#
 anada   "Connie Makes A                                          #          
 215         Cold Drink"               +###           +###    +####    +###  
                                      #    #  #  #   #    #  #    #   #    # 
                                by   #     #  # ##  #     #  #    #  #     # 
 12                       Infernal   #    .#  ## #  #    .#  #   .#  #    .# 
 nov                                  *###  * #   *  *###  * *###  *  *###  *
 2000 .+#################################################################.net

        Randy Andy was always a crazy sonofabitch, he’d just as soon piss on
 you as look at you, but he woke up one day about a year ago and poked his
 head out the screen door and it felt like he’d been smacked in the face
 by God.  The weather was just so damned fucking gorgeous, one of those
 heartbreak kinda days that the Good Lord seems to shit out his ass about
 400 days a year if you’re in California, but maybe once a summer if
 you’re in the midwest.  And for once in his stupid life, he smelled the
 stink and spoiled food and beer farts that made up his duplex – see, he
 stayed at this place over to Perth, near the university, one of those
 damn places that they squeeze in extra apartments so that college kids
 can live there, you can always tell because they have those bare wood
 staircases going up to some back door, and some half ass patio that
 every year some drunk frat fuck falls off of and dies.  Anyway, Randy
 Andy and Connie lived in the first floor of this place, and it was bad
 even for college kids, which they definitely wasn’t.

        Next thing you know, Randy Andy starts whipping open windows, he’s
 got the door hanging open, and he starts looking for garbage bags.  Because
 this place, man, youda just have to have seen it.  We’re talking pizza
 boxes, twelve-packs full of empties, socks on the floor, underwear on
 the stove, old milk in the fridge raising a stink.  Hell, Connie’d taken
 a shit the night before and never even flushed the damn john!  So
 there’s just all this smell, it’s like you know the cartoons where the
 green lines are coming offa something and that means it stinks?  You
 could pretty much see the green lines over there.  So Randy Andy’s got a
 bug up his ass, he goes down to the 7-11 and he picks up some garbage
 bags.

        He gets back, and by now the place is sorta actually aired out, and
 he starts tossing shit in bags.  It took one bag just to clear up the pizza
 boxes outta the living room.  So he’s hauling bag after bag to the curb,
 not even really thinking about it.  Like this summer day, it just got to
 him, you know?  After a while, of course, Connie hears all this ruckus,
 this throwin’ in bags and carryin’ around, and he wakes up.  Now I dunno
 if you met Connie, but he’s just a flat-out asshole when he’s drunk, and
 he’s pretty much drunk all the time.  He’d gotten to the point where
 he’d make sure he drunk enough to still be drunk when he woke up, so he
 never had to have a hangover.  I dunno, one of those guys had some kinda
 deal with disability, or a trust fund, or something, but I know they
 always had enough cash for another twelve of the Beast or Pabst Light,
 some shit like that, and a large pizza.

        Speaking of which, I never saw a motherfucker be more of a Jew about
 pizza coupons than Randy Andy.  Like, when the guy would deliver those
 circular things door to door, you know, just throw a big batch of
 coupons and grocery store ads and shit, all up on your porch, about ten
 minutes later there’d be Randy Andy scooping them all up, all up and
 down the street.  He had this fishbowl, only it was no water in it, he
 just had pizza coupons.  He’d reach in there, and it was like some game
 show host, he’d get all dramatic about it, and yank this piece of paper
 out, only instead of winning a million bucks or a trip to Cancun, he’d
 yell "THREE DOLLARS OFF A SAUSAGE AND CHEESE!!!"  It got to where if I
 was over there, or whoever, me and Connie and whoever would sit there
 and clap and go "wooo!" like a game show crowd.  Like the goddamn Price
 Is Right.

        Anyway, he’s throwing everything out, and Connie wakes up.  He comes
 out of his room in his underwear – and man, I don’t mean to get off the
 subject, but Connie had the yellowest, pissed-in-est underwear I ever
 saw.  I dunno if he pissed the bed or what, I never went in his room,
 but the times I crashed on the couch over there, he’d walk around till
 four, five o’clock, in these underwear that was yellow all over the
 front and shit, and he stunk, too.  Most times he’d take a shower about
 sundown, before he went out, and he was all right then, but I remember
 days he wouldn’t even put clothes on, he’d yell at Randy Andy to go get
 ‘em some beer at the 7-11, and they’d get pizza, and he’d sit in that
 fucked up La-Z-Boy in the living room with the spring biting you in the
 ass if you didn’t sit right, and he’d just have his damn underwear on
 all day.

        Now Connie, I mighta told you before, he’s mean as hell.  He gets up
 and walks out of his room right when Randy Andy’s walking by with a garbage
 bag full of beer bottles.  Connie does this, like, pushing thing with
 him, where he puts his arm out in front of him like a bar and sorta
 plows into you like a snowplow, and he does that to Randy Andy.  Knocks
 him over, and the beer bottles rip out of the bag and go everywhere.
 There’s that vinegary smell from old pop or beer bottles sitting around,
 ashy shit on the floor from the bottom of the bottles.  And Connie just
 goes "whathefuckyoudoin?"

        Connie likes to talk in single words.  "Whathefuckyoudoin?" is one of
 his favorites, and so is "Heygimmeanothercoldone" and "wherzafuckinpizza?"
 The Connie Dictionary could have about one page in it.  Unabridged.  Think
 about how cheap that book would be.

        So he’s all pissed off ‘cause Randy Andy woke him up.  And Randy Andy
 tries to tell him about cleanin’ the place up, and getting the stink
 out, because it’s such a beautiful day and all, and Connie just walks
 away from him in midsentence.  Goes out to the kitchen to make himself a
 cold drink, as he liked to put it.  Usually Randy Andy’ll stand toe to
 toe with Connie – I seen ‘em break each other’s noses in a fight once
 down at The Sports Box – but Randy Andy’s all rattled from getting
 smacked in the face by God, or whatever.

        Connie would go in the kitchen in the afternoon, whenever he woke up,
 standin’ there in his pissy britches, and he’s get a big tall Taco Bell
 glass, and he’d fill it up with ice.  The guy would go a week without
 brushing his teeth, but he was a dick about filling those ice cube
 trays.  Then he’d take all the leftover half bottles of beer, the ones
 people didn’t finish before they left, and he’d pour all of that on the
 ice.  He’d stand there like some kinda Foghorn Leghorn gentleman
 asshole, swishing that warm beer around with the ice till it was kinda
 cold, and he’d drink that for his first drink of the day.  One time I
 saw him take a beer that was almost full, but with a cigarette in it,
 and fuckin’ strain it through a shirt he picked up off the floor – some
 old t-shirt.  He strained it, threw the shirt back on the floor, swished
 that shit around like he was colonel Sanders with a mint fuckin’ julep,
 and he guzzled it right down.

        Randy Andy’s picking up all the beer bottles and puttin’ ‘em back in
 the bag, and Connie says to him "whathefuckyoudoin?" again.  Randy Andy just
 looks down at the slop and ashes and shit on the floor and says "we’re
 gonna have to rent a Shop Vac."  A Shop Vac!  I shit you not!  This is
 the same Randy Andy who fell asleep in a pile of his own dirty clothes a
 couple nights before, didn’t wake up when Connie poured a full beer on
 him, and didn’t change his clothes the next day.  And now he’s talkin’
 Shop Vacs to Connie!

        Connie walks over to him, and he’s lookin’ at him like Randy Andy’s
 some kind of bug he’s never seen before, or an alien or something.  "What
 happened to you?" Connie says, all quiet.  Randy Andy just twists the
 bag around, so it’s closed, then he takes it outside.  Just walks away
 from Connie, not sayin’ nothing.

        When he comes back, he stops in the doorway, all shocked – Connie’s
 standing there with his cold drink glass empty, and he’s got a finger
 down his throat!  He’s retching and heaving, and Randy Andy yells "what
 the fuck?  What are you doing?" right as Connie sorta does this
 wiggly-worm spasm and BLEEEEEEEEEEEAAAARRRGGHHH!!!  Pukes all over the
 carpet, all over the cigarette ashes and spilled beer, and the
 footprints and dirt and crud.  Old beer and pizza, bile, chunks of who
 knows what, just everyfuckingwhere.  He gets done, and he’s gasping for
 air, and he looks up at Randy Andy and he wipes his mouth off on the
 back of his hand.

        Then he just goes: "This is where you live, Andy.  Don’t you fuckin’
 forget it."  Just like that, and just "Andy," not "Randy Andy," for the
 first time ever.  Then he walks back into his room, right through his
 own fuckin’ puke, leaving footprints in the hall as he goes.  Doesn’t
 even stop to wipe his feet off, he just keeps going.  When he gets to
 his door, he throws the empty Taco Bell cup at Randy Andy, and it
 bounces off his chest and lands in the puke.
 
        What?  How’d I find out about all this?  Connie told me; he told
 everybody about it.  I was over there later that day.  Randy Andy was
 just sittin’ on the couch, totally in the fuckin’ bag, and it was
 pouring down rain outside.  Connie told everybody that story every day
 for, like, a month, sittin’ there with his can of beer or his Taco Bell
 cup, laughing at Randy Andy and talking about the day he was gonna clean
 the place up.  Randy Andy hardly said shit for a month or so, but he
 sorta gradually snapped back to his old self.  One thing, though – he
 never went out and got pizza coupons any more.  Connie would hold the
 fishbowl out to him, and he’d just sit there all crocked, and finally
 Connie’d get one out himself.  He tried to do the game show thing a few
 times, you know, "GET A LARGE PIE WITH TWO TOPPINGS FOR ONLY TEN
 NINETY-NINE!!"  But it just wasn’t the same, and he quit it.  After a
 while the fishbowl was just gone, I dunno where, and they'd just go get
 coupons off the front porch.

        Oh, and they never did clean the puke up, either.  It just dried
 right there on the carpet, and it stunk for a long time.  When I saw mold
 growing on it, that’s when I sorta quit going over there so much.

        I mean, that’s gross.

 .+##########################################################################

 anada215 by Infernal                                                (c) 2000
 ###################################################################anada.net