Hell or Hangover - Part 1

Friday - April 17th - 7:19 PM to 8:21 PM

A note from the author:

For quite a while I’ve been put off by the idea of sharing my book via a Substack post. Maybe it’s just a personal thing, but I’ve always thought that reading long form fiction is done best with a physical book. Using an E-Reader is a ways down the list of enjoyable ways to read, but it is still preferable to reading on a phone, computer, or tablet. But ever since Anthony Marigold, that beautiful son of a bitch, took an idea and ran with it, that idea being the ability to send Substack posts to your Kindle or, if you’re a glutton for punishment with a sick kink for killing trees, to print them out (this is me), I’ve opened to the idea of releasing the opening chapters in three parts over the next couple weeks.

So, I introduce to you, thegreatreader.com. An easy way to send long form posts (or any posts for that matter) from your favorite Substack directly to your Kindle via a Chrome Extension. If you’d like to get a preview of my book Hell or Hangover right on the phone or computer, continue reading here. But if you, like me, desire a better reading experience, kick back, relax, pour yourself a drink, and send this bitch to your Kindle (or print it out, you sick fuck!).

I hope you enjoy it.

Then buy it.

Hell or Hangover

By

Alex Muka

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2025 by Alex Muka

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: alexandermuka@gmail.com

First edition printed in 2025 by:

OME OMY Publishing L.L.C.

Red Bank, NJ

Cover design by Barış Şehri

ISBN 978-1-XXXX-XXXX-X (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-XXXX-XXXX-X (ebook)

www.hellorhangover.com

In your love,

Tara

Friday

April 17th, 2015

7:19 PM

Every night starts the same. The pregame. The debauchery before the debauchery. An excuse to get drunk before the actual drinking starts. It makes stepping off the PATH train from Hoboken into New York City more difficult than it should be, but it’s hard to blame my current state on booze alone.

It began in the liquor store on Washington Ave. As I procured the refreshments my legs turned to jelly, or maybe it is natural to duck when you see a phantom in the store’s window. There were the same eyes from ten years prior, brown and chaotic and shaded by dark bangs, then floor. As I stood back up, Arianna, or her doppelganger, had disappeared. I struggled to grasp if what I saw was real or imagined. It was either a ghost from the past or another hallucination, a side-effect of partying for a decade.

My current predicament, the way my lower half feels part elephant and my vision seems to have been set behind an off-kilter gray sheet, could also be blamed on the difference in height New York City maintains over my beloved Hoboken. A quick look up could leave me as dizzy as a tourist. But I am not looking up. The buildings around me are a peripheral blur; a side note to the phone in my hand. It’s become a daily chore trying to translate my rambling thoughts into 140 characters.

What to tweet, what to tweet?

My Twitter profile picture shows a twenty-three-year-old male, white enough to have a couple beers, drive, and not worry about acquiring my first DUI, yet Latino enough to have a curly mess of brown hair and an even tan. You can’t tell from the picture that I can dance the bachata or cook rabo de toro or that now, two years after this picture was taken, my curls are beginning to thin. Distinguished would be a nice way of putting it. Fun doesn’t come without consequences. At the preposterous age of twenty-five, I’m an old man in this game. But what I lack in youth I make up for in dedication.

What to tweet, what to tweet?

I could go with my thoughts on the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Maybe my take on the gender pay gap. I could even enlighten my audience with a small diatribe on the current state of the flailing American empire. But the people don’t want that. My followers don’t care and neither do I. Give the three hundred loyalists what they want Lou.

I can’t help but laugh. Graduating college was supposed to have magically matured me. I took enough social science classes to have crawled from my cave. If the exhilaration of SOC 2200 – Working Women didn’t get the engines revving on the quest to grow up then nothing would. This was all supposed to end after shutting that last blue book. Looking back on it, college was the perennial pregame. The debauchery before the debauchery. An excuse to get drunk before the actual drinking started.

What to tweet, what to tweet?

I wonder what hates me more after college…my liver, my wallet, or my parents.

7:20 PM – April 17th – 2015

Sent.

“Lou, c’mon!”

I know this voice is Kyle Aisle’s. It’s got that whiny tinge to it, like a child begging for his mom. He knows as much as I do that being late to my sister’s party will end in an earful at best.

I shut my eyes, take a deep breath, and try to orient myself. I’ve been here before. Hopelessly drunk and in the moment. I wonder, for a second, if this night will be just like every other night. The noise, the talking, the noise, the bathroom, the yip, the shot, another shot, the talking, the noise, the drink, the bathroom, the yip, the shot, the drink, another drink…a desperate march.

There’s got to be a reason to stop this charade. I just haven’t found her yet.

Shit, Freudian slip.

I just haven’t found it yet.

7:21 PM

My legs begin to remember their purpose walking west down 31^st. I’m flanked by my two compatriots, Kyle Aisle and Chris VanNeece, who I’ve dragged to my sister’s going away party under false pretenses. This party will surely suck, there’s no doubt, which is why I’ve decided to withhold such information from their pretty little heads.

“So, like I was saying, we went to the bar for a couple of drinks first and then I took her out to dinner. We were talking all night, no awkward silences or anything, which for me is a rarity. She’s the receptionist at the veterinarian I go to for my mom’s dog, remember?” Kyle asks.

I have no idea what he’s talking about. I still can’t get past his outfit. I’ve told him time and again you have a 60% chance of getting laid if you dress in joggers, a hoodie, and some sneakers, but he insists on going with the 70s album cover look. A pleather jacket, baggy jeans, and boots are a sure-fire way to scare any suitors away.

“Sure Aisle, keep going,” I say.

“I asked her if her day was ‘ruff’. She loved it,” he says.

My legs were heavy but now I’m floating, as if gravity shut off or the world stopped spinning on its axis. Learning Santa isn’t real was less disappointing than hearing this garbage fall out of Aisle’s mouth. Ruff? Fucking ruff? He seems unfazed.

“Jesus bro,” VanNeece says.

VanNeece’s caterpillar eyebrows touch at the center in concern. He’s got so many facial follicles it’s hard to tell if he’s made of skin or hair. Forgive his father’s half-German ancestry, VanNeece is actually a good Italian boy. Even with the Reich-ish last name, VanNeece has the accent of a gumba. It’s as if Tony Soprano has been squeezed into chinos one size too small and is stating my sentiments exactly.

“Never mind,” Aisle says.

“C’mon bro, just finish the story,” VanNeece says.

“No, never mind.”

Kyle’s got the pout of a giraffe. He wants us to care. It’s hard enough to care about myself and now I’m supposed to care about Kyle too? The same Kyle that doesn’t heed my warnings. The same Kyle that doesn’t take my advice. Kyle, poor Kyle.

“Just finish the story,” I say, glancing at my phone.

An email notification pops up from my boss, something about a new phone app being released on Monday. All employees are to promote said app on every social media platform throughout the weekend. I ignore it. Even if the email was life or death and had been sent on Wednesday at noon it would have been just as easily ignored. At work I skirt by, collect my middling paycheck, and try not to get in anyone’s way. The key to my professional success as a phone app marketer is keeping a low profile and being the son of a silent partner. Nepotism sounds like a form of government in a struggling Asian country but it is thriving right here in the Garden State.

“Alright, fine,” Aisle continues. “I walked her back to her apartment, which is far. All the way down by the movie theatre on 14^th Street. I’m figuring, if she made me walk that far she’s obviously going to let me up…”

Aisle pauses for dramatic effect. My phone vibrates again. I look down at a notification.

1 Snapchat from Kristen Birdock.

A recent ex.

Odd.

“And…” I say, barely listening.

“She lets me up! Then we start making out on her bed and I start kissing her ears and she loves it. She’s making this little moaning sound like ahhuu, ahuuuhaah.”

“That sounds like crying, Aisle,” I say.

“So, I unbutton her pants and start playing with her a little and she starts to get really, really wet and then…”

“Aright, we get it. Spare us and get to the point. You’re no Anaïs Nin,” I say.

“Who’s Anaïs Nin?” VanNeece asks.

“Just finish the story,” I say.

“So, we’re about to have sex and she…she starts to cry…” Aisle says.

“Jesus bro,” VanNeece contributes to the conversation again.

“See. I knew it,” I say.

“She said she just broke up with her boyfriend. That she missed him. She made a compelling argument. Even I shed a little tear,” Aisle says.

“You actually cried with her?” I ask.

Aisle’s pause leads me to believe the veracity of his statement.

“Jesus bro,” VanNeece repeats.

“Why does this shit always happen to me? I can’t catch a break,” Aisle whines.

“Aisle, let me see this girl,” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“Pull her up on Instagram,” I insist.

“I don’t have Instagram. I’ll look her up on Facebook.”

“And you ask me why this always happens to you? A girl can smell that kind of technological desperation the minute you pick her up,” I say.

I’ve broken this down for Kyle thousands of times. Half the battle with women these days is finding out who they are before you even strike up a conversation and Professor Lou is here to illuminate the way.

First, the obvious: is she hot? If she looks good in her pictures hopefully she’ll look good in real life. This isn’t always the case. If a picture is worth a thousand words then a photoshopped picture is worth a thousand questions. With filters, fillers, jaw-line makeup, and the surgery now available to women, it is almost impossible to tease out the real from the fake. It’s not their fault. It’s the nature of the medium.

Second, does she have a boyfriend? Most girls that do have a boyfriend incessantly post pictures with them. It’s easy to spot the taken from the single. People think this is a bad thing; they’re sick of having relationships shoved in their faces at all times. They’re wrong. The girls that you have absolutely no chance with are the girls that hardly post pictures at all. These girls aren’t looking for any social reassurance. Their confidence is doing just fine and that does nothing for me. It’s the ones that need to prove their relationship online that will crash and burn. The key here is to catch one of these girls between boyfriends. The rebound. The breakup back board. If Aisle had paid attention he would have known that there is a Goldilocks zone. Not too soon and not too late post breakup. It’s actually easy to know when to swoop in, bringing me to my third, final, and most important piece of advice…

Has she posted any emotional quotes in the last month? If any girl has posted the, “If you love someone let them go. If they return they were always yours. If they don’t they never were” quote, or other recycled trash then you know the girl needs a helping hand. There’s no reason to confuse morality with results here, just read the signs. Open your myopic eyes. Women are always begging you to pay attention, this is your chance.

You can call me an animal. A misogynist. A misinformed maniac. Say what you want. But this is how it works. You don’t go into a test without studying, do you? You don’t make a speech without practicing it, right? It’s called preparation. Why waste all this valuable information people are so intent on throwing at you? Luck is where hard work meets opportunity.

7:27 PM

A cab would have been the preferred option, but we somehow make it through the tourist traps of mid-town into Chelsea on foot. The streets become progressively greener. Vendors vanish. Foot traffic thins. The feint hint of river muck begins to overpower the smell of Sabrett. Though it’s tough to know where I’m going while viewing a Snapchat, the disappearing I <3 NY signs in my periphery mean I’m headed in the right direction.

The video starts out facing a bathroom stall. There’s a dick etched into the door with the words suck it in vulgar black sharpie. Maybe I really did screw her over, I wonder, until the camera flips, showing Kristen Birdock sitting on a toilet with her tits out and a hand over her nether region. She giggles. The words “miss me?” slide across the screen. Subtle.

Though I’m tempted to screenshot the last two seconds, I follow the unwritten Snapchat rules. Unless it’s your girlfriend, you cannot screenshot nudes. Chivalry is clearly alive and kicking. Just like that, with my pearls clutched and mouth agape, the video disappears.

“I don’t think she has a Facebook,” Aisle finally says.

“Huh?” I say, staring at my phone.

“What’s so interesting down there?” Aisle asks.

“What? Nothing. What were you saying?” I ask.

“No, what’s so important?”

“Uh, Kristen sent me a Snap,” I say.

“What?!” Aisle yelps.

“Hea we go again,” VanNeece says, rolling his eyes.

“What?” I feign ignorance. “It was very low-key. Nothing to see here.”

I shoot off a wink at Aisle that will surely make his head explode.

7:31 PM

A block later Aisle looks constipated. He pushes his hands through his slicked back blonde hair, sucking in a breath. His eyes search the ground as if he’s lost an earring. An earring is all he’s missing with the outfit he’s gone with tonight. But lightning does finally strike that thick skull of his.

“She sent you a nude? A fucking nude?” he finally yells.

“I am not at liberty to discuss private Snapchats between one consenting adult and another, Aisle. Now please, continue your story.”

“I just don’t get it,” Aisle can’t stop himself. “How the hell do you find these girls? After all the shit you did to her she still wants you?”

“What shit did I do to her?” I ask.

“C’mon! The girl wanted to wife you. That little ball of perfection wanted to be with you. Didn’t she make you dinner every night for an entire month?”

“Two times a week…10 weeks. And only one dinner,” I correct him.

“What?”

“Forget it,” I say.

“If you don’t want to wife her then I don’t know up from down,” Aisle says.

“Aisle, let me break this down for you. On the surface Kristen might seem perfect. On the outside everything goes according to plan. She’s short with a set of legs that look good from skirt to legging, a tight yet protruding ass, and tits that are deceivingly large. She even pulls off a bob. Only true beauties can pull off a bob. So far so good, no?”

Aisle nods. Even VanNeece’s eyes widen and his head begins to shake up and down.

“Once you go one layer deep it all falls apart,” I say.

“How? She’s cool, she goes out to the bar with us, she holds her drinks. Shit she even buys us drinks sometimes,” Aisle says.

“Fair. Two layers deep then. You guys don’t see everything else. You don’t get handed the phone to take a thousand pics for the ‘gram. You don’t watch her brain melt when it comes to writing a caption. You weren’t there for brunch that day. I had to end it. I had no choice.”

“Aint that every girl?” VanNeece asks.

“That’s right, and another reason why I’m not wifing anyone up.”

Aisle’s thinking again and it looks like it hurts. “You’re twenty-five. Your parents got married when your dad was twenty. They’re the happiest couple I’ve ever seen,” he finally says.

“That’s called an enigma, Aisle.”

My parents are an enigma. I am constantly reminded of their seven-day “courting.” By the end of one week my dad was on bended knee asking my mother to marry him with a ring-pop. This breaks all of Professor Lou’s rules and should be considered a dangerous outlier. Looking at a dataset and making policy from one little dot out in no man’s land is something a true Professor would never do.

“And besides,” I continue, “my mom’s the shit. You think there are any women out there as cool as her? Highly doubtful.”

“This is true. But don’t sell ya’ dad short,” VanNeece chirps.

My eyes roll back near my occipitalis. My dad has a soft spot for VanNeece for the simple reason that he gives a fuck about his job. He thinks I can learn a thing or two from a semi-successful investment banker. I could tell my pops how VanNeece has taught me how to properly snort drugs. That’s a thing or two, I guess.

“Let’s get back to the subject, Lou,” Aisle says. “I’m talking about you and Kristen.”

“There is no subject, Aisle. I’m not wife-ing anyone until I’m at least thirty,” I say.

“Right, when all the good ones are gone. Good plan,” he says.

It sounds good to me.

7:42 PM

The entrance to my sister’s low-rise building is like a maze designed by Kevin McAllister. Avoid the hand-sculpted planters. Duck under the potted banana tree. Miss the cacti set like mouse traps. Make it through the forest and into the loft.

The pregame is supposed to lead to the game but the jungle that greeted us at the door has now turned desert. Though I didn’t expect much, a party shouldn’t sound like a movie theatre. Half the attendees are hued in blue light, necks bent, phones in hand, glazed over eyes. Leonard Cohen leaks out of the speakers. VanNeece and Aisle look at me as if I were Judas. I avoid eye contact. This “party” resembles a funeral.

What’s scarier than my friends’ disappointment is my sister making a beeline for us as soon as we walk in. If it came out one day that she is the product of my mother’s affair with a large Viking, it would surprise no one. It would be even less surprising if she were, at the bare minimum, adopted. If my mother indeed had Kimberly, I cringe to imagine the pain her pregnancy caused. Not because of the lack of resemblance, but because it’s possible Kimberly was taller than my mother at the time of her birth. Long, blonde, and built like a Norse goddess are probably terms you will never hear associated with the woman who gave Kimberly life. My mother is a short woman with dark features born on the island of Cuba. Alas, baby pictures in our mom’s palms have surfaced from a time in which photoshop was not possible.

“Why are you late? You killed the vibes,” my sister says.

VanNeece yawns while Aisle stares at her with his mouth open.

“There aren’t really any vibes to kill sis,” I say.

“That’s why I told you to come early. Do what you do already!” she says.

Without hesitation, and the faint but all too real prospect of getting beaten up by my big sister, we each man our stations. VanNeece heads toward the iPhone connected to the speakers, prepping anything other than the nap-inducing playlist they’ve got on. Aisle ravages the place for shot glasses and plastic cups. My job is to get everyone’s attention, which shouldn’t be too hard. The problem with this “party” is that all of my sister’s friends are actually her co-workers.

Kimberly started her business two years after graduating college; two years into the trap they call the “real world.” That high-speed car you can see coming from miles away. The options are pretty simple: you can step out of the way nice and early, you can lunge out of the way just in time, or you can get mushed by it.

I’m currently in the mushed phase.

My sister took option number two. If it wasn’t for me she might not be so lucky. Her lunge happened when she decided to visit me at college one weekend, long ago. It was a move of desperation. She was a devout disapprover of my shenanigans, but she was fresh off a nasty breakup. I missed the early Friday morning pick up from the train station due to aforementioned shenanigans and she ended up meeting an old man who taught her how to make a simple chair out of wood. Kimberly is lucky like that. Things don’t simply fall in her lap, but leap towards it. I didn’t see her all weekend, or the subsequent six months, even though we technically lived in the same town. She left with a skill and an idea for a business. I left with a degree and a drinking habit.

That story becomes an anecdote of grand proportions as I walk around her loft. If ever you must live on an island packed with over 9 million souls mashed together into some post-Darwinian hell hole, this is the way to do it – in a loft decorated by the now semi-Instafamous Kimberly Kennedy.

The ceiling is far, far away, aloof to the action below. Tillandsia, peace lilies, and money plants of all different ethnicities, shapes, and sizes pour oxygen into the already airy room. It is like walking into a casino pumped hourly with fresh air but replacing the smell of stale cigarette with soil.

The décor has a warming effect on the room. There is the red oak coffee table made from a tree that fell in the backyard of our childhood home, made by Kim Kennedy. It is surrounded by a group of hand-knitted cushions and pillows like a Bedouin gold mine, knitted by Kim Kennedy. Wheel-crafted pots with Mexican blue patterns hold succulents and ferns with dead ends, made by Kim Kennedy. Uncomfortable, yet beautiful, one-off chairs are scattered around haphazardly to the naked eye, though knowing Kim I am sure everything down to the leaf has its aesthetic purpose. There is even a house phone…yes, a candlestick house phone lined with smooth balsa wood and a rotary dial. It actually works, too. I tested it out one night making random prank calls into the wire-connected microphone.

The true masterpiece is the bookcase covering the entirety of the wall opposite the open kitchen. A work in progress for years, each section is a slightly different color wood filled with juxtaposing colored book sleeves.

“This isn’t a library,” she told me once. “I can organize my books any way I feel like it. The colors speak to me more than those dead men anyway.”

This is where Kim and I diverge in opinion. I am slightly colorblind and would rather read The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love for the fifth time than blankly stare at a Picasso in an attempt to pull meaning from it. This may make me uncultured. I do not argue this point. But I can still appreciate the beauty of the ivy intertwining between shelves of unread 19^th century classics as if the entire case and its contents were breathing.

It isn’t until I see the newest addition, a rolling ladder, that my infantile joy takes over. Attempting to resist the urge is futile. The momentum of my run and jump propels me and the ladder to the far edge of the masterpiece. The ladder abruptly runs out of track and plants me face first at the bottom of a set of stairs, just a little more disoriented than I already am.

Hoping no one saw my little tumble, I turn to the kitchen. The few glances my way are more out of fear than judgement.

“Who is that feral boy?” I hear in a hushed tone.

This job is going to be harder than I thought.

My phone vibrates.

Kristen: Hi

7:50 PM

Now this, this is more confusing than the Snapchat. At least I understood that video’s message loud and clear. It’s not the word that is confusing me, it’s the meaning behind it. It doesn’t get more open ended than ‘hi’, especially when we haven’t spoken in months. But that still begs the question, how do I respond?

I decide to do some more digging to see if I can get closer to the truth of what this “hi” is all about. Kristen’s Instagram is a plethora of feminine propaganda but damn if she doesn’t look good. There are pictures of her doing that back leg kick in different low-cut dresses, iced coffee selfies, hoodies by a fire, and two or three with that squat pose where one leg is straight and the other is tucked under her ass. If I didn’t know any better I would agree with Aisle’s assessment that this girl is wife material. But I do know better.

Knowing does little to quell my curiosity though. Her place is in Murray Hell, I mean Hill. Cab distance from my sister’s. A hop, skip, and jump from a Plan C…Plan B, let alone Plan A, has eluded me thus far.

7:51 PM

The new Drake wakes me out of my perusal, blasting at a decibel that has the makings of a good time. Thank God. That’s my cue to get the party’s attention.

“Everyone…”

My voice is cut short by a whisper in my ear.

“Hey…”

Two mounds of fake flesh pressed into a tank top grab my eyes before they can make out the mystery whisperer. These two melons are easily discernable. A birthmark on top of the left breast might as well be a bullseye.

“Bridget. How are you?” I ask.

When I look up her small black eyes are overshadowed by matted-on mascara. Her eyelashes resemble dreadlocks. I’m sure those are fake too but, to each their own. It’s hard to focus on lash when there is so much boob.

“Could be better. This party is boring. Nothing like those college parties your sister let you come to. I can’t believe I almost took advantage of such a good young boy. How much do you miss me?” she asks.

A memory flashes before my eyes. Bridget, a couch, those large breasts out in the wild, and then my sister and her ex. Yelling, fighting, a push, a shove, my fist landing on the douchebag’s chin, my hard on turning into a piece of cooked spaghetti. Nowhere near al dente.

“I miss college…and you, of course,” I say.

“I think I’m going to Finale later if you want to come. I know the promoter there,” she says.

“Hmm, when are you going?”

“Well, it doesn’t really get good until two, so probably three.”

I’ve taken a peek at Bridget’s Instagram before and I am starting to connect the dots. Bridget has turned into a bit of a bottle rat. By a “bit of,” I mean she’s the Master Splinter of bottle rats. The bottle rat is a new species, one evolved from the powder room ladies of the late 1940s. They see themselves as the new Café Society but without the mystique and elegance. The main habitat of this animal is the club, and the club only. We are very lucky to see one so outside of her element. Usually, bottle rats hunt in packs, swarming to the hottest and loudest club. Words like “DJ” and “Bottle Service” are pheromonal to these creatures, attracting different subspecies from far and wide. These subspecies range from The Un-Fuckables (sexus habere nihil) all the way to the Two Steppers (duo gradus). My sister hiring Bridget to run her social media was probably her smartest decision to date.

As a professor of debauchery, I do get quite pedantic in my observations. Going to a club with Bridget would mean running into all sorts of creatures. But it is something to do if nothing else presents itself.

“I’m down,” I’m shocked to hear myself say. “Later, of course.”

Knowing my penis was responsible for that answer, I try and stay focused on Bridget’s head. The voodoo trickery of her breasts in my face has made a potential late-night Plan B disaster. Plan A still eludes me.

7:55 PM

“Everyone!” I start over. “Let’s take a shot for my sister here and wish her good luck on her trip to London. It’s been a long road, as you all know. And, really, you’re welcome. None of this would have happened if I had just picked my sister up from the train on time. So, cheers to you, and cheers to me. The best of friends, we’ll never be. And if we ever disagree, fuck you, and cheers to me.”

The shot glasses are already aligned on the table thanks to my trusty sidekicks. Hesitant hands reach out one by one and take the shots which I regrettably find out contain warm vodka. Even I can’t hold in a shudder as I give my sidekicks a look of disgust.

As bad as the vodka is, it seems to be working as the party lubricant and, coupled with VanNeece’s playlist of new hip-hop, we seem to have this AARP group ready to shake out the cobwebs.

8:21 PM

I take another shot by myself and receive a skeptical look from a couple in the corner wearing matching sweaters. I pour two extras, which their wine glasses are quickly switched out for. All this entertaining makes me fiendish.

I try and force eye contact with VanNeece, who somehow has gotten himself into a heated debate with one of Kimberly’s employees. There is a vein popping out of his neck and his hands are flailing and the poor employee looks like he’s about to cry. Somehow I am able to pull a Jedi mind trick, or VanNeece is over the argument, and as he looks at me, I lightly tap my nose like a baseball manager throwing up signs to steal second. He nods. We head to the bathroom.

VanNeece deftly crafts two landing strips of white powder on the bathroom sink. He hands me a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill as we look at each other in the mirror and laugh. His smile is somehow soothing. This? It’s just a phase, it says.

The bill is in my left nostril. It smells clean. If I didn’t know any better I would assume Wall Street prints the bills right there. It’s also possible that VanNeece and his Wall Street friends have an ironing board at the office for cash only.

The white line disappears into my nose as the bill moves across the sink. The yip freezes at first, then burns, like running cold hands under hot water. My brain frosts and thaws out within seconds. Breathing deep, I snort in one more time to clear my nose, nullifying the ten plus drinks I’ve consumed so far. This is the power of the powder.

“This fuckin’ guy out there was lecturin’ me about capitalism. Said I was something like Hitler fa’ working at an investment bank,” VanNeece says. “Maybe this’ll calm me down.”

He taps out another bump on the webbing of his thumb and the little mound rockets up his nose.

“Doubtful,” I say.

I could agree with the employee and call my friend a selfish, money-hungry sycophant, but is a man who shares his prosperity with my party-pipe really a selfish, money-hungry sycophant? How dare I even think such filth about such a generous human. A comrade in this same crusade.

“What are we doing here anyway?” he asks.

“We won’t stay all night. I just have to see my sister off. She’s going to live with her boyfriend in England for a few months.”

“But she’ll be back?”

“Yea,” I say.

“Then what’s the fuckin point of a party?”

I shrug my shoulders.

“Anyway, how about that Bridget chick?” he asks me.

He lays out another two lines. I don’t object. My body needs more more more now now now always always always.

“Smokin’ right?” I reply.

“Yeah,” VanNeece says. “I was talking to her before that freak got in my ear. She wants us to go to Finale later. I know the promoter. He could probably hook us up with a table for only like $250 each. Which isn’t too bad considering. We’ll leave here at like 12 and get there before it gets too packed. We’ll definitely get a table.”

“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold,” I say, looking at myself in the mirror.

“What?” VanNeece asks.

“I said, I’m down.”

“We’ll definitely get a table,” he repeats.

His jaws are clenched, making ripples in the sides of his cheeks. He hands me an extra bag for safekeeping. That wondrous powder has a way of solving all problems. In this particular case it’s helped me come up with a diabolical plan. A plan that will go down in the record books. A plan that they will write novels about. I text Kristen back.

Me: Hi

Even I am shocked at the subtle genius of such a text back.

VanNeece and I run a nose check before walking out, tilting our heads back and checking to see if there are any white bats in the cave. Drugs aren’t so bad as long as no one knows you’re on them.