Mike Faricy - Bite Me

“Call me if you see him, okay.”

“Yeah, but he won’t be in here, like I said, he quit.”

I crossed the street to my office, phoned a couple of hospitals, the Detox unit, the police. Nothing. About forty-five minutes later I began getting phone calls from Serenity Center. The calls continued every fifteen minutes. I really didn’t want to talk with them so I let the calls drop into my message center.

Kiki phoned sometime after seven that night. I was in the process of stuffing the last of a BBQ cheeseburger from McDonald’s into my mouth and washing it down with a Summit beer. I really didn’t want to talk to her, either, but I answered anyway.

“Kiki?”

“He’s here,” she whispered.

“Who? Gary, he came back?”

“Apparently he never left. I was doing all my laundry, again,” she paused for emphasis. “I found him passed out in the guest bedroom down in the basement. You better get over here, right away, before he wakes up or I’m calling the cops.”

I didn’t have to be told twice.

Gary was on the floor and out cold. He must have rolled off the bed. He lay wedged between the bed and the basement wall. His face looked like it had gone about three rounds with the concrete floor when he fell. He had dried blood below his nose, a split bottom lip and a gash on his cheekbone.

“Did you do that to him?” I asked Kiki.

“If I’d done it he’d look a lot worse, believe me,” she sneered.

I believed her.

“Gary, hey Gary,” I was shaking his foot, attempting to wake him up.

“Just get him the hell out of my house, now,” she demanded.

“Look. I’m trying to, but he’s out cold.”

“I want him out of here before he throws up all over the place. God, you and your friends,” she said, like this was an everyday occurrence instead of just the fourth time I’d ever been in her house.

“Can you help me carry him?”

“Me?”

“If you can just help me get him up the basement steps, then I can drag him out the door.” I explained.

“I just don’t want him to throw up,” she shuddered.

“He won’t, look, he’s dead to the world,” I shook Gary’s foot again and got no reaction.

“Oh, that’s great,” she said, then crossed her arms, cocked a hip and thrust her bottom lip out.

“Just grab his feet, okay?”

“Ugh,” but she did it.

I held Gary beneath his arms and wrestled him up Kiki’s ancient basement stairs. Talk about dead weight, but eventually we got him up into the kitchen.

“Can you get the back door for me?”

She let go of his ankles and they dropped with a thunk as she hurried to the back door and opened it. I dragged Gary out the door and across the porch.

“You better get your ass back here tomorrow and fix the fucking mess he left here.”

“Me?”

“God,” she screamed, then slammed the kitchen door and turned off the porch light. I dragged Gary down the steps and out to my car in the dark. I stuffed him in the back seat, checked for a pulse once I got him in, then headed off in the direction of Serenity Center.

I answered my phone on the drive to Serenity.

“Haskell Investigations,” I was pretty sure I knew who it would be.

“Mister Devlin Haskell, please. This is Gordon Sweitzer, provost at the Serenity Center.

“Yes, Mister Sweitzer, I’m enroute to your facility now. Should be there within the next fifteen minutes,” I put a little cheer into my voice and tried to keep things positive.

“You do realize you are in gross violation of your sworn pledge.”

“Yeah, well something unexpected came up.”

“You may find this amusing, Mister Haskell, but I can assure you there is nothing funny about this situation. Mister Hobson is much like a fragile flower, and you’re responsible for leaving him out in the sun too long, far too long.”

“Believe me he wasn’t in the sun.”

“Excuse me?”

“No problem. See you shortly,” I said and hung up.

I drove on for a few more minutes when I heard Gary cough from the back seat and suddenly he sat up and breathed on me. I put down the window.

“Let’s stop for a drink,” he said, clearly having difficulty forming the words.

“I’d love to Gary, but I think we should probably take a pass on that tonight, I’ve got to drop you off, get home myself. Maybe some other time.”

“Then I better just get out here,” he said. At the moment we were in the center lane of I-94, doing a little over seventy-five.

“Tell you what, why don’t you just lie back down, rest your eyes. I’ll tell you when we get there.”

“You’ll tell me? Promise?” he said laying back down.

“I promise, Gary. Rest your eyes,” we were maybe five minutes away.

The remainder of the ride was uneventful. Gary snored in the back seat. I sort of toyed with how I was going to play the Serenity folks, decided there wasn’t much to say other than to hand Gary over and suggest that there might be a flaw or two in their after treatment approach. Then run like hell.

I pulled up in front of the facility. The front porch light was on, the porch uninhabited. The Serenity House looked to be in lock-down mode.

I turned off my car, looked into the back seat where Gary was snoring soundly.

“Rise and shine sleeping beauty,” I called, then shook him when I didn’t get a response.

Gary groaned and grunted, but eventually, with some vigorous shaking he sat up and leaned forward on the front seat.

“Are we there?”

“We are,” I answered.

Gary looked at me through bleary, bloodshot eyes and then threw up, all over me and the front seat of my car. Projectile vomiting, as they say, he even managed to get the inside of the windshield. I didn’t have a chance to recoil. I just sat there for a long moment as a lot of liquor and what looked like beef hash, slowly dripped off my dashboard.

“You finished?” I asked.

He threw up again, but this time on the back seat.

I got out of the car, opened the back door, pulled Gary out and half carried, half steered him toward the front porch. I more or less man handled him up the steps, leaned him against the wall, just below the brass plaque that said you are at a secure facility ring the bell for service. I did just that, rang the bell the bell for service, twice, as a matter of fact.

I was back at my car, standing with the driver’s door open, debating about getting back in, when they opened the front door. Gary had slithered off to the side, and was leaning against the door when it opened. He fell backward, I heard the thump from out on the street as his head bounced off the polished wood porch floor. He groaned, rolled sideways, and then threw up again.

I was going to yell something at the attendant, thought better of it, slid behind the wheel of my disgusting car and drove home.

I stripped my clothes off out in my back yard in the dark and just tossed everything in the trash. I removed anything worthwhile from my wallet, then discarded that with the clothes. I took a very long shower, drank a very large Jameson and went to bed.

Kiki’s seven-thirty call the following morning woke me.

“What time are you planning to come over here and fix this major league fuck up?” she asked before I had a chance to answer hello.

“Who is this?” I groaned.

“How many homes have you ruined this week?”

“Oh, hi Kiki. Today?”

“Yes today. And just so you know, I have to leave for an investors meeting at K-R-A-Z no later than eleven-thirty.”

“Yeah, well, see I have to get my car cleaned.”