BRETT AND LESLIE: CHAPTER 12

One Call

“HEY! Petunia! You want your phone call, or not?”

“Ugh?”

I don’t know how I managed to fall asleep in that jail cell. But being starkly hung over without the chance to get a cup of coffee or a glass of water helped. I was so dazed—my head so full of barking drug dogs and phalli in blue space-age fabric—I almost let the guard pass me by.

“Nnnn… oh, SH1T! WAIT! Yeah, I DO need a phone call! Oh, cr@p.”

My throat felt like I had been fellating a horse made of cotton. But I hauled myself to my feet and followed him out to the phones. I was supposed to be at work at the brewpub at eleven, and it was… ten-forty-five.

Obscenities bounced around the cavern in my skull. But somehow, I remembered my work phone number. My least favorite manager-whose-husband-had-nailed-me-while-I-was-half-passed-out-and-then-she-threw-her-keys-at-my-head was, unsurprisingly, on morning duty.

Usually, Kate made the hostess answer the phone—even if the latter was simultaneously trying to seat ten tables, stop a fight, and operate the fire extinguisher, while Kate ate jalapeño poppers—but today she must have sensed fun coming down the telephone wires.

As soon as her c§nty voice answered my call, I made a point to silently thank the universe for its consistency. I wouldn’t call it predictability, given the events of the day, but at least it never changed flavors.

“Ah, hey, Joann—uh, sh!t, I mean, hey, Kate. How ya doing?”

“Great! I take it you’re calling to tell me you’re going to be late. Too bad! Technically, you already are late and I’ve written you up. As I have explained to you prior.”

“Technically, it’s only—” Well, it was 10:47 now, and I was already learning that it was a waste of my time to argue with the delusional. I stopped breathing and pinched the bridge of my nose as a wave of nausea passed. My glasses had somehow become more crooked.

“I commend you for your efficiency, Jo—uh, Kate. I’m really sorry, but uh… I’m not quite sure how to tell you this…”

The guard tapped his watch while Kate happily cleared her throat: “Are you too hung over to come in? Too bad. You have an hour to get here before you’re fired.”

“Fired?!” I said. I didn’t think that was on the table already. I had never so much as missed a shift. Or been actually late. Kate herself had called in “sick” three times the past month. Then again, she did hate my guts…

I didn’t think there was any moisture in my mouth, but somehow it got drier. “I—there’s nothing I can—yeah, I would love to get there in an hour, but aside from not knowing where I am, I’m kind of… locked… in a sort of a… box, sort of.”

“Wow, must have been some night! I can understand their motives. Was it tequila? You have 58 minutes.”

“Look, Kate, I know you’re already enjoying this way too much, but—I’m in jail, OK? I’m in f@cking JAIL. But it’s not my fault, it’s—”

“WOOOOW! JAIL!” She moved from celebration to litigious suspiciousness with impressive speed: “It’s not your FAULT you’re in JAIL?! Oh, that’s a new one. What—did you assault some innocent woman after you fornicated with her—

“…I think you’ve got that sideways,” I muttered.

“…Wow, Lucy!”

“We’ve already said ‘Wow’.”

“I would hang up on you right now, but I’d love to hear what you did!”

“I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!” Although, if I could right then, I might have been tempted to choke her. “They made a mistake! The—I’m not sure exactly why, but a drug squad came to my house this morning looking for somebody else. Somebody ELSE—that is, not me—who had DRUGS!”

“Oh, so it’s someone else’s fault you’re a drug addict? Wow, I wish I could fire you twice, for lying.”

“I’m not—ON WHAT PLANET DO YOU THINK YOU @SSHOLES PAY ME ENOUGH TO BUY DRUGS?!”

After a fake-shocked pause, Kate pretended to be hurt. “Three times—I want to fire you THREE times, for calling us nasty, obscene names. I’m sure the owners would love to hear what you think of them.”

“Yeah, I’d like that too,” I growled.

“Have you even met them?”

“They hired you, didn’t they?”

Kate chose to ignore that part. “So you’re calling us names—on TOP of being a drug DEALER. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I’m not—what?”

“Well, if you claim we’re too stingy for Princess to buy drugs, then how else would you get caught with drugs? You must be selling them.”

Everything suddenly looked bright red. “They didn’t—I’m not—Jesus, would you listen for a second? And not just for key words that make you feel things! What the f@ck are you, a talking chimpanzee?”

“Says the drug dealer.”

“Jesus f@cking—look!”

“Language!”

“LISTEN TO ME! If I were a drug dealer, would I be working at a brewpub?”

“Yeah, as your cover story, maybe. Have you been selling to our customers? I’ve never had the chance to check your socks.”

My neck shortened by about three inches as my brain tried to crawl away from her voice. “Kate, there was an ERROR. I think they were looking for this roommate dude we already kicked out, because he kept throwing his girlfriend at the wall, and we didn’t want to lose the security deposit—”

“But you were fine with him selling drugs? I knew you were a low-life.”

“Low-life? How is that better than @sshole? Look, you hernia, I didn’t know he was selling drugs. He’s a seventeen-year-old from the suburbs in a backwards baseball cap! I just—”

“You look! As much as I enjoy firing you, I don’t want to have to do the carrots today.”

“You couldn’t even get them up the stairs,” I muttered. “Lazy—”

“So I’ll be nice. If you can get here in… let’s see, forty minutes… I’ll let the owners decide whether they want to fire you, after I tell you what you called them, and then you do a spec-ta-cu-lar job today.”

I was pretty sure that “spec-ta-cu-lar” was code for somehow getting all of her work done on top of mine, assuming she did anything in that office besides eat and b!itch.

“…If you aren’t here before noon, though, don’t eeeeven bother. I can probably get Stacey to fill in. We’ll mail your last paycheck, I don’t want you in here going postal.”

I would have preferred to say “I don’t think having you eat her out is going to be much of an enticement for Stacey,” but I thought there was a slight chance I might make Kate’s ridiculous deadline. So I chose to end the call civilly and then hammer the already-battered heavy-duty phone handpiece against the wall in rage.

That decision has been one of my life’s great regrets.

Sure, the guard promised me they would see about getting me out in time. I think he said that to be funny. Three hours later, they told me to get comfortable—they were still searching the house.

“What house?” I said. “The last time I saw it, you already took the door off. If you search it any harder it will turn into antimatter.”

That didn’t help. But at least I got some water.

So much for my big promotion.

The next morning, hungry, cranky—and thirsty again—they finally decided they had gotten all the drug crumbs out of our floorboards, and we were free to go back to what was left of our youthful fortress against a hostile world. More hostile than we had figured, I suppose.

Once I made out where I was, I skip-jogged across the isthmus home, swearing in fear, mouth drier than ever: Chumpy!

The last I had heard of my beloved furry lagomorph, he was being chased around the upstairs by a drug dog, squealing in mortal fear.

Leslie, however—for some goddamn reason—had been released an hour before me, and the look on his face as I sprinted to the top of the stairs made me feel a mixture of relief and confusion. I must have been white as clay; even Leslie was sensitive enough to know why, and he looked worried but not like he had anything to break to me.

“He’s OK! Your guinea pig? He’s OK! I think. But—”

“Oh, thank god… where is he?”

“Well, that’s the thing… we can hear him, but we can’t get him out of there.”

That’s when I noticed the mountain in my bedroom.

I didn’t even know I owned that much crap. But when you piled the shelves up too—well, the crates and planks I was using for shelves—along with all my books and records, plus my clothes and sneakers, Chumpy’s cage, Chumpy’s poop (oh, dear), and the lamp, it looked like that mountain the guy in that movie made in his house to try to talk to the aliens.

They had taken every loose-ish object they could find in the building—along with most of the baseboards, window screens, fixtures, stairway bannisters, cupboard doors, door-doors, door handles, and even some of the cupboards—into piles in the middle of each room. I couldn’t WAIT to see the practice room—and nobody had ever cleaned up the bonfire we made of Paul’s loft.

“He’s still hiding from the dogs,” Leslie said, pointing at the heap. The heap sounded like it was panting.

“I think he has shell-shock,” Brett added, looking particularly pigeon-toed and greasy. We all looked like sh!t, though. More than usual.

“Ha ha—look, Lucy!—Sylvia left drug syringes in your room! And they missed them!”

“Holy shit…” My heart stopped and then started again as Leslie scooped up a trio of used needles from a pocket of guinea-pig dung. No doubt the innards of those syringes had been coated with smack; I don’t know where she or I had hidden them, but the cops—as gleefully as they had trashed my belongings—had completely missed the distinctive orange plastic caps.

“I guess that’s why they had the g@dd@mn drug dogs,” I grunted. “They can’t find hunting-orange drug paraphernalia without them.”

“Or their asses with both hands.”

“They found Paul’s stash, though! Ha ha!”

That’s when Chumpy produced the most piteous whimper any of us had ever heard.

My heart stopped again. “Ohh… Come out, buddy, the dogs are gone… Mom’s here! I love you, little dude—come on out.”

The guinea pig whimpered again like he had heard me, but without a reassuring touch, he could only sit where he was and shiver so hard a pile of my offensive T-shirts began to tremble. Despite ourselves, we began to laugh.

“I think we can narrow it down,” Brett said.

“Lucy, your guinea pig sucks at hiding,” Leslie said.

“Thank the gods,” I said. A handful of fur never felt so good. But Chumpy kind of had a drinking problem after that.