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I was wandering around the living room, looking for my
car keys, ready to leave, when I heard music. It was classical
music, a symphony. I thought no one was home, so I walked
through the house to make sure nobody had left his stereo on.
Nope, it wasn’t coming from inside the house. I figured it must
have been a neighbour’s stereo. Funny though, no matter where
I walked in the house, the volume remained constant. I
shrugged it off, found my keys, and headed out to work. When
I stepped outside, the volume stayed the same. When I got in
the car, the volume stayed the same. All the way to work, I left
the car radio off, because my own private symphony played on.
I’m actually hearing things, I thought. And not just
random things, but a whole classical symphony. I was so
freaked out by the time I got to work that I blurted out to
James, “I keep hearing classical music everywhere I go!”
“Oh, the fucking classical music. I’ve had that too, man,”
he said.
“You have?” I asked, surprised.
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No one had put anything on the jukebox, so the bar was
quiet and I could still hear it. The violins had come in now.
“Yeah, dude. You been up for a few days? I’d tell you to
lay off the shit for a while, but I’m probably higher than you!”
he laughed, and then looked over at the jukebox. “I’ll help you
out, bro,” he said and walked over to the jukebox, putting in a
few dollars. He pressed some buttons, then turned to me,
grinning, as the first notes of the first song from The Misfits’
Walk Among Us came blasting through the speakers.
“Let the fucking classy shit fight its way through this!” he
said, his face contorted into extreme musical appreciation. He
loved The Misfits. I laughed.
“Nervous laughter,” I could hear my mom saying. I
wondered if she had picked up that gem while she had been in
the nut house.
My friend Kendall came down to the bar that night to
visit me. He was a cop with the Oakland Police Department.
Kendall and I had gone to high school together. Everyone we
knew stopped hanging out with him when he entered the police
academy. I had been the only one to attend his graduation. All
of our other friends saw him as the enemy, but I still saw him as
that kid I used to listen to Flipper and skate with. Except now,
he could get rid of my speeding tickets and bring me interesting
stuff from the evidence locker. He sat at the bar, in uniform,
drinking a whiskey.
“Better hope you don’t shoot anyone tonight,” I said,
motioning towards his drink.
“Ha!” he responded. He chatted away, dissing all the
other law enforcement agencies in the area: “Belvedere Police
Department? You know what that is? That’s two guys who
needed a job. Alameda County Sheriff’s department? Thugs
with guns, man. Highway Patrol? AAA with a badge!”
I told him that I didn’t have much respect for the law.
“Still hoping for Anarchy? What would keep shit from
falling to shit then?” he asked.
“Morality. I know right from wrong. I don’t need the law
to tell me that,” I responded.
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“Anarchy, huh?” he grinned.
“ANARCHY!” I said.
“Do you honestly think that, as a species, we’ve
developed that far? Do you think that we don’t need the law?”
he queried.
“No, not the whole species. Just me.” I said.
"Oh! Of course, just you, Adam. But, until the rest of us
catch up with you, I’ll continue to arrest motherfuckers who
beat their kids, rob homes, and kill each other.”
“And drug addicts?” I asked.
He gave me a hard look, then said, “I got nothing against
the drug addicts a state sponsored hot shot wouldn’t fix,” and
laughed.
I was trying to breathe deeply, fight the urge to
hyperventilate. I decided to change the topic.
“You know, Kendall, you’ve been a cop for a while
now ” I started.
“Yeah, so?” he answered.
“So, I think it’s high time you grew a moustache, man.
No one’s gonna take you seriously with that badge and gun if
you don’t have a moustache.”
“Fuck you,” he said, smiling.
“You know I’m right.”
“Motherfuck you,” he laughed and left to go back on
patrol.
I wondered how long he would be able to stay himself in
that line of work.
The spiders danced in my peripheral vision.
Yeah, the rest of the human race had a long way to go
before it caught up with me.
Idiots and assholes, man.
It was after closing time, and James was holding a paper bag
over my mouth and nose.
“Breathe! Breathe!” he urged me, sternly.
The hyperventilation attack had started right after we had
closed, as I was cleaning up, stacking the stools on top of the
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bar. It was strong—I couldn’t stop it. I could hear my own
rapid breath, see the blackness creeping in, closing off the sides
of my vision; it felt like my head would unscrew and fly off.
“Breathe!” James said, again.
I pushed the paper bag and his hands away from my face.
“It’s not working,” I managed to say.
“Of course it’s working! It always works!” I heard him
say.
Then I passed out.
I regained consciousness in the office chair. James was
shaking me by the shoulders and shouting my name. I glared at
him.
“YOU BACK?! FUCK FUCK FUCK!” he asked, still
shouting.
I looked around and saw the paper bag on the desk in
front of me.
“It always works, my ass,” I choked out. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]