September 2008, A Creeper

We parked behind Hookah Joe’s in Arben’s 1994 Crown Vic, a car that had been a police interceptor at some point and still carried itself that way. Riley insisted on riding shotgun and neither Pavel nor I argued. I had picked up a pack of menthol Parliaments earlier and smoked through half of it in a few hours, lighting one after another. My mind was on my move at work from the front of the house into the back as a fry cook. I kept replaying it without finishing the thought. I smoked faster than I meant to. At the time it didn’t register as anything. It just felt normal to keep going.

We scattered from the car into the alley behind Hookah Joe’s, moving low and fast, dropping behind the dumpster where the street couldn’t see us. We sat on crates pushed up against the brick. Riley pulled out a joint she had rolled in the car, tight and even, and Arben passed her a book of matches, insisting good weed should be lit with wood. She lit it and took a deep inhale, coughed once, sharp and contained, then handed it to Pavel like that settled the matter. The smoke smelled wrong immediately, not sweet or green, but chemical, sharp enough to sting my eyes before it reached me. Ammonia, like a bathroom someone had just tried to clean. Pavel took a long hit anyway and nodded, which didn’t mean anything.

Arben inhaled and immediately started coughing, bending forward and shaking his head. He told Pavel it was all stems and embalming fluid. Pavel laughed and told him he was a bitch who didn’t know good weed. Arben wiped at his eyes and passed the joint to me. I could see tears on his face from how hard he’d coughed. I took a pull and went through the same thing, lungs locking up, chest burning. Riley said both of us had virgin lungs. I tried to laugh and made it worse. The smoke scraped going in and stayed there, tasting flat and metallic, like smoke from a house fire I’d stood too close to once. The joint kept going out and Riley relit it twice. When it burned down she dropped the roach into a pipe and took a hit, then passed it to Pavel. He waved it off. I took it and coughed harder than before, the burn sharp and ugly, like the gutter oregano I’d tried once in tenth grade. Riley smiled at me and said I was a real fucking trooper. Arben refused. Riley and I each took two more hits.

We knew better than to linger. We stood up and went inside, still coughing a little, trying not to sound like it. The back entrance smelled like stale smoke and cleaner. My chest felt scraped raw and every breath came in a little too sharp. I was wearing a polo shirt I liked, faded from too many washes, with a faint cigarette stain near the hem that never came out no matter what I did. I hadn’t noticed it before leaving the house and didn’t think about it now. Arben pushed the door open and we moved through without stopping, up the stairs and into the bar, shoulders loose, eyes half-lidded, moving like we belonged there and like we didn’t care who noticed. The coughing faded but didn’t fully leave, settling into my chest as we crossed the room, the noise swallowing it before it could matter.

There was no high. I saw it on Arben’s face before I admitted it to myself. He shook his head once and told Pavel and Riley to go upstairs and find a room, get some cards. He said he was going to show them a magic trick. They disappeared up the stairs. I pulled out my cigarettes and lit one, offered one to Arben, and he took it without hesitation. He asked why he had invited those two, said Riley was sketchy and Pavel just fucked around with his guitar. Before I answered he laughed and took a long drag, said I was fucking crazy for hitting that pipe, said she probably smoked rock out of it or something. The thought hit hard and then slid off. He laughed. I laughed. It didn’t fix anything, but it didn’t stick either. The hookah manager came up to the counter and asked us what we wanted.

Arben grabbed an ashtray and studied the menu. Lil Wayne was playing on the speaker system throughout the hookah bar. Arben turned to me and asked me what we should get and I told him green apple was tart and sweet. He shrugged. The manager didn’t ask for ID. He never did. I’d been coming in and out of this place since I was sixteen. We weren’t checked or questioned. For all he knew we could have been fourteen. We might not have looked it, but we moved through the space that way, confident and uncorrected, already halfway upstairs before anyone decided otherwise. The manager wore a red polo with the Hookah Joe’s logo printed on it. He was stocky, bearded, focused on what he was doing. I pulled out my wallet and put twenty dollars on the counter. Arben looked at me, a little surprised, then added another ten. He asked for drinks and snacks. Bottled water, pretzels, candy bars. Munchies. The manager nodded and told us he’d bring the hookah up in ten minutes. Arben told him to keep the change.

We headed upstairs with the bag, steps heavier than before. Somewhere between the first landing and the second I felt something shift. Not much. Just a thin pressure, like something rising slowly. I leaned in and told Arben it was a creeper. He shook his head and said it was bed bug weed from bed bug people. I couldn’t tell if that included me. I didn’t ask. We walked through the rooms on the second floor and didn’t see them. It was early, a weeknight, not many people around. We kept going up. The third floor furniture looked cheaper, mismatched, worn down in a way that felt permanent. We found them in the back room at a big table, cards spread out. Arben dropped the bag in the middle and we all reached in at once, pulling out water bottles and snacks without looking.

There was no music. The speaker in the room didn’t work. Riley noticed immediately and pulled out her iPod speaker, crouching by the outlet. Pavel and Arben shuffled the cards. I sat and watched. Something about my vision felt off, not broken, just shifted. I smiled at that and lit another cigarette and started laughing. Arben and Pavel looked at me. Riley was still messing with the speaker. Arben asked what was so funny. I didn’t answer. I don’t think I heard him. I laughed and smoked. Pavel started laughing too. He leaned over, took the cigarette out of my mouth, and hit it. I watched him do it without reacting, not offended, not sure what I was supposed to feel. I laughed again. I turned back toward Arben and his hands were moving across the table like he was turning records, slow and deliberate.

I took a moment to look at Riley. I hadn’t really looked at her before. I noticed the black shirt she was wearing and how it fit without seeming deliberate. She was digging through her purse, pulling things out and putting them back in the wrong order. I stood up and wobbled over without deciding to. I asked her what she was doing. She looked up at me, confused, and said she was looking for her iPod. She tipped the purse over and everything came out onto the floor. It landed in flashes. Lip balm, keys, receipts, loose change. While she was doing that, the hookah manager came into the room carrying the tray. He set it down on the table and lit it. I watched him work, the way he adjusted the coal and waited for the smoke to thicken. He glanced over at Riley and me and asked what we were doing. Riley snapped upright immediately, said she was sorry, said she was just looking for her iPod and that everything was great. The manager shrugged and left.

I pulled my iPod out of my pocket and handed it to her. She took it slowly and looked at it for a second. She asked if she could keep it. I told her it was for music. She looked at me like that didn’t quite track. She said she thought I was giving it to her to keep. I told her again it was for music. She nodded and asked if I had a cigarette. I pulled out my pack and gave her one. She shook her head and laughed and asked why I was so weird. I laughed too. Pavel told us to shut up because he was showing Arben a magic trick. I told Riley I liked her shirt. She said thanks and went back to stuffing everything into her purse.

I plugged the iPod into the speaker and “Engel” came on. The sound filled the room all at once, heavy and close. My body caught the rhythm before I did. I started moving without checking if it made sense. Pavel and Arben started laughing. Every movement sent a small jolt through me and I kept going, the music carrying it forward. It didn’t feel sufficient to stay on the floor. I crossed the room and dragged a table over, chairs skidding and falling out of place. Arben looked at me over the hookah and asked what I was doing. I turned my head, tongue hanging out, and told him I was going to go fucking dance like it was Necto. Pavel fell out of his chair laughing and told me Necto was a gay bar. I didn’t know what that meant and didn’t care. I always thought the cool people went there. When the table was where I wanted it, I climbed up clumsily and started gyrating.

“Tier” came on and the movement got worse. I pulled out another cigarette and smoked it while I danced. Riley sat back down with Arben and Pavel and they watched me, smoking and laughing. I liked that they were watching. I didn’t know why. It felt obvious that I should be doing this. I heard Arben joking that Pavel didn’t know how to party and that was why I’d come along. I didn’t respond. The music kept pushing electricity through me, every beat adding to it. I was soaked in sweat. I don’t know how long it went on, but “Tier” was still playing when I finally climbed down and sat at the table. Everything felt friendly and complete. Arben tried to talk to me but it sounded like pots and pans hitting each other.

I took a deep hit from the hookah. Pavel stood up and went over to the iPod, scrolled through it, said something about Japanese music, something shitty, then put on The Crystal Method or maybe The Chemical Brothers. He started dancing. I told him no. I got up and danced right in front of him. Riley cheered and told us we were both weird as fuck. The synths kept pressing forward. Pavel’s skin brushed mine and I felt his breath on my face for a second. It was warm. Something hung there without forming into anything. Neither of us did anything about it. The music kept it moving. Arben laughed from the table while passing the hookah to Riley.

I recognized the next song, or thought I did. It was called “Bad Stone” or maybe “Elektrobank.” Pavel got tired of dancing and went back to the table. I followed him and told him I’d won the dance off. He said he wasn’t even trying. I wandered over and sat with everyone. Arben asked Riley if she was religious. Riley said she didn’t know, like church or something, her answer loose and disconnected. Pavel cut in and said something about Jesus walking on water barefoot. Arben said Jesus wore sandals. That turned into Arben talking about the Prophet, peace be upon him, and how footwear mattered. Arben asked me what I thought. One of the Street Fighter II Turbo stage songs came on. I told him sandals were shoes and that we were all wearing shoes. Arben seized on that and told Pavel he was wrong, that shoes were sandals. Pavel stood up, lifted his foot, and showed us his Nike Airs. He said they were called Airs because you could walk on air with them. All of us called bullshit.

I stood up and took my shoes and socks off. Arben stood too, watching closely. Riley leaned back in her chair, smoking the hookah and looking between us. I climbed back onto the table I’d been dancing on and dropped one of my shoes from the edge. It hit the floor. I felt triumphant. I said shoes could walk on air. I crossed my arms. Arben took off his shoe and tossed it at me. I fell off the table catching it. I didn’t hurt myself. There wasn’t a loud sound. The music covered it. I pulled myself up and saw Arben rapping his argument at Pavel, repeating, "If the shoe falls, you know your motherfucking argument stalls." Pavel shook his head and explained that the argument was that if Jesus wore Nike Airs he wouldn’t just walk on water, he’d walk on air.

I climbed back onto the table and tried to walk off it. I fell again. This time it was loud. People from a nearby room leaned in and asked if we were okay. Pavel told them we were having an important discussion and that everything was fine. They shrugged and told us to be careful and left. I felt the urge to start dancing again as Guile’s Theme played, or maybe Cammy’s. I watched the argument flare and fade, Arben and Pavel standing, rapping about shoes and floating and Necto. Riley came over and asked me for a cigarette, said she’d left hers in her purse. I gave her my last one. She told me she liked my shirt.

As the songs kept changing, I kept dancing. I wandered back into the arguments whenever they came up and then drifted out again. Riley explained what a fluffer was and none of it connected for me. Arben asked Pavel if he was a fluffer. Pavel denied it loudly. The conversation slid into pillows and then somehow into geometry. Arben asked me to explain how a square had four equal sides. I told him four times four was sixteen. Nobody corrected me. The hookah sat in the middle of the table and went mostly untouched after that, Riley taking pulls from it every so often without comment.

Gradually my vision came back into focus and everything stopped feeling so electrical. “Los” came on again through the speaker. We’d been up there about an hour and a half. We were all sitting at the table playing blackjack without much enthusiasm. I dug through my pockets for my cigarettes and found the pack empty. That bothered me more than it should have. I took a couple pulls from the hookah instead. The room was quiet in a way it hadn’t been earlier. The energy had drained out of it evenly. Arben and Pavel both looked spent. I noticed I wasn’t wearing shoes. One was by the other table and the other was under my chair. My socks were in the middle of the floor. I gathered everything up and put them back on.

I asked Pavel if he had any more weed. He said we’d smoked everything he had. Riley said she had more at her place and could grab it, but we couldn’t smoke there. Arben said he had work the next day and wasn’t down for anything else. I stayed with Arben on that. Pavel asked Riley if she wanted to come back to his place. She said yes.

We packed up slowly and left. The playing cards stayed on the table, every hand losing. Riley handed me one of her menthol Parliaments and I took it without hesitation. I lit it on the way down the stairs. We said our goodbyes. Arben and I walked out through the front. Pavel and Riley went out the back. I sat in the front seat with Arben and as we pulled away I saw Pavel’s Crown Vic roll out with Riley in the passenger seat. I finished my cigarette and leaned back. I was happy the night didn’t argue with us on the way out.