Satan VI: Lucky Number

 One of my favorite movies is The Royal Tenenbaums, and there is a scene in there that cracks me up every time. The father, Royal, is telling somebody that his foreign companion carried him on his back through the jungle to a hospital when he got stabbed. The somebody asks him “who stabbed you?” Royal points at his companion: “He did.” I think it’s hilarious. You’ll understand how that is relevant as the story continues.

One day I was trying to drink a Natural Ice (gross. Why?) in my own yard, for once. I was wearing a very tight and very short flesh colored dress, which I never washed. There were two chairs in the yard, so my Spanish neighbor was sitting with me. “Are you hungry? Did you eat dinner?” he asked me, concerned (This is all in Spanish, btw, but I’m writing it in English for you, my American friends). “No, I’m not hungry, I have beer.” He said “no, you can’t just drink beer, you need to eat. Flaquita…”

Our neighbor John (everybody in the park is a “neighbor”) was walking by and he joined in on the conversation. The Spanish guy said “John, tell her she needs to eat.” John asked me “Do you like Mac and cheese? With tuna fish?” Meanwhile I was too busy crying because I couldn’t remember the names of all my nana’s six sisters. I looked and sounded pathetic. John asked me if I wanted to come to his trailer to eat. I barely knew him; I’d only seen him walking his trash to the dumpster a handful of times. But it didn’t matter, because alcohol equals poor judgement.

He held my hand as I walked with him barefoot down the road to his house on Riverside Drive (the only trailers that have real mailboxes). Inside the trailer were seven baby kittens, running around and hiding in cardboard soda boxes, along with some other adult cats. He told me to sit on the couch and watch tv, “take your mind off things.” I know football was on; the Greenbay Packers might have been playing (his favorite team). I wanted to play with the kittens (screw football. Still my sentiment to this day). They were all black, except for one calico. I picked it up. “Woah, be careful, they’re still very young,” he admonished me. He said I could bring it on the couch with me if I liked, and he proceeded to make dinner.

But first he asked me “what are you drinking?” I had brought my warm Natural ice with me and he let me put the other one in the fridge. That was a loaded question: did it mean what would I drink, or what could I drink?…(anything. Good thing I didn’t know he had a bottle of raspberry Smirnoff in the cabinet). I said I like Busch Light, and before I knew it he was jumping in his car. I don’t know where he went, but he came back very fast, with an 18 pack of BL. “Here’s a fresh beer.” Wow.

By the time dinner was ready, I was getting sleepy. I took a couple bites of the Mac and cheese. “I’m sleepy,” I cried. And as soon as I said it he was putting sheets on the bed in the air conditioned back room. I would sleep anywhere, I was that crazy (even though it wasn’t “sleep,” just a little break from the intoxication). I laid in that bed, my overheated body at peace in the cool air. But something wasn’t right, and the feeling seeped through the buzz. What am I doing? Where am I? Does anybody know where I am? 

John didnt come into that room, he sat in the living room eating his dinner (actually he’d probably finished  as soon as I quit mine) and watching football and minding the cats. I got up from my non-sleep because I needed a drink. I just helped myself to the refrigerator figuring the beer was in there. Maybe they were cold and maybe they weren’t; it didn’t  matter: I would drink it. 

Football and food were not my thing, so it was time for me to go. I don’t know where I went or what I did, except sip from a can and find somewhere to put the empties (sometimes I just threw them in the bushes). I tried to carry as many beers out with me as I could. John gave me a pack of smokes (he buys Seneca menthol by the carton). I’d end up coming back to his trailer, knowing that the beer was there (he doesn’t drink beer. At all. Ever); even in the middle of the night, as he kept his door unlocked. I spooked him a couple times, but he was expecting me.

Later on he promised me “you’ll always have a cigarette and a beer as long as you’re here. I mean that.” John’s trailer was my new favorite place.

*again my poor judgement told me to publish this.