Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [7]
Sounds like some nefarious drug held me in its clutches. No, I’d just run a mini marathon through the heart of Montreal. My blood sugar had dropped to my ankles, and dehydration had sucked up all my bodily fluids. My lungs felt scarred after inhaling ten kilometers’ worth of car exhaust. This weakened state left me prone to hallucinations as all the toxins stored in my body after a week-long debauchery recycled to deliver a haymaker to my senses.
My chess opponent had introduced himself moments earlier as Milos, a fat, brooding man with a scraggly beard and thick Slavic accent. Never seen him before. I’d come in for a beer, and he challenged me to a game. It took him only a few minutes to notice my disorientation.
“You look all in,” he said.
“Rough week. Not enough sleep. Ran too fast too far today. Didn’t eat enough. A cold brew will put me right.”
“Try this.”
Milos handed over a stunted joint wrapped in black rolling paper. I assumed it contained either pot or hash and merrily struck a match. I know. Accepting drugs from a stranger is a stupid thing to do. Nancy Reagan would never approve of me; I rarely say no to anyone offering a good time. I never thought her antidrug slogan got it right anyway. Really want to drive a drug dealer crazy? Don’t say no. Say maybe. Dealers hate to wait around while you make up your mind.
I toked twice, paused, and again considered how to outflank my opponent. The board had stopped playing tricks. But as I raised the pawn to shoulder height, the head of the piece grew bulbous and top-heavy. It pulled me backward.
I teetered on the edge of my stool for a moment and swooned. I surrendered to buoyancy. Buoyancy failed me. I could not float. Down, down, down my body fell, off a bar stool the height of a skyscraper. My brain went as well, rolling, tumbling ass over cerebellum down a velvet staircase studded with spikes.
Customers and staff ran over to help. I heard them babbling somewhere far off, cushioned snub-nosed sounds from under a bubble, imploring me to get up. Betty Boop shimmied naked on the pale, hairless chest of Koko the Clown. He passed an opium pipe to Cab Calloway, who was spinning on his heels, fronting an orchestra of skeletons. Hot jive. Hot jive. Cold fingers played hot jive. Bone bebopped against cold metal until . . . jazz slid into dirge . . . and then . . . crabalocker fishwife . . . sheep . . . barking . . . like . . . frogs . . . semolina pilchard . . . rat-faced gremlins . . . flagellating . . . Toulouse-Lautrec . . . yellow matter custard dripping . . . banshees devouring . . . flamenco dancers . . . dead dog’s eye . . . a chanting castrato chorus . . . the egg man . . . Gertrude Stein buggering . . . Dr. Billy Graham . . . mouth . . . opens . . . goo goo goo joob . . . Davy . . . Davy Crockett . . . could . . . not . . . com . . . plete . . . a . . . senten . . .
Four hours later I awoke in a beer cooler, splayed on top of six cases of Labatt’s. Oh, fuck. Not even my brand. Josh, the bartender, grabbed the front of my sweatshirt and gently hefted me to my feet.
“What the hell did you stick me on ice for? Did I look overheated?”
“No, Bill. You looked dead. We figured this was the best place to preserve the body.”
My tongue tasted of glue mixed with sand. I gulped two tankards of water and joined Milos at the bar. “What was that shit,” I asked, “opium? Angel dust?”
“Just some pot.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Laced with a little powdered heroin.”
“Heroin! Jesus, why didn’t you warn me? You could have damaged me!”
He waved me off. “Not with just two tokes. Besides, you fall pretty good.”
“I’ve had lots