souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 113: misery loves company

"another fan's appreciation,
a do-be, don't-be situation.
drag me down into your hatred."
-"misery loves company", anthrax

"Thank you again, Marla."
Sam, Zelda, Alex, and Chuck had landed in Syracuse at around nine thirty at night. And, once they had landed and after a swift phone call to the apartment in Hell's Kitchen, Marla drove up for a ride over to Joey's place. For all Sam knew, he had barricaded himself into his place and thus she asked Marla to bring some more things along with her all the while: her old journal stayed put in that red courier bag over her shoulder. If Joey would at the very least let them in, she knew that the work of her pens and her pencils would perhaps help him.
Once Marla bounded into the airport parking lot, and she pulled up to the curb of which the four of them congregated at in anticipation of her, Sam was quick to catch her there at the driver's seat first: she kept her hair that bright neon green except this time around she ridded of the black stripe so she had a solid helmet of rich ferocious green hair that they saw from clear across the parking lot.
"You got those books?" Sam asked her once the three of them had piled into the back of her car.
"Right in the back seat!" Marla announced with a quick gesture behind her.
"Yeah, there's a li'l stack of books here—right here on the floor," Chuck told her; once she put her courier bag in the trunk, Sam rounded the front of the car back to the passenger seat.
"Those are the books I got from the house in Elsinore," she told him. "Next to my art, they were the only things that kept me sane. I have no doubt those books will help him recover and keep him company in this hard time for him."
She strapped in and Marla lifted the parking brake, and they proceeded away from the curb and into the rest of the lot. Despite the glow from North Syracuse, the darkness met them there at the driveway and all the way into the woods outside there. The memory of her and Joey having driven up to North Syracuse felt so fresh in mind: it wasn't that long ago he took her to the edge of the lake and then he showed her some hockey moves, complete with a round on the ice.
She kept her hand up on the "oh, shit" handle over her head all the way out from that city's edge.
"I'm also glad you two guys and Zelda came with her," Marla said at one point, and with a glimpse into the rear view mirror.
"Well, as Alex said—Joey's going to need all the support he can get," Chuck told her.
"I was coming back East anyway," Zelda added, "back to Providence once all is said and done here."
"Tour's cancelled, I assume?" Marla asked her with another glimpse into the mirror.
"Yeah, pretty much. My hope is that we can pick up where we left off again soon enough. The four of us are fine and good to go—like we'll tour with David Bowie or with Springsteen, as long as it gets us going again." Zelda paused for a moment. "We were doing great, too!"
"New album," Sam said in a soft voice.
"Marla can't know the full truth about it as of yet," Zelda pointed out; she had leaned forward to the back of the seat to better say that to her.
"Oh, right, right, right."
"I didn't even hear you anyways," Marla said with a shrug of her shoulders.
"Anyways, but yeah! We were just killing it lately. More so than when we toured with them and these two birds on either side of me here. I have no clue what's gonna happen to Anthrax now."
"They're gonna need a new singer, for one thing," Chuck told her. "Who that's gonna be is another question all together."
"Somebody who isn't Joey," Sam declared.
"Yeah, it's not gonna be the same without him," Alex agreed with her. "He gave them that dissonance that makes them stand out. His high voice held in junction to their hard and fast music."
"He also gives them their heart, too," she continued, "like when they were just a quartet and he was playing guitar, they had a lot more heart than when Scott was with them the first time around."
"Yeah, they did," Marla said with a glimpse over to her. "They really genuinely did. Like they had a certain warmth to them. Like a kindness of sorts."
They fell back into silence and Marla took the next exit off to that familiar neighborhood, the street with the right turn across from the art shop, buttoned up for the night. The apartment complex stood dark and lifeless against the inky black sky overhead.
Sam reached his front door first and knocked on the panel.
"Joey?" she called through the wood as Chuck stood behind her.
Silence on the other side. The kitchen light was on, as well as the living room light. But it felt as though nobody was home.
"Try the knob," Chuck advised her, and she turned it to the side. The door swung open.
There on the living floor, stretched out flat on his back, was Joey. His jet black curls had spread over part of his face while his arms were stretched out on either side of him. He looked as though he had fainted: through his curls, Sam made out the sight of his eyes pinched shut. His otherwise brown skin had washed out to the point it was more pale than the four walls that surrounded them.
To think that she held him in her arms only a month before. To think that she had come so close to him before that point. To think that he confessed his love to her and kicked that other woman away from him.
Sam lunged for him.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion from that point onward. She was about to clasp her hands to the sides of his face when something stopped her.
Or someone.
"Sam, look!" Chuck pointed out.
She glanced down at Joey's outstretched right arm. The syringe on the floor, filled with something gray and liquid, and for all she knew fatal.
"Joey!" Zelda shouted from behind them.
"JOEY!" Sam never yelled so loud in her life as she crouched down on the other side of him.
"Oh, god," Zelda groaned. "Oh, god. Oh, god, oh god oh god oh god oh shit—oh hell no."
"Oh, fucking hell," Chuck said as she ran his fingers through his hair. "Sweet Jesus don't let it be true."
Marla and Alex skidded into the apartment.
Joey groaned in his throat and Sam and Chuck gasped.
"Joey?" she whispered to him. Chuck crouched down next to her. Marla and Alex loomed right behind them.
"What's—what's all the yelling?" Joey grunted out through gritted teeth.
"Oh, thank god," Alex declared in a broken voice.
"What's going on?" Joey rolled his head over so his hair streamed off of his face. Sam looked over to the couch to find an empty beer right bottle next to the base.
Using a tissue, Zelda picked up the syringe from the carpet and she tossed it into the garbage can in the kitchen; Sam and Marla took another look at his arm to find that he had not made a single puncture.
The point of the needle had missed the vein by about a hair's breadth. Had he not been drunk, he would've made the lethal injection. Being drunk literally saved him.
Marla and Zelda lifted him off of the floor and propped him into an upright position, with his back right up against the front of the couch. He bowed his head and his jet black curls tousled around his shoulders and his chest. Tearful, Sam lunged forward and lifted his head for a better look into his eyes: those soft brown irises had given way to bloodshot terror. The beautiful sun kissed Indian boy she had fallen in love with had the angel of darkness looming over him right at that very moment.
"Joey," she pled into his face, "Joey, can you hear me?"
"I do," he said as he closed his eyes. His dark lips, once smooth like chocolate, never looked so dry and chapped from the lack of liquids.
"Dude, why do you have to do this to yourself?" Alex demanded, mortified.
"I just feel like I have to," Joey confessed in a broken voice: all the while, he barely moved his lips.
"We enjoy a couple of beers once in a while, but it's once in a while, though," Chuck pointed out.
"Joey, I could've lost you!" Sam declared as she could feel the tears coming on.
"I've only had one drink," he told them; indeed, he didn't smell alcohol at all, but rather like he had been asleep for hours on end. "I just—don't want to be awake anymore. I want to sleep. I can't sleep. I want to sleep."
A single tear fell down Sam's cheek at the sound of that.
"Joey, listen to me," she begged him. "You and I were getting so close to each other in my bed—in my bed! Back at my mom's house! Make no mistake, I was about to go all the way with you. I'll go with you all the way right now if you want."
"Sam, please," he said as his eyes drooped shut, "I'm not in the mood right now."
"Joey—please—listen to me. You don't need to pollute your body like this—you have to heal—you have a beautiful body and you mustn't do this sort of thing to it."
"I deserved it, though," he breathed out; she could hear tears in his voice.
"No! No you didn't! You didn't deserve any part of it, Joey!"
She began crying right there, right in front of him. She pushed the hair out of his bloodshot eyes once again.
"I want to heal you—I want to make art of your beautiful body and show the world of what I see in you. All the love I feel, away from the horrors of which you do to yourself."
She brought her lips to his, to that dry and cracked skin and she could feel the pains in his heart all the while. She held her hands on either side of his face to better feel his skin.
"I love you, Joey," she begged right into his gaping mouth. "I love you—I love you, Cliff—"
"What?" he asked her.
"I love you, Joey," she repeated in a near whisper.
"I thought that's what you said," he breathed back to her.
"What else would it be?" she asked him and she could feel her eyes burning with tears. She ran her fingers through his inky black hair for a better look into his face, so sick and pale; and she took a glance down at his body, so thin and emeciated.
"When's the last time you ate?" Chuck asked him in a gentle voice, to which Joey shrugged and he closed his eyes again. Chuck turned back to Zelda, Marla, and Alex right behind them.
"One of you go into the kitchen and get him something—he's probably famished to high heaven right now."
"No," Joey begged them.
"No?" Sam demanded as she brushed a tear from her eye.
"You look like you're about ready to pass out," Alex chimed in.
"Why the hell is he here," Joey sputtered, and his speech slurred a bit.
"Alex came along because he wanted to help you!" Sam exclaimed. "Chuck and Zelda did, too!"
"I don't need help," he croaked. "I don't need an Eskimo again."
"Yes, you do! Yes, you do, Joey! You got fired and now look at you! You're in dire straits! I let one boyfriend die, I'm not going through that again."
"I can get it myself..." His voice was to a near whisper at that point, further accentuated by the lack of liquids within him.
"I need to help you, Joey—I need to get you away from that. I need to protect you."
"Sam—don't—with him," Marla advised her as she set a hand on her shoulder. "He'll figure it out himself."
"But I need to help him! He needs help—" Her voice broke as the words left her lips. Marla tugged her up from the floor and she turned her around to better face her.
"Literally the best and sexiest thing you can do for him is to let him figure it out for himself," Marla continued in a gentle tone. Sam could see in her eyes that she too was crying. But she had to let him go, even if it meant another series of deep breaks within her heart. She bowed her head and wept right in front of Marla; she lowered her head and all but collapsed right into her chest. Marla cradled her in her arms and held her within her chest.
Chuck joined in right next to them.
Sam couldn't think about anything any further than that. All she recalled from that point onward was her climbing back into Marla's car and then nothing else after the fact. Everything was a blur, such that the mysterious man finally returned to her, even while she was wide awake. She pictured him right next to her, with his eyes deeper than the bottom of the ocean and his face right up close to her own. She wished to ask him on what to do next, but he never said anything to her.
Instead, he shook his head to her and then he looked back towards the trunk. She couldn't hardly think of anything else, but she knew that he meant business, and he always did when she reached a dead end. Behind every dead end was the road less travelled and his presence within her showed it to her. Marla saw him, too, and thus she knew that they were all in it together. It was all she could think about on the way away from Joey's apartment.
One of them led her into some place there in Camillus and the next thing she knew, she sat right next to Alex in a booth somewhere around there. She brushed away more tears and she peered over at Alex and the thoughtful look on his face. He had already ordered himself a cup of coffee despite it being almost eleven o'clock at night.
"Where's Marla, Chuck, and Zelda?" she asked him in a broken voice; she picked up a napkin so as to dry her eyes.
"Chuck and Zelda went next door for something," he replied in a gentle tone, "Marla's right there." He pointed to the right of her, where Marla finally picked up the receiver after she had apparently been waiting in line for a time. She put in the coins and slowly dialed the number.
Alex picked up his mug and took a sip of coffee.
"Hello, Charlie," she started in a loud enough voice for the both of them to hear. "This is Marla. I know it's late, but meet up with me, Sam, Zelda, Chuck, and Alex as soon as you get this. We're at the coffee shop up in Camillus, like it's the coffee shop right at the center of town. It's highly important that you do. Like, this is dire. This is a potentially life or death situation here."
Sam turned her attention to Alex right next to her in the booth, and his hand rested upon the table top before him, right next to his cup of coffee.
"So you said your parents hail from New York, right?" she asked him in a broken voice.
"Yeah, Sheep's Head. A neighborhood down in Brooklyn—my dad's from there, especially."
She looked down at his cup of coffee right before him. Having coffee so late at night felt so strange to her, but at the same time, there was something so precious about it. She thought back to when she and Joey first met Alex, and he sat on the front porch of the coffee house with Cliff. The only thing they missed was a bit of rain on their backs otherwise the mood would surround them and fit like a glove. She had bought him some ginger snaps all the while.
"You know what, Alex?" she started. "You're always giving me stuff. I wanna give you something, too."
"Nonsense, you always give me stuff," he pointed out with a straight face. "You feed me and you cuddled up next to me—both in my car and in my bed. You took me to your old home, too, the place you go to when no one's looking. That's far more than what it's worth, Samantha."
"And you took me home..." Her voice trailed off as she glanced up at Marla who had dialed another number on the pay phone right next to them.
"So we're always giving each other stuff," she told him. "How 'bout—we give each other our silence?"
"Our silence," he echoed that.
"Yeah, if we don't stifle one another with gifts to each other, surely we'd have to give each other our silence."
Alex lowered his gaze to the floor before them and then he nodded his head in realization of what she meant by that.
"I don't know if I've told you this," she started again, "but one thing I've always wanted to do with Joey was make a glass piece based off of him."
"Glass—like stained glass?" He was stunned by that.
"Yeah. When I was in school, Belinda taught both me and Marla some tricks on how to work with the glass tools—you know the cutter and how to make things go with the grain of the glass. It was something I've always wanted to do when I was in school."
"And you never did?" He knitted his eyebrows together, to which she shook her head.
"Never could get into it," she confessed. "And I have no clue where to start with where Bel works over in Albany, either."
"Do you think—" He raised his gaze to the ceiling overhead: the light over them shone down on his prominent brow and it in turn made his eyes appear deeper than they actually were. "Do you think maybe they can get you something there?" He returned his gaze to her.
"Maybe," she said with a shrug and a sniffle: all the crying had loosened her up. "But then again, that would mean that I would have to come back here to New York. I'm already just barely settled into my mom's house. And I'm still just getting to know you guys, too."
"Traveling can be hard, too. I mean, look no further than when we were in Germany last summer."
"Oh, yeah, on the flight home, you were out like a light," she recalled.
"And I was out like a light after I got back to the hotel from the border, too!" he added with a chuckle. And then he turned serious once more. "Well—Samantha—"
She turned her attention to him, right into those bright steely deep eyes with a quick glimpse to the little tuft of gray over his brow, which had returned to full bright fruition. He nibbled on his bottom lip.
"Whatever you want to do—" he began, but he stopped from something right next to them, and Sam turned her attention to Zelda who had just walked in through the front doors right then. Marla hung up the phone but then Zelda lunged for it herself.
"Sam?" Marla said once she turned back around towards them.
"What's up?" she asked her.
"You guys aren't gonna believe this."
Alex raised those dark eyebrows at her.
"Apparently Bill hasn't nulled the marriage," she told her. "You're still legally his wife."
Alex closed his eyes and bowed his head.
"Oh, for crying out loud," Sam groaned as she leaned her back against the vinyl seat right behind her. "But wait, I kissed Joey, though! That's a breach of contract, isn't it?"
"For it to be as such, you have to be caught," Marla pointed out. "You have to actually show proof of it in the state of California."
"Caught," she echoed. Alex raised his head right then.
"Caught," he muttered, and then Sam raised her eyebrows at him.
"Marla, do you have your camera on hand?" he asked her.
"No, it's back home in Hell's Kitchen."
"Damn."
"Why?" Marla frowned at him. Sam lowered her gaze to those spidery guitar player fingers right next to his coffee cup, and right next to her own hand. Thin and sparse, perfect for running along the neck of that little red guitar back at his parents' house.
"Well," he started again with a bit of caution, "'cause if you did, I'd ask Sam here to hold my hand with me and you to take a picture for us. If he needs proof that his legal wife's sneaking around behind his back, then let's give it to him right now."
"I think you're gonna need to do way more than to hold hands with her, Alex," Marla pointed out. "Even when she said that she and Louie screwed around, he didn't buy into it once. At least as far as I could tell anyway."
She sat back down next to Sam while Zelda called up someone, probably one of the girls back in Rhode Island. The three of them sat there in silence, when Marla turned her attention back to them.
"I have an idea," she said in a low voice, "but it doesn't involve him, though." She nodded at Alex.
"What're you thinking?" Sam asked her as she drummed her fingers on the top of the table.
"We go back to Hell's Kitchen—you know, it's four hour drive, so it's going to be real late by the time we get there but it'll be more than worth it, though. Like we get in the car and—and—" Marla closed her eyes.
"Yeah?"
"We go back there and—seeing as Chuck is with us, another Native American man—I do a little—" She ran her tongue over the edge of her top row of teeth.
"A little what?"
Marla nibbled on her bottom lip and then she made the shape of a woman's body with her index fingers and then she made a camera gesture thereafter.
"Marla," Sam scoffed, albeit in a hushed voice.
"Well, what the hell else are we supposed to do, though, Sam? Especially since we're here right now, within range of Hell's Kitchen and my camera—" She flashed Alex a dirty look.
"Hey, sometimes the way is through, you know," he pointed out as he took a sip of coffee.
"And be the other woman with Chuck and Tiffany?" Sam was horrified. "I don't think so."
"Well, unless Joey wakes up any time soon, there's no way to do something straight up without crossing some lines and then showing it off to Bill to verify it. As far as he knows, you're a citizen of California now and therefore his official wife. He won, Sam. Unless you go to bed with Chuck and I catch you on camera all the while, that Bible thumping mother fucker won and you go back to Elsinore and undo everything Bel and I did to get you out of there."
She sighed through her nose and she pulled in her fingers so she had her fist upon the table top.
"Time to put on your acting skills, Sam," Marla told her with a wink. "C'mon—it's a four hour drive. The longer we stick around here, the later it'll be by the time we get home."
Alex polished off the rest of his coffee and then, as Marla left a tip for the waitress, the three of them headed out of there right as Zelda hung up the phone.
"Rose is coming to get me," she told them.
"Okay!" Marla replied. "So—good night for now."
They exchanged embraces and then Marla led Sam and Alex back outside, where Chuck met up with them, out of breath and with a sheen of sweat on one side of his face.
"Where've you been?" Sam asked him.
"Looking for another phone," he told her as he ran his fingers through his dark hair. "Not another one for at least a couple of blocks and the damned thing wasn't working."
"Well, we're going back to Hell's Kitchen," Marla announced to him, "I have an idea because Sam's still caught up in a little pickle with her insane counselor."
"Oh, really?"
Sam herself then turned to Alex.
"By the way," she started, "what were you going to tell me a little bit ago?"
"On what?" he asked her.
"You know when we were talking about glass and coming back here to New York, and how traveling is hard and whatnot," she recalled. "You were going to say something to me. Whatever I wanted to do and then you got cut off. Ring any bells?"
He paused and then his face lit up.
"Oh, yeah! I was gonna tell you that whatever you wanna do—I'm behind you on it."
"Really?"
"Yeah." Even in the afterglow from the cafe behind them and the streetlights before them, she could see the thoughtful look on his face. She sniffled again and she flashed back to when he rescued her from the side of the road.
"Aw."
"Besides," he continued with a shrug of his shoulders and a shift of his weight, "after what happened with Joey earlier, you're going to kinda need that, too. That type of support. I'm sure Marla and Belinda would give it to you, too. But—you know. The more, the merrier."
"Thank you, Alex, that—that means a lot to me." She showed him a little smile and she could feel the tears coming on once more.
"Hey, it's just like when I picked you up from the side of the road a couple of months ago. I'm just doing what I can."
"Hey, kids!" Chuck called out to them. "Think the snow's coming, I feel it!"
"Oh, shit! Yeah, let's get a move on..." Alex and Sam ran to the car together, and he stayed right behind her in the back seat on the four hour ride back to New York City. Even if the snows came in right then, Sam knew that she could rely on friends now.