  These gypsies show up, and I think they are trying to sell some painting so they can pay for the cross country trip, and I realize this party is getting really weird.   We go to another party and do some lines in the bathroom, and I have been calling him for hours now.  We make it back to the apartment somehow, and he finally calls me back.  I’m getting really excited to see him tonight, or maybe its just the coke.  Then the bastard hangs up on me and I can’t stay awake any longer.

~

Ringing.  Ringing.

“Hello.”

“Hey baby, I’m on my way over right now.”

“Mmm, okay I can’t wait till you get here.  I’m so horny.”

“Jesus, sober up a lil...”

Click.  Disconnect tone.