by L.C. Barlow
Chapter 7
INHALE
That night was not like the other nights. Ever since I had met Patrick, he had invited me out to parties every few weeks, as well as gatherings with his friends, to eat, drink, shoot up, sniff, snort, inhale, and stagger. It had been wonderful, these days - a spicy heaven. But then, quite suddenly, it shifted.
"So tell me about yourself," he yelled to me under the flashing lights of the club. Patrick had bought me a Royal Fuck, and I had downed it. He had bought me a vodka and sprite, and I had downed it. I was now on a Colorado Bulldog.
"Well," I yelled back, "I'm from Florida. Moved here for college. Grew up on a lot of land with my mom and dad. Didn't grow anything on that land, though. Had llamas for a while once when I was younger. Have a brother. His name is Jason. He's going to the University of Maryland. He's studying aeronautics."
Patrick nodded his head up and down as I spoke. "Listening to Jason talk about the shit he does..." I continued, "makes me want to put a bullet through my head... or his. It's so boring." I shook my head back and forth. "Came here to study biology." I shrugged my shoulders. "It's going well so far I guess. How about you?"
Patrick nodded his head one more time, smirked, took a drink, surveyed the club, and raised his eyebrows. "That's complete bullshit. What you just said."
I froze, feeling the sweat of the glass in my hand. "No it isn't," I replied.
"Oh please." He waved an arm at me and shook his head. "There's no need to lie. None of that shit matters anyway." He turned away from me, leaned on the rail, and looked at the pulsating crowds. "There are other ways to get to know a person. You don't have to tell me about your past if you don't want to."
He looked sideways at me and bit one of his lips. For a minute all I felt was the beat of the music, and then I came to stand beside him. I leaned against the rail.
"Sorry," I said. "I don't normally lie."
"Why did you?"
I shook my head. "I'm uncomfortable."
"Why?"
"I'm still sober."
He laughed. "Then we've failed."
"Well, we've got the whole fucking night," I replied.
"To get rid of ourselves... so we can talk about ourselves."
I nodded. "Yes."
He licked his lips and turned to me suddenly. His face flashed pink, then yellow, beneath the lights. "What if I were to guess? About you, I mean. If you can't put yourself into words, can I try? Will you admit when I'm right?"
I smirked. "Oh Lord. You're going to shock me with myself."
He gave a deep-throated laugh, and I barely heard it over the music. "It'd be nothing new."
I downed my drink. "Sure. Why not?"
The first thing he said to me: "You're the type of person who knows how to pick locks."
I replied with nothing, turning my eyes up to his ginger head ever-so-slowly. I felt the vibrations of the music file through me, down to my bones. They burned bright for a second.
Only an idiot would miss why he said that.
"In fact... you are the type of person that can do more than pick locks. Yes?" he urged.
"What says that about me?"
"Everything."
"That can't be good." The bass of the music swept into me, made me notice the desolate silence between us. "What other ever-so-beneficent things am I capable of?"
Patrick didn't bat an eye. "Own a brothel. Hijack a bus. Take illegal substances across state lines. The possibilities are endless."
"Sounds like a lot of damned responsibility."
"Versatility."
"If that's what you want to call it." I paused, scanning the crowd. "And why do you need someone who can pick locks?" I asked.
His smile spread its wings for miles, feathers glancing off those on the dance floor. "See what I mean?" he asked, and he moved back and forth on the rail, rather pleased. "We don't need facts to get to the truth. We just need questions."
"And drugs."
"Sometimes..." he said. "Fascinating, isn't it? How much you have to inject yourself before any real blood is spilled."
"Tell me more about me, Patrick. I'm beginning to find myself very intriguing."
"I think... you're a cook." He winked.
"You're wrong."
"Let me finish..." He brought his hand out on the rail close to mine, palm down. "A cook in the sense that you have the recipe of all recipes."
"And this recipe would be..."
"How not to get caught."
My chuckle was corked. I took my right hand from my glass, and I poked Patrick's chest with my forefinger. The alcohol made me laugh at him outright. "You're ludicrous."
"Why?"
"I'm not what you're looking for. I'm not a professional."
He took his own finger and jabbed the center of my chest with it, imitating me. He said his words one at a time, sparsely. "There is no better bonding for two people who have just met than what I have to offer. Nothing better in the world. Why would I waste that on a cold, emotionless professional?"
I shook my head condescendingly at him, "You talk about it as though it's building a castle out of sugar cubes. But 'jobs' live and breathe. Each one is its own monster."
Patrick smirked at me as though he were all-knowing. "For fifty grand, would you deal with a monster?"
"For fifty grand..." I stopped. I wanted to tell him 'no.' But as I tried to shoot the word from my mouth, the gun simply wouldn't fire. I was too drunk to lie. "I'd take a look at the damned thing," I confessed.
He threw me the keys to his car and said, "Then let's talk about it. You drive."
Fuck meth. Nothing even compares to the hum of a hundred thousand dollar car caressing my body. I felt the gear shift in my right hand, the seating from the softest slaughtered cows. I adjusted the rear view. I raced to a hundred and twenty. And for the single second I nearly killed us both when a semi cut across, I felt like I was returning home. As close as to home I could get, anyway. To Cyrus's.
