Delerium Tremendous

Nathan Winston discovered himself on the linoleum of a kitchen in a condo on the shores of Daytona Beach and he didn’t want to wake up. He opened his eyes against better judgment and let his head swim back to him.
         He stood and swayed and slunk around the kitchen, searching for a mirror he thought was hanging between the refrigerator and the microwave on a space of wall under the cupboards. It was like he was playing tag with his memory and he was most definitely ‘it’. But when he found the mirror and saw the state of his face, he shut his eyes again, knowing that the game wasn’t over.
         He opened his eyes again and a rotten-bowled, grimacing fool looked back at him for sympathy. A two-day growth of sandy scruff dotted his cheeks and chin. His eyes drooped and his lips sagged. He thought all he needed to complete his look was a “Why lie – I’d love a beer” sign. His face was an open book of beach bum loserdom, a washed up Don Johnson in Miami Vice, who’s line at a bar would be to ask a woman if she knew what the word cuckold meant. The mirror framed him like a shot in a low rent movie before he was about to deliver a line that summed up his character: I’m a diamond in the rough and now I’m gonna rough you up.
         He’d been out for a long while and felt even worse than the reflection made him appear. He searched himself for cigarettes and a lighter. Finding nothing, he turned from the mirror in front of him and ambled toward the living room, looking for the bar.
         Lying about the room were three other passed out sots, unemployed young college dropouts still as statues, mimicking the dead. The room was quiet except for the refrigerator’s hum and Nathan’s ice cubes clinking in a highball glass he found at the Formica-covered bar in the as yet unremembered host’s living room. There was also the faint sound of the ocean, gently rolling in from the balcony’s open sliding glass door. Nathan’s hands steadied as the Ron Rico rum he’d liberally poured slid into the pit of his stomach. The night was still a mystery, but would surely flood back after some liquor with a stale spit chaser. Downing the three or so fingers of rum, Nathan poured another and walked over to the nearest zombie, a cut-rate weed head named Wink. Wink was slumped over a glass coffee table, a roach burned down to his blistered fingertips, one of which was a good bit shorter than it should have been due to a machine shop accident years past.
Nathan vaguely remembered something Wink said about how marijuana can better society as long as it was taken away from all the “niggers and spics” that have cornered the market. “ A decrease in crime, you know, serious crime, like murders. Drug dealers don’t have any ethics these days, because they’re too busy grabbing their dicks and calling each other cholos and dogs and not putting any emphasis on their most profitable market: white people. They still think that we’re oppressing their people, and so they rip us off and then grab their dick and smile at you and tell you to get the fuck out. Do they tell other niggers or other spics or anyone that even looks remotely non-white to get the fuck out? No, they sit down, they smoke with them, they increase peace among themselves, and then talk about what a devil the white man is. It’s not like we’re in the fucking animal kingdom where they have to stick to their own kind. Shit.”
         Wink was definitely white, there was no arguing that, but Nathan knew that he was disliked in a more equal opportunity way. Black, Mexican, White, everybody hated Wink. Matted strings of long hair were plastered to Wink’s face and a crusted layer of redneck drool gristle seeped onto the glass coffee table. Declining the temptation to wake him, Nathan nursed his drink and peeked through the long white blinds into the bright sun and beautiful rolling waves of Daytona Beach and whispered to himself, “I hate this place”.
         As a kid his dad had taken him here to introduce him to sunny Florida, in the hopes Nathan would cheer up about leaving his friends and his school in Pennsylvania. It was near his birthday and his father took him to the Daytona Boardwalk to celebrate. The first thing Nathan noticed was the sickening heat that covered him. His father had bought him a neon green tank top with a picture of an Orange on it, as well as some new swimming trunks and flip – flops, which were hell to walk in when a kid is used to rubber snow boots, and despite all the ventilation the heat flattened Nathan to the ground and left him dizzy and nauseas.
         His birthday party consisted of a smattering of cousins and aunts whom Nathan didn’t know but already resented because when he asked his father why they had to move to Florida, the most common response his dad could came up with was ‘Oh, we’ve got family down there’. He was face to face with some of his greatest enemies and he had to share his birthday cake with them. The party was a resounding let down and Nathan’s father brought him aside to give him his “real present”, a crumpled five dollar bill that he could spend at the arcade.
         The arcade was a square-shaped mess of noise and tourists, middle-aged Canadians with saggy freckled cleavage and sun screened noses, but Nathan reveled in the fact that he was alone and had money. He quickly made change with the five dollar bill and slid quarters into flashing, decorated boxes to do battle with soldiers or hungry-faced monsters. The fortune his father had given him slowly dwindled and when he was down to his last two quarters, he noticed the game of his dreams: Stiff Armstrong, a game where the contestant paid his fee to go up against a machine shaped like a cocky blonde arm wrestling professional. To Nathan’s dismay, the machine cost a dollar so he forlornly grabbed the giant animatronic arm that challenged all who passed it, and pretended to be  Stallone in Over the Top. A wizened old man popped out of the shadows at Nathan and noticed his plight. He smiled widely and his faded running shorts jingled with the promise of financial offerings. “Let’s see,” said the old man, “what do we have here?” Nathan told him that his birthday wasn’t for another week but they were celebrating it in Florida, he would be six years old. “Your birthday, huh?” Nathan told him he needed two quarters for the game. The man jingled his pockets and said, “Well…you’re gonna be six, huh, let’s see. I feel some quarters down there, tell ya what,” his chin was trembling and covered by a thick gray beard, “you reach down there in my pockets, and see what you can find, there might be two or four or even six quarters for a six year old boy on his birthday!” Ecstatic, Nathan reached for the old man’s pockets and as the man bent forward and Nathan’s hand began to slip in, the right leg of the man’s running shorts hitched up, revealing his shriveled dead fish penis and one long sagging testicle that swung like a pendulum in the salt air. Nathan silently wriggled free of the old pervert and ran down the boardwalk. He glanced over his shoulder and the man just stood there, grinning ear to ear, penis and testicle and all drooping toward the wooden slots of the board walk, waving a friendly goodbye.
         Nathan met up with his father and cousins on the beach, shaken and sad but resigned to tell no one of the incident. They were all laying in lawn chairs, soaking up the sun, their backs turned away from the bubbling waves of high tide so they could watch the parade of cars drive slowly up and down the beach: hotrods, lowriders, sports cars all with booming speakers and filled with young tan bodies shaking and gyrating and lubricating.
“Hey son,” said his father, “look, they can drive on the beach!”
“So,” said Nathan.
“You all right? You wanna play catch or something?”
“I guess.”
Nathan’s father stood and dusted himself off while grabbing a Frisbee. The two of them tossed the green disc back and forth and Nathan started  to feel better about the day instead of feeling like a pale six year old caught in an inferno. The ocean glistened as the waves broke and rolled back, creating a rhythm of sound that Nathan tried to syncopate with the Frisbee game and a small smile broke on his face.
“That’s it,” said his father, “go long.” His dad let the green disc fly and Nathan faded in a backwards run, his eyes focused, the Frisbee and the waves and his heartbeat, watching the disc float slowly back down, down, down, until a dull blunt pain shot through his right arm as a lowered green Ford Mustang slowly coasted into him at a speed of four or five miles per hour. The Frisbee dropped in the sand. Nathan had been thrown, but the impact of the car was slight, and he rolled away from the traffic into the dry hot sand where he buried his face in the crook of his elbow and cried, his breath blowing sand on his face, his tears making the sand stick and run like mud down his cheeks, while his father ran up to comfort him.
“My god, Nathan are you O.K?” He heard the cousins he hardly knew laughing as the stereo of the car that hit him droned slowly away and he repeated over and over again, as he does now years later, “I hate this place, I hate this place, I hate this place…”

Now almost thirty, in the hot dead of summer, Daytona had once again let him down by providing him with the company of the three half-dead men in front of him. Although he talked like a racist and had a redneck exterior, Wink, whose real name was Scott, was actually just a harmless coward. Tim, a self-loathing and self- described “dirty Jew” was sprawled out on the couch of the still-unknown host’s black sofa, his nose pointed toward the ceiling with his mouth wide open and eyes shut tight in what looked like a silent snore. Rounding out the trio was Chan, nee Xiaou Yu, a Chinese immigrant who was a naturalized U.S. citizen and who had lived over half of his life in the states, yet still spoke in accent-heavy, slightly askew English. Nathan peered over Wink’s body, tempted to wake him with a violent shake. Instead, he made one more drink and headed out the open glass door to the patio, trying to guess who would let the likes of them in such a nice place.
          Like most blacked out nights since Nathan had lost his job, this one was over for him before he got where he was going. He had trouble keeping up with standard drinking culture mores. How much was too much? Was vomit (one’s own or someone else’s) acceptable as an accessory? He often wasn’t able to distinguish which moron in the crowd offended him, and normally assumed they all had and for that, they should pay. Too often it had been Wink or another one of his friends, at the risk of severe bodily harm, who smoothed things over “He doesn’t normally drink like this, at least not in public…” Then Wink and the rest of them would sneak out back exits into dark alleys, just in time to miss the cops.                       
It became necessary for a code to be created so the innocent fun-loving drunks would be able to clue Nathan in if things were getting out of hand. “Now, when the Whore has Given Birth—“
         “Stop taking shots.”
         “Right, and when the Devil’s Riding Shotgun?”
         “Do something to sober up, even a little, even if it means coffee or cocaine.”
         “And when I pick up your puke stained dead weight, that means it’s time to go.”
         Nathan remembered the Devil Riding Shotgun last night, as someone was screaming it into his ear while he attempted to suck a shot of vodka with a straw up his nose, in the back of a pick up truck. Two men he swore he’d never met before were in the truck bed with him, bumping over scrub palm back roads in the wilds of the beach town, blinding themselves on glue and spray paint. They were Tim and Chan, their skin the color of eels, twitching and writhing to the inhalants in the breezy night air. They actually pinpointed, within seconds, the exact moment of Nathan’s decline, when his mind became a pock marked, bombed out Gettysburg of neurons which signified the oncoming blackout. In unison they pointed and squealed “Devil Riding Shotgun, Devil Riding Shotgun!”
         It had been five or ten minutes since Nathan had been up, and the sordid details of the night before had just begun to squirrel their way into his conscious mind, when he stepped onto the patio and saw the birds. The three cockatiels, obviously someone’s pets, rested under a hanging brass cage, lying dead in the stains of their own waste on the concrete. Theirs were twisted, pained little carcasses who’s life meant very little to their tormentors. One had been plucked of much of the feathers on its head and back, one had burn marks the size of a cigarette dotting it’s frail, lifeless body, and the third’s neck was broken at such an angle that it made the unfortunate animal look like a flesh and bone pez dispenser.
         Nathan sensed movement behind him and he froze. In a half second he tallied any weapons that were available to him; deciding the highball glass was his best bet, he whipped around to face whoever it was he was going to face.
         “That’s something.” It was Tim, staring down at the poor unfortunate creatures, eyes bloodshot and face a mess.
         “Something, alright…” Nathan relaxed his grip on the glass and took a sip.
         Tim waved Nathan into the living room and slowly hobbled  toward the kitchen. Passersby often gave Tim sad looks because his gaunt physique, poor dental hygiene, and strong, unshowered scent seemingly cast him in the homeless milieu. Tim was far from homeless. He had elected, not on a moral ground, not in some pseudo-anthropological posture, but out of sheer convenience, to give up on the modern shackles of cleanliness and propriety. He actually came from a wealthy stock of lawmakers and computer whizzes, the latter of which held great economic sway over the decade of the nineties. They had predicted the internet boom and had been developing BBS’s and artificial intelligence systems while everyone else was picking their jaws up off the floor because of Pac-Man. Tim stopped at the refrigerator, turned toward Nathan, and gave a bemused smile.
         “Where are we,” he asked.
         “Huh? I was just trying to guess that myself.”
         “You know you’re here because of me, right?”
         “What, you got the condo?” Nathan was getting dizzy.
         “No, I mean you’re not in jail,” Tim chuckled and opened the refrigerator, “there ain’t shit in here, man.”
         Tim was one of the many people, and by far the most loyal, who had taken to babysitting Nathan in his increasingly regular times of vomit and violence. Not that Tim was very far off the mark of Nathan’s downward spiral, it’s just that he wore the wear slightly better and was able to hold onto his memory more often than not. For all the white trash slumming Tim took part in, there were still unshakable vestiges of his silver spoon upbringing, the least of which was pride, which kept him from utter oblivion but allowed him a nice view of the vortex.
         “Not in jail?”
         “The Applebee’s on Williamson?”
         “I remember getting there.”
         “Do you remember who was bartending?”
         “That girl, what’s her name, the one I got head from in the parking lot a few weeks back.”
         “Yeah, well you kept insisting on her giving you head again. Very loudly. It wasn’t a polite: excuse me, but would you mind giving me some head on your break. You were using all kinds of nasty nouns and verbs and you were demanding it from the poor girl. She eventually got the manager to throw us out and you threatened him. He went to the phone to call the cops and another employee followed us to the door and locked it. We had to pull you out and throw your ass in the back of Wink’s truck. And just as we were pulling out, you fucking jump out and start banging on the restaurant windows like an ape. We could hear the cop sirens down the street. You’re already on probation. We almost left you there.”
         “Damn…well, thanks, man.”
         “Yeah.” Tim found a carton of milk and took a long swig.
         “You don’t know where that’s been.”
         “Fucking ulcer. So what about the dead birds out back?” Nathan stood silently as sweat beaded on his forehead. “I’m not saying you were the one that did it, but I do know that none of the four of us live here, and I’m guessing those birds were killed last night. That’s why I try to avoid violence at all costs. You start to turn it into an instinct. You black out, and your mind only runs on that instinct. Then, you might just go and murder someone’s pet.”
         Nathan and Tim had a mutual understanding, based on years of petty criminal activities and substance abuse, that unpredictable behavior was often forgivable. The basics of their relationship were founded on distain for almost everyone and a concerted effort to keep each other out of jail. Nathan trusted Tim’s tacit knowledge of the legal system and Tim was sure to have many practical, legally questionable situations arise with Nathan around, which may prove useful if ever the urge for Tim to join the family business of law should arise.
         Nathan hit a dizzy spell as the white liquor slowly worked its way through throbbing intestines. Tim gave up on looking for refrigerated goods and sighed, his face scrunching up slightly.
         “Well, what the fuck are we gonna do?”
         “Leave?” said Nathan.
         “Yeah, well your boys in the other room might be a little hard to get motivated.”
         A small stirring sound came from an unseen room around the corner from the kitchen, followed by a slight croak that was distinctly female. Nathan and Tim, equal parts tense and resigned, waited to see the unfortunate victim of their group’s presence. The tenant fumbled with the bedroom door and blunt muffled swears broke the silence. The two men in the kitchen moved within sight of the door as it was thrown wide open and the mystery host came into view. She stood short and squat, with smeared cosmetics screwing up a face that had been slightly used over the years. A cigarette dangled from the corner of her twisted mouth and her eyes hung low as she hovered in the doorway, staring for a moment at her feet. Her hair, impossibly black, as if it were stripped and dyed with ink from Sharpie markers, was riled and frizzy and stuck up in places around her pale face. She was wearing a gleaming white bathrobe that was improperly cinched, so that the lopsided cleavage within brimmed the edges of its confines, threateningly close to becoming full-on breasts. She looked up from her long toes, immaculately pedicured and decorated with miniature lotus flower relieves, and seeing the two worse for wear men in front of her, gave a relieving smile and asked in a smoke-heavy, female Tom Waits growl “Got a light?” Without hesitation, Nathan scooped a yellow lighter out of his pants pocket and obliged her request. She gave him a knowing smile, what it knew was only Nathan’s guess.
         “So, you still know I’m too old for you, right honey?” Nathan smiled, oblivious to the reference. “Oh, you probably don’t remember, dear. You were all over me, trying to get these wrinkled lips around your little pecker last night. I wanted to save you the embarrassment this morning, so I passed.” She laughed, wide mouthed, and smoke wafted toward Nathan’s face, making him queasy.
         “About last night, I just want to apologize for anything I may have said…”
         “Nonsense, I knew you were out of control when I picked you up at the gas station. The only things you seemed to be able to half way say were swears, and your eyes were turned in two different directions. I just needed some company and I love inviting young men into my home, even if it is just for a laugh.”
         “I’m actually a gentleman.”
         “Yeah? Well how about you be one and help clean this place up.”
         “Well we would,” chimed Tim, “but we’ve really got to run. Our friend over there needs to get to his probation officer early today.” She looked them both up and down, a tinge of suspicion in her squint.
         “Well, if you must, but you simply must come back. I had a marvelous evening, you boys were highly entertaining. Oh, hold it just one minute, gentlemen.”
         The woman turned around and with a jiggling scuttle moved back into her room. Nathan and Tim eyed each other and Tim quickly went to rouse Wink and Chan so they could all get while the getting was good. [waking Wink and Chan description]
         “Oh, I know it’s around here somewhere, ah!” She came out, now fully awake, with a bright smile and a business card, which she handed to Nathan.
         “My card,” she said with a fake haughty aire, “ call anytime, please.” Nathan looked at the card:

                                       Cynthia “Cyn” Kelly
                                                 Cyn is in
                                       


         The card was elegant and simple, with Ms. Kelly’s phone number and beach front address in the corner, with nothing more to explain what warranted her having a business card.
The group finally assembled, they groggily shuffled, single file, into the bright white hallway. Nathan gave a nod of acknowledgement to Cynthia Kelly, with an amiable poise that contradicted the fearful guilty feeling in the pit of his stomach. As the four of them reached the end of the shaggy dark blue carpet-lined hall and waited wordlessly for the elevator in front of gleaming brass plated doors, Nathan stepped back and spoke up. “Hold on a minute. When you guys get downstairs just stay put in the lobby for a minute, there’s something I need to get from that apartment. Tim rolled his eyes and gave Nathan a withering exhausted look. Chan and Wink hadn’t really recognized Nathan had said anything. “I’ll only be a minute,” said Nathan as a soft tone announced the elevator’s arrival. Before any words of protest could be made, Nathan quickly strode across the carpet to Cynthia’s room at the end of the hall.
         At the door, Nathan cautiously turned the knob, taking great pains to enter silently and unnoticed. The door remained unlocked and Nathan opened it a crack, mindful of any creaking sounds. He peeked in the apartment to find the place as still as when he initially began his morning recovery. There was no sign of Cynthia Kelly anywhere and, much to Nathan’s relief, the gentle cascade of the shower sounded distantly, which Nathan took as an all clear signal. He moved as fast as his sweaty, uncoordinated limbs would allow, surreptitiously making his way toward the balcony, which was still open, wafting a warm, welcoming salt breeze. The carnage was just as he had found it, the poor lifeless birds lying at awkward angles, feathers ruffling in the breeze. Nathan quickly scooped the birds up and in a single motion, pitched them off the balcony, silently hoping that no hapless tourist was wandering about to witness the grizzly rain of avian carcasses. He turned to exit the way he had come, when he heard the shower turn off. He made a mad tip toe attempt across the living room, but the pressure to stay silent, mixed with a lack of equilibrium, was too great and he tripped over his own feet and went sprawling to the ground. As he scrambled to pick himself up, he could hear Cynthia humming to herself as she came out of her bedroom. Nathan looked over, embarrassment and shame turning into revulsion, as he saw Ms. Cynthia Kelly dripping wet and naked in front of him, save for a towel on her head. Her sheet-white body jiggled as she stopped in surprise and her low breasts heaved upwards, as if someone were throwing two bean bag chairs into the air. Nathan fumbled and stuttered, trying to blurt out any excuse, any shred of a reason why he should be where he was. Cynthia didn’t run or scream and was in fact not visibly upset at all. She smiled a wide, toothy grin and said in her husky snarl: “So came to try it again, huh? Well, I’ll give you something to remember for a little later down the road, darling,” and she squealed with delight as she bounced on her square feet, sending waves of old dimpled flesh careening up and down her body like a carnal waterbed, her large irregular breasts nearly swatting her face, which was alight with joy. Nathan unsteadily stood in horror as he blurted out “My wallet,” in a half-hearted attempt to explain his re-entry to her home, but Cynthia, clearly uninterested, shook her body at him and let out a reeling belly laugh. “See ya,” Nathan shouted nervously over the din of Cynthia’s mad cackles. He made a speedy line to the door and as he turned to shut it, he caught a glimpse of Cynthia bending down to touch her ankles and wriggle the bulk of her rear in his direction as she yelled out “Bye sweetheart, see ya real soon!”


         Before the elevator door opened on the ground floor of the lobby, Nathan Winston knew more trouble was on the way. He could hear the high nasal voice of Chan in one of his frequent bouts of impotent arguing. His voice was still singsong even when he was trying to be harsh and critical, unaware that his paroxysms of rage generally left him sounding as stereotypically Asian as his adopted name implied. The elevator doors opened like the curtains of a play you were dragged to, knowing full well that it was no good, but forced to watch all the same. Chan and the security guard were battling over what looked like the guest book, while Tim and Wink eyed the scene with great relish and broad smiles.
         “Me Chinese! Me no sign no book!,” Chan, while no great orator of the English tongue, often exploited his ethnicity in situations that involved authority figures. His hope was that the people who were questioning him would eventually give up out of frustration and he would walk away the victor. The ploy usually worked, but based on the stoic look of the security guard, Chan seemed to be losing this particular round.
         “I’m Chinese! I am Chinese!,” said the plainly white security guard.
         “You no Chinese. You white devil!” said Chan, jumping on the opportunity. A culture war was being waged in the lobby of a condo on the shores of one of the most famous beaches in the world. There was no doubt that Chan could be consistently relied on for impropriety.
         “If you don’t calm down sir,” said the guard, taking pains to make the word sir drip with so much sarcasm, he might as well have said ‘gook’, “I am going to have to call the police.” At this Chan backed down a bit. Between the four of them, there were a total of seven arrests, not one of which belonged to Chan, yet his hatred of police was stronger than most people who had been incarcerated for years.
         “What’s going on,” asked Nathan, taking some caution to divert his booze-ridden breath away from the man behind the counter. Although everyone’s credibility was paper-thin, every little bit helps.
         “Your friend here refuses to sign his name, and signing in Japanese or whatever doesn’t cut it. This is America, we write American,” said the guard, darting his eyes in Chan’s direction.
         “I’m sorry for any inconvenience,” said Nathan, his three weeks as a telemarketer finally paying off, “but you see, my friend here has very little experience with the civilized world.” Nathan could feel Chan’s indignation without even looking at him, so he raised a pacifying arm. “The poor man’s family was killed in a Chinese landslide and I am hosting him as a guest in this country while he looks for his long lost aunt.” The guard relaxed a bit.
         “Well, he still has to sign his name. For security purposes,” said the guard, justifying the meager authority he had, perhaps the only thing that made him happy in this world.
         “Of course he does. Chan?” Nathan waved an incredulous Chan over to the registry book. “Chan, what did we go over? When you write your name in English…” Chan, though ready to become quite violent, acquiesced, because the implications of savagely beating an unarmed guard proved fruitless.
Under his horrid breath Nathan whispered “Not now, Chan,” then, loudly, “O.k.: C, h…no, that’s a capital C, good… a… n.” Chan choked back millennia of rage and smiled at the guard, who clearly felt his job was done.
         “That is so crap!” Chan yelled as the foursome exited the lobby, another near- catastrophe averted. Chan was with people who knew that something was, is, or will always be crap to him. Generally, Chan could match wits with anyone, excepting the realm of English grammar.
The sun was an unrelenting force, blasting photons like jai-aliai balls off everyone’s skin. Wink started a tired descent down the sand-embedded steps, the rest following in drug-and-alcohol addled unison, until they hit the black tar pavement.
As his feet sizzled on the superheated concrete, Wink let out a guttural cry and, coordinationally challenged as he was, he began a tiptoe fall that sent Nathan, Tim, and Chan, one after one, stumbling on top of each other. They all ended up a jumble of twisted limbs and sad facial hair writhing at the bottom of the concrete steps. The idea of hitting rock bottom had never been so tangible to any of them.