Spirits

At work, Larry looked paler than usual; a fact I attributed to a heavy intact of alcohol rather than night shift employment and a healthy aversion to the sun.
When I asked him for a pull from whatever bottle he had hidden away he treated me to an undeserved sneer.
"Ain’t been drinking. I just ain’t been sleeping, neither."
I wasn’t buying it. Walking exhaustion came with the night shift program. You just washed down a handful of yellow jackets with three cans of Red Bull and you’re good to go. I’d been around booze since conception. He had a bottle stashed somewhere and from a whiff of his pastrami-inflected breath, I surmised he was rocking the vodka.
"Come on, man. All I’m asking for is a couple long deep swallows. It ain’t right, you getting greedy on me all of the sudden."
"First of all, I have every right to be greedy after you and Harley drank sixty dollars worth of my liquor without so much as a ‘fuck you, see you later’."
"Hey, now, I’m the one who brought the chocolate flavored cigars."
"And, secondly, I ain’t even got any liquor tonight. The fucking fumes from the rubbing alcohol would probably knock me out, right now, which ain’t an option cause we still got another six hours of pretending to work ahead of us."
I guess I sulked. I might have even pouted. I knew for bedrock fact I wasn’t getting drunk.
"I don’t see you bringing any booze," he added.
"I’ve got my money tired up in the football pools. You know this."
"Anyway, it don’t matter. Except for napping my car at work, I ain’t slept a rightful wink in five days."
I raised an eyebrow. Would I have to start pestering him for crystal meth? Cause an addiction is not an addiction if you don’t have to pay for it.
Apparently I left my poker face at the house. "And I’m not on the dope," he said. "I can’t sleep cause my goddam trailer’s haunted."
My eyebrow, all ready raised to full mast, managed to climb an inch higher on the flagpole of my forehead and wavered there. A flag of utter disbelief. I don’t think my eyebrow had ever reached such heights before. And I’ve heard some bullshit in my time.
"I don’t give a fuck you believe me or not. I’m the one gots to live with it."
"No, Larry, I... uh... believe you. I’m just thinking I should investigate. You know, on a professional level and shit."
 
Harley finally answered his cell phone on the eighth ring, the fourth time I called.
"It’s three o’clock in the morning," he hissed. "What the fuck you want?"
"I’m at work," I said by way of explanation. "So it’s like three o’clock in the afternoon for me."
"You’ve got five seconds to say what you gotta say. And it better be good. And even if it is good, I’m still gonna slap your mouth come tomorrow."
"Ok. Take a wild guess what Larry just told me."
"That he likes hog-tying midgets and blow-torching their feet?"
"No. What? No. Even better, I think. He says his trailer’s haunted."
Obviously, Harley was blown away by this nugget of information. It took him a full minute to respond. "How the fuck can this not wait til morning?"
"Look, man, this is a golden opportunity to get back at Larry for letting us drink all his liquor and trash his trailer. He’s pretty spooked about this haunting. I figure I’ll go over there and you can hang around outside. When the time’s right you can make some ghostly noises and shit like the phantom of the okra. Rattling chains and what not."
"Fuck that. I still got buckshot lodged in my legs from the time you talked me into getting on old man Alldredge’s roof with a slide whistle and high beam flashlight, pretending to be a UFO."
"Oh yeah. Ha ha. Good point," I conceded, noting that he still held me at least partly responsible for the Cullman County Alien Visitation Fiasco. "We’ll just go over there and get fucked up again like we did before. You can bring a bottle of Bacardi, maybe. Worse that can happen is that we make contact with the other side... of consciousness."
"Worse that can happen is I get alcohol poisoning again. My weight training routine’s still fucked. And somebody puked on my cell phone; fucked it all up."
"Well, bring some Hennessey, then. We’d’ve been all right if we’d just stuck to cognac."
"I ain’t got money for liquor."
"You got money for steroids. It’s the same thing; in fact liquor enlarges and enhances your liver just like a steroid."
"What are you bringing? Cigars?"
"My expertise for one thing. Anyway, I told you. If Alabama beats the spread I’ll be good. And if I get a 5 and a 2 lined up during the end of any quarters I’ll be real good. Hell, I’ll be bringing fifths of Wild Irish Rose for everyone. In the meantime, I’m gonna hafta ask you to bite the bullet and bring me some goddam booze."
"All right, fucker, I’m in. But I’m still gonna slap your mouth."
"Friday night, then. And wear some normal fucking clothes, all right? It’s just gonna be us guys and ghosts and none of us are interested in seeing your musculature. So leave your Under Armor at the house, deal?"
"I see I’m gonna hafta slap your mouth two times."

Undaunted, I called Nick’s house next. He answered with the quickness of the terminally needy. "What up, Buttercup?"
"S’up, bitch."
"Shit, chillin. Me and Dan’s smoking a bowl, listening to some tunes. What are you doing?"
"I’m working... I’m always working."
"That’s tragic, man. Like a fat woman with small tits. Tragic."
"Listen, Nick, how would you like to see a ghost? ... Hello? Nick?"
He refused to answer his phone the next twenty two times I called. I had to stop by his mom’s house after work.
"We got disconnected," I offered weakly when he opened the back door.
"I hung up on your ass. What the hell’s wrong with you? You know about my incident."
In the bedroom Dan laid unconscious in the corner with neither pillow nor blanket for comfort. The magenta lava lamp reflected against the bald spot insatiably devouring Dan’s dome.
Nick, drunk and stoned to the point of terminal hippiosis, did not look pleased to see me.
I quickly explained the situation, adding "look, man, there ain’t no ghosts, ok? Larry’s like this cause it’s a biological fact he can’t go two straight hours without jerking off. Those dark circles under his eyes – it’s the result of chronic masturbation."
Nick glanced at the bruised skin beneath my eyes. Wisely, he held his tongue. "If there ain’t no ghosts then I don’t see why I need to go over there. I can get fucked up just as easily here."
"Well, because Larry thinks there’s a ghost, see. And we have to prove him wrong. And since you’ve seen that movie White Noise and given what happened at the cemetery, you’re the closest thing we have to an expert. You know what’s needed to investigate this shit. Like barometers and magnetic compass readers and those green night vision cameras like the kind Paris Hilton films her fucking with."

Last update : 04-04-2007 20:12

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