Post by Job on Jun 26, 2022 22:48:07 GMT -5
06/26/2022
Time was running out, and it was all Amanda Davis could do not to run the few short paces to the room next door. She knocked, not gently, and without waiting a beat put her face to the jamb of the door and said, "I need to talk to you. It's really important."
She pulled back and waited, a mask of impatience. The door cracked open and Paul Freedom's face appeared in it, confusion in his deep brown eyes and a quizzical quirk tugging at his lips. "Um, it's kind of late. Can it wait until tomorrow?"
She stood silently as, from behind him, the groaning struggle of Jommy's making his way from bed to chair could be heard. "It's okay, Paul," he called as he rolled to the door. "I think she means me."
"Okay...?" Paul said, opening the door fully and looking from his agent to his trainer as they made their way back to her room. "It's fine," he muttered to himself, closing the door to the lodgings he and Jommy had been sharing and settling back onto his bed with his phone. "Nobody ever tells me anything anyway."
It was, of course, neither okay nor fine, but there were things they didn't think he was ready to hear and, moreover, that they knew they weren't ready to tell him.
Back in Amanda's room, Jommy watched with curiosity as Amanda rummaged through her luggage. "It's hard to believe it's here again so soon."
"Happens once a year," she muttered.
"Hard to believe it hasn't gotten any easier," he mused, watching her manhandle a parcel wrapped in brown paper from a rolling suitcase.
"Maybe not for you." She deposited the package at his feet and started to unwrap it as he watched. "Okay," she admitted, "maybe not for me, either."
His eyes first played over the eight silver tallboys, taking in the aggressive typeface and bold primary colors. "Gosh," he said. "Is that...?"
"Liquid Courage, yeah," she said, staring blankly at the cans.
"Didn't they outlaw that stuff?" The advertising copy claimed that each of the pints was 8% alcohol by volume and contained 100 milligrams of caffeine.
"Sure did. Want some?"
He hesitated. "Are you sure you don't just want to talk?"
"Yeah, we'll talk. We'll drink," she declared as she broke two cans free from one of the four-packs and set them on the threadbare hotel carpet, "we'll smoke," she continued as she produced a sealed pack of Newport 100s and a blue Bic lighter with that old piece of sleight of hand Piter had taught her all those years ago, "but we'll talk."
"I don't smoke, Amanda, and even if I did we can't do that in here." She leveled her gaze at him. "We can't, can we?"
She packed the cigarettes without breaking eye contact. "It's on my credit card, Jommy. We can do whatever the fuck we want to this hotel room. We have my permission."
"I don't really drink any more," he said, his tone taking on a hint of pleading, "and I never smoked."
She sighed. "I'm not gonna twist your arm, Jommy. I could... but I'm not gonna. I mostly just need someone to talk to."
"Well, that's good. I know it's a rough situation, but we can do better than that."
"No, Jommy. You can do better than this. In two hours, these drinks and smokes are gonna be gone whether you pitch in or not." She peeled back the cellophane and foil from the box and pulled out a cigarette with her teeth. Wordlessly, but without hesitation, Jommy reached for a Newport and, with it between his lips, picked up and opened a Liquid Courage.
"To Piter Svoboda," he said around the butt, "the best friend I ever had." She lit it for him, her expression inscrutable, and he immediately started coughing from the menthol death stick.
"To Piter Svoboda," she said, opening her own drink and sitting back on her bed, setting it down momentarily on the extra firm mattress. "May he never be dope sick again." With those words, she cupped her left hand around the end of her Newport and lit it with her right, shielding it from a wind that simply wasn't there. After the first drag, she stared at the cherry and said, absently, "And to think I used to worry these things would kill him."
Those words marked their last clear memory of the night. The rest was moments of clarity in a waking blackout, islets of existence in a roiling sea of oblivion. It wouldn't be accurate to say it would have been what Piter would have wanted. Not for them, at least.
They each powered through their first Liquid Courage at a relaxed chug, as they had seen Piter do so many times before, so that they could turn it into a butt can. As their first cigarettes burned down, Amanda suddenly announced, "He never gave me an explanation for why he left. Not a good one. Not a real one."
Jommy shrugged as he deposited the dog-end in the empty. "I don't think he ever had one."
Later, at some point during the second cigarette in the chain, Jommy said, "Piter was like a brother to me. I think. I was an only child and it sounds weird to say he was like a cousin to me."
Amanda chuckled mirthlessly. "My brother tried to warn me about him, but I thought he must be wrong. He kind of was. I should have steered clear, just for different reasons than TJ said."
As the room filled with undetected smoke from their third cigarettes, Amanda mused, "Every time I let him back in my life, he found a new way to break my heart. When he died, I thought that was the end of it. Then you and that kid showed up in my office, and now I don't know if it will ever stop."
Jommy took a deep drag, steepled his fingers, and stared into his lap. "What always broke my heart about Piter was that he could have been a huge success if he had ever been able to find his way. I just want Paul to have the guidance he didn't."
Jommy found himself unexpectedly midway through both his fourth cigarette and a sentence. "-because... wait, what was I saying before?"
Amanda chortled and collapsed back on the mattress, pulling hard from the Newport's filter as her third Liquid Courage lightly sloshed onto the bedspread. "Yeah, this stuff will go to your head, especially if you're a lightweight. I don't think it's typically-"
"-just good to have someone to talk to about it. Someone here who gets it, you know?" She didn't remember lighting their fifth cigarettes, but there they were, so presumably she had. After all, Jommy couldn't work a lighter.
"Yeah, I get it. We both get it. We shouldn't be alone at a time like this. Apart we're lonely people, but together we're-"
"-never coming back. No matter how much I miss him, he's gone. That part of my life is gone." Jommy jammed his sixth cigarette into the opening of the butt can, the tears in his eyes more than a product of the smoke.
"It was just the end of a chapter, Jommy. Your story is still being written. Mine is, too. Sometimes I wish it wasn't. Sometimes I think I can't-"
"-believe we're supposed to catch a flight to Hawaii tomorrow. Fucking Hawaii." She paused, examining her seventh cigarette pensively. "The kid's literally going places."
"That's tomorrow," Jommy mused. "And tomorrow is never guaranteed. I think Piter knew that. He kind of lived his life in a way that would guarantee it, even."
Jommy examined the butt of his eighth cigarette in the hotel toilet. Something was wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on what. "Okay," he announced, "I don't think I'm actually gonna hurl. But something still doesn't feel right. It's just... so painful..."
"Jesus fuck, Jommy," Amanda softly but firmly said from outside the bathroom. "Open the fucking door. You forgot your wheelchair, dipshit."
"You really do believe in Centerpoint City, don't you?" Amanda inquired, her gaze fixed on Jommy's eyes and alert for signs of deception. So far, all she saw was irritation from the smoke of their ninth cigarettes, filling the room with an anachronistic tobacco haze. "That that's where you and Paul went?"
Jommy shrugged. "It doesn't really matter if I believe. If your plane lands at O'Hare, who cares if you believe in Chicago? I think..." He paused, seeming to think better of what he had planned to say next, then thought worse of it again. "I think it had something to do with Mr. Whiskers."
With their final drinks drained and their final cigarettes completed, Amanda and Jommy lay back on the bed together, hammered and emotional, each fixated on the same spot on the ceiling. "I just hope Paul doesn't think there was any funny business," Jommy murmured, self-consciously inching away from her. "No offense."
"None taken, Jommy." She was silent for a few moments, then began with a slight giggle that crescendoed into a cackle. "Can you imagine what Piter would have thought about this whole situation?"
Jommy smiled. "I think I can, yeah. I think..." He blinked back some unexpected tears. "I think he'd be glad. That we all have each other. That we're all dealing with everything without him."
Amanda gnawed on her lip for a few seconds, then said, "Yeah. Something like that, I guess."
But, even in her drunken haze, she couldn't help but think of Paul in the next room over. Was he part of the all who had each other? Was he dealing with everything?
None of them slept that night, but Paul remembered.
