Bodybags and Blondes (flashback)
West Village. January, 2013.
It wasn’t the first time he’d seen a dead person. But it was the first time he saw one lying on the road like that; a wasted rag doll. Head, neck, twisted — leg bent. Blood. Odd and unnatural angles. He’d remembered the details but not what she looked like overall.
Jude hadn’t known her. He may have passed her once in the club, brushed by. Or maybe that was another tall blonde. She hadn’t been that attractive, and anyone below a certain threshold in those days, as shallow as it was, slipped completely past his notice.
All he could do was stare. Stare at the misshapen heap lying on the ground across the road from him. Like a trance he found himself in, unable to look away from the LED lightshow on the ceiling, only this time it was trails of blood on concrete, and paramedics in navy blue flitting about like bugs.
Death seemed so real, so fucking real to him in that moment, several mounds of cocaine ingested and mouth dry like a cotton plantation. Nothing else felt real, hell, even the girl lying on the road seemed to come alive as he stared off. For a moment he saw Jenny. No, it couldn’t. It would never be. She wasn’t reckless (she was the most reckless person he knew).
A hand clapped his shoulder, and Jude felt like a lead slab hit him. “Fuck, that’s some morbid shit,” the voice clapped in his ear. Rich almost sounded amused by what he was taking in before him. And just like most everything Rich said those days, it made Jude want to fight him.
“Think that’s fucking funny, do you? Think it’s hilarious?” Jude was livid, a raging bull. “Because it’s not.” The tiniest thing could set him...off...
... Then Rich mouthed something about the girl (which for purposes of propriety cannot be repeated here), and it was done.
Several minutes later there was a bouncer or two added to the mix of professional personnel buzzing around the club. Cops were too busy with the dead girl to get properly involved, but by the time the bouncers pulled the two apart there was blood on both Jude and Rich — mostly on Rich, since it had been Jude who delivered the first hit, the hardest. Blood on Rich, Jude, and the girl. Eventually they ended up sitting side by side on the curb, two pathetic losers, watching the girl carried away in a body bag. Some night.
Eventually, no one was left there but them.
“You’re a fuckin’ piece of work, you know that,” Jude muttered, passing him the joint he’d been squeezing between his lips.
“You’re no fucking flower, amigo.” A chuckle from the dark, curly-haired seraph. He really was the most attractive person Jude knew. Male or female. And with that attractiveness, of course, came entitlement of proportions only seen in the prickliest of Hollywood stars.
“Eat my ass.”
“Suck me off first.”
“I’ll fucking... cut off your dick. With Dan’s pube scissors.”
Another chuckle. From both this time. Jude shook his head, joint burning his fingers but he still smoked it down to the grinds. He was the biggest asshole Jude knew, by far (But it wasn’t like he was too far behind).
“Shit. You know what?”
“What?”
“I saw under her skirt.”
Jude looked at Rich as if he was going to deliver another punch, holding his gaze with an ice queen intensity, all bated breath and pauses; until he erupted into laughter. They both did.