Funny how life sometimes brings up the questions we never thought we’d ask ourselves. At this very moment, for example, I ask if I’ve ever really felt just how soft the earth can be underneath a pair of dress slacks? As I allow the remnants of last night’s rain to seep through the fabric and dampen the back of my legs, I can’t help but laugh a little. The things we choose to focus on at the damnedest times. A man might ponder why his doctor has a portrait of Tom Waits on the wall as he is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. A woman who has just been fired after fifteen years with the company may wonder why she is laughing uncontrollably, simply because her boss’ chair made a farting noise. Are these nervous tics? Coping mechanisms? Misguided attempts by our subconscious to tell us that life goes on regardless? Or random moments in the lives of random people who populate a random universe?

Looking out over a field of unmolested wild grass leading to the distant woods, I wonder if I am the first man in decades, possibly centuries, to lie in this exact spot. A slight breeze out of the west offsets the gathering heat, yesterday’s thunder having not swept out the humidity entirely. Another storm is building, and I wager it will be here by the afternoon. There is no reason why I should be lying here so peacefully right now, no reason at all. I am still somewhat drunk, and considering how recklessly I was just driving I ought to be in the back of an ambulance or a squad car. Why am I still here? What greater purpose is being served? I’ve made so many poor choices, so many mistakes and done some truly ugly things. And yet God, or whoever is tending the light at the end of the tunnel, continues to grace me with life. I just can’t figure it. About fifteen yards behind me, up the hill on a gravel road I can hear my phone ringing again. My head hurts. I am lying on the side of a hill and feel I should relieve myself soon.

I stumble on the slick grass and walk back up to my battered old black Civic. Opening the door, I realize that my keys are still in the ignition and the thing is still running, which is honestly astonishing considering how much rattling is coming from under the old girl’s hood. This machine probably belongs in the scrap yard but, to be fair, the same could be said about me and yet we both persist. I turn the car off and grab my phone before ungracefully sliding back down the hill. I feel like there has to be a reason why I stopped here, I mean physically right here. Yeah, I want to sober up but I could’ve parked in a gas station and slept for a few hours. I need to concentrate but concentration is hard when you’re hovering in that gray area between being drunk and hungover. My phone isn’t helping matters either. I see that I’m up to nine missed calls and three voicemails. Having left my best friend a cryptic message this morning after what happened last night, I shouldn’t be surprised. Sorry Rosie, but I don’t know what to say yet. I put my phone away and close my eyes.

I have searched my conscience, and as much as I would like to believe my current situation is due to some sort of cruel cosmic calamity; it is actually the culmination of events set in motion long ago. When you toss a pebble in a pond it has a ripple effect upon the water. I can point to a specific night last August when a pebble was cast in my life; a half-baked epiphany I cooked up while getting ripped with my drinking buddy. What transpired between then and now is hard to accept or believe really and the only word I can think of to describe it is fucked. I have been put on leave from my job under a cloud of scandal that threatens to destroy everything I’ve worked for. I had to watch as the only person in my family who ever gave a damn about me died frightened and confused. Now just last night, in a moment of vulnerability I revealed something to my best friend, something I’ve spent decades hiding from, and if the look of horror on Rosie’s face was any indication, I may have alienated the only family I had left.

It was on a Saturday last August, one of the last before schools opened back up. I was wandering around my place half naked and somewhat the worse for wear as I contemplated the evening ahead. I rent an apartment on the bottom of King Street, the part that hasn’t quite been gentrified yet. The city of Burlington Vermont is hell bent on clearing out the tattered old Victorians and duplexes to make way for new apartment complexes that working folks either aren’t eligible for or can’t afford, papering over the landscape with gentrification castles rather than addressing the ravaging addiction, income inequality and housing insecurity that’s rotting this city from the inside out. The newest looking building on lower King Street is next to mine, filled with the recently released who chain smoke next to the dumpster at all hours. I live on the second floor of a weathered duplex just off the intersection with Battery Street, tucked away in the back corner. Up the covered stairs is a tiny porch where I kept the lawn chair bike locked, but folks could help themselves to the bottles and cans just outside my door.

My apartment is divided into little squares, connected by a carpeted hallway that creaks like it belongs in a haunted house. Just inside the door is the living room, consisting of a lumpy old couch, slightly less decrepit love seat, a stereo system I keep on the floor so enterprising thieves can’t see it from the window, and bins stacked practically to the ceiling because I am incapable of throwing anything away. Down the hall and across the peeling linoleum of the kitchen floor is my office. Along the right wall are two garage sale bookshelves, one lined with hand selected literature I’ve acquired throughout my life and cycle through every couple of years. The other is a patchwork of gifted books I’ve been meaning to get to, obsolete DVD’s, crafts I’ve been duped into buying and family photos that gather more dust with each passing year. My tan coated desk sits in front of the window, adorned by a wheezing printer, a decade old laptop and usually stacks worth of work from my students that need grading. My bedroom is relatively sparse, two floor lamps, a dresser with the drawers falling off and a bed that’s older than most of my students. The only other aspect of my apartment worth mentioning is the small deck off the kitchen, which I share with aggressive yellow jackets that no store-bought spray can wholly eradicate. But at night it is my sanctuary, the place where I can slip on my headphones, look up at the stars and try to remind myself that life is worth living. At least, that’s what used to work.

That particular evening was hot and sticky with little breeze. My apartment didn’t have AC or a tree to block the sun, so it got balmy during the dog days of summer. I ended up taking a cold shower to sober up a bit and get some temporary relief from the heat. Standing under the brisk water I was again confronted by my protruding belly, puffed out to a disconcerting extent. Sixty pounds gained in four years does not bode well for the future, nor does the fact that I’ve consumed enough booze to fill an Olympic size swimming pool since Covid kicked off back in March of 2020. It’s not that I wasn’t drinking heavily before, I was, but my diminished exercise routine was no longer able to keep pace with my alcoholism. On the other hand, letting myself go had also correlated in giving up on attempts at dating, which considering how most of my previous relationships had ended, was probably for the best.

Now I can spend consecutive weekends talking to nobody and doing little more than lounging in my PJ’s, drinking, reading and watching movies and feel very much content. As I’ve gotten older I found that I cared less and less for socializing in general. Not that I was ever a social butterfly, but after turning thirty-two I stopped feeling the need to curate what would be considered an enriching social life. I also used to feel bad for not reaching out to people to see how they were doing, like I was a neglectful, lazy piece of shit, but then I realized that worked both ways and excepting a few people I rarely got checked up on so to hell with it. If I wanted company for drinking, my friend Elliott was usually willing to oblige, provided I bought the first bottle or round. He and I have alternated as both the angel and devil on one another’s shoulders. We rarely set plans as we’re both apt to sleep or drink through them so any get together is almost always spur of the moment. The exception to the increasing hermitude and disconnect was my best friend Rosie. She’s a brilliant, if sometimes awkward, conversationalist who can also sit quietly and enjoy one’s company without needing to fill in the gaps with pointless small talk. Aside from my job she’s the only regularity in my life. Every Thursday we have a game night, alternating locations depending on the season and daylight. Every other Sunday, I also drive her to the grocery store. She in turn cooks dinner for us, the only nutritional meals I tended to consume. As fate would have it, I was meeting both for a drink that night.

After drying off and cleaning up I slid open the closet in my room to get ready for the evening. My wardrobe was almost exclusively made up of plaid button downs, worn flannel and oversized golf polos, all designed to mitigate the tumorous fat that continued to spread around my midsection. I chose a brown flannel with black checkers and white stripes, paired with faded dark blue jeans. Assuredly I’d be sweating bullets for a little while, but then I happened to know that there was a storm due from across the lake in a little while, and behind it were temperatures that would vindicate my wardrobe choice come midnight. I’ve found in Vermont one must not just dress for the present, but for the future as well. I slid on one of the dozen pairs of performance underwear from my broken dresser drawer, part of my effort to prevent the painful boils that seemed to plague my inner thighs every summer. I then pulled on the white undershirt over my head and tucked it into my jeans before encircling it with the well-worn belt, meant to act as something of a girdle for my goddamned belly.

Once I was fully dressed I walked to the bathroom to inspect. My dark brown hair grew curly, frizzy and thick on each side and in the back, but the crown of my head frustratingly continued to thin. I missed being able to grow my hair long, but accepted the necessity of a chop before the school year began. My overmatched comb powered through the tangles as best it could before I turned out the light and headed for the front door, where I laced up my brown hiking shoes and performed my ritual pat down to ensure I had my wallet, keys and phone before walking out the door. As I locked the deadbolt, I looked down at my two increasingly full recycling bins. No matter, I was sure an enterprising forager would be along before the night was out. I descended the creaking wooden stairs, under the woven tapestries of unappreciated arachnid artists and walked out onto King Street. Before turning uphill, I threw a westward glance towards Lake Champlain, drawing a deep breath of sea air which thankfully that night wasn’t spoiled by sewage. A shrouded sun retracted the last forlorn beams from the water, back through the darkening clouds while dark yellow slivers of lightning silently flashed above the mountains on the New York side. Was that the storm already? I couldn’t tell, though it might’ve helped if I actually wore my glasses. I ran back up to grab them before moving on.

Now with my eyeballs on I felt a buzzing in my pocket as I slowly made my way up the sidewalk. Naturally Rosie was already at the agreed upon meet spot. In the ten years we’d known each other I could count on one hand the number of times she’d not been early to a rendezvous. I texted her back and asked her to snag a booth if she was able. Approaching King Street Laundry on the left I saw a haggard looking man camped out on one of the dirty white plastic chairs with a box. As I walked past he was deep in conversation with a tree, and though I was not two feet from him we were on different planets. For whatever reason that night I fixated on the road itself as I walked uphill. King Street was by no means flat, but rather the pavement bulged in the middle like a forgotten can of beans in the back of the cupboard. When I was a kid I assumed all paved roads were flat, and when I discovered the contrary it blew my little mind. The first of countless occasions when what I imagined in my head skewed quite a lot from reality. Ruinous potholes also lurked on both sides of King Street. It needed to be repaved in the worst way, but considering the absolute mess the city had made renovating nearby St Paul Street I wasn’t exactly eager for their version of a solution either. They decided to shrink a busy intersection and then have the sidewalk jut out into the street for no good reason (do you need to be able to land a small plane on the sidewalk?). Now it’s a nightmare I avoid driving through at all costs. I sashayed around a diet Coke bottle filled with what I assumed was piss as I rounded St Paul and headed towards the center of town.

The dark clouds were making their way across the lake and the rumbles started as I passed under the lighted marquee of the Flynn Theater. I was already sweating at inconvenient proportions and annoyed at how out of breath I was. Since when had walking a couple of blocks uphill become such hard work? I excused the winded feeling walking to school in the mornings because I was usually hungover, and at times stumbling to the bathroom can be exhausting work. But this was different, I wasn’t that drunk yet and the incline was not terribly steep. I wasn’t an idiot, I knew that I was not a well man. I’d been having vivid, surreal dreams for over a year, unable to sleep for more than three hours at a time, and feeling a fluttering/tugging at my chest when I laid down to rest. Then I would wake up more tired than when I went to bed and noted my heavy breathing for at least twenty minutes after waking. I would start to review the day’s lesson and found that I had misspelled words I damn well knew how to spell. Little things like that were starting to add up, and I was beginning to believe that I was in the early stages of brain damage from booze or Covid, which should’ve been my signal to stop drinking and start taking better care of myself. But then another part of me, the alcoholic, figured if I’m already at the point of noticing brain damage then it was too late for me, so why spend what years of cognitive function I had left sober and hating my life choices when I could keep on drinking and hope that my heart gave out before my brain rotted.

Perhaps that’s a bit morbid, but I’ve always been somewhat morbid, and with the onset of Covid death intruded on my thoughts more and more. It didn’t help that my paternal grandmother, the only member of my family I didn’t have a toxic relationship with, had congestive heart failure and wasn’t likely to live another year. A hundred and two was an incredible run for anyone, but I hadn’t been alive for nearly enough of them and selfishly wanted her to stay a little longer. Nora Cullinane was heading towards that light at the end of the tunnel and a well-deserved rest, at least that’s what I wanted to believe for her. Distracted as usual I had taken a step off the curb in front of Manhattan Pizza on Main Street when a city bus roared through the yellow light not two feet in front of my face. Snapped back to reality by the hot breath of public transit I took care to look both ways before I attempted another crossing onto Church Street. There is no more fitting symbol of late stage capitalism or Burlington than the Church Street marketplace. By day it functioned as a commercially charming tourist trap, a place where yuppies and trustafarians could dump their money and justify the stupidly high taxes levied against every business on Church Street’s four blocks. But that was Dr. Jekyll, now old Mr. Hyde came out right around ten at night, by which time the polite crowd had mostly cleared out.

One of the consequences of the afore mentioned high taxes was that many mom & pop stores had been forced out, clearing the way for a bevy of bars to move in. I firmly believe that you could blindfold somebody on Church Street, spin them around and have them point. If they didn’t point out a place that slung booze after a second try, they genuinely deserved a prize. Thus, on any given night of the week Burlington cultivated more than its fair share of drunken foolishness. This was especially acute on weekend nights, when students from UVM and Champlain College streamed down the hill to mix with underpaid twenty somethings and townies who ventured from the old north end. By the time midnight rolled around on a Friday or Saturday, Church Street and the surrounding blocks were awash in bad behavior and poor decision making. Binge drinkers vomiting in City Hall Park, homeless finding any doorway they could to sleep in, addicts scoring some Oxy in the alley, women getting rushed away by friends (if they were lucky) because they got roofied or assaulted… in short Church Street, and by extension Burlington, was a hot mess.

Normally I wouldn’t have ventured downtown on a Saturday night, but there were only so many times I could brown out on my lumpy couch without it feeling sad, even for me. Besides, I didn’t have a stick of food left in the apartment so I might as well grab a bite between drinks. Two blocks up from city hall, and just a wabble to the right on Bank Street was El Cortijo. Formally a diner and then a delicatessen, the now farm to table Mexican restaurant wasn’t much bigger than my apartment, nestled between two red brick buildings, one of which bizarrely hosted an independent book store on the first floor and a remarkably trashy nightclub on the second. On a Saturday night it was a matter of dumb luck whether or not you somehow snagged a spot in the cantina, so I was pleasantly surprised when Rosie grabbed my sleeve from a booth just inside the door as the rain started to paint the pavement.

“Rosie! A booth? How did you pull this off?” I said as we hugged one another.

One thing to know about Rosalita D’Agostino was that when she hugged you, she hugged you like you were the most important person in the world. Even on the most innocuous occasions Rosie hugged me more convincingly than my mother, or even my grandmother, ever had. I had seen her hug others like this as well, so I knew it wasn’t just me. Once I was drunk and loose enough with my tongue to ask her why she gave such hugs at seemingly unimportant times. She replied that she had never understood why people gave limp, half-hearted or awkward hugs. That one ought not to hug at all if it feels disingenuous or unwarranted. Furthermore, she said, life is truly fragile, and you never know when or if you’ll see any one person again. She wanted to be sure that when she hugged anybody, they knew regardless of what was happening in their lives, that they were cared about and valued. I believe that in particular related to what had happened with her father, but I didn’t have the heart to ask.

“By waiting twenty-four minutes and assuring the hostess that I was not dining by myself.” she said cheerfully as we let one another go

Rosie was just under six feet tall, her long brown hair perpetually in a ponytail and her inquisitive brown eyes sheltered behind a pair of pink rimmed glasses. She smiled often and unlike anybody else I knew, she had white teeth, though they were crooked like the rest of us. She was wearing one of her favorite shirts, an emerald green ‘Pet Sounds’ tee and khaki cargo pants.

“Probably helped by the fact that Elliott and I will end up buying plenty of tequila.”

“Yes I mentioned that there would be generous spending on liquor this evening.” Rosie replied, and I had no doubt she really had.

“How are you friend?” I said as I sat down across from her, facing the window so she wouldn’t have to watch the thunderstorm developing outside.

“I’m good.” Rosie said with her customary head nodding. “Yeah… work’s been a bit crazy. We’ve got more seniors than we can handle at the moment, not enough care givers to fill the shifts and an owner determined to never say no to a perspective client.”

“Mitchell still preaching the power of yes then?” I asked.

Mitchell Berrigan was the owner of AOTGM Senior Care (Angels Over The Green Mountains). He had been a middle manager of a national sporting goods chain based out of Boston. His wife, who was anything from a trust fund baby, a lottery winner or the daughter of an Irish mobster, depending upon whose rumors you choose to subscribe to, grew weary of having an over glorified paper pusher for a husband so she staked him in AOTGM. Perhaps the two of them figured that, as Vermont contained the most rapidly aging population in America, owning a senior care company would be a sure-fire money maker. As anybody in senior care would tell you however, the realities of the industry and what it looks like on paper are two very different things.

“Only in every staff meeting, every Wednesday morning.” Rosie said as she shook her head, “It’s been a year and a half since he bought us out, or more likely his wife bought us out, and still not once, in any meeting has he talked about a client by name. He reviews our billable hours, compares them to this time last year and extolls us to find ways to add more hours. We literally have the same meeting every week. Why he can’t just put this in an e-mail and spare the rest of us forty-five minutes of our lives is beyond me.”

“Maybe this is his way of trying to connect personally with you all as a team.” I said

“If he wanted to do that, he could talk about one of our clients like they were human beings instead of numbers on his spreadsheet.” Rosie said, exasperated as our first round of margaritas arrived. Rosie had a standard house margarita while I curled my hands around a triple shot monstrosity.

“Perhaps not,” I said with a chuckle, “why don’t you tell me about one of your clients then?”

“Well one of the people I’ve probably mentioned before is Professor Kasztner. We do his grocery shopping and prep meals now that his wife has passed on. One night, when I happened to be filling in and making him some goulash, he told me how he escaped Hungary during the Second World War. He and his parents were rounded up from Budapest in 1944 and put on a train for Auschwitz. Before the cattle car could be sealed however, a man who turned out to be a Swedish diplomat climbed on top of the train and began handing out passports while the Nazi’s fired warning shots above his head. The professor’s father managed to get his hands on one of these and gave it to his boy. Several men tried to wrestle it away from him, but as the guards opened the doors his father managed to shove him off the train before they could. He didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye before he was whisked away to a diplomatic vehicle. Professor Kasztner used that passport to make his way to Sweden and later America, but he never saw either of his parents again. He ended up teaching Holocaust studies at UVM for over thirty years as a way to honor them.”

“That’s extraordinary.” I said

“These people are so much more than faceless names and numbers. Many of them have lived extraordinary lives, like Professor Kasztner, but even if they haven’t they are all still human beings, our elders who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and not reduced to dollar signs and billable hours on a damn spreadsheet.”

“Well Rosie my friend, I will raise a glass to that.” I said as we clanged our drinks.

We were having a spirited conversation regarding our desert island five albums, and I was purposely drawing Rosie’s consternation by selecting William Shatner’s ‘The Transformed Man’ when a rain-soaked figure forcefully plopped down next to me in the booth.

“Elliott, nice of you to join us. Did you fucking swim here?” I chided my robust friend as he took off his coat. Stephen Elliott and I had known each other since we were roommates freshman year at UVM. I didn’t know him before his transition, but by the time he got to college he had a temper and knew how to fight. Fortunately, we ended up having a mutual love of old movies, bad jokes and cheap booze so we got on well. Built like a brick shithouse at five foot eight, Elliott had a prematurely gray head of hair, a mouthful of neglected teeth, and a small and delicate nose that look borrowed from another face. He also had piercing green eyes and massive forearms that broke down many a supposed tough guy. The forearms he got from growing up a farmer, the eyes from his father and they were one of the few good things that alcoholic piece of shit gave him.

“No but some floaties might have come in handy, Christ!” Elliott said with a laugh. The scene outside had turned so quickly that I could hardly believe it. On the other side of our window was a wall of whiteish/gray rain that reduced visibility to the point that I could hardly see the building across the street. Lightning crackled unseen above, followed by the base boom of the thunder that caused our drinks to vibrate. Then it started to hail, and the wind began sucking like somebody had turned on a skyscraper sized vacuum.

“If this gets any worse we should proceed to the bathrooms. That’s about what passes for a central location in here. We certainly don’t want to be sitting next to a huge window if a tornado has touched down.” Rosie said, making a concerted effort to not look at the scene behind her.

“It’s not a tornado, just a summer storm so relax.” Eliott countered, “Besides, I don’t think there’s been a recorded tornado in the history of Burlington.”

“That doesn’t mean there can’t be one Elliott,” Rosie said defensively, “Just last year a tornado touched down in Middlebury. And with global warming continuing unabated we should learn to expect the unprecedented.”

“You’re probably right Rosie,” I said, trying to intervene before an argument broke out, I wasn’t drunk enough for that yet. “but I checked the forecast not an hour ago and there was no mention of a twister so I think we’ll be alright in here. That said, if we start seeing cows flying by we will adjourn to the toilets expeditiously.”

“Exactly,” Elliott added, “so just sit back, have another margarita and enjoy the free laser light show.”

“No thanks, I don’t like lightning. Maybe a second drink though.” Rosie replied.

“That’s the spirit! Goddamn I need a drink!” Elliott thundered.

“Way ahead of ya pal.” I said as I passed over an untouched margarita.

“You managed to refrain from drinking available booze in front of you, how novel.” Elliott laughed.

“Just drink asshole.” I said back as we clinked our glasses.

“How’s your work going Elliott?” Rosie said between careful sips of her reasonable drink.

“You ought to know Rosie, it’s August and absolute bedlam. Clients crawling out of the woodwork with projects and nobody wants to work. It’s a goddamned mess is what it is, per usual for the summer.” Elliott responded.

Elliott and Rosie had been colleagues at Green Mountain Traffic Control Experts (GMTCE) many years ago. At the time Elliott was a crew leader and Rosie was the scheduling coordinator. That’s actually how I met her. For a couple of years after obtaining my degrees in education and history I had a hell of a time finding an opening in Chittenden County for a teaching position. I either had to wait it out or take a job out in the boonies, so I bided my time with substitute teaching and Elliott helped me get a spot as a flagger for GMTCE to help augment my spotty income. Rosie eventually took another scheduling gig and I managed to somehow landed a position teaching history at Burlington High School, but Elliott stayed on, getting promoted to northern district supervisor.

“These kids, nineteen, twenty years old with no experience show up and demand, DEMAND $20.00 per hour, like it’s their fucking birthright! Back when you and I started Patrick, we were lucky to be making the $10.00 per hour we did.”

“That was 2009 boss,” I replied, “we were lucky to have a job period. And I seem to recall many a time driving to a work zone talking about needing livable wages.”

“That was different,” Elliott countered, “we were actually out there, showing up on time and doing the job. We’d earned that, unlike these punks who roll in and just expect everything to be handed to them up front. Then they work for, like a month before calling me the night before a job, apropos of nothing and telling me they quit. They don’t give notice, they just fuck off. Most of these kids wouldn’t know personal accountability if it jumped up and bit them in the ass.”

“I don’t think you can exactly blame this generation, can you?” Rosie asked.

“Sure I can,” Elliott said, “At least our generation has something resembling a work ethic. Now we’re dealing with the fuck you, I quit generation. I had a kid drop off his hard hat one morning, smelling suspiciously of piss, a paper taped to it reading I fucking quit you miserable, lying sacks of shit.”

“How pithy,” I laughed.

“I can’t say that I approve of the note or suspected urination on company property, but I see no reason to pledge loyalty to any one company.” Rosie said

“Ah yes, like the time you resigned and stuck us with that asshole who’s more interested in drinking cream liquor under the desk and watching YouTube than doing his fucking job.”

“How is it my fault that you all hired a drunkard?”

“Because you left, that’s how!” Elliott thundered before lowering his voice, “despite your idiosyncrasies we were a good team. Everybody got along, we each did our jobs and sacrificed for one another. We were a family.”

“You know I love all of you, but that’s the problem right there.” Rosie countered, “Work family may sound great, and I appreciated all the closeness, but that also means working unhealthy hours and sacrificing physical and mental health for a job. I’m sorry, but being on-call for seven straight days during a rotation is insane and terribly unhealthy. I just couldn’t handle that sort of stress anymore, not without losing my sanity or suffering a stroke. No job, no matter how much I love the people, is worth that.”

“I know, I know.” Elliott moaned, “but it’s a fucking pain in the ass finding somebody competent who won’t run screaming after two months. Besides, don’t you still have on-call at your current gig?”

“Yes I do, but I rarely get jolted awake at three in the morning because of a broken pole, or getting cursed out by a construction foreperson, or having people send me pictures of their vomit or diarrhea. Not nearly as busy or crazy, though it comes with its own set of challenges.”

“Well it’s been a hell of a summer peak. Last week some kid had the bright idea to drop some sunshine acid before hoping onto a zone in the middle of Route 2 in Waterbury. By the time I raced there the dip shit said the asphalt was singing to him.”

“Well you ought to be an expert in dropping in public, eh old friend?” I said with a grin.

“Fuck off!” Elliott said with a shake of the head.

“There’s a good reason you’re banned from engaging in similar activities.”

“Wait why isn’t Elliott allowed to take acid anymore?” Rosie inquired.

“Do you want to tell her or should I?” I responded, unsure of how much Elliott remembered.

“In my defense, ” Elliott began, “I thought mystical waters were flowing through me, cleansing me of all poisons and hatred. Turns out I was angrily shitting in a urinal at the Applebees.”

“Somehow, the manager got my number and called me to come get him before they called the cops. But he escaped before I could get there. I finally managed to track him down on Redstone campus, shouting about laughing spiders to a group of utterly confused stoners.” I managed to get out before Elliott and I broke down laughing.

“You two certainly had crazier younger days than I did,” Rosie said with the shake of her head and a chuckle.

“Younger days?” I said, “This was what, 2019?”

“Ah yes, the hellion days before Covid and my promotion.” Elliott said.

“Oh my gosh, seriously you two?”

“Don’t be judgmental now Rosalita. If you’d let your hair down and come out for a crawl with us every once in a while, you wouldn’t be such a ball of anxiety.” Elliott said

“I’m good Elliott, besides I know a night of drinking with you two entails. Wearing old flannel and making poor decisions.”

“Well that’s not entirely true,” Elliott said.

“We don’t always wear flannel.” I finished before Elliott and I started laughing again.

We stayed a while longer in the cantina, before the crowd and the noise began to bother Rosie. Elliott and I were going to find another bar to drink at, but Rosie decided she’d had enough for one night. She bid us both farewell, encouraging us to hydrate before walking back to her apartment.