I find whole pages written I don’t recognize. Maybe there is a phrase or something that makes me think it is actually me writing. Somewhere in there.
She says she is Nashville and today is only Tuesday.
but that’s not the beginning…
White light. Cold, white light. Almost too white for what is left of my stinging eyes to assimilate. The bleak environment slowly bringing itself into focus; turning from a warm white ocean into a perfectly segmented sea of cubes.
Tiles.
A tile floor.
A balcony: well kept and monochrome. After many long minutes of deliberation, I decide it is indeed a tile floor filling my vision, and not the white light of the afterlife. Within moments, the jackhammer in my head makes me think that being dead might not be such a bad thing.
The piercing pain necessitates I rise and find out the nearest route to painkillers/alcohol. The sight that greets my gaze is more than unusual.
A church yard.
And vomit.
This is a scene I’ve not been treated to previously in my lifetime; beautiful and strange in it’s Dali-like picturesque quality. Where are my pants? This could be a red letter day.
Peeling my face off the geometric landing pad of a balcony, I scratch my head, wondering what in the hell happened. My left hand doesn’t feel right, dulled in sensation, and moist. I’m wearing a large yellow rubber kitchen glove…down to my elbow. I didn’t know they made them this large.
Tucked inside the glove is a key I have never seen before. Looks like the key to a hotel that is far behind the times. That first generation of keys after the skeleton style key finally passed on, slightly twisted and teeth ground down dangerously.
112.
There is a shoddy motel sign blinking “Vacancy” from across the street that seems a likely suspect. It looks like those 1950′s billboards ushering you into Vegas would look if they were still around today; faded and ragged with all the promise of hepatitis. Good thing I’m wearing the glove.
The key fits the lock of Room 112 of the Vagabond Motel. The lock looks so old, I’m fairly certain any key would have worked. Opening the door, I’m scared of what might lay inside. Have I made a horrible mistake? Should I run now while I still can? Where the hell did this glove come from?
Two girls I have never seen before are laying across one another in the king sized hotel bed. Wrapped in the sheets of the bed as they are, it’s hard to tell if either one has any clothes on. I’m not a gambling man, but I’d say no. They’re pretty… that kind of pretty that comes with a price tag. I can see the rather shapely butt of the blonder of the two, and the wrist of the brunette’s arm as it disappears between the blond’s legs. It’s like a Timex commercial.
A mess that might be my pants occupies a place of honor in the middle of the floor amid scattered alcohol bottles and shredded pages of a TV Guide. With a brief check to make sure both of the girls are breathing, I grab my pants and head for the door. There’s a glass of something that might once have been scotch on the old tv playing a snowstorm and audio static. I drink it in one gulp. Looking at my hand holding the glass, I think, I should probably leave the glove. They may want it back.
The brunette stirs slightly saying, “Jake?” as I close the door and make like a brontosaurus.
The sun is up. It’s been up. An hour? Two? Who knows? Time to find my wheels and get the fuck out of here. There is a strange mystery about this city and it’s automobiles; half of the city is a parking lot, yet there is never anywhere to park.
I’m pretty sure it is still AM, so since the sun is east and I live on the upper east side, I figure that’s a likely bet. I start walking.
I like Jiminy Cricket. I think if we all had more friends like him, we would spend less nights sleeping outdoors in our underwear. I think he got a bad rap, being called a conscience. Conscience implies a kill joy; guilt. That voice in your head that sounds an awful lot like your ex-gf who brought up every indiscretion of your life, every time you forgot to take the garbage out. I think Cell Phones are the new Jiminy Cricket.
With pictures, videos, text messaging, and instant drunk dialing available to everyone, everywhere; a cell phone is the closest thing that we in our disposable rocket fueled society can call a conscience. Proof of all your shameful and ignorant activities stored in a miniature digital database on your hip. It’s also a damn good place to start figuring out what the hell happened last night.
I am reminded sharply of this fact when my cell screams from my newly recovered pants that I am missing an appointment.
It reads, 8:00 AM. “lunch iTucsom domt.gave tm eat”
I’m really not much help to myself. Cycling through the pictures on my cell phone provides me with a number of blurry images of people I may or may not know. Some shots of a concert I attended prior to losing consciousness and a picture of a restaurant that should be nearby, judging from a street sign I just passed. I feel kind of like that guy from Memento; no clue what just happened, but I have a whole lot of pictures of whatever “it” was. I have a whole lot of pictures of her, too.
Those fucking pictures.
I haven’t deleted them, though god knows why. That guy from Memento seems more and more blessed as these days roll by like 1′s leafed off into herpetic underwear at the Last Chance strip club. Happiness is good health and a poor memory. The cigarette cough building deep in my lungs tells me I’m pretty far from that side of the tracks.
The pictures are all I have left of her, thankfully. I had the good sense in a drunken fit to take everything she had ever touched, throw it off my balcony and start a bonfire with it in the middle of the parking lot at the apartment complex I lived in before I had to leave town. Needless to say, I didn’t get the deposit back.
I’m back at the corner of Churchyard and Vagabond with the vacancy sign flashing lethargically overhead; reading only “Vacan” from this angle. I’ve just walked in a gigantic circle. Shit.
With the addition of pants to my wardrobe for the day, I remember I have pockets. The first pocket yields a pack of cigarettes and a match. I light it and drag hard, making my head spin a little. Oddly enough, in one pocket I still have my wallet. Giving my wallet a once over, I discover that I apparently paid the girls very well. For what, I have no idea. In place of the last dollars I had left is a valet check. This means wheels. This means escape.
Escape. I beeline to the restaurant showcase in my pictures from last night. They’re doing brunch.
The valet looks at me like he knows me. That wary stare with uncertainty and… something that might be fear mixed in. Trading him my ratty piece of paper for my ratty ass keys to my near useless car I shoot him one last look, wondering what he knows. Donning the battered old sunglasses that are shaped a little differently every time I park in the sun, I leave the scene of the evening and head back home. I don’t leave home much anymore. When I do, things like last night tend to happen.
I park the car.
I walk inside.
A madman lives here. You only have to look once to know it. And I fucking KNOW it…
My phone makes more noise and I look around the room. I haven’t changed my number since it all went down.
Down. Hill.
I walk around the tiny apartment picking up scraps of paper all banged out on the same antique typewriter I stole from the last professor to give me a shit grade before i wiped my ass with my Literary Arts degree and walked away. It’s hell to find ribbons for this fucking thing, but keyboards have no soul.
One hand answers the phone and presses it to my ear while the other hand keeps propping up pages in my vision; almost accusatory in the action. What have you done? What are you going to do now?
I find whole pages written I don’t recognize. Maybe there is a phrase or something that makes me think it is actually me writing. Somewhere in there.
She says she is Nashville and today is only Tuesday.
The voice, I recognize.
But that’s not the ending…
