Page 57 of Intoxicated
“I mean…” I clear my throat. I suddenly don’t have the appetite for my Indian food. “Guess it started while I was in college. I had a buddy who got massively fucked up by an evil chick who thought it would be funny to make her fall in love with her only to dump him. She never intended to marry him after school, which was what she originally told him she wanted to do after she lured him into her web of lies.” My words make Cher roll her eyes. She may be unimpressed, but what I say is the truth. My best friend, dear old Hank – yes, that was his real name, because he hated Henry with the fire of a burning sun – fell in with the wrong girl. We all knew she was trouble, but he wouldn’t listen to us. The girl was so spoiled that it meant nothing to her that the only way she could amuse herself was by playing with others’ feelings. “When she dumped him on his graduation day, I decided to get back at her on his behalf. You have to understand…” I hold up my hand before Cher can protest what it was like being twenty-one and watching my friend slowly waste away from depression. “Hank was in abadway, and this girl was seriously bad news. Luckily, I knew she had the hots for me. She tried multiple times to hook up with me while she was with Hank. So, while Hank stayed in bed for a whole month, I invited her to a party I threw at my family’s summer house.”
“Where you fucked and dumped her in front of everyone, I’m assuming.”
“I fucked her, yes.” I don’t go into the details. Like how I fucked her as if she were a worthless woman not worth the labelhuman being.It wasn’t my proudest moment. Everything I did with her was fueled by anger for my friend, who refused to answer my texts and calls. His mom was always blowing up my phone, though, telling me how worried she was about her only child. The man had just graduated college and couldn’t be assed to go to the job he had lined up. He lost that job, you know. He was bound to become one of Portland’s hottest architects, and he was too depressed to remember he had his whole life ahead of him. “Long story short, I made sure she was good and smitten with my looks, dick, and body before humiliating her in front of everyone we knew. It was our senior year, you see, and I wanted to ensure she would be mortified until the day she either graduated or dropped out.”
“Dare I ask what you did?”
I glance around us and lower my voice. Cher leans in closer, some of her hair falling into her paneer. “I got us nice and toasted the night before the first day of classes. The campus was crawling with froshies at their orientation and seniors getting ahead of the game. I may have had her so blazed I convinced her to engage in some late-night hanky-panky in the great outdoors.”
Cher continues to methodically chew her food.
“And we werenasty.Ahem.”
She swallows, still unperturbed.
“After she was passed out, I left her there. By then the sun was coming up, so I barely had enough time to drag my naked ass back to my on-campus apartment. Half an hour later, she wakes up to everyone laughing at her lying naked and hungover in the middle of campus. Never saw her again after that.”
Finally, Cher shakes her head, but it’s hardly in admonishment. “Stone cold. Was your friend vindicated?”
I wait until she’s well into her next bite before responding. “He killed himself the next day. He never heard about it.”
She stops chewing. That’s the only response I get, until, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, well… so am I. He was a good guy who didn’t deserve any of that.”
“Unlike that nasty bitch, right?”
“Figured you’d be on her side.” I barely think about the food I’m consuming. I’m too busy thinking about Hank and how quickly he slid into that darkness. What was he thinking that last month of his life? How he would never love again? How all women were only out to use and abuse him? That he would rather die than take another breath? Obviously, I’ll never really know. I’ll never know if there was anything I could do to save him, to drag him out of that hell. I didn’t find out about his death until a week later, when I contacted his mother and found out the funeral already happened. Best I can do now is visit his grave down in Silverton once in a while.
“I’m not on anybody’s side,” Cher says. “I don’t know either of these people. She sounds like a bitch, yeah, but your friend probably had other shit going on in his life. She might have pushed him over the edge, but…” She stops, aware that I’m not finding this amusing. “Sorry. Your friend didn’t deserve to die. I’m not convinced that girl deserved what you did to her, either. She’s not responsible for his death.”
“Yeah, well… you wanted to know what got me into my line of work? That was it. Was in a pretty bad spot for a while after his death. Had another buddy ask me to get back at his ex like the way I got back at her, and… one thing led to another…”
“Now you have a successful business humiliating and ruining women who had the nerve to break up with men.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that.”
“Sure.” Still unimpressed, Cher sniffs up whatever’s clogging her nose and pulls more paneer onto her plate. “Thanks for being honest with me.”
“Unlike you, right?” When she gives methe eye,I explain, “you still won’t tell me what ledyoudown your path of unrighteousness.”
“Maybe I don’t have a reason.” Cher shrugs, as if that’s all there is to it. “Maybe this is how I came to survive this crazy world. Maybe you can’t understand what it’s like being a woman.”
There are a million testy things I want to say. She doesn’t have a right to put this all on her gender. Not when it comes to the pain I’ve seen in the faces of some of these guys who come to me for some sliver of justice. You can’t arrest a woman for treating you like crap. I mean, you can if she technically broke the law, but most of them don’t. Most of them get away with being stone-cold bitches who don’t care what happens to you or your money.
Yes, I know… the more I sit here trying to explain myself, the crazier I sound. Suppose it is kinda crazy. Yet after my grief for Hank faded and I realized that this may not be the best course of action for my life, I had stopped caring. This was what I was good at. Not whatever it was my family wanted to do. In my twenties, it was my way of getting back at the world. Striking my own path. Doing what I wanted and going about as I cared. For every woman I was paid to sleep with, there was one who was in my bed for the hell of it.
Now I look in these blissfully brown eyes and wonder what the hell I’m supposed to do. Cher has become both. I’ve been paid to break her. I was committed to splitting her apart, body and soul.
Now, I’m not sure what the hell is going on.
Cher pulls out her phone and scrolls through something on her screen. Yup. Right in the middle of our conversation.
“Whatever,” I mutter, going back to my food.
“Hang on a sec.” She glances up at me, then back at her phone. “Says here I can get some of the weed I like two blocks over. Now I know what I want for dessert.”
“Weed,” I repeat. “If that’s what you really want, I’ve got some in my…”
“Yes, I saw what you have. I don’t care for that, though. You smoke what you want, but I’m getting whatIlike.”
Can I help it if I’m surprised by this change in topic? One minute we’re talking about my dead friend, and the next? Marijuana. Will wonders never cease with this woman? “Far be it from me to stop you from getting whatyouwant.”
Her sly grin punches me right in the chest. “Good,” Cher says with a tawdry purr. “He’s finally starting to learn.”
It being the Pacific Northwest, I already smell pot in the air before we step into a dispensary.
