The Cooper Chronicles - Episode 4

I took it to that hell of a party with me. Don’t ask me why. I guess I only got a psycho boyfriend to feel sorry for it. He followed me, who knows, all across the city. I knew it don’t have the price to take him with me. Turns out I felt very alike when I went to date it the first time. Like a fucking nurse, that is. A nurse that’s perversely fond of her patient. Somehow, scientifically interested in. That patient was Jason, and I was working overtime right now. I was free to flip him off and tell him to go home, wherever that was. His feelings were not for me to bother. It all comes down to remorse.*

‘Not that I’m hittin’ on ya,’ he uttered on the way up, ‘but it’s nice to be with you again. I mean I’m genuinely impressed, you know.’ As I hurled myself up the stairs, he got short of breath. It was not my obligation to slow down, though; I was coming pretty late, so he took a deep breath and produced a nasally sound from his nicotined lungs, something like ‘I still find saloon.’ ‘Good for you,’ said I. I felt so damn upset. He followed me, all the way to this house. I hated him again. Only as we reached the third floor, and George welcomed me with open hands, I understood those words were ‘I still fancy you’. I got out of George’s grandiose hugging-fest to turn and slap Jason’s face. Just like that. The kind of thing you feel driven to do by your conscience. No time to think, no time to talk it over, no time to take a chill pill, whatever that might be.

‘What the… hello there.’ He wasn’t exactly freaked out, to my regret.

‘What the fuck you think you’re doin’ now?’ I felt 6-feet when I screamed.

‘Now? I’m not doing anything now.’

‘We’re over, okay? You’re done with! Die alone, I don’t want you!’ Tears in my eyes.

‘Did I suggest…?’

‘You’re stalking me and trying to impress me, somehow, dunno what you’re thinking I am, but I’m sick of you, sick of all this!’

‘Not for nothing, but you really ought to redo your shades.’

‘Shades?’

‘Under your eyes.’

‘Oh.’

‘It looks cute, though.’

‘What the devil’s happening here, guys?’ George’s thick Leeds accent came through this time, somewhat accidentaly.

‘Piss off, constable,’ mumbled Jason.

‘Wha’?’

‘Don’t listen to him, George. He’s a… bitch.’ I couldn’t find an appropriate word. ‘He’s been following me.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘Yes, unfortunately.’ I gulped. I was the bitch here.

Suddenly, everything went silent. At least in my head. The floor wasn’t the floor. It was a slide. I felt queasy. I put my hand into my pocket to take out the Xanax pills. I was late. My mind thought it easier to pass out.

Small patches of blur. I had that strange feeling again. Usually, when you ask people what it’s like to pass out (yes, there are people who hadn’t, which I find odd), they usually say somehing like, You don’t know it’s happening at all, or, It’s nothing, really, or, I really don’t fucking know. That’s bullshit. It only tells you their vocabulary is too poor to describe the thing. I’ve a pretty poor vocab myself, but I can attempt to describe it. First, you start to feel you don’t belong. You feel this situation is something going on without you, therefore you don’t have to interfere. Or you could, but you would just fuck things up. Secondly, you feel like coming home from a long shift. Like going back to bed. Your comfort zone extends, and it’s no problem to lie down in horseshit, if you’ve no other option. You just wanna do as programmed. Thirdly, there’s the last impulse. The transition between okay and not okay. The very last moment you suddenly care. You want to do something. But not for long. Then, you don’t see anything. When they wake you up, you feel brave.

That is, if you don’t wake up in quite an equally stressing situation like the one that made you collapse in the first place. That’s why I call this the Fatal Party.

‘Come on, lady. Wake up. You’ve passed out. Drink some water.’ A man in a long white coat and a Frank Zappa trademark moustache, peculiar as it sounds, was leaning over me, drawing the coat up his legs, as if the floor was too filthy for it. George, standing to my left, cleared his throat to get my attention. I was sitting against a radiator. He held a glass of water. He gave me a freaked out look. I didn’t know what was going on. I just passed out, that’s all, I thought. I took the glass from him and drank the water. The sound of me gulping seemed to be right now the loudest noise in all of the Yonkers area. All those people stared like idiots. I recognized many of them. About seven girls I knew there, and five boys. I shan’t bother with coming up with fake names. I handed the water back and waited for someone to say something. I might have stopped breathing. Why was everyone so fucking silent?

‘You’ve collapsed in the corridor,’ said one red-headed friend of mine.

‘I know. I remember.’

‘We called a doctor,’ George explained, as if the white coat wasn’t helpful enough a clue.

‘How long has it been?’ I asked. Goodness, did they actually call the ambulance? They couldn’t be dimmer, I thought.

‘You’ve been unconscious for about a minute.’

‘What the fuck? How did he turn up, then?’ I nodded at the white coat fella.

‘He’s from the hospital. We paid him to be with Clara in case she’s sick.’ He glanced at him. The man nodded and kept staring at me. ‘We told him to stay for the party.’

‘Good for him,’ said I. ‘Sorry, I just… it’s a bit confusing. So, everything’s okay, right? Let’s party.’

‘There’s one thing,’ groaned the doctor. He maintained a tone of voice that made me shiver. ‘There was something we found in your pocket.’

I took out the Xanax pills. ‘Yes, I take those sometimes when I feel anxious. No big deal. It’s called Xanax.’ I glanced up at him. There was something about his look. I felt hatred, among other things, coming out.

‘Your other pocket.’

‘What?’ I searched it with my hand. ‘Just my phone. What?’

‘There was something else, Jessica.’

‘What do you mean? Just my phone and the headphones, and some change in the inner pocket. What’s up with that?’

There was something I didn’t notice. In one of his hands, resting just under his knee, he held a plastic bag. Full of white powdery stuff. Fuck.*

He held it up against my face. ‘Jessica, this is what bothers me.’

‘But… it can’t be!… That’s not mine! I mean, I don’t do cocaine! And I don’t carry it in my pocket! No!’

‘Don’t give me that shit. You be careful, lady, this is a serious offence. I may as well go report this, or anyone else here could. You gotta be very nice now, okay?’

‘But I don’t know how it got there! I don’t do cocaine, I swear!’

‘George told me something else.’

‘What… three fucking years ago, yes! Three fucking years! That’s over!’*

‘NOT over, apparently.’

‘THIS IS NOT MINE!’

‘You’ve got no way to prove that.’

‘Search my house!’

‘I’ve searched you. That’s enough for me.’

My heartbeat accelerated. This was hell. The doc took a deep breath.

‘Right, I’m getting rid of this thing, okay? And nobody had seen anything. Shit happened. You deal with your problem. I don’t wanna handle this kind of stuff. Nothing happened.’

‘Thank you. I don’t know what to…’

‘Yes. Keep out of trouble.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I stood up slowly. Everybody stared, shocked and stunned. My about 30-year-old friend from high school broke the silence. ‘Man, you need some help.’ As if that could cheer me up. Anyway, what was the big deal with coke? I quit cocaine myself. Even if I did cocaine, I mean… Anyway, how did that thing appear in my pocket? I didn’t put it there. What was happening? How… ‘WHERE THE FUCK IS JASON!?’

Jess Cooper

XXX

P.S.: My grandmother died in a nursing home today. I cried all day. Rest in peace, Anna. I loved you and shall never forget you. I wish we could meet someday in heaven. If only I deserved to go there.

I wrote you a poem. I don’t know if it makes sense. It makes sense to me. It makes me feel even sadder. I love you. God bless you.

Foreign spirit breathes onto the bed
The emptiness is new to the room
So new one can feel the chill
The day they had gone away
The day that might be forever

“God, why do we suffer
“Is your will what makes us feel?
“Is it your wish to make us see
“How dilapidated is our sisterhood
“For we shall be thus forever”

R.I.P. Anna Cooper

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*NOTE: This text is entirely a work of fiction. None of it is true. It doesn’t represent any of my personal opinions, it indeed often opposes them. No part of the story whatsoever is based on any real event. Neither the protagonist or any other character in the story are based on real people.