Light poured through my closed eyelids and my skull rang
like a council-fire drum. I could hear Seamus’ voice asking if I was okay but I
hadn’t figured out how to answer. The muscles in my face pulled the strings to make
my lips move but the pounding harshened. Ten or 12 thoughts swum in my head but
none of them spoke as loud as the one that wanted to darken the room. A handful
of ice cubes clanked in a glass just before some liquid was poured. The image
of the cowboy flickered in my mind and I hoped the Buick was parked outside of
wherever we were. Seamus sipped his beverage and let out an exhale gasp of
satisfaction. Some plastic crinkled and a light rapping of one surface upon
another preceded the dragging sounds of a scrape. Seamus snorted.
“Where’s
Abel?”
Seamus
mimicked the sound he’d made after sipping, then snorted again. I managed to
open an eye and see him hunched over a table. He clutched something cylindrical
between his thumb and forefinger and one end of it was inside his nostril. The
idea of a whiskey-and-cocaine combination saturated me with nausea.
