Drink in case of Emergency (4 page)

             
“Make sure she knows I’m really broken up about the lost job. I’m gonna go grab some more beer. I’m pretty sure we’re going to need it.” Tyler called over his shoulder as he skipped away to the beer cooler. Justin stayed with their shopping cart and left a quick voicemail explaining the situation to Beth’s cell phone.

Ten minutes later they were back with Tom! at the checkout lane. Five minutes after that, they were piling back into Tyler’s Stratus, with Justin behind the wheel.

             
The lumps of charcoal on the grill were red hot and crackling quietly as five thick bratwurst began popping and sizzling from the scorching heat. The sweet smell of grilled meat filled the air as Justin, Tyler, Chris and Scott sat on lawn chairs, each sipping on a beer.

             
“...All I’m saying is that it’s not THAT weird. If a woman wanted to eat a sandwich while having sex, most men wouldn’t complain. But a guy does it, and suddenly he’s not being intimate enough.” Chris was arguing his point with Justin, who argued more for the sake of listening to Chris’s unique form of logic. Scott interrupted, changing the subject.

             
“So, what’s your plan, Tyler?” Scott had been quiet for the last few minutes, seeming content with listening to the discussion. His voice was softened with concern. “Do you have anything lined up? Do you need help with your resume? I ran a workshop on resume building last semester if you want any help.” Tyler replied, moving his voice to match Scott’s soft tone.

             
“Scott, you’re a good friend. What I really need from you right now is the education and experience of another beer.” Scott rolled his eyes at this, but still reached behind him to grab another can out of the cooler and tossed it nonchalantly to Tyler. Tyler caught the beer and tilted his head to the side in mock confusion, speaking in his normal tone once again. “I don’t believe I was clear enough. I don’t just need another beer for myself. I need you all to drink another beer with me.” Scott glanced sideways over at Justin, they locked eyes for a moment of silent communication, and Justin spoke up.

             
“Hey Ty, I don’t mean to be a dick or anything. I know you’re going through a lot today, but I’ve gotta work tomorrow afternoon, and I don’t really wanna be too hungover to go in.” Tyler saw through the excuse and laid on a thick dose of sarcasm.

             
“Yeah...I’m sorry guys. You don’t have to get drunk with me, it’s not like my whole life was just turned upside-down. I would feel terrible if you weren’t at 100% tomorrow afternoon when you go to WORK at your JOB.” The attitude was thick enough to cut with a knife, and was simmering on a pool of anger. Scott looked over at Justin who had a look of confusion on his face.  He had never seen Tyler so direct with his anger before.  Scott let out a sigh and pulled out three additional beers and tossed two of them over to Chris and Justin.

             
All 4 friends now had a beer in each hand, setting one down only to enjoy the brats as they pulled them off the grill. The shadows grew longer, as the pile of empty cans grew larger. The overall quality of conversation was slipping, Tyler’s words slurring slightly more than his friends.

             
“Justin....I know I don’t say this enough, but I love you, man...Beth is such a lucky girl. I mean, I know she looks like a barbie doll...in a good way, but she’s still purty damn lucky to have you...Like...four leaf clover lucky.” Scott recognized this, Tyler had hit supergratification. The level of drunkenness where you feel obligated to point out just how great everyone around you is, and how grateful you are to have them in your life.

“What do you mean ‘in a good way’?” Justin retorted, a smirk on his face, accented by a glint in his soft green eyes.

“You know...she’s not like, plastic. But she is...like...a bombshell. I mean like..wow... she is definitely one of my favorite people to look at.” Tyler’s hazel eyes were fully glazed over, the vacant look of a person whose brain is a full second of processing time behind what his senses were taking in. Scott and Chris sat and listened to this stream, content to simply enjoy the buzz from the beer and the genuinely stupid conversation.

“...wait...are you saying that you’ve spank-banked my girlfriend?” Justin paused for dramatic effect. “I’m not sure if I should smack you or be honored...”

Chris was chuckling at the comment when he was suddenly caught off guard. Tyler’s delayed stare suddenly sharpened, and in a moment he flicked both of the beer cans he held at Chris’s chest. With a beer can in each hand himself, Chris was unable to block the flying cans, and in the moment of surprise his reflexes caused him to flip his chair backwards. Of course this didn’t happen quickly enough, and the empty cans softly bounced off of Chris as his chair tipped backwards into the grass.

“While you’re down there...wanna grab me a couple more?” Tyler was now standing over him, smiling. Still laying on his back, Chris reached up over his head and fumbled blindly in the cooler.

“Uh oh....looks like the party’s over. We’re all out.” Chris said, tipping the cooler over to prove it was empty. Scott and Justin let out silent sighs of relief, until Tyler responded to Chris’s statement.

“Guess that just means it’s time to kick things up a notch.”

             
Scott had been working on his Masters Degree in Civil Engineering, but even he would admit, when it came to coming up with truly creative solutions to problems, Chris was the genius of the group.

Once, when they had all gone on a camping trip together, nobody had remembered to bring a lighter to start the campfire with. Chris somehow got it started with an old AA battery, a pair of headphones and two shots of Bacardi 151 (one of which he had drank).

             
It was this creativity that led to the situation that the group was in now. All four friends were in Justin’s kitchen. Tyler and Scott had their hands down flat on the floor, with their feet being held up by Chris and Justin, in what has long been called the ‘wheelbarrow position.’

             
“Just to be clear, we race into the living room, around the coffee table, up the hallway and into the bedroom. In the bedroom, all wheely-racers take a shot of tequila...” Chris was calmly explaining the rules when Scott chimed in, from his inverted position.

             
“Except me, because Tequila makes me puke, I’m taking a shot and a half of rum.”

             
“Yes, except Scott, whose sensitive Polish disposition requires him to stay away from anything of Mexican descent.” Chris responded, a poke at two separate stories Scott had drunkenly revealed to him over their time as roommates.

One story involving chimichangas and what could only be described as a weekend of emotionally traumatizing diarrhea. The other involving a Hispanic midget prostitute, or dwarf hooker (While telling the story, Scott had used the terms interchangeably) who had attempted to extort a modest sum of money out of him for sexual acts that did not happen (according to Scott’s partial memory of the night’s events).

             
Chris continued, remembering the tiny powerful fists that Scott had described. “After the shots, we trade roles, Tyler takes up my feet and Justin takes up Scott’s. We race back through the hallway, around the coffee table and back into the kitchen, where we all have to send Tyler’s ex-girlfriend a nonsense pick-up line. Winner is decided by speed. Bonus winner is decided by whomever she responds to first.”

             
Describing the exact events of the next six minutes is unnecessary, as anyone who has seen drunk adult men participate in a complex competitive physical activity can imagine the grace, poise and total lack of injury that is expected in such an event. Of course it ended with Emily, Tyler’s most recent ex-girlfriend, receiving the following text messages.

             
Hay, do u like me? Check yes or no.

             
Sweet mamma-jamma, I’m gonna court you so hard, your grandparents will be asking when we gonna jump the broom.

             
Mine dearest, I long for the moment when we can once again make wonderous meeting with our nether regions.

             
Hey I’m responding to the craigslist ad. When does the gangbang start?

             
There was no bonus winner, as she did not respond to any of the messages.

             
The rest of the evening went according to plan. The group of young friends became shamefully intoxicated and continued to make increasingly poor decisions, which led to additional shame and intoxication. The only incident that was out of the ordinary was the thirty three minutes when Beth came home at 11:15pm.

             
Beth felt a shiver as she crossed the lawn to the stairs that led to Justin’s apartment. It was a cool night, even for spring, and this reminded her that winter was a 5 month long season up here in Illinois, or at least it felt that way. Maybe she would move down to South Carolina, live with her aunt while she finished up her four year degree.  She would ask Justin what he thought about this plan.  Maybe he would come with?  It wouldn’t hurt to ask.

The lights of the apartment were all on, as far as she could tell, and it looked like the door was halfway open. The only sound she heard as she made her way up the steps was the squeak of each stair beneath her feet. The eeriness of it all sent another shiver up her spine. When she reached the landing, she found the door wasn’t halfway open, but it was ajar. She pushed open the front door the rest of the way and peered through the doorway before stepping gingerly through the threshold and into the apartment. She was immediately certain that Justin had been robbed. The furniture was strewn about, a recliner lying on it’s side and a lamp on the floor. Beth was reaching for her phone to call 911 while her eyes scanned the rest of the scene.

There was a small cooler in the corner of the kitchen that was full of empty beer cans and leaking what she hoped was just water onto the kitchen linoleum. The kitchen table as well as the coffee table in the living room each had several bottles of liquor, mostly empty, sitting atop and next to them. Her eyes followed a dozen empty bottles of wine that seemed to form a trail leading back through the apartment toward the bedroom and bathroom.

“Hu.....Hello?” Beth finally chirped out as she took another step into the apartment. She jumped back as something lept out from behind the couch to her right.

“SHHHHHHHHHHHH” Tyler hissed as he reached for Beth’s arm. She recoiled in surprise. Beth backed into the kitchen and was now six feet away from Tyler, but could still smell the booze on his breath. He looked as terrible as he smelled. His clothes were wrinkled, and stained in a few places in dark yellows and browns, most of which came from the bottles in the apartment, she hoped.

Tyler’s eyes had the glazed looked of a man who was too drunk to be talked out of a bad idea. He looked disgusting, and then he started talking in what Beth could only describe as a shouted whisper.

“ARRRRRRRGHHH...We’re playing Blind Pirate Pete. Hurry with me, lass. Hiding time it beeee.” Tyler hissed out his words, his whispered urgency coming out rather loudly. Beth was too flabbergasted to respond. As she was starting to get her bearings, there came a shout from down the hall, in the bathroom.

“Blind Pirate Pete hears your words, and he be comin’ to take away yur tallywackers!” Justin burst from the bathroom with what appeared to be a pillowcase on over his head. Beth stared in awe as he hurried down the hallway with surprising speed given his circumstances as Blind Pirate Pete. Bumping against both walls like a pinball, he quickly emerged into the living room.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Beth screamed in confusion, ending the game as quickly as she unwittingly joined it. Justin pulled off the pillowcase before responding.

“Oh, hi hun. We were playing Blind Pirate Pete, but it looks like I lost since you made me take my mask off. Don’t worry about the mess, Tyler can clean it up tomorrow. He needs a job.”

“Truth ye be speakin’! Does the fair strumpet care to try her luck at the trial that is Blind Pirate Pete?” Tyler spoke up in his pirate accent, climbing awkwardly over the couch, tripping and nearly falling when his foot caught between the cushions. As her heart rate began to fall back within normal levels and her shock subsided, Beth felt her anger begin to rise.

Beth had always felt like her anger was a burning coal. She knew that if she held onto it, she was only hurting herself. She learned not to hold it in back in middle school when she started getting headaches from her anger. If she let the anger go somewhere, if she threw the coal at someone, she wouldn’t get the headaches. In short, she needed to hurt someone, and there was only one person here who deserved to hurt.

“You lost your job? And instead of doing what any normal person would do and start looking for a new one, you decide to get drunk and fuck around with my boyfriend?” Beth let the question hang in the air for just a moment, just see how Tyler would respond.

Was he a fighter, or was he weak? Beth glared at him for a full two seconds, waiting for some show of defiance. When she saw none, she knew she had already won this fight, and continued pouring out her anger. “You have to destroy my apartment and waste everyone else’s day because you’re too stupid to keep a job?” She was furious at Justin for having such a loser friend and then being so weak that he rearranged his entire day to have a pity party with him. A pity party that she was sure she would have to clean up after. She couldn’t direct her anger at Justin though, he didn’t deserve it. He was just trying to do what he thought a good friend should do.

“You’ve always been such a loser, Tyler. I don’t even know why Justin wastes time on you. This is not what I want to come home to after a long day of…”

“Wow....that escalated quickly.” Beth was cut off by a voice and the sudden appearance of another person in the corner of the room. Beth looked up in surprise to see another figure climb out from behind the Lay-Z-Boy recliner.

“Shit!” Beth clutched her hand over her heart at this new figure’s emergence. “Well look...” Beth paused, her concentration broken as she tried to remember Chris’s name, “Justin’s other loser friend.” Chris’s gaze did not fall to the floor as Tyler’s had.

Was this one worth fighting? “Look douchbag, I have a right to be angry when I come home from a full day’s work at my REAL JOB and have to deal with my boyfriend and his drunk friends destroying my apartment.” Beth could feel her anger spreading. It was no longer a single burning coal, it was like a small fire that was growing. With two small whispered words, Justin caused a conflagration.

“My apartment." Justin said quietly, almost in a whisper. Beth was in shock, but she didn’t miss a beat.

“What?” Beth screamed at Justin. Maybe he did deserve it. Is this all the thanks she gets after six months of her life? Playing backup to a bunch of loser friends in Justin’s life?

“He said ‘my apartment’.” The figure in the corner said, answering her screamed question. Beth couldn’t remember this guy’s name, but she knew that he had never really liked her, probably because he was secretly gay.

She would not let him control the conversation. Beth felt herself redirecting her anger, ready to destroy this new opponent, but he got out one more statement that stopped her in her tracks. “The only things in this apartment that belong to you are a bag of clothing and a dead cat.”

“Wha…?”

Beth's face twisted at his final two words. Tears began to well in her eyes as her fists curled into tight balls of fury. She took a deep breath in through her nose, ready to lash out. Ready to break bottles and bones. Ready to draw blood. She felt the veins bulging out in her neck.

What kind of sick sons-a-bitches would hurt a helpless cat?

As she opened her mouth to begin her verbal barrage, a soft 'meow' sound came from behind the couch as Tiger padded around the corner of the sofa and into view, a sleepy look on his face. Beth felt her heart leap to happiness, making her dizzy from the emotional roller coaster.

“And he's all better!" Chris called out excitedly. Ten seconds of awkward silence passed, marred only by the soft purring that Tiger gave off as he rubbed against Tyler's leg. Beth felt herself recovering, readying herself for the long fight. She could make his friend’s pay later, right now she just wanted some peace and quiet.

“Justin, I work hard.” Beth put a pause in after her first sentence. She learned in ninth grade how to use uncomfortable pauses to emphasize her point. “I put in eight long hours today being unappreciated at the hospital. As your girlfriend, and as one of the few good influences in your life, I feel obligated to tell you. These fuck ups,” Beth paused and gestured to Tyler and the mouthy one in the corner as she spoke. “They’re dragging you down. I mean, it’s a Thursday night, and they’ve got you carrying on like you were still in college.”

As she was finishing her statement, Beth saw that her words had struck. Tyler’s shoulders fell in shame, and the one in the corner even looked away from her, although it was only for a second.

Time to end this. She touched Justin’s arm, locking eyes with him. His blue eyes were glazed over, he was really drunk. Beth began thinking of things she was going to make him do tomorrow to torture while he was hungover. It was the only way to break him of this habit, that’s what her mom had done with her dad. Beth was going to make him mow the lawn, paint her nails, maybe drive her to the mall at 5:30am so she could go mall walking with her mom. As many bright lights, loud noises, and strong odors as she could muster...Justin’s glazed eyes sharpened for a split second. In that second, Beth felt fear for the first time that evening.

“Wait a second...If you worked an eight hour shift today, where have you been?” Justin tilted his head to the side and began scratching his head in confusion. He looked like a puppy that heard a noise it couldn’t comprehend. Beth paused, thinking through how she could answer, how she could talk her way out of this one.

Shit, think. Think dammit. Beth looked down and saw Tiger brushing up against Tyler’s leg. She couldn’t think of a way out.  Not enough time.

“Where were you for the last five hours?” Justin’s drunken pallor was fading away. Beth tried to move fast. Half truths might work.

“I got off at 5:30. After work I went out with people from the hospital for a few drinks and dinner.”

Shit. It wasn’t working, too many details. Justin’s eyes were sharpening. The fat one in the corner was watching intently, his eyes moving quickly from Beth to Justin. Tyler, drunk and petting Tiger, didn’t seem to pick up on what was happening, but still asked the one question she didn’t want to answer.

“Awh snap! That sounds fun. You shoulda called us and we could have met you. Who did you go out with? Anyone looking for a boyfriend who is unemployed but willing to try really hard in bed?” Tyler joked, having clearly shaken off Beth’s previous comment about him being a loser. Beth’s strong eyes faltered at his question, so Justin repeated it.

Shit… lost to a bunch of drunk assholes.

“Who? Who did you go out with?” When Beth didn’t respond right away, he asked the real question. “What’s his name?”

“Jeremy.” Beth said quietly, slowly lowering herself into one of the chairs around the kitchen table. “His name is Jeremy.”

“Who’s Jeremy?” Justin’s buzz was completely gone now, his emotions starting to build.

“Jeremy Robertson. Dr. Jeremy Robertson. Justin...I’m so sorry. Can we please talk about this alone?”

“Yeah, that’s about all the uncomfortable feelings I can handle right now anyway. Tyler, lets go wish upon some falling stars. We’ll get you a new job and everything.” Chris was moving towards the door and Tyler moved to follow him, mumbling as he crossed the room.

“I’m gonna wish the shit out of some falling stars.”

*****

Tyler and Chris walked outside and lay down in the grass, not saying a word as they looked up into the clear night sky. They couldn’t make out the exact words being said in the apartment, but they heard Beth’s volume gradually increase over the first ten minutes. After another couple minutes Scott came down the stairs and mumbled something about hiding under the bed and nobody telling him the game was over. He lay down next to Chris and Tyler and looked up at the night sky with them.

Another 15 minutes later the apartment door opened and they could hear Beth’s screaming clearly now. “You’ll never fuckin’ amount to anything, ever! And don’t think you can call me next week and ask me to come back. This is it. You can start writing your Taylor Swift song about this relationship! And another thing, Jeremy has a bigger dick than you, too.”

Beth stomped down the steps, dragging her duffle bag and holding the squirming cat. “Hey losers, go back to your pirate butt sex or whatever you were doing before....fags.” Climbing into her black Pontiac G6, she flicked off the group of friends as she slammed on the gas, causing the tires to squeal as she drove away.

Still lying in the grass, Scott and Chris sat up, nudging Tyler to wake up him. Without saying a word the friends climbed back upstairs and into the small apartment. Justin was sitting on the couch, face hiding in his hands, elbows on his knees. Tyler walked over and sat down next to him, offering Justin the bottle of vodka that had been sitting on the end table.

“Stupid Jeremy and his big dick...” Justin mumbled as he took the offered bottle.

Over the course of the rest of the night the group of four young men became dangerously intoxicated. Justin drank to forget the pain of the last half hour. Tyler drank to forget the pressure he felt on his chest at the thought of getting fired. Scott and Chris drank, well, because there is a strict obligation to do so with friends who are mourning.