Baker leans out the doorway and waves her hand at me: hurry, hurry! I reach for the door handle: it’s not there. I reach again: contact! I’m foot down and out the door. Following Baker up the stairs, taking two at a time until I’m in the close wake of Baker’s perfume, closing a door behind us both. A girl with a baby across her chest leads us to a bedroom on the left side of her short hallway. Baker and I go in, push the door to almost closed, sit cross-legged on the floor.
“Check this out,” Baker says. She plops out a sandwich bag, one corner full of coke, and reaches for the vial around my neck.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m dosing out your coke for the evening.”
“Oh,” I say.
Baker unscrews the metal vial, sets it on a Stephen King book she grabs from the shelf behind her. She’s tapping the vial to make sure nothing’s in it. Pouring all coke from the bag on The Shining’s glossy cover.
“This is for you,” she says. “And this is for us, later tonight.”
“Are you gonna be ok with me and Nik having dinner?”
“Sure. Of course!”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I live here, buddy! I’ll make do.”
“Ok,” I say. But I’m already imagining betraying her, snorting all that coke with Nik, leaving nothing for me and Baker.
Baker makes three piles now.
“One for you and Nik. One for you and me after your dinner. And..one..for you and me right now—how’s that?”
“That’s good,” I say.
Baker puts her hand on my leg.
“Are you comfortable here?”
“A little. Yeah. I’m ok here.”
“Do a bump with me.”
She cuts off a bump from the me and Baker pile. I snort it with nothing but a soft crush to the other nostril.
Boom!
“Ooh!” she says, impressed by my method. “I thought you said you just started doing this shit?”
“I watch movies, though.”
We both bust out laughing and Baker takes a bump from the same pile. She and I are all smiles and squinted eyes—the formation of crows’ feet all around. She’s sexy to me again, with her heft hidden behind those cheeks and averted eyes—everything but her plush and I remember what it’s like to be inside..
“And..one..for you,” she says. “And..one..for me,” she says of the two lines she cuts off and sniffs.
“I like this shit, Baker. This is almost as good as what I got in LA.”
“Did you ever do coke in Ohio before?”
I shake my head, snorting a drip from the back of my throat.
“Damn!” I’m smiling. “The only reason I say that my LA coke is a shred better than this is that coke..it comes from a guy who knows PT Anderson—I mean hangs out with PT Anderson—I’m not saying PT Anderson does coke! Just saying: the closer you are to an ever-increasing set of circles, the better your coke is likely to be and damn, Charisma this is that good shit. Good better best! Motherfuck!”
I let out a wolf howl.
Baker looks to the door. Puts her finger to her lips.
“Maybe better to keep the animalistic howling to a minimum.”
“Sure.” I nod.
“Now,” my always-a-fuck, never-a-girlfriend Baker says. “Let’s get you to Pacchia for dinner.
Pacchia. The nicest restaurant in town, on a row of restaurants where the serious restauranteurs throw in their hand at catering to the almost nonexistent upscale dining clientele of Dayton Buttfuck Ohio.
Charisma pauses on Fifth Avenue and I step out, peering back through the rider’s window at my friend raising her hand to wave at me and she drops her foot on the accelerator and speeds off down the road.
Nighttime. The coffeehouse (that’s what I called it anyway) was busy with customers, everyone standing in line looking heads up at the chalked-in menu. I decide to go in this way, as here’s the trick: all three businesses on this corner are owned by the same person. The coffeehouse, the Jazz Room, and Pacchia. And they all flow through from one to the next. I flow from caffeine junkie in ultra-bright halogens through a dark hallway into the subdued atmosphere of the Jazz Room. Katya tending bar—she looks my way and gives a what the fuck?! gesture with her shoulders. I remember a time when Katya introduced me to real hip-hop, on mixtapes she made in New York, carrying them around with her for all these years. Then I’m underneath a doorway and into Pacchia, the fusion jazz from the last business falling fast from my ears as I scope out the hostess area where Nik stands looking out for me.
“Hi, my friend.”
A man handshake, hands joining, a light touch for each of us from the other—a shoulder touch. Smiles.
“Hey, buddy,” he says.
Erin, coming from behind the hostess station, says, “This way, guys,” and seats us at a table in the middle of the front dining room. She picks a RESERVED sign from the tabletop and reads us the specials.
“And of course I should let you know that we also have on special a black-and-blue tuna..which..is what about everyone in here is having!”
Nik looks to me.
I look to him.
Nik is dressed out in suit pants. A handkerchief which matches his pants (baby blue) and a white shirt with pin stripes. His hair is combed and sports a chipmunk fluff where it terminates on his forehead.
I am wearing red converse. A pair of yellow club pants, a white t-shirt and a baby blue Paul Frank beanie covering my head.
“We’ll have the tuna,” Nik says.
We all smile and the waitress leaves.
“So. What brings you here?” Nik says.
“I..well I was in film school. And I’m on break. I got tired of LA, naturally. Missed my Ohio roots. That was an amazing time we had when you came by, by the way.”
“Yeah, hows Sashi?”
“Sashi..you know we broke up. Actually we broke up and then I kicked her out of the house. Actually: I kicked her the fuck out of my house,” I say.
“Never really saw what you saw in her.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“I want to ask you a question,” I say. “When you me and Sashi were making breakfast that day and you and Sashi went out to the farmer’s market, did Sashi flirt with you?”
Nik starts to talk but I interrupt him:
“Or: really: did you flirt with her?”
“Never flirted with her,” Nik says. “As to whether she flirted with me, I’m not the best person to read Sashi—not better than you.”
“Well, if she flirted with you, you would know it—she comes on like a tornado.”
“Truth, Matthew: I never understood why you were with her. I figured she was really smart and you were smarter than that and your extra brain cells allowed you to see what no one else ever saw in her. Me and the people here never understood why you were with her.”
“Huh. Yeah. Well. I mean. The reason I was with her is that the sex was really good!” I say, and laugh.
Nik laughs too.
“Also: Sashi is really smart. She’s also super fucked up on drugs. From drugs. She and her friends used to do LSD every day in New York and ride the busses around with film equipment and they’d make these cray-cray movies. I don’t know if the drugs really messed her up, but she thinks they did so she goes around with this belief that she’s permanently fucked—that she can’t relate to anyone, that no one can relate to her.”
“You know what?” Nik says.
I place both my hands on the table in front of him.
“What?” I say.
“I’m glad you broke up with her.”
“Haha. Thanks, bro. You known what? I gotta take a piss. Will you get us some wine?” I ask.
I’m off to the bathroom. And here I went wrong. For not trusting my friend. For being paranoid on coke. I locked myself inside the men’s and broke the innocent-seeming vial beneath my neck. Dried the countertop obsessively. Tapped out a little bit of coke. Found the straw in my pocket. Looked at myself in the mirror. And here’s where I really went wrong: trying to make my image look my definition of perfect. Snorting, adjusting my shirt. Taking pictures with my mind. Ignoring people knocking at the door: bunch of know-nothing Ohioans who wanted to piss. By the time I was finished I was the definition of coked out. My pants were extra crumpled—extra smashed. My forehead filled with medium-sized sweat bumps. I finally checked and triple checked my gear and made sure I wouldn’t be leaving anything behind.
I went through the dining room and sat across from Nik. Everyone at every table around us was buzzing for action, ready to both exalt and deny my high. Nik poured me a glass of wine—from just about the most expensive bottle you could buy in Dayton. And I drank and ate with my friend. Everything was supreme. Our meal was the best piece of tuna I have ever had anywhere in my entire life. And as it all sunk in and as I decided not to reveal to Nik that I was high on coke this entire time, Nik’s story echoed in my mind:
“..these two girls—one I had never slept with, one my on-and-off girlfriend Katya—are sitting here. Janel here. Katya here. They both have their hands on my cock. And I’m like: is this the invitation to a threesome? Am I gay? I mean that’s the question I’m asking myself: Am. I. Gay? I know sex with these two would..you know..be great. But I don’t want to go through with it. This is like the perfect situation, right? Isn’t this what every guy wants? But I stood up—called it off. And I’m standing in my kitchen. With those two on the couch making out and shit. And all I could think of? I went over every time Katya and I were together. And every time I had to pick her up from the Jazz Room, her stupidly, crazily drunk. Like kill yourself drunk. And I’m like: I love this girl. I am head-over-heels, pink-cheeked-schoolgirl absolutely in love with this woman. And if she never stopped drinking, I’d be in love with her till the end of time.”