That was the night I took everything I could carry and slept on the hide-a-bed in my drummer’s mom’s basement.

Carl was at the kitchen table filling out forms for hospice care when I came knocking.

After a radical double-mastectomy and two years in remission his mom’s cancer was back but she was done with doctors. Said fuck it to further chemotherapy and had Carl move her bed to a first-floor room with a view of the birds in the backyard. Bought a ridiculously large TV that made all four of “The Golden Girls” look big as Mount Rushmore when we crept past her open door on the way to the basement.

The bed looked unmade and empty but she was there, sleeping while a studio audience roared and a cellular mutiny of rot multiplied unopposed inside her body.

Carl went through this with his dad around the time I moved to Seattle.

He opened a door at the end of the hall and led me downstairs. Asked:

"How’d you fuck this one up?"

"I said I wouldn’t drink. And I did."

I dropped my backpack and stood my guitar upright in the corner under slanted bands of streetlight.

Carl flicked a switch, powering fluorescent tubes that popped softly, snapped and clacked overhead.

"That’s what you do. Dogs roll in dead shit and you drink."

My movements felt remotely controlled, vision detached and delayed. Eyes red and raw from processing grainy video feed from an undersea probe.

I submerged further into shock. Looked at my hands, saw my legs below me and my feet beneath them, attached but somehow separate and uncomfortably abstract. A photo of a drawing of an image of me, standing in shoes my fingers laced up that morning in a thoughtless moment of automatic action. I considered how my fortunes had changed since I left Margaret asleep in our bed, tied those knots on my feet and walked downtown to open PapaTaco.

I turned my hands over and studied parts of a puppet impostor incapable of doing all the things I’d watched them do that day. I couldn’t understand or accept the fact that I was here now, shot down behind enemy lines, seeking shelter from a sympathetic partisan ex-bandmate.

Carl lifted cushions from the couch, jimmy-jacked the tubular frame upward and out to form a bed and for a moment we stood without speaking, mourners at the edge of an open grave. I’ve logged a great number of hours on countless couches and I’ll testify that the only thing more depressing than sleeping on a shitty couch is sleeping on one that transforms into a shitty bed.

Springs plucked and hummed as I crab-walked my ass to the cold musty middle of the mattress. I shucked my shoes and let them thump to the Berber carpet.

Carl opened a closet and began to unpack a suburban yard sale of snowboards water skis life jackets chest coolers and tents stuffed into slippery nylon bags. He stacked these items against the wall. Made enough room to disappear inside and dig deeper.

"And I got myself fired today."

"Nice. You file for unemployment?"

"No way. Pure fucking misconduct."

He stopped rummaging, poked his head out like a prairie dog.

"So? Fuck it. File anyway. They deny, you appeal. Every time I was denied, and every time I appealed and got my benefits. You have to file."

Carl knew how to game anything, anyone. No was never no to him, rejection never truly final. Those things simply didn’t translate, wouldn’t stick. Carl could sniff out an unknown angle and juggle the odds in his favor. Prop a mirror in front of the situation and disappear into it, running upside-down and backward toward some M.C. Escher vanishing point where downstairs was upstairs and he somehow came out golden.

He threw a shriveled down sleeping bag over me. I drew it across my chest and turned onto my side, already splendidly uncomfortable.

"Your mom’s okay with me staying here?"

"You know she fucking loves you man. She still thinks you’re going to write a hit song, take me on tour with you somewhere. Get the band back together. She always believed a hundred percent in Clownhunter."

The rest of our parents saw the band as a lark but Carl’s mom was an active supporter, a true Clownhunter believer. When none of us had credit cards she phoned ahead and booked motel rooms on her Visa. We put a million miles on her camper van touring in high school. That woman had a heart as big as a barn.

Carl returned items to the closet in order by season.

A science-fair volcano bubbled in my gut. I vented a belch and moaned.

"You gonna throw up?"

"Maybe. Later."

I sat up slowly, relieved to feel the polluted tide of my stomach ebb from the root of my tongue. I drew a heavy breath that ran rough in my chest. Exhaled and it was sharp on all sides like something made of metal.

"Still hitting the drums?" I asked.

"Fuck no. Check this out."

Carl switched on a buzzing bank of lights at the far end of the basement. Wheeled a ticking ten-speed Schwinn to one side and snatched a bedsheet from his decommissioned drum kit with a magician’s flourish that left a quivering high-hat hissing like a snake.

The sight of Carl’s scuffed Ludwigs and tarnished Zildjians broke my fucking heart. This mothballed setup was once a steel-driving machine, an explosive decibel factory that laid steady tracks for the Clownhunter sound up and down Interstate 5, from the Chula Vista Y.M.C.A. to Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. Now it was a cramped slum of basic shapes on chromed steel stands, a forgotten city’s silhouette obscured by exhibits of the recreational and leisure pursuits of Carl’s dying North American nuclear family.

"So when’s the last time you saddled up and played those?"

Carl shook his head, half-shrugged and stretched his arms apart as if estimating the size of something mysterious he’d only glimpsed from a distance. His hands dropped like two shot birds, palms cracked to his sides and he took a deep breath. Came up on his toes and rocked back, staring at the floor and shaking his head, stumped.

This was proof you’d reached the real Carl, when a response to your statement or question wasn’t immediately batted back at you. I knew now we were talking about a system he couldn’t scam. A code he couldn’t crack. It was the same expression, the same broken-robot, cut-puppet body language he used when he said he couldn’t move with me to Seattle because his dad was dying.

He cast the sheet over the drum kit and snapped off the lights.

"You ever try to find someone who needs a drummer?" I asked. "Set those things up and play?"

"Yeah what, haul those into a coffee shop for open-mic night? I see Dave and Pete once in a while but they don’t play anymore. And I don’t even have time. My world is small now, man. I’m lookin’ after my mom and that’s-"

He raised his arms again. Exhaled and let them softly fall.

"That’s pretty much my life."

He rolled the bicycle back in front of the drums.

"Clownhunter was your band, Vincent. You wrote the songs, you organized every practice. You made all that happen. If YouTube was around back then I know we would have gotten serious exposure."

He was right. Indie success stories in the ’80s and ’90s were limited by a real-world bandwidth of opportunity. There were only so many clubs hosting shows and a finite number of dates each year for a lucky number of bands to play. Oh, and you had to be really goddamn good.

Carl nodded toward my guitar in the corner.

"Set fire to a man’s house, he’s gonna grab his most valuable possession going out the door. You lost your job, your girl kicks you out and what do you do? Hit the streets with your fucking Fender. Absolutely badass."

"Carl, I didn’t-"

"I know you think your session work wasn’t a big deal but I was proud of you. Tellin’ everybody fuckin’ yeah, Vincent’s a professional musician in Seattle, he’s doin’ it. You did it."

"Man I played a lot of local radio ads. Scored a video game about wizards, wrote some atmospheric filler for a couple of independent films. But it’s not like I went up there and made, you know, “Pet Sounds” okay? It was work. Just paying the bills."

"So fucking what? You weren’t wearing a name tag, sitting under a headset in a call center. You made a living with those strings and that makes you a professional. I haven’t seen you since last summer but here you are. Poundin’ the pavement like “El Mariachi” at the end of the world."

Carl went to his dad’s old workbench in the corner, opened a cabinet beneath it. Said:

"If this house was burning right now and I didn’t have to worry about my mom? I’d probably run out of here with all her meds and my Xbox."

He found a five-gallon bucket, placed it on the floor near my head and stood over me. Pointed toward the dark end of the basement.

"That was the first time I’ve looked at those drums since I dumped them down here. But there’s no dust on your guitar. You never gave up the dream. I wish you felt good about that."

Carl walked to the stairs.

"If Mom’s awake I’ll tell her you’re here. We’ll have breakfast tomorrow. Today. Okay?"

"You bet."

"You want a Percocet?"

I wanted two, in fact.

He brought me drugs and a glass of water, shut off the lights and went upstairs. I tracked a fading series of kittensqueaks as Carl trod above me. Headlights of passing cars sent frames of light skimming across the wall over my head and I wriggled and rolled, desperate to find the least uncomfortable posture.

The furnace kicked on with a hushed thump and my unoccupied mind began to replay highlights from the day’s events.

This is what I could remember:

I waited until the restaurant closed to return my PapaTaco uniform, walking the block and scouting for Kyle’s car in case he’d stuck around to cover my shift like a fast-casual franchise martyr. I wasn’t going to roll in there as the defective tire that went flat and allow Johnny Lunchmeat to portray himself as a full-size spare. My shaky self-esteem couldn’t take another hit like that. Not while I was still trying to figure out how to sell this fiasco to Margaret.

All day I’d struggled to craft a narrative that acknowledged the facts while minimizing my fault. But I had brought us to days like this many times before. She knew every card in my deck and I’d run out of fresh ways to play them. The only approach left untested was pure honesty. Confessing to Margaret that she had fallen in love with an intractable double-wide fuckup.

I saw Jenny alone behind the bar, head down over a tangle of receipts and register tape. When I rattled the locked front door she jerked her head up, squinted until she found a ghost image of me on the sidewalk waving at her through a forest of upturned chair legs reflected gray in the black glass.

I detected the odor of tequila and fury when Jenny met me at the kitchen door. Her face was flushed with fire, skin toad-moist and shiny with sweat.

I handed in my uniform.

"The apron’s a little damp," I said.

She snatched the folded shirt and apron, flung them onto a supply shelf crowded with overflowing bus tubs and trays that never made it to the dishroom.

"I don’t give a shit."

Jenny’s eyes quivered with alarming energy, like those dashboard lights that let you know something is already seriously wrong with your car’s engine.

"Kyle," she said, "is a goddamn monster."

"Asshole," she hissed. Sent another deep breath through her system and said:

"He is a fucking asshole."

She rubbed her face, stripped the gauze from her neck and let her tattoo removal site breathe, a raging red earthworm wound that read JOKER in cursive letters. The raised capital J looped from her clavicle to her earlobe. Jenny was halfway through a pint glass of what appeared to be crushed ice and tequila. She tilted her head back. Gritted her teeth and gasped.

Her voice strangled:

"Want one?"

I wanted four, in fact.

"Yes, please."

A strong hand fell on the back of my neck and Jenny steered me toward the wreckage of the bar, pulled out a stool as if seating a guest. Loose receipts fluttered and spun in her jet wash as she loped behind the counter and fulfilled the optimistic potential of her half-full glass by topping it off with more Cuervo.

"Here."

She slid my worn manila tip envelope over a sticky grit of margarita salt on the bar. Banged down a pint glass and some ice. Slopped it damn near full of Cuervo and pushed it toward me with the knuckles of one tight fist.

Jenny raised her glass, locked eyes with me and nodded before dragging down a mouthful.

I made an inch disappear, came up for air. Growled like I’d been kicked in the ribs when I asked:

"What happened?"

"So. I clock in to open with you, and of course you’re not here. There’s no music and all the tables are pushed back so at first I’m thinkin’ someone broke in right? Then I see this little circle of chairs and Kyle’s just sittin’ waitin’."

Jenny tipped her glass at an aggressive angle now, nearly down to the halfway mark again. She dug a lime from the garnish caddy, popped it into her mouth and shuddered, spit the stripped rind over my shoulder into the dining room.

"Motherfucker tells me Come have a seat Jenny, and we wait and then Rick shows, he’s always on time right? Mostly? So Rick sits down. Then Megan and Jazmine, Kyle tells them to clock in and come join us but he’s not sayin’ shit-else, he’s just starin’ at his fuckin’ phone. The second it hits ten-thirty Kyle gets up and locks the fuckin’ door. We’re fuckin’ locked in now okay and he takes the timecards of anybody who hasn’t showed up and writes NO CALL NO SHOW TERMINATED on them. Then he sits down, tells us all this crazy shit like The Chinese, they believe a character in crisis is also an opportunity and we’re all like, What the fuck?"

I was confused but didn’t dare interrupt Jenny. She had a limited window of time before Jose Cuervo overran her perimeter completely. The picture she was painting had started with the bold cold clarity of Rothko. Now she was working in the scribbled but oddly organized detail of Basquiat. I did not want to be in the room when her expressionism devolved to the point of Pollock so I nodded through the fuzzy parts, encouraged her to continue.

"Kyle’s clipboard, he’s printed up this whole read-and-sign thing, it’s like three pages and we all had to read it and sign it."

"What did it say?"

"It was all like, Professional Expectations. Consequences. And then the kitchen door, someone’s knockin’. And the house phone starts ringing and Jazmine gets up to answer it and Kyle’s like No, let it go to voicemail and he keeps talking right? And then we see Ramon is right there at the front door fuckin’ lookin’ at us, he can see us and we can see him right? And he’s got his cell phone, he’s the one calling the house line. We can actually hear him shouting outside but Kyle doesn’t look up, he just keeps talking and we’re all lookin’ at each other like, What the fuck?"

"Oh, no. Not Ramon."

"Oh yeah, he fuckin’ fired Ramon and Dennis today over the phone. Dennis and Ramon."

She held up their felt-fuzzy tip envelopes. A white PapaTaco envelope poked from the end of each one.

"So that was Kyle’s meeting and now you see? You see this fuckin’ place? I had no coverage for breaks and everyone’s busing their own. Nobody’s on the dish pit and I’m seatin’ guests, I’m takin’ orders and workin’ the fuckin’ bar, Megan’s all alone on the outdoor seating, Jazmine’s got the floor and I’m on the register plus I’m takin’ phone orders and baggin’ to-gos. Rick’s by himself in the kitchen and this customer totally screamed, the guy fuckin’ screamed at Jazmine so she’s crying and Kyle? Sits in his fuckin’ office on speakerphone all day. Yeah. Fuckin’ bitch left at three."

Jenny slumped against the stainless steel slop trough running under the taps behind her. Straightened up and pawed for a straw, drank the last of her drink.

She closed her eyes, aimed her chin at the ceiling. Turned her head slowly from side to side like she was smelling something warm and wonderful and I heard her breathe sharply.

"I can’t. Vincent I can’t."

The Cuervo bottle was empty. She reached across the bar with both hands, baby-grasping for my drink.

The nature of Jenny’s physical movements, even her facial expressions normally reminded me of something made of iron, bolted together at right angles and powered by steam. Now her laser-scorched hands were incapable of coordination and her stubby fingers with bitten nails became graceful and gentle, fumbling for my glass with mesmerizing motions like tentacles on an anemone.

Kyle 2.0 had broken Jenny proper.

I hoisted my half-empty glass out of her reach and dumped it into the potted fake ficus at the end of the bar.

"Jenny you’re done. Come on. Come here."

While she could still remember her screen-lock password we set an alarm on her phone for seven. That would give her plenty of time to get her shit together, reconcile the receipts and walk the deposit to the bank in the morning.

I broke down four cardboard boxes and spread them on the floor, covered them with clean kitchen linens to create a coarse nest reeking of industrial bleach where Jenny could sleep it off. Helped her manage a controlled collapse and shut off the light overhead.

Counted out the cash total, organized the receipts and put everything in the register. I wiped the black-glass specials board clean and brought it to the bar. Wrote down totals in neon pink so Jenny could begin with known sums in the morning. I made a note reminding her that a pitcher of ice water with lemon was waiting for her, chilling on the floor of the walk-in. Sure as shit she was going to need that.

I opened the fuse box and threw the breakers, cutting power to the lights and the alarm system, all the refrigeration units and fan-cooled appliances, the POS terminals, the credit card readers the registers and the walk-in, the icemaker, the microwaves, the Easy-Bake pseudo-espresso machine and the self-serve beverage case. The contrasting silence filled my ears with cotton thick as concrete.

Seated at the bar in the dark I mixed a double Jack and Coke in a short glass and texted instructions to Jenny about how to play this power-failure ruse to Kyle in the morning. PapaTaco had no CCTV. Within limits I could bend time and the truth of this situation to keep Jenny off the hook for getting too shitfaced to drop the night deposit. But I had to be smart about it. And my instructions to Future Jenny had to be perfect.

Tell Kyle: power out 30 min, alarm & card reader wouldn’t reset. You didn’t wake Kyle to drive up since he stops in Sundays after church. Say you *took initiative* he loves that. You slept here on guard since no alarm, make sure he sees your bed on floor, good luck.

Tomorrow after praying to an imaginary bearded ghost in the clouds about shellfish, house pets and other critical life choices, Kyle would walk in to find every logic-driven display blinking 12:00. He would see Jenny’s cardboard box-spring and bar-towel bivouac on the floor. He would listen to her explanation and patiently train her to reset the alarm after a power failure. Then Kyle would trust Jenny forever.

Tell Kyle you talked to your pastor, he discussed it w/ God & all 3 of you agree you deserve promotion to Assistant Manager.

Jenny’s phone rumbled on the bar. I placed it beside her head, a winking firefly nestled in the crumpled cotton wings of a crash-landed Valkyrie on the fast track to middle management.

I quietly hustled trays and bus tubs from the surrounding shelves and ran them to the dish pit. Refolded my shirt and apron and put them away.

Tidied up the bar, smashed the Cuervo bottle in a plastic bag and buried it under burnt refried beans in the kitchen trash. Put Ramon’s tips in my pocket. Removed an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels from the top shelf of the bar and crept past Jenny like a shoemaker’s elf as her raspy breathing approached the dragging roar of a cartoon snore. Patted my pockets to ensure I had everything before throwing the breakers on. A morning chorus of beeps and chirps filled the restaurant as I pulled the kitchen door shut behind me.

Blackouts are funny. The period of time you can’t track does not necessarily correlate to your peak period of intoxication. I’ve had blackouts run in both directions on my timeline, erasing parts of the day that occurred before I started drinking. Remember musical chairs in grade school? Do they still do that or is it considered cruel? Sometimes the needle comes off the record and your brain is left standing there.

When the power comes back on it’s not like Snow White waking up from a poison-apple nap. It’s an abrupt and disturbing restoration of basic systems after a hard reboot, a running start from zero as you try to remember your prime directives and return to your mission. Kyle Reese sent from the future back to a filthy ’80s L.A. alleyway, naked and groggy without so much as a dime set aside in the crack of his ass to fund his hunt for Sarah Connor.

Many drinkers who black out are overcome with a fear that the missing hours they can’t recall were spent behaving like a lunatic but that’s rarely the case. If you started your night with a couple of drinks while sorting your stamp collection or watching PBS, chances are good you stayed that course after your memory decided to quit taking notes, close up shop and hang that little sign in the window that reads GONE FISHING.

I had to go to counseling once, that’s a story for another time but the counselor I met with was very keen to hear about my blackouts. He did his best to impress upon me that this symptom of my drinking was truly significant. Troubling to the point of being dangerous, yet somehow special. A rare white rhino on the wild savanna of alcoholism.

He told me about a client who had gone to Hawaii for one week. The plane left Portland and when it leveled off the man had his first drink.

The needle didn’t drop back onto his record until he was flying home. An entire week of his life had been erased, a seven-day jump cut directed by tiny spark plug-sized bottles of airline liquor.

Like me this man was not a committed daily drinker but an impulsive and mercenary binger. It stood to reason he hadn’t been on a rampage or in a dead-drunk stupor the entire time he was in Hawaii.

When he got home he checked his luggage. No bloodstained clothing. Souvenirs he didn’t recall buying. Reviewed his credit card statements and pored over his hotel bill. No exorbitant room service charges, no cab rides home from strip clubs at four a.m. No massive cash advances, no escorts coming to his room charged to a Visa account cloaked under the name of a 24-hour tow company run from a post office box. He got tested for every sexually transmitted disease and came up clean. He even contacted the police to see if he’d been arrested in the Aloha State. Nothing.

There is every indication he had peacefully enjoyed himself, been a perfect gentleman as he walked on the beach, ate great food and saw some bitchin’ sunsets. But the alcohol he drank bored a wormhole between two in-flight happy hours and opened a rift in his personal space-time fabric that swallowed an entire week. It spooked him so bad he got on the wagon and stayed put. And good for him.

That story didn’t scare me at the time. Sometimes I wish it had but when you’re sixteen there’s not much anyone can tell you.

Lying in Carl’s basement I tried to follow a trail of breadcrumbs back through the course of my night.

I know I left the restaurant and went to Ramon’s house to deliver his tips. Kyle had my scalp hanging from his junior bat-belt but I wouldn’t let him shame Ramon into scrubbing his uniform, force him to come crawling back to exchange his dignity for seventy-two dollars in small bills and change.

I gave Ramon the Jack Daniels and his money.

"Didn’t you quit?"

"Fired. Total fucking misconduct."

"When we were at the Amber Room you drank Cokes all night. You said you quit drinking."

"This isn’t mine. It’s your PapaTaco severance package."

We opened the bottle, of course we did and we actively hated on Kyle. Ramon’s envelope was largely singles and I broke into my twenties to match him for five-dollar hands of Blackjack while we chased shots with peppermint Tic Tacs and talked shit about the new sheriff in town.

I remember setting the alarm on my phone. I had to get back to the apartment in time to brush my teeth and pick up the place a little before Margaret came home. I figured she might let a few sips slide if I told her how I saved Jenny’s job and provided Ramon with restorative justice.

At some point the music got too loud and I got louder which pissed off Ramon’s girlfriend. I was asked to leave.

I walked up Monroe under streetlights swarmed by jerky galaxies of insects.

CUT TO:

My needle dropped back to thumping sounds. The growl of zippers. Heels on hardwood, keys jingling. Then the noises moved away from me.

Vapor condensed inside my skull. Slowly cooled and accumulated. My cheek peeled painfully from the floor.

I was on the tile against the tub in the bathroom, white enamel tinted blue. I wiggled my extremities and took inventory. Ran a hand over my face feeling for cuts and dried blood. Pushed a finger into my mouth and probed for broken edges, missing teeth.

Rolled over and held my breath as the fluid in my head shifted and leveled. Clenched my eyes shut and watched the darkness inside me explode in a storm of visual signals, sickening phosphene hula hoops and wobbly helixes of pixels and static. A painful impact hammered my head in sync with my pulse, crashing like those swinging steel balls that hang in a frame to demonstrate what Margaret called The Croquet Phenomenon. I heard my heartbeat army-marching through my head from ear to ringing ear, combat boots over crunchy snow.

A sharp pain in my hip, but all major systems reported normal. My vessel was intact.

When I finished vomiting I drank from the sink. The bedroom door was closed.

I knocked soft. Put my ear up close and listened for any sign of Margaret. Stepped away from the burnt-fuel smell of my breath against the paint.

Nothing.

The bed was empty, Margaret’s pillows gone. Dull in the darkness, crumpled bills on the hardwood. I stepped around them and looked for a note. Backed out of the room empty-handed like a man who’d stumbled upon a crime scene, careful not to leave a trace or touch anything.

The front door stood open wide. I held up a hand against the glare of the hallway light. Reached to pull it shut but missed and nearly fell.

A backpack full of my clothes hung from the doorknob. My guitar lay across the threshold.

I pulled these things inside, secured the door and returned to the bathroom to vomit again. I got dressed. I couldn’t find my phone.

I turned on all the lights and looked one last time for a note.

The last time I did this she left a note.