Chapter 6: Makin' Groceries
Clark Takes Gage on a Detour; Ariel and Brian Pursue Their Drug Mule; a Broadway Diva Joins the Cozy Rooms Coterie.
“Mind if I stop at a buddy’s to make some groceries?” Clark asked as he led Gage in a northerly zigzag through the French Quarter.
“Make what?”
“Groceries. Like, buy them.”
“Who’s your buddy?” Gage asked with a sinking feeling.
“Boogs? He’s top-notch. A real staunch character. Classic N’Awlins,” Clark drawled.
Gage hesitated, detecting a parodic edge in Clark’s voice. “Will you take long?”
“Like a drive-by.”
“I guess?” Gage waffled.
Clark hung a sharp right on Rampart, typing rapidly on his phone. On receiving a reply, he picked up the pace, fuming. “That control queen cunt is always in a hurry but he never leaves his fucking house.” After speed-walking several blocks, Clark became absorbed in his phone again, yelling in a text-to-speech tantrum: “My H-O-L-O-D-E-C-K is busted comma B-I-T-C-H period head exploding emoji we are getting there as F-U-C-K-I-N-G fast as we can exclamation point.”
By the time they crossed Rampart, Clark was wheezing, clutching the front of the “Jesus U” hoodie. “Finally!” He guided Gage to a busted gate which opened onto an alley, leading to a disheveled carriage house in the back. The windows were covered in cardboard, taped from the inside.
“Boogs!” Clark gasped, still panting.
A piece of cardboard moved inside the front window, then fell back into place. As Gage tiptoed backwards toward the alley, Clark waved him back with a don’t-fuck-this-up expression.
“Get back here. Don’t be sketchy,” Clark whispered. “Rule number one. Besides, you can’t say you seen N’Awlins if all ya see is tourist traps. I’m your tour guide to the flip side.”
The door creaked open. Nobody greeted them. “See?” Clark said, “We’re good.”
Gage took a breath and followed Clark into the dark void within the tumbledown structure.
#
Booger gently waved his torch beneath the bubble of his grody glass bong, melting the crystalline white substance within. He took a long, gurgly draw, dislodged his lips, and looked at Gage with a “Ya want some?” gesture toward his mouth. Puffs of exhaust trickled from his nostrils.
“What does he want?” Gage pleaded from his perch atop a hodgepodge of soiled laundry, deconstructed electronics and take-out containers, one of many such piles within the filthiest room he’d encountered in person - a category which included livestock barns from his years in 4-H.
“He wants to give you a shotgun,” Clark chuckled. Booger released a gigantic cloud of white vapor that swirled into a mini-tornado beneath the limping ceiling fan. Clark clapped his hands as if applauding a gymnastic stunt. “That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout!”
As the cloud dispersed, Booger passed the bong to Clark, who offered it to Gage in a chivalrous manner. “Tweak?”
“I have an allergy,” Gage demurred. “But thanks.”
“An allergy!” Clark yelled too loudly. “Y’ever hear that before, Boogs?”
Booger didn’t reply, his attentions preoccupied by the contents of a plastic tote.
“Psst.” Clark’s stage-whisper to Gage cut across the room. “Y’think he’s hot?”
“I guess. Yeah.”
“Booger here was an Abercrombie and Fitch model back in the day. Ain’t that right, Boogs?”
Booger nodded without looking up from his digging.
Gage gazed at Gollum-gaunt, balding Booger. Though a sickly sheen coated his pallid skin, and oozing scabs dotted his face and extremities …
… Gage could see how the man might have been handsome, once. With a shudder he realized that Clark showed no intention to leave. He opened his phone and held the mugshot to Clark as he took a rip from the bong.
“I don’t think this is him,” Gage whispered in a leading manner. Clark finished his draw and gestured to Booger, who rose and locked lips with Clark, shotgunning his exhale and releasing another white cloud into the room.
“I told ya, I’m just makin’ groceries on the way,” Clark muttered grumpily on catching his breath. “I’ll take you to your boyfriend after I check out. I can see why you’re all hot for him. With a glamor pic like that, who wouldn’t be?”
“We just gotta, like, stay on task. I got a flight in the morning.”
“Why is everybody in such a fuckin’ hurry?” Clark grumbled, picking at his neck. “Yo Boogs, can I get an eighth of T and a couple ounces of G?”
Booger rose and carefully hopscotched over piles of debris into an adjacent room.
“And ya got a couple ah, points you could toss in?” Clark asked sweetly, giving side-eye to Gage.
“Do I look like a fucking pharmacy?” Booger growled.
“They don’t let me in pharmacies no more,” Clark sighed in a martyred fashion. “They got facial recognition shit. So what’s the dama-dam?”
“One-forty,” Booger replied.
Clark turned to Gage and assumed a horrid Cockney accent: “Good chap, moight I borrew another for-eee quid? We needn’t tarry a mewment longah, oy guvna?”
Gage reached for his wallet, feeling trapped inside a high-speed elevator plummeting to the Ninth Circle of Hell with no intervening stops.
#
Given that Prada Purse remained incommunicado with Brian and Ariel, they decided to terrify their drug courier by video message.
After a good twenty minutes arguing over the script, production elements, budget and mise en scene, the collaboration threatened to fall apart. Then Brian cracked a joke about using the creepy grinning Snapchat filter, whereupon they gasped and everything clicked into place.
“Prada Purse! Hellew! Guess who?” Ariel grinned.
“And ‘guess who’ too?” Brian grinned.
“Your buddies Ariel ...”
“... and Brian ...”
“... hope our lil’ ol’ ‘liter o’ goodness’ made it safely from the border to New Orleans ...”
“... and that you’re zippin’ it to our place right fucking now ...”
“... as we reckon you shouldda done yesterday ...”
“... ‘cuz if you don’t I’m gonna fuck you up. I will FUCK. YOU. UUUUUUUUPPPPPP!” Brian grinned while pounding his fist into his hand.
“Ta ta!” Ariel grinned in a devil-may-care manner, giving the camera the finger.
#
Tyler gave high marks to the film overall, praising its breakout performances, with small reservations for the open-ended denouement. Ariel texted the video to Prada Purse with a whoosh.
“Wanna bet he’s on rotation at the Corner Pocket tonight?”
“You sure it reopened?” Tyler asked.
“It was a small fire. Lemme check.” Ariel turned in the direction of his player piano and sang out in a ringing voice: “HELLO, CAROL!”
“Yessssccchh?” a gravelly, synthetic voice replied.
Brian jumped. “The fuck was that?”
“She’s my new Virtual Assistant: A.I. Carol Channing.”
With the elegance of a “Price is Right” spokesmodel, Ariel drew Brian’s gaze toward a speaker on the piano, emblazoned with the image of a grinning woman with a blond bob haircut, her wide-set eyes two green LED’s. “It’s amazing, the things you can find on the Dark Web if you just dig around.”
“The fuck is Carol Channing?” Brian asked.
Ariel gasped.
Tyler gasped.
After an ugly silence, Ariel slapped Brian hard across the face.
Brian went down. Ariel advanced towards him imperiously. “And you call yourself a faggot.”
“The fuck I do! I’m BI.” Brian scrambled backwards like a crab.
“I don’t care where you stick it. Carol Channing was a Broadway titan.”
“There are limits, Brian,” Tyler warned.
“Carol Channing was the STAR of the first EVER Super Bowl Halftime Show. Does that whisper to your BREEDER half?”
“I’m sorry!”
“And the, uh - those, the Super Bowl People -” Ariel snapped his fingers.
“The NFL!” Tyler piped in.
“Thank you! The ‘NFL’ liked Carol so much they had her do it again two years later!”
“I’m a little at sixcches and sevensschh,” emitted Carol Channing from atop the piano.
“So is Brian, Carol.” Ariel shook his head in disappointment and turned to Tyler. “Where was I?”
“Corner Pocket,” Tyler cued.
“Thank you. Hello Carol, is the Corner Pocket open tonight?”
“Ooooh, let me get my schpectaclezch,” Carol burbled. The sound of rustling papers emerged from the speaker for a good ten seconds, then Carol cleared her virtual throat. “Okey dokey! Here’scch an article about reinforscching pocket cornersschh ...”
“No, no, Carol.” Ariel enunciated: “‘The Cor-ner Pock-et.’ It’s a gay stripper bar on Burgundy and St. Louis.”
“Ooooh, scchhtrippers!” Carol’s LEDs sparkled in excitement. “That remindssch me of a scheow I did on tour with Mary Martin in the 80’sch, called ‘Legendzssch.’”
Ariel paused. “Thank you, Carol. That will be all.”
“You betcha.” With a little ‘doodly-do’, Carol’s LEDs went dark.
“She’s hardly ‘next-gen’ but I’d feel awful replacing her,” Ariel apologized, reaching down to give Brian a hand up. Brian feinted, reached under Ariel’s kimono and twisted his testicles. Their ensuing scuffle was interrupted in short order by the grinding moan of the buzzer downstairs.
“It’s HIM!” Ariel shrieked, rising and clapping in excitement. “The Ketamine’s here!”
Brian hugged Ariel, their dispute forgotten amidst the giddy whirl of a fresh shipment of Ketamine.
Tyler pressed the intercom and answered in a salty voice: “Yeah, who is it?”
“Here to see Ariel.”
“Okay, but who is it?” Tyler asked impatiently.
“I’m his sister from another fister. It’s Clark.”
###
Chapter 7: White Rabbit
Thank you for reading!
☮️ & ❤️,
