Avery and the Gravity (Part 1+2)

[MalReynolds]

It smells like weed in here. He must have been smoking… It’s still strong, so not too long ago. What time is it?

The light from my cell-phone as I flip it open doesn’t do anything good for my headache. I just stare at the readout, unblinking for a few seconds, taking in the time. 3:45PM. I need a job.

I walk out of my bedroom, down the hallway, to the kitchen. The tile is cold, and the smell is stronger in here. The blinds are drawn, bathing the room in a subtle darkness, cooling my headache. Until I open the fridge, that is.

Inside, I have a large green bowl full of raspberry Jell-o, my favorite snack. On the shelf, I have three eggs. The rest of the fridge is bare, except for the frozen bottle of orange juice near the back. Decisions, decisions.

It smells like weed and eggs now. The TV turns on as I sit on the remote, but the nasal voice of the news anchor really isn’t doing anything for me. I’d leave my eggs on the table, but if Matt comes out, they’d be good as gone, so I take them out into the hallways with me. My neighbor is out of town, his papers piling up in front of his door. I take one from the top; he won’t miss ‘em.

The eggs don’t really hit the spot and just remind me of how hopelessly broke I am at the moment. I check the kitchen clock over my shoulder; wonderful. Going on half-past four and I’ve seen neither hide or hair of my roommate. Where is he? Did he leave already?

The door creaks open to his bedroom, but I did knock, the door just wasn’t shut all the way. The door moves inward, pushing the green felt blanket he uses to buffer the smell out of the way. The gravity bong station is set up in the corner. It takes my eyes a second to adjust to the harsh lighting, both natural and artificial. At first, the form on the floor is a shadow, but as it comes into focus, I wince.

My phone flips open.

“Hello, police?” There’s a pause; every time my heart beats I can feel it in my head, like it’s going to split open. What I’ve just stumbled upon is only really going to exacerbate the situation.

“Yeah. I think my roommate is dead.”

It’s going to be a long day.

-

The thin man across the room is saying something, but I’ve managed to block his voice out while I try to compile my thoughts. Unfortunately, he’s caught on to the fact that I’m no longer listening and rebukes his attempt at conversation.

“Dude, are you listening? What happened?” He’s trying to light a cigarette.

“You can’t smoke that in here. The management will have a fit.”

“Avery, all things considered, I really don’t think they’re going to mind the faint smell of cigarette.”

I sighed. There was no use arguing with him; he was a man with an addiction to feed.

“Just crack the window.”

He moves across the room, trying to lift the window in vain. His scrawny arms aren’t doing the trick. I move over and open it with one hand. He smiles, but before he can retort to my action with the typical house-wife response of “I loosened it for you,” I cut him off.

“The police came, looked around the room, tagged the body, took pictures, called a wagon, and left. They asked me a few questions about the bong setup, and said they’d be back for it later.”

“It never ceased to amaze me how little the police actually know about homemade paraphernalia.” He takes a puff, blowing it towards the window but not straining himself. “Did they come back for it yet?”

“No.”

“So, like… Why don’t you hide it?”

“Because, they’re the police. If they need it, I’ll let them have it. Why the hell would I not want them to have it?”

“I guess.”

The thin man is Justin. He’s a guy my age, twenty, particularly twitchy when it comes to the matter of police and seizing drugs. I guess that’s one of the small hang-ups when you’re a smalltime dealer. His hair is brown, falls over his left eye, covering a scar above it. He says he got the scar during a fight, but his girlfriend told me (in the strictest confidentiality, of course) that he procured the scar when he fell out of his twin-sized bed one evening after a particularly nasty bender.

He was also an aficionado of tight pants and studded belts, a true child of the modern generation. Of course, if you threw the word “emo” out, he had a few choice words of his own to toss back at you, mainly pertaining to your mother and actions performed on his twin-sized bed.

A Jersey boy, through and through.

As he finishes the cigarette, I push the yellow police tape above my head, questioning briefly why they didn’t leave an officer to guard it. Understaffed, maybe, or maybe they just didn’t care.

It’s time to give a crash course in home-made smoking devices. The gravity bong is the item of choice for anyone with a spare bottle, a large bolt, a bucket, and a few minutes. One would be surprised at how easily one could procure the items needed to construct this device.

The bottle is cut along the bottom, and placed in the bucket, which is filled with water. The bolt is stuck through the bottle cap, and a small screen is placed inside the bolt. You put the drug of choice on the screen, secure the screen to the bottle, and light the substance while pulling the bottle up. The gravity effect will pull the smoke from whatever you’re burning into the bottle, at which point you remove the cap and take a hit.

Particularly devastating for a first timer.

The room is different, almost alien. The sun has gone down, and the only light is coming from a desk lamp. There’s a large baggy on the floor, it looks like something a fancy magazine would come in. Besides the unusually low water level in the gravity bong, everything seems up to scratch.

The body was next to the bong, in the corner. I take a few steps over, straddling the position where the body was and hunkering down. It was almost as if he was still here, but something is very wrong. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but -

“What?”

Justin is now in the room. He’s looking over at me, completely upsetting my nerves and ruining my concentration for the moment.

I sigh, and rub my eyes. “Nothing.”

“Are you sure, man? I could give you something to take the edge off.”

He’s misreading my signs pretty bad. I’ve seen worse than what I woke up to this morning; it was a rude awakening, and surprising as hell, but he was reading my annoyance as fear.

“I’m fine.”

He nods, his hair shifting. The scar on his forehead is goofy as hell. “Alright, man. I’m going to get out of here before the police get back.”

I either nod, or wave. I don’t know. There’s something ticking in the back of my mind, a bomb that I want to explode because I know it’ll have the answer I’m looking for. All the border pieces are in place, but it’s like someone forced a piece in the center that doesn’t quite fit.

Like a splinter under your nail. You hope it goes away, but you want to get at it, because if you don’t, it’ll become infested. Or something. I was never good at analogies.

I’m going to lie down.

-

The green tub of Jell-o is sitting on the trey table in front of me, a spoon dug into the bouncy surface. The container is half full, from what I can see. I don’t want to do this, I hate calling in favors to people I’ve only met a few times, socially, especially when the main contact that introduced us is now dead, but if I don’t, not only will the rest of my day be horribly boring, but the splinter will begin to rot and the puzzle will never look quite right.

I hold down the “5” key, which auto-dials Mandy. I only have five numbers in my phone, which some consider sad. I just consider it safe.

“Hello, Mandy? Yeah. This is Avery. I need a little favor.”

-

“And then you found the body?” The officer had asked. I had already gone over the story with him three times, each time exactly the same, tone and meter. I had no idea if he was challenging me, waiting for me to slip up…

“Yeah, officer. Could I go in the other room? I just got up.”

“Alright,” the officer said, flipping his notebook down. “Thank you for your time. We just need to get the body out of here.”

Somewhere, on the other side of the world, a young man was sniping a kitten.

“So… Do you know what happened to him?”

The officer sighed. “Well, it looks like an asthma attack brought on by all the dope he was smoking.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, until we can get an autopsy, no.”

I didn’t say anything, but I turned and left the room. It was almost a Tetris, but the “L” shaped block is one square over, and there’s an empty square dead center.

-

The party had been loud and obnoxious, Matt’s kind of place, where I met Mandy. He introduced me briefly, before I asked her to come outside with me. It was raining, but it was better than inside. I gave her the space under the awning, and stood in the rain, trying to light a cigarette. She pulled one from her purse, lit it, and passed it to me.

We shared a few words. Every minute or so, when my cigarette burned lower, I was forced to take another step forward, towards the awning to keep it burning and out of the rain.

When it was down to the butt, we left for the night. She stayed in my room. I hadn’t called her since.

She’s standing in front of me, looking mildly pissed that I would have the audacity to phone in any kind of favor. Her brown hair is covering her shoulders, a white lab-coat coming down to her knees. Mandy was the type of girl who, if she wore glasses, would be ten times sexier.

She had her contacts in. But the filing folder she held in her other hand was almost as good.

“Oh, just a few strings.”

I nod. “Well, what does it say?”

Mandy looks irritated that I would have the gall to ask. I’m only beginning to lose my patience with the day. If I wanted the report, I would also want to know what was in it. She was obviously frustrated with something else.

“Let me put this in laymen’s terms for you, Avery… When you drown, your lungs close themselves off so they won’t be filled and damaged by the water. Same thing when you breathe in fire, same thing during an asthma attack. The throat just closes up.”

Dammit. “So, he had an asthma attack?”

“Whatever happened, air stopped going to his lungs.”

“Mandy, you’re telling me that this man, this man who has smoked marijuana religiously over the past few years all of a sudden just developed a bad case of asthma?”

Mandy moves to take her glasses off, but she’s not wearing any. She bats at the phantom facial adornment before opening the report, closing it, and fanning herself. She takes a seat in a blue chair, the shadows from the blinds crossing her face. Mystery was a woman, and today, that woman was Mandy.

“It’s not impossible.”

“Godammit,” I sigh.

“I don’t think you’re asking the right question, though, Avery,” she teases, hanging the bait right over. It was a simple game I have to play to get what I want; I have to pretend that for this instance, she is smarter than me, that she had the key to the kingdom that I need, and once she asserts her superiority, she will feel somewhat vindicated. A feeling, like Chinese food, that would leave her feeling empty later, but give her the satisfaction of the now.

I bit. “Well, Mandy, what should I be asking?”

She crosses her legs and lit a cigarette, playing Catherine Tramell, batting her eyes at me. “Not if it’s possible to develop an allergic reaction to marijuana… But how likely is it?”

“How likely is it?”

She puffs the cigarette, mentally counting out five seconds before delivering her monosyllabic answer. “Un.”

I already knew the answer before she was done counting to one. “Yeah. Can I have a copy of the autopsy report, Mandy?”

“Oh, hell, Avery. Take this one… I was planning on dropping out anyway.”

Mandy rises to her feet, watching me take the folder from her hand. She waits, eyes on my forehead, hoping that our eyes will meet and we’ll have a moment. She wants to be taken away from here, she wants out. I want out, but I don’t want anyone with me. And right now, all I’m doing is digging a hole.

The door closes and I imagine her on the other side, slumping down into the chair. If I was any kind of a gentlemen, I would walk right back through the door, take her in my arms and tell her we’re running away together.

But I leave the building.

I leave the medical building the same way I came in; front door. I can feel her eyes burning in the back of my head from one of the many third floor windows as I walk away. Who knows, maybe she isn’t looking, I’m just infused with regular old human paranoia, the natural kind that comes with the kind of life I lead… Or used to.

I’m walking down the sidewalk, heading to Al’s Deli, a generic name if there ever was one. I have five dollars in my wallet; enough to secure two pieces of delicious pie, enough to keep me going for the next day or so. The autopsy report is stuck under my arm as I try to light a cigarette. I don’t know where to begin, or what to do with the information in the folder. It’s pretty much information that I already had, with an official stamp on it. But sometimes, those stamps really make all the difference.

Cigarette dangling from my mouth, I open the report. There was THC in his system when he died. Well, no ****. What else? Elevated carbon levels, but that comes with breathing in from the bottle.

Rapid footsteps approach from behind me, but I’m too busy juggling the report and my cigarette to really notice them. That, and I had no idea they were after something I have.

The person screeches past me, crying something out and grabbing the report from my hand. Cuts like a bitch.

“****.”

I’m too far out of shape, up to a pack a day to really give this guy any chase. I could grab something from the trashcan, but what are the odds, in this city, of something heavy enough being in the garbage can to really peg this guy with? I could try running, but I haven’t done that since high-school. The guy is gaining more and more distance on me as I sit and ponder the situation.

I do the next thing that comes to my mind. “Someone stop that guy!”

I don’t expect it to work. There’s a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I’m never going to see the report again, although in the back of my mind, it wouldn’t really matter either way.

A figure darts out from around the corner, feet thudding on the pavement, chasing down the thief. Incredible. Whoever this kid is, he’s got speed. And, from the fifteen yards away that I am, it looks like that tackle hurt the thief way more than the paper cut hurt me.

The chaser climbs to his feet, and looks down at the out runner, giving him a kick. A stifle a laugh as the young man brings me the filing envelope, closed. He’s not even looking at it, although I’m sure he has, at this point, noted the official stamp on the front proclaiming its home at a medical facility.

The guy is wearing a white t-shirt, with the beginnings of a sweat stain coming up under his neck. He’s got a brown belt to secure his jeans, which look too big, and a big frock of brown hair sitting on his head. It looks like a wig, but this guy is too young. He’s just unfortunate to have hair like that. His glasses are sliding down his face as I take the folder from him. He pushes them back up, squinting against the sun.

“Thanks, man.”

“No problem.” He looks a little antsy, and I wonder if he wants money. “So, is that like… Some kind of important legal document or something?”

I sigh and open it. Paper clipped to the front page is a picture of the body laid out on a cold, steel table. “No, it’s an autopsy report.”

The kid shies away for a second, before stepping forward and leafing through the report, inspecting it for anything that might have been of value to the runner, who is climbing to his feet and beating pavement into the distance. The kid begins to run after him, but I grab his shoulder.

“It’s not worth it, anymore.”

The kid watches the thief disappear, before motioning to the report. “Oh, man, that’s bad news. Why did that guy want it?”

“I have no idea.” I toss my cigarette to the ground and stomp the burning ember out. “Maybe he thought it was some kind of important legal document.”

“Man, what are you doing with an autopsy report? Are you police or something, walking around with that **** waving in the wind? What do you even want with that?”

I sigh and look at the folder. “Honestly, I have no idea.” I light another cigarette, not to calm my nerves, but to keep my hands occupied.

“My name is Avery.”

“Jorge.”

“You look Caucasian.”

“You look –“

Before he can spit out whatever half-baked insult he could come up with concerning my name, I advance my day mentally. And I extend an invite to the young man that got me the autopsy report back.

“You wanna get some pie?”

-

I’m running out of Jell-o. The bowl is sitting on the TV tray, almost empty. I could buy some more, but I don’t have any money. His parents came by this weekend to pickup his items, leaving a few things behind. His parents were so old, they left his computer, monitor, printer, and some gaming system. I have to get rid of some of this ****. Maybe Justin would want some of it, give me some money. The rest I could hawk, no harm, no foul. And keep my addictions fed.

Justin is walking in front of me, carrying the computer monitor in his arms. I’m a few feet back, the actual tower in my arms with the printer resting on top. Justin is sweating profusely. I think he got the heavier load. Of course, that would be standard, considering the 100 discount I had just given him on all the items.

“You sure I can have all this ****? It’s some expensive stuff.”

“Yeah. I’m not going to be doing anything with it.”

I watch as Justin’s feet slowly do a complex ballet move that I’ve only seen on Swan Lake, and he drops the items he’s carrying to regain some balance. Of course, the monitor hits the ground and breaks open, the cathode ray tube shattering against the street. It would be completely useless now.

“Avery, man, get over here.”

Completely useless, save for the six baggies full of weed, three baggies half-full of coke, and numerous pill containers with duct-tape on the outside, marked with single letters. It looks like four containers of “E” and six of “A,” whatever those are. Maybe amphetamines.

“Holy ****, Avery, did the monitor even work?”

“I have no clue.”

“If it did, it must have been high-strung as hell with all that **** inside. You have enough drugs here to keep a small army going.”

“Yeah, and it’s lying on the side-walk right now, Justin. I think there are a few more pressing matters at hand than just –“

“You want any of it?”

“What?”

“The rules changed. There was something inside the computer, so like… Do you want any of it?”

I had been in the room with Justin before when he smoked at least one hundred times, and each time he tried to pass me the joint, or bowl, I would pass it up. I would have thought by now, he would have gotten the picture that it isn’t really my bag. It’s his philosophy that everyone has a vice, and that may be true, I’m just trying to rid myself of mine. Start over.

“Justin, you know I don’t do that ****.”

“So, I can have it?”

“What the hell am I going to do with it? Put it on my coffee table and stare at it? Take it, man. No harm, no foul.”

Justin turns into the Cheshire Cat for a few moments, before he realizes that his stash is almost in full view to anyone walking by.

“There’s got to be at least $3,000 worth of stuff in there. Was he going to start dealing?”

“Hell if I know. If he was, he never mentioned it to me.” Or, he had, I just wasn’t paying attention. Bad habit of mine, when it comes to drugs, and people that talk too much. I just tend to zone them out. I look over at Justin, who is mouthing some words. No, no, he’s not mouthing them, I’ve just –

“…That’s insane, man.”

I stare at his forehead and nod complacently. “Yeah, just turn around and sell it. Or snort it, or smoke it, or pop it. Whatever. I just don’t want it. You could make a pyramid on your coffee table with all that stuff, just don’t leave it on the ****in’ sidewalk.”

“Yeah.” Justin bends down, scooping up the bags and stuffing them into his pockets. His jeans are so tight that it’s obvious he’s carrying several baggies with him. I hand him the computer tower and printer. He leaves the empty shell and busted out glass of the monitor on the sidewalk and takes a stroll towards the end of the street. He disappears around the corner and I light a cigarette.

Forget long day. It’s going to be a long existence.

-

I need to go to the store. I’m completely out of Jell-o. The bowl is sitting, filled with a sticky film, still on the TV tray. I’m just staring at it, thinking, about what though, is entirely my business. I pick up my phone and flip it open, holding down “5,” wondering if Mandy would like to see my face, when my phone rings. The number isn’t recognized, and I’ve learned not to pick those up. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message.

And they did. I punch in the code to my inbox and listen.

“Mr. Cunningham, do you know what it is to eliminate the competition?” I do, and whoever left the message was going through a great pain to disguise their voice. “Then you know about Manuel Smalls, and his poker game. What you may not know is that your roommate was involved with Smalls, not only playing the game, but also a frequent buyer…”

The message went on for another minute, vomiting out information that someone other than me might find “shocking” or “appalling” to some extent, mainly involving the good character of my roommate and the ill repute of Mr. Smalls.

He played with Smalls, and maybe he mentioned that he was going to start dealing. That would warrant a murder, if he was going to be stepping on Manuel’s toes. Maybe Manuel even took it a little personally. Hell, maybe he made an offhand comment to one of his goons, and his goon wandered out of the room with a seed in his head. Could have been any number of factors.

Tonight, I would get some answers.

Maybe.

-

I’m on first name basis with the security guard at NYU. He lets me in without having to check my ID, and I make my way into the dorms. I walk past speed-dial “2”s room to the end of the hall, a green door without a number. There’s smoke pouring from under the door with the pungent tang of marijuana and the almost offending scent of tobacco, mingling in the air.

Through the door, I hear the distinctive voice, “Yeah, mang, I heard she needed one of those muff corrective surgeries. How crazy is that, mang?”

The voice belongs to Manuel Smalls. He’s not really Hispanic; everything he learned about the culture, he learned from Scarface. He’s also one of the biggest dealers on campus. Whatever you need, you’d usually be directed to him. He was trying to branch out, offering a referral bonus for whoever sent him the most customers. When it came to drugs, and selling, Manuel was a guy that really knows what he’s doing.

Word on the street says he also has a thing for high-school girls, although there’s really no credence to the rumor.

“That’s why I love high-school girls, mang!”

Bingo. Savory, this guy ain’t. Of course, I’m not here to make friends or raise my public image. He might have pulled some underhanded **** to knock out the competition, maybe sell something spiked to my roommate to take him out of the picture. I’m just here to get some answers.

I walk through the door, and the room silences. The raucous laughter backs down as I throw a stack of money onto the table. All eyes are on me, but you can call me Joe Cool. I’m going to play it straight.

“Hey, boys, I’m here to play for Matt. You all know him, tall, lanky, brown hair, used to play here… Dead?”

Poker faces all around. They weren’t the crowd for black humor, that was for sure. Hell, they treated my appearance in an almost religious manner.

“Mang, that’s horrible what happened. I’m really sorry, you know… I lost one of my best customers.”

The old, unwelcome feeling of anger begins to build inside the pit of my stomach, giving me heartburn.

“I bet. What’s the game?”

“No limit Texas Hold Em’.”

Smalls has the audacity to pronounce “Texas” as “Tey-has.” He’s a full foot shorter than me, and the only Hispanic part of him is his appearance. His accent is so unconvincing, he’d give Pacino a run for his money. His has a uni-brow, but fancies looking fancy. A white button up shirt, khakis, but no undershirt. Horned rimmed glasses. I’ve heard that when he smokes weed, he also gets a little gay.

“Doesn’t anyone play a ****ing game of five-card draw anymore?”

“I know, right, mang? Listen, we can let you play tonight, on account of Matt, but from now on, if you want to play, you gotta call ahead of time.”

At the rate the heartburn was bubbling up, I’d have no esophagus in three hours.

“Oh, no worries, Manuel. I just plan on robbing you all blind, taking your money, and walking out of the building.

This, they laugh at.

Manuel has the dealer chip and raises five-hundred straight out.

It’s going to be a long night.