Frank was on a road to disaster. He was snorting line after line. Big ones too and the coke was good.
I’ve been known to dabble in that particular field of mind alteration, and trust me, the stuff was potent.
There was usually a certain point at which I felt the need to stop for a little while. I would carry on between twenty minutes and a half an hour later, just to stay on top of my plateau, but my body wouldn’t let me get any higher than that.
Frank didn’t have the same mechanism in him. Once he started going he didn’t stop unless he was out of drugs altogether.
Maybe, I could have stopped the events of that fateful evening early, because I knew these details about my pal Frank. I didn’t know just how much blow he was able to score. I was also unaware of the heroin that had found its way into circulation. And besides, I wanted to have a good time myself.
We’ll get back to the drug situation later. It all really started going wrong when this guy, Bill Harris, started getting loud and annoying. Plenty of people were getting irritated with him and telling him to keep his mouth shut, but he just wouldn’t stop saying things that were way out of line.
* * *
“Can somebody do something about this fucking nigger music? I can’t fucking stand this shit!” he said at one point.
Well, some of the people there didn’t quite like that statement, for instance, my friend Jon, a black guy. Jon grew up in Billerica, MA, a predominately white suburb twenty miles or so north of Boston. I say predominately white but you have to understand ninety-nine point nine percent of the population was white, myself included. (That’s where we were by the way, Billerica, and most of the people at the party had lived there their whole lives.)
Of course, the natural reaction among friends is to stop a fight before it starts. A couple of guys held Jon back and some others tried to get Bill away from the heat. They were going to kick him out of the party. They told him it was time he went home. Surprise, surprise, he didn’t want to leave. Just when Jon was starting to cool down, Bill came running back toward him screaming obscenities.
“What? You want to start some shit with me, you fucking coon?”
Jon wasn’t prepared to answer such a stupid question with words. He was, however, prepared to bash Bill’s brains in. He leapt toward Bill with thundering speed and clocked him on the lower left side of his jaw. Bill went down, flat on his back and Jon kept punching him in the face.
“Fuck you! You piece of shit!
“Motherfucker!
“How do you like that? Fucking bigot!” he yelled while standing over Bill’s limp body.
It took three other guys to pull Jon away from Bill. As he was getting pulled out of punching range he just started kicking Bill in the ribs.
* * *Meanwhile, inside the house, Frank was getting annihilated. The cocaine was certainly taking its toll on my good buddy. He was high as a kite and loving every minute of it.
* * *
I was in Anna’s bedroom, doing my best to comfort her in her hour of need. I was also hoping that, on the off chance she was looking for a rebound, she would turn to yours truly. She was crying a lot and talking about all of the problems that she and her ex-boyfriend had been having, she was also drinking copious amounts of alcohol.
