Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives. Lauren B. Davis
seemed unsure.
“Then I guess it’s half each.”
“Guess so.”
“Go on, Steve!” “She’s bluffing!” “She can’t handle it,” came the encouragement of Kid’s gang. The girls remained silent.
“I don’t know about this,” Barbara ventured.
“Be cool,” Lee-Anne growled, “Yeah, Stevie, half each, if you can handle it. Go on.”
Steve looked like his mouth may have written a check his body couldn’t cash. I actually felt pity for him. I’d been there, one foot off the gangplank and no where to go but down. Best to retain some dignity and put on a brave face.
He put the bottle to his lips and drank, and drank, and drank some more. Then he started to cough. He turned a quite beautiful crimson shade, his eyes watered and his nose ran and he gagged. I was sure it was all going to come right back up. Everybody was laughing at him, Lee-Anne loudest of all. Somehow he managed to keep the vodka from coming out his nose. He sneezed three times. Slowly he regained his lost composure. He looked at the remaining booze in the bottle. Not even close to half gone, but still, he’d consumed a sizeable whack of alcohol. He looked woozy. He looked the colour of sea kelp. But he was on his feet.
“Shut up, you guys. She’ll never beat that. Your turn.” He passed the bottle to Lee-Anne.
Lee-Anne smiled and I knew just from looking at that smile there was no way she was going to be outdone. She wasn’t doing it for womankind though, she was doing it for herself, for the hell of it, for the sheer pleasure of making him look like a dickless idiot. I didn’t have a good feeling about this.
“That’s it, Stevie? Can’t even finish your half? Guess I’ll have to drink yours too.”
“Lee-Anne, you don’t have to do this.” She looked over at me, almost as surprised to hear me speak as I was.
“What do you have to do with this Rose? Stay out of it.”
She was right of course. I had nothing to do with it. I was a visitor to the party. My rank did not include permission to interfere in hierarchy rituals. People glanced over at me. I shrugged, feigning nonchalance, but they’d turned away by then. I was not noteworthy.
“Bottoms up.” Lee-Anne toasted the room. She raised the bottle to her mouth and poured it in. She was not so much taking swallows as just letting it flow down her throat. From the level of expertise, I was betting she’d done this before. The chanting started.
“Chug, chug, chug, ...”
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The level of the bottle of harmless looking, water- coloured liquid was rapidly lowering. It was as though someone had pulled the plug in a bathtub. It slid down her gullet smooth as rain through a tin trough. I was impressed.
Chug, chug, chug,......”
There rose a mighty cheer, as the last drops of vodka disappeared. Lee-Anne raised her hands, one clasping the bottle, high over her head in victory. Even Weasel Boy was impressed.
“Shit,” he muttered, eyes wide.
Lee-Anne bowed to the crowd, and promptly flopped down in the beanbag chair. She accepted the congratulations of her followers with all the self-contained grace of Queen Victoria. I raised my beer bottle in recognition of the powers of a superior human being. Then I noticed the look on her face. The fighting colours were all fading away. Something was drastically amiss here.
Nobody else seemed to notice. The main event of the evening being over, kids returned to the record player and some were starting to dance. Steve, slightly wobbly, was trying to feel up some girl in a corner and she was giggling. Barbara was trying to stop people taking any more beers and asking anybody who’d listen how she was going to explain the missing bottle of vodka to her parents.
I kept watching Lee-Anne. She tried talking to somebody now and then, trying to laugh and pretend nothing was wrong, but I could tell. The colours were just dripping out of her, leaving her ashen, beyond pale. She tried to stand up but couldn’t make it and fell back into the chair. A couple of buttons popped open on her shirt. She fumbled with them, trying to get her fingers to work. She gave up. Maybe ten minutes went by before her head lolled back. Lee-Anne just lay there, her left breast showing through the opening in her blouse. The girl was gone, long gone. Passed out cold. Steve, unmistakably snozzled himself, must have had some sort of internal boob radar.
“Titties!” He cried and stumbled over to Lee-Anne’s prone form.
“Oh God,” whimpered Barbara, “What’s wrong with her?”
“What’d ya thick?” Steve replied. “She can’t liquor her handle.” His hand moved forward in the general direction of Sleeping Beauty’s breast. Barbara slapped his hand away.
“Piss off! You’re such a pig! Somebody help me with her.”
A couple of girls went over and tried to rouse Lee-Anne. There wasn’t a chance in Hell she was coming around any time soon. Stevie-boy threw his arms around two of the other boys and, from the sound of the snickers, made some rather crude remarks. The girls got Lee-Anne’s blouse done up again but the Leader of the Pack was down for the count. The girls wandered off and left her, half disgusted, and half admiring her nerve. I just watched. Nobody made any particular motions to include me in the little groups that were forming, but I didn’t mind. At least the evening’s entertainment hadn’t been at my expense. I just hung around, taking the occasional sip from my Labatt’s bottle and watched Lee-Anne.
The more I watched, the more concerned I got. She was so colourless she was practically transparent. Her eyes had sunk back into her skull and she was motionless. I saw a bubble form on her lips and as she breathed it sucked back in again. A little saliva dripped out of the corner of her mouth. Ah shit, I thought, she’s going to puke.
Now, I did not want to be anywhere near our Legless Leader when this event occurred. I have a weak stomach. The second I even hear anybody making even a gagging noise, it’s a race to the bathroom. I stood up, planning to walk inconspicuously onto the patio.
As I strolled past the bean bag chair I glanced down at Lee-Anne. Her head was thrown way back, her mouth open. I could actually see inside her mouth. There were bits of creamy coloured stuff in there. I could hear her breathing. I hadn’t been able to hear it over the sound of the music when I was sitting across the room, but now close to her, I could. It wasn’t good. She was gurgling.
I did some baby-sitting for a little girl who had seizures. Her mother told me right off that if she ever took a seizure she could vomit and I had to make sure she was lying face down so she wouldn’t choke on the stuff. The little kid had never vomited under my care and for this I was profoundly grateful. Unfortunately, it looked as if the information was not going to be wasted.
“Barbara,” I called, “I think we’ve got a problem.”
“What?”
“I think Lee-Anne’s sick.”
“She’s not sick, she’s just passed out. Leave her alone.”
Ah, double shit. I’d like to say the thought to just leave her there to her fate didn’t even cross my mind, but it did. I wanted to just shrug my shoulders and be uninvolved. I hadn’t even been hanging with this group for a month yet, and my status was still way too tenuous to be drawing any undue attention. I still had time to blend. Lee-Anne gurgled again. More bubbles. Triple shit.
I knelt down beside the chair, put one leg up on the beanbag to steady myself and the other leg on the floor. I drew a big breath. I heard someone call out.
“Rose, Jesus, what the fuck are you doing!?”
I grappled with Lee-Anne’s inert form, hoping I would not soon be covered in bits of undigested macaroni and cheese. I held my breath. I hauled her over my leg.
Lee-Anne spewed.
The vodka ran out