CHAPTER 4: DISAPPOINTMENT
“I guess there’s a reason you haven’t had one in years. They don’t make it anymore,” I say to Chester, who has an animated sulk all over his face like a character in the Sunday funnies.* (I can’t think of a reasonable simile, so this will have to do.)
“Bbbaaauuuuuhhhhhh, what a let down! That’s all I wanted. I’m not a greedy person. I’m a good man. I do my best in life. God must hate me,” Chester says, and turns away from the menu.
“Ooooooo-K, that’s a bit much. Just get something else,” Taylor says.
“Nope, it’s time for a boycott.”
“We came all the way down here so … never mind – you are a child. Just give me my money back,” Taylor demands, his palm out, ready to reclaim his loaned – but probably never-to-be-reimbursed – cash.
It’s getting late and I don’t want to interrupt this lovers’ quarrel, but I really need to get down to business with my two best friends. “Look, fellas, we need to talk about something, so can we wrap this up?”
“Alri’, I’ll just get a six stripper meal, a side of biscuits, and a large Pep.”
Chester never wastes money that’s freely given, and I gather ‘Pep’ equals Pepsi in his newfound vocabulary.
In a few moments we’re all outside. Taylor is leaning up against my Datsun and Chester’s jamming whole strips of chicken into his mouth, covered with a mix of honey mustard and barbecue, which he coins as being suicidal. I’m still not sure what he means by that.
So as I lay out the groundwork of the story to the guys, they absorb it all. After the conclusion, I get what I expected would be the main response from both, and Chester fires off first.
“So how big were they?” His eyes wide, waiting for details.
“Huge,” I say, deciding not to go into detail that her boobs did in fact remind me of Superman – they defied gravity, stood for truth, justice, and the American Wet Dream, or whatever that last one was.
“Did you get a picture?” Taylor says, and crosses his arms, puffing his chest out, and partially flexing his biceps.
“Yeah, I just waltzed in and was like, ‘Hey can I take a photo of your braless bimbo?’ – Why are you flexing?”
“I’m not. This is just how I …” Taylor uncrosses his arms and shifts weight to the opposite leg.
“Big or small nips?” Chester asks with a grin like a child on Christmas morning.
“They were perfect, but her face could have used a bag. Look, I –”
“Were they like dinner plates? Dark? Light? Were they even? I want some details for the spank bank.”
After Chester’s latest chime in, I can’t take it anymore. “Look, this is serious. I think I’m in trouble with all this, and the one thing you guys take away from it is that I saw some coked out chick treating this guy’s house like a nude beach?”
“Bewbs,” Chester and Taylor say in unison.
I ignore it and open the car door, unlocking the glove compartment. With stealthy movements I show them the package Tony gave me, trying to make sure no one else is watching.
“What’s that?” Chester says.
“Flour to make delicious pastries. Some sort of drugs, you idiot. It’s gotta be coke or heroin or something. I don’t know. I grew up watching the same movies as you.”
“We should take it,” Taylor says as he takes a step forward, eyeing the wrapped brick of drugs.
“Yeah, totally. That sounds like a great idea. Go for it, Scarface.” I make to hand it to him. “Only one problem. When I don’t deliver this crap to Sam, he’s going to know who has it, and us sharing the same dorm room won’t be good for either of you. Also, what the fuck do we know about dealing drugs?”
“I buy a dime bag every now and then. But it’s for medical-inul … I mean medicine-al …” Chester struggles to say.
“Medicinal?” I ask.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Remember when I tore my shoulder muscle when we were kids? Well, it still bothers me. That’s why I can’t hit the gym like I want.” Chester begins rotating his arm in a slow circle and rubs the socket joint as if the imaginary pain has suddenly resurfaced.
I don’t recall this tale he is speaking of or how he injured himself, but if Chester has told the story before and I don’t remember, it usually means it was so dumb that I cast it to the far reaches of my brain. “Oh, yeah. I forgot, totally. But that’s not what I’m getting at. What I am trying to say is that people get murdered all the time over drug deals gone bad.”* (Not to be confused with Girls Gone Wild.)
I hold out the drugs farther, tempting Taylor or Chester to relieve me of my unwanted burden.
Taylor takes a step away from the cocaine block as if being close to the substance might give him cancer.* (Proximity to cocaine has not been found to cause cancer.)
“You guys didn’t really think that through did you?” I toss the drugs down onto the passenger side floorboard of my car and close the door. It bounces back and I have to give it a more forceful slam for it to lock into place.
The behavior Taylor has just exhibited is his classic fashion: show his strength/machismo, and as soon as it’s tested, back down like a pair of cold, shrunken balls.
Taylor says, “Maybe we should call the cops. They can come on down and we can set up a sting operation or something. Maybe we can get a reward?”
For the first time in a long time, Chester speaks up with something useful. “Let’s not get all cray about this. Calling the 5-0 is a bad idea. The only real crime here is that the menu is missing my meal of choice.”* (A quick clarification: the first part of his comment was the useful one – the one where we shouldn’t contact the police.)
“I guess,” I say, still pondering.
“Listen bro, Gary* might be a douchebag, but he is absolutely right when he says you can’t trust the po po.” (Here’s a recap for you: Gary is a mega-turd, that is for sure. Most people assume that Gary is Chester’s stepdad because he is always referred to by his first name, but in truth Gary is his biological father.)
“Maybe you’re right. The less involved I am the better. I can just claim ignorance. I know nothin’ ’bout nothin’. Right?” Why I’m listening to Chester’s advice right now, I am not sure. After all, he was the one who gave my grandma a goodbye card when she was in the hospital. To be fair, he was right and we all knew she wasn’t going to make it, but Chester just doesn’t … well, he just never thinks about the feelings of others when it comes to his decision-making skills.
I check the time. I still need to give the bag of ‘five to ten’ that I’d serve to Sam in at least fifteen minutes, or my ass was toast. That’s when I have that gnawing at my insides again. It’s that all too familiar feeling that I’m forgetting something that I felt earlier.* (At this exact moment across town something is indeed happening, and I’m going to feel the repercussions from it later.)
The last two minutes of our discussion conclude with Chester still in a funk because the Double Down was no longer available at the KFC, and it’s decided that I need to hand off the incriminating evidence and hope that this special delivery service I provided is a one-time thing.* (It isn’t.)