bvvvvvb bvvvvvb

phone next to bed, text: Hey man I’m outside. 

Force wake. Tom said he was gonna come over after his classes at Brooklyn College. Clothes, up and open the door, blinking in the sunlight. 

“Yo, whatsup? You just waking up? It’s almost four.”

“Yeah, I know, I was just napping. I want to be awake now though. How are classes going?”

“They’re fine,” he said as he walked in, “I’ve got a paper to write tonight and tomorrow on game theory, which is kind of interesting, but it’s harder than I was expecting.”

“Like chess?”

“Yeah, it can be about any game, but chess is a zero-sum game and for my paper I have to come up with an original non-zero-sum game and explain it with a statistical model.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Zero-sum games have a winner and a loser, non-zero-sum players can both win or both lose, so more like stuff in the real world, economics, and epidemiology.” 

“You could do war games with mutually assured destruction as an outcome.”

“A statistical model for the cold war… I guess I could do a game of chicken.” 

“What you got there?”

He sat down at the dining room table, “Deli sandwich and a sweet tea from the Chinese food spot.” 

I grabbed an Ensure protein shake from the fridge and sat with him.

“How you feelin’?” he asked between bites. 

“I’m okay, but stomach’s always bothering me, sleeping a lot.”

“Mmm? I thought you were on a new medication?”

“Yeah, doesn’t seem to be working, going to the bathroom like every half hour.”

“Maybe it’ll start to kick in soon?”

“Maybe, it’s intense though, I had to go into the hospital and get an IV for a couple hours.”

“That’s the only way you can take it?”

“Yeah, have to do that once a month, I think it makes me tired too.” 

“Well, whatever, if it helps you feel better that’s good right?”

“Yeah, but it hasn’t been working and if it doesn’t kick in soon, I’ll have to go stay at the hospital as an in-patient so they can pump me full of steroids.”

“Jeez. For how long?”

“Like a week.”

“As an in-patient?”

“Yeah.”

“That sucks.”  

He scrunched bready sandwich scraps into a ball of tin foil and pitched it. 

“The schoolyard’s emptying out, you wanna kick the ball for a bit?”

“Uh,” energy? “Sure, I’ll go kick for a sec.” 

We walked across the street and onto the open pavement, a few children scattered around, parents watching from benches. I flicked the ball up and knocked it over to Tom, who kept it up on his knees, then back down to his foot and over to me, slight mistouch on the outside of my foot, heavy can’t recover, ball bounced out of foot reach. We kept it up a few times before I got tired and gave up.

“Not feelin’ it?” 

“Yeah, I don’t know, feel like I have sandbags for feet.”

“Wanna play FIFA instead?”

“I don’t feel like being competitive. How about Halo 3 co-op?”

“I’m down, where are you in the campaign?” 

“Just killed the Prophet of Truth, about to enter High Charity.”

“Oh shit, time to fight the flood.”

“Yeah. The level makes me squeamish, looks like a diseased intestine, could use your help.”

We went back inside and down to the boiler room in the basement. Ground nug pinched into ceramic bowl caked with resin, need to soak it in rubbing alcohol overnight.  

“What if your mom comes home?”

“It’s okay, she doesn’t care anymore, she said since it makes my stomach feel better and helps me eat, besides she was a hippy when she was our age.”  

Crkll Pwwhhuuhhh…. coughghghck

“You should get a vaporizer, easier on the lungs, I heard that’s the medically preferred method.”

“Yeah I wish, I don’t know how I could save up enough money though. Can’t really work a job.”

“Ask for one for your birthday or holidays or something.”

“From my parents? Turning a blind eye and purchasing paraphernalia are on different levels, but maybe.” 

Emerged from the smoky boiler room and pressed the console power button, warming up with fan noise until drowned out by Gregorian chants for the space opera. Start: Through the slipspace portal Master Chief and the Arbiter mission to disable the all-destructive Ark and save sentience in the Milky Way, bosom of life, and free Cortana from the Gravemind. Armed with assault rifle to explode the infestors and shotgun buckshot for the stalkers, we advanced into the infested fungal space station, don’t move out of position or they will overwhelm and parasite highjack your central nervous system… 

“You first, I’ll cover.” 

– – –