Chapter 12: Meeting The Devil
We were both jonesing for some uppity, so we got some coffees with extra espresso, or as Jocelyn liked to call it, 'expresso'. We cruised down the Arizona streets with the windows down—a cool 90 degrees, the wind felt therapeutic against our crippled bodies.
Everyone always said drugs were bad. I pondered the validity of that claim. Propaganda surely… If only I started doing this stuff sooner, I would've been way cooler in high school. Those days are gone… Sad.
We grabbed a bite to eat. I was happy because my stomach felt like it was eating itself… Something about the alcohol, molly, weed, cigarettes… It erased our craving for sustenance in the moment, only for us to suffer later down the line. 4 hours until we were scheduled to work.
"Do you think we should try to sleep?" Jocelyn asked.
"Probably… I don't think I can, though."
"Let's just get some energy drinks, yeah?"
"Sounds good."
We chugged two in the parking lot and reserved two more for during our shift. I felt like a productive member of society. Sure, we did some crazy drugs last night, but it's no big deal, look! We're going to work, sober as a gopher! Sleep is for the weak.
We clocked in. Night crew was me in the kitchen, Jocelyn taking care of drinks and customers, and Ariel. The shift was as usual. I cooked burgers, hot dogs, french fries and tots. Jocelyn made slushies and shakes and got an average amount of tips. Every time a customer didn't tip her with a gracious amount she would insult them to us, saying the most offensive things. She was so funny.
Our energy drinks were gone so we brewed a fresh pot of coffee for our stationary travels. The final hour we did a whole lot of nothing, counting down the minutes till close, looking out the windows for, as Jocelyn called them, 'bitch ass customers' to pull into the parking lot.
A vicious late-night rush. A bunch of drunk and high people ordered burgers, shakes, bullshit… Dishes piled up in the sink. I tried my best but unfortunately, we probably would be staying at least 20 minutes past closing time… We really should have tried to take a nap, but alas, we learned our lesson the hard way.
Ariel could tell we were tired and since she was the store owner, she planned to close 5 minutes early. We were grateful. The caffeine just wasn't doing it. We needed sleep, desperately. We did the bare minimum of our closing chores and waited…
A car pulled up. Jocelyn threw down her squeegee and cursed to the ceiling.
"That's just Gordo," Ariel said.
"Oh, cool."
Gordo was Ariel's husband. He was a fat cholo with tattoos covering every inch of his body and he always had a cigarette tucked behind his ear and black shades on his bald head covered in black text. I honestly couldn't read any of his text-based tattoos. They looked like they were done in prison, probably were, but I would never ask about that.
"Ay, wassup foo." Gordo and I bumped fists.
"Nothing much man, how you been?"
"Juss checking out… uhh—"
"The drains, babe."
"Right, the drains. I got my snake in the whip, you wanna help me out bro?" Gordo tapped my chest with the back of his hand.
"Yeah, let's do it."
I helped Gordo get his metal snake from the car, a device meant for unclogging drains. Ariel never enlisted maintenance workers to fix things around the store; Gordo did it for free. I don't think he had a job outside of that…
Ariel shut off the store lights 5 minutes early. When it was pitch-black like this, cars rarely ever pulled up since the store was hard to see at night.
With no customers to worry about, Jocelyn and Ariel cleaned the front-half of the store while me and Gordo unclogged the floor drain. This was gonna make our lives so much easier. We always had to wait for the liquid to slowly dissolve to continue cleaning the floors, otherwise we'd be walking around in a layer of gray water.
Jocelyn hung out with Ariel near the front of the store while me and Gordo bonded over some manual labor. A well-deserving cigarette was in order before I got started on the dishes. He pulled the one from his ear, but when I offered him one of my Parliaments, he put it back and took mine.
"Ay, we gonna go out and smoke."
"Don't corrupt my best cook, Gordo!" Ariel said. Gordo laughed. I didn't know what she meant.
If Gordo didn't arrive we would've been gone already, but his presence seemed to slow Ariel down in closing duties. Jocelyn was good to go and could have left, but she was talking to Ariel.
"So, how long you been working for my wife?" Gordo asked as he lit his Parliament.
"Uh, like, two years now? I think?"
"Shiiit… That's a long time for growth, eh?" Gordo flashed an accusatory smile.
I shook my head with a laugh. "I guess. I like working here though. She's a good boss."
Gordo let out a hefty laugh. "You ight homeboy." He took a drag of his cigarette.
He looked at me from the corner of his eye while blowing smoke in the other direction. "Ayy, you go fast?"
"Go fast? In the kitchen yeah, can't handle the heat then—"
Gordo laughed and cut me off, "Nah ese, I mean you go fast? Like, you smoke?"
He put his index, middle and thumb fingers together and rubbed them against each other, like he was twisting a tube.
"Smoooke, what? Bud?"
He looked at me with one eye squinted. "Ice? G funk? Jib?"
I was still lost. He sighed and looked around, which I thought odd since the parking lot was pitch black and dead. He spoke hushed, secretively… "Glass?... Speed?"
My eyes got all big. "Oh! No, no I don't."
"Well fuck you then." He turned around to walk back in the store. He stopped and looked back at me with his missing teeth. "Ahh! Got yo ass!" He did a dance called the 'dougie'.
"Nah, but you wanna try it? I got some in my car, holmes."
I was surprised that someone as cool as Gordo would do speed. I remember seeing commercials saying 'not even once', but those same commercials also showed a kid melting into his couch from a hit of weed… How accurate could they be? Plus my own experiences the last week… Why not do it once? Just a taste…
"Uhh… Sure… I never done it before, but if I were it'd be with you."
Secretly, I thought Gordo was really cool and wanted to impress him, just like how I wanted to impress Jocelyn that first night we did the yayo together…
Gordo flashed that jagged smile again. "And why's that?"
"Cuz I trust you and I trust Ariel. I don't know nothing about that stuff."
"Ok, homeboy. You know I take care of my own. I'll meet you in the back, by the bathroom. Make sure the door is unlocked."
I flashed him a thumbs up and turned around.
"Ayy, what about Jocelyn? She go fast?" Gordo asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. "I'll ask her." He nodded and went to his car.
When I got to the back rooms where the bathrooms were, Jocelyn was waiting for me with her face beaming with excitement.
"So what did you say to Gordo? About the go fast?"
"How did you—"
"Ariel talked to me too. She said they do it all the time. Let's just try it out, yeah?"
Her eyes were doing that thing again, where her face tilted downward and her eyes through me with that sly grin… I could never resist. If there was any chance I'd back out, Jocelyn just made it impossible. There was no turning back…
Gordo reverse-parked his car at the back of the building. He walked in with a black bag and gestured us into the female restroom. Ariel followed us inside and locked the door.
Me and Jocelyn both felt like the VIPs of Flippin' Patties. Smoking with the store owner and her boyfriend after work! Holy shit! Our hearts were thumping… Gordo pulled out an empty bottle of Bacardi. Molded into the center was a glass pipe with a glass globe on the end. Gordo filled the bottle with a bit of water. It was the dopest makeshift bubbler I had ever seen, puns intended.
"That's sick as fuck," I said. Jocelyn agreed. Gordo nodded his head silently as he set up.
"I made that for you, remember, babe?" Ariel said. Gordo smiled.
"I love my wife." They were not married but he called her this anyway.
Gordo rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a tiny plastic baggie fit to hold a singular pill, but instead was full of what looked like glass. I wanted to crack a joke about it, 'that's why it's called glass' or something, but it didn't feel right. We needed to do this as quick as possible and get out.
The globe had a circular hole the size of a thumbtack handle. Gordo dropped some shards into the globe then pulled out a torch lighter. He showed off the blue flame to us with that janky grin of his.
"I'll get it started for you." Gordo put his lips to the bacardi bottle and torched the globe, expertly applying just enough flames. Like roasting a marshmallow, he never let the fire touch the glass too closely. The water bubbled as he breathed in, filling the bottle with milky smoke. He exhaled a thick, pure white cloud of smoke like he was smoking hookah. The air in the bathroom smelled like under-the-sink chemicals, sort of like bleach. It's hard to explain, but it was filthy.
"Fat ass clouds," I whispered.
"Oh yeah, holmes. Don't inhale dis shit unless you really jonesin. It'll torch your lungs, make them black. Treat it like a cigar. Understand?"
"Yeah, I get it," I said as Gordo turned the pipe around and leaned it toward me.
"You hold it. I'll light it for you. Just breathe in, k?"
"Uh huh," I said. Already I could tell Gordo was acting different. His eyes started bugging and it seemed like his jaw had tensed up and all the muscles in his face were activated…
"You ready?" Gordo said. I nodded with my lips to the bottle. He started torching the bowl. I inhaled, following Gordo's lead and taking several breaths, but there was no smoke coming.
"Ease up, homeboy. It takes a second—there, hit it! Don't waste my shit!"
I listened to Gordo guiding me to victory and kept inhaling the bubbler contraption until I couldn't anymore. I exhaled a fat cloud. Dragon's breath… Smoke trails misted my entire field of vision. The taste was disgusting, like drinking bleach… I handed the bottle back to Gordo, ran to the sink and threw up.
"Virgin lungs, eh?!" Gordo and Ariel laughed. Jocelyn giggled too, remembering our first time drinking together. I ran the sink water and disposed of my vomit as best I could. I did not feel any shame at all. In fact… I felt…
I felt the entire world around me flying at lightspeed, like my consciousness was a fishbowl hurling through deep space, jumping into a wormhole with no regard for precautionary measures…
I felt a confidence build up within me as an energy, rising up at thousands of miles-per-hour. I did not stop after crossing the finish line. I just kept going and going and going… I felt like jumping up and down. I felt like dropping down and doing pushups… I felt…
I threw both my arms up in the air like doing a power pose of victory. Behind me, Ariel and Jocelyn were taking their hits. This high felt unlike anything else I'd ever experienced. No caffeine, yayo, molly, nothing… It felt almost natural in a sense, like all this energy came from within me.
The lights in the room grew brighter, almost like Molly but without the tracer effect. The contrast of everything grew deeper, sharper… It was like I put on a pair of glasses and could see clearly for the first time in my life. My heartbeat was thumping in my chest and it felt like it would burst through my skin and fall into the sink, still beating, flopping around like a dying fish. It was a clear, distinct visual in my mind, almost as if I was seeing it on a screen in front of me. I felt like a Zen master that just achieved enlightenment. Every thought and movement was overexaggerated, a deliberation with each ounce of my flesh…
"Dis some good shit huh?" He could see it in our faces. We were gone, transported to Andromeda…
High speed, can't stop, won't stop… Jocelyn was rolling around the parking lot at top speeds, cutting sharp corners, feeling the air whooshing past her face. I watched her for a while.
"Jocelyn! I'm gonna go do the dishes!"
"K!" She rolled up next to me and had the most beautiful smile with her hair blowing backward. She was so alive. We entered through the back door and locked it behind us to finish closing the store.
Me and Jocelyn cleaned like we never had before. It was a newfound joy. Everything that felt repetitive over the years I'd been working had a newness to it, a fresh appeal… Whatever was in front of me had my full, laser-guided focus. What would've taken me 30 minutes to wash was done within 5 minutes. I spent the most time organizing the dishes in the drying rack, making everything perfectly symmetrical…
Jocelyn was done early too. She did not spend so much time on detailing; she was dancing and grooving on her skates to the music blaring from Ariel's phone. Rap and hip hop stuff, west coast beats, etc.