Read Online Clearly Now, the Rain by Eli Hastings - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Eli Hastings
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big foil sheets of Vicodin, Soma, and bottles of liquid codeine. In a Corona-pennant and chili-light crowded taqueria, Serala goes to the restroom with the pills; Monty and I buy Gatorade and pour codeine into it.
A few hundred yards shy of the borderâs razor wire, stern agents, and German shepherds, we split up. Serala checks her watch a lot and is very good at looking exasperated. Monty and I play the role of fatigued tourists. Iâm nervous for Serala with all those pills and her dark skin, lip ring, but the agent doesnât even ask her a question when she whips out her ID, like a cop might do with his badge. When the officer asks me if I have anything to declare, I shake my head and take a swallow of the sour red blend. He waves me on.
Later that night, back in the Batcave, Serala doles out Vicodin, lying prone on her elbows with Fred the parrot at her side. Her hands flying over the foil sheets, punching out the tablets, she gives me specific instructions.
If you take three you can drink a little; if you take four you canât. If you take two, Iâll tell you when youâve had too much to drink.
But even Serala couldnât understand the way that those pills affect me. While Serala and Monty and a redheaded girl all reel into lazy dizziness, I get downright hyper and giddy like Iâve been snorting coke. Going stir-crazy in the Batcave, I fly out, beer in hand, to the quad, where I run up and down the chemical grass mounds, drop and roll like a child. I find an Asian freshman kid lolling in a hammock and start some kind of deep exchange; I remember hearing the music leaking from Seralaâs window fifty yards awayâMazzy Star, I think. The night is oddly clear for southern California and the stars are bright. Spring is in effect and it feels good.
We stop at the grocery store for booze and the fluorescent lights are too much so I buy cheap sunglasses, then a big red rubber ball. None of them can figure me out, but Iâm not even interestedâif Iâm having an adverse reaction to painkillers then Iâm all for adverse reactions.
At a rowdy party at a beat-up old house, I am in my element with the drunks, flyers-up games with the rubber ball behind the place. Itâs a while before I realize Iâve lost track of Serala, and I wander down the driveway. I find her on the front stoop, looking bad, Monty standing awkwardly off to the side, draining a cup of beer. The light from orange streetlamps softly coats her. I ask how she is.
Sick,
she says, and when I look at her hunched there, collapsed into half her size and trembling a bit, all my moron high burns off and I realize sheâs been poorly all night and I have been oblivious. It is literalâsheâs been pukingâbut also not so, I think. It is one of the most troubled looks Iâve seen on her: pallor even on her dark skin, eyes both glazed and wild, like she has witnessed a massacre.
She must have pasted on one of her donât-fuck-with-me faces and strode off to some funky corner of that house to add heroin to the litany swirling through her, because just the pills would have been a mild high. I see her in the bathroom of that old house, the fluorescent light, the odor of rotting pipes and drunk misses of the toilet around her, sloshed assholes pounding the door while she screams
fuck off
and then gets the needle in or the line cut and sucks orgasmic air as the rush turns the room into cloud.
Soon after that night she tried to explain.
Sometimes i feel like i lie even to you. All the things that you donât see. Your pain weighs on me as does Montyâs, because it is my own in a way that i failed to ever explain to you. Once i told you, but only half. Itâs when days and nights pass and I do not move from my bed, i donât open my eyes for more than an hour and still i am not sleeping. And when i do get up itâs because everyone and the world has passed through my eyes, then you
A few hundred yards shy of the borderâs razor wire, stern agents, and German shepherds, we split up. Serala checks her watch a lot and is very good at looking exasperated. Monty and I play the role of fatigued tourists. Iâm nervous for Serala with all those pills and her dark skin, lip ring, but the agent doesnât even ask her a question when she whips out her ID, like a cop might do with his badge. When the officer asks me if I have anything to declare, I shake my head and take a swallow of the sour red blend. He waves me on.
Later that night, back in the Batcave, Serala doles out Vicodin, lying prone on her elbows with Fred the parrot at her side. Her hands flying over the foil sheets, punching out the tablets, she gives me specific instructions.
If you take three you can drink a little; if you take four you canât. If you take two, Iâll tell you when youâve had too much to drink.
But even Serala couldnât understand the way that those pills affect me. While Serala and Monty and a redheaded girl all reel into lazy dizziness, I get downright hyper and giddy like Iâve been snorting coke. Going stir-crazy in the Batcave, I fly out, beer in hand, to the quad, where I run up and down the chemical grass mounds, drop and roll like a child. I find an Asian freshman kid lolling in a hammock and start some kind of deep exchange; I remember hearing the music leaking from Seralaâs window fifty yards awayâMazzy Star, I think. The night is oddly clear for southern California and the stars are bright. Spring is in effect and it feels good.
We stop at the grocery store for booze and the fluorescent lights are too much so I buy cheap sunglasses, then a big red rubber ball. None of them can figure me out, but Iâm not even interestedâif Iâm having an adverse reaction to painkillers then Iâm all for adverse reactions.
At a rowdy party at a beat-up old house, I am in my element with the drunks, flyers-up games with the rubber ball behind the place. Itâs a while before I realize Iâve lost track of Serala, and I wander down the driveway. I find her on the front stoop, looking bad, Monty standing awkwardly off to the side, draining a cup of beer. The light from orange streetlamps softly coats her. I ask how she is.
Sick,
she says, and when I look at her hunched there, collapsed into half her size and trembling a bit, all my moron high burns off and I realize sheâs been poorly all night and I have been oblivious. It is literalâsheâs been pukingâbut also not so, I think. It is one of the most troubled looks Iâve seen on her: pallor even on her dark skin, eyes both glazed and wild, like she has witnessed a massacre.
She must have pasted on one of her donât-fuck-with-me faces and strode off to some funky corner of that house to add heroin to the litany swirling through her, because just the pills would have been a mild high. I see her in the bathroom of that old house, the fluorescent light, the odor of rotting pipes and drunk misses of the toilet around her, sloshed assholes pounding the door while she screams
fuck off
and then gets the needle in or the line cut and sucks orgasmic air as the rush turns the room into cloud.
Soon after that night she tried to explain.
Sometimes i feel like i lie even to you. All the things that you donât see. Your pain weighs on me as does Montyâs, because it is my own in a way that i failed to ever explain to you. Once i told you, but only half. Itâs when days and nights pass and I do not move from my bed, i donât open my eyes for more than an hour and still i am not sleeping. And when i do get up itâs because everyone and the world has passed through my eyes, then you
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