Laird stood in the middle of his living room, and he took off all of his clothes. He did this slowly, a ritual. Unhooking every button, and unzipping every zipper with aching precision, and when he was done, he tossed his clothes to the floor, and they crumpled together on the ground, mixed together and forgotten. The exception was his belt. He tossed his belt down onto the ground next to him. It had gotten colder in the night, and a draft came through the window. He shivered, but he stood perfectly still, holding a little bag in his right hand.
It was the kind of thing that an electric razor would be carried around in, black, fake leather, with a small, crooked zipper that sometimes got stuck about halfway through. He set the satchel, his kit, on the ground, and he fell down onto his knees.
Kevin, and the old Chrysler. Hot Pink in that lonely, lit window, smoking an unfiltered cigarette, and bright blue and white lights burning up his eyes like tiny embers. The sky in Queens filling up with angry clouds.
He opened the bag, and he took out an envelope of carefully folded white paper, and he set it on the ground.
The aspirin taste of cocaine, the feeling of flying from Xanax.
He pulled a spoon from the bag, a spoon bent into a small handle, and a small, glass syringe. He opened the envelope, and there was a pinch of brownish powder, and his heart was beating faster, and he wiped his hands on his legs, because he was sweating. Laird ran his fingers through his hair, and he grabbed big fistfuls of it, and he looked up at the ceiling and he screamed as loud as he could.
He poured the powder into the spoon, and he emptied the syringe on top of it, and he opened his lighter and he started to cook.
Kevin.
The two of them as children, and playing basketball outside of P.S. 232, and the letter on the door, and the feeling of rough, dirty hands on his body, a the sweat-grease of palms on his hips, and saliva and the grinding of course facial hair and dry skin, and fifths of cheap, dirty liquor.
The solution sizzled into a bubbling, boiling cauldron, and Laird dropped the lighter to the floor. He balled up a piece of cotton between his fingers, and he wadded it up real tight, and he thrust the needle into the cotton, and the bubbling, sizzling solution filled the syringe.
Kevin holding a beer and laughing. Are you fucked for the night?
He reached out into nowhere, and he found his belt, and he looped it around his bare arm, and he held it tight with his teeth. His heart sped up. A vein stood out at the bend of his arm, asking. He took the syringe in his hand, and he bled it, he pressed the plunger…just a bit. Just enough to let out a thin spray of cloudy, white fluid. Let the pressure out. Let the air out. Outside, behind the dark cloud cover, there was a full moon.
A single bubble of oxygen caught in the bloodstream could cause a heart attack or a seizure.
He pressed the needle against his arm, and he held his breath. He closed his eyes.
Tim Tim jumping on the trampoline, going higher and higher into the air with his tousled hair flaring up into the clouds. Laird pressed into his flesh, and he pulled back just a little on the plunger. A drop or two of blood swirled into the solution like a bad special effect, and he knew he was in the vein.
Outside, there was a full moon, and New York was filled with vampires and werewolves, and there were dogs howling and people screaming, and people disappearing. A little girl with an Italian name in a little pink dress was swallowed whole in Bensonhurst, and five young, Latino men raped a black woman repeatedly in Central Park while the police watched and cheered, and the sky filled with thunder and lighting. On the West Side, there were car accidents and assaults, and a white woman with a rich husband smashing another woman in the face with a claw hammer, and the sky opened up with a giant thunder clap, and there were people sitting in the streets naked in the rain, and covered in blood, and Laird could see everything.
He could see…everything, and then nothing but black.
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