23
The Drunk Friend
IDENTIFYING CHARACTERISTICS: Slurring of speech, rude suggestions, misplacement of phone.
OTHER FACTS: Society dictates not leaving the drunk friend in a ditch. Typically occurs with the least-liked acquaintance, because of course.
WARNING: Vomit could be splattered upon you at any time.
Practice that Saturday was, dare he say, good.
Norris had been watching the team with trepidation, with just a few weeks to prepare for their first-ever game, but he was having trouble finding fault with their play. Shannon had proved to be a natural on defense, Brett was an excellent goalie, and even Patrick—who of course wanted to play forward—was making good progress with his stick handling. If Norris weren’t predisposed to assume total nuclear fallout at all times, he might even say they had a good shot at winning their game.
Norris and Liam finished picking up the equipment and joined the rest of the team in the parking lot, only to realize that Patrick had manifested a case of beers. Though he was tempted, Norris abstained from the proffered can; he needed to go home, shower, change, and make it to the reception for the McElwees wedding. He was surprised to find he was actually kind of . . . excited? to head to the party the whole Bone Yard crew had spent months prepping for. All in all, he thought, this was turning out to be one of Norris’s most successful Austin days.
That was the exact moment Patrick chose to projectile vomit everywhere.
Patrick was, as it turned out, already quite shit-faced. Neither Norris nor Liam had a handle on exactly how many of the beers he had drunk, but out of a case of twenty-four, at least seven had gone to him.
“No worries, folks. Lamarra is just down with a cold!” Norris said, because nothing could diffuse a budding team like one of the key players projectile vomiting Lone Star all over one of his new teammates.
“No wonder he was so loose on the ice,” Norris grumbled, putting a groggy and barely coherent Patrick on the back seat of Liam’s car and beginning the unfun process of patting him down for a cell phone–shaped lump. The posthockey, postvomit smell likewise wasn’t amazing.
“Who drinks seven beers before four p.m.?”
Norris had noticed that there was a recklessness to how American teens drank. At Meredith’s, around the school parking lot, before prescheduled hockey practices, they did it because someone told them they couldn’t. Maybe the same thing was happening back in Montreal too, and he had simply missed that window there.
“You’re assuming that he hadn’t been drinking before practice,” Liam said, throwing an almost knowing look into his rearview mirror to the back seat. “That’s not seven-beers drunk.”
“Did you find his cell phone?”
They pulled out of the warehouse’s parking lot, waving to the car of one of the other players who honked them goodbye. Liam’s turning on of the ignition had barely elicited a whisper from the top-of-the-line engine.
“No!” Norris groaned. “Patrick, buddy, where’s your cell? We need to contact your girlfriend, parents, a really nice neighbor. . . .”
With a dramatic amount of effort, Patrick gestured toward a window, and whatever that actually meant, it was clear that there was no phone to be had on the premises. Phone, elsewhere.
“Goddammit.” Norris sighed. He climbed off Patrick and into the passenger seat as nimbly as possible at the first red light. Things had gone too well today; Stephen Fuller Austin’s ghost was awake and demanded penance.
“What do we do with him?” Liam asked. “We have to help him.”
“Do we? He did push me down a flight of stairs,” Norris said.
“You were being a little bitch,” Patrick mumbled out of nowhere.
“Dude,” Norris snapped. “We will leave you by the side of the goddamn highway!”
“No, we won’t.” Liam sighed, not even letting Norris have his bluff.
“I wish I remembered his girlfriend’s address. . . .” Norris trailed off, trying to remember the route to Meredith’s, and failing. This was likely Meredith’s mess anyway; dating her probably required constant lubrication.
“My house isn’t an option,” Liam said solemnly.
“Why not?”
“Trust me,” Liam said. “It’s just not. My parents wouldn’t . . . react well to me bringing a drunk guy from school home.”
“No shit,” Patrick snorted from the back seat, suddenly drunkenly alert again. “Hey, Mom, I know I had a full mental breakdown last year, but here’s a drunk-ass dude for your couch.” He then laughed to himself.
“What do you mean?” Norris asked aloud to the rearview mirror.
“I get it, man. Life’s hard. It’s cool!” Patrick’s drunken hand reached over Liam’s head and attempted to pat it, grazing his ear twice instead.
“Patrick, buddy, I’m going to need you to shut up right now,” Liam said calmly.
“Wait, is that true?” Norris asked.
“Ignore it,” Liam quickly answered, purposely avoiding looking Norris’s way. “He’s obviously incoherent.”
Liam was now driving in a way that seemed equally stressed and nonchalant, all clenched jaw and occasional glances to Patrick through the rearview.
“Right. Um, well, I have a Haitian mother,” Norris countered. “She will ship me to Haiti before letting me fall prey to your decadent American ways.”
That might have been an exaggeration, but Norris really wasn’t ready to have Liam Hooper (of the multiple-sports-utility-vehicle-household Hoopers) and Patrick (who until very recently was Hairy Armpits in all his stories to Judith) look around their tiny apartment. He just wasn’t.
“Well, we can’t just drop him off at a hospital,” Liam said. “I mean, can we?”
Only one other alternative came to mind.
“Take a left on Guadalupe,” Norris instructed with a sigh of resignation. Goddammit.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time . . . which might one day be the title of a Norris Kaplan biography.
Norris and Liam had snuck through the back with Patrick in tow, both carrying one heavy drunk arm around their neck because, of course, he’d lost the use of his legs once they pulled into the Bone Yard’s at-capacity parking lot. Norris never again wanted to be anywhere near Patrick Lamarra’s post–hockey game armpits. The smell of Axe Chocolate could severely alter the local wildlife.
Even during peak post–Longhorns game frenzy, Norris had never seen this many vehicles in the parking lot. Maddie hadn’t been answering her phone, probably in the middle of a toast during his three calls, but they had no other option. Julio had been the one to open the door and had been dispatched to go get Maddie for them without telling anyone.
Norris could hear the sounds of the festivities coming through the back. Laughter and chatter rising into the early evening air, heavy with the scent of food, and clattering of utensils Norris knew so well by now. The wedding was in full swing.
“Hmm,” Patrick moaned, breathing hot, drunk-ass air into Norris’s neck. “I know here. . . . Why are we here?”
“The last resort.” Norris sighed.
“Maaaddie!” Patrick suddenly said, his head bursting forward, startling both Norris and Liam.
“Um . . . . hi, guys?” Maddie greeted them, appearing in front of the back entrance of the Bone Yard. She looked unsure of what it was she was even seeing. Her dress was the same turquoise color as those worn by a handful of other women that Norris had seen, with a black ribbon around her waist that matched the one in her hair. She looks beautiful, Norris thought, before shaking the thought away.
“Maddie! Hey, girl,” Patrick slurred. “Mad. Eee. Mah. Dee.”
“Hi, Pat,” Maddie said, as if to a toddler, giving Patrick—her ex-boyfriend, Norris reminded himself—a hesitant once-over before turning to Norris for an explanation.
“His owners didn’t tag him,” Norris said, jutting his shoulder and causing Patrick’s head to sway from his shoulder to Liam’s. “Very irresponsible.”
Maddie had no ponytail to undo and retie slightly more tightly, as she normally would. Her hair was instead curled and assembled in a complex sculpture that didn’t really match her face. Bridesmaid hair, Norris thought. A little awkward and clearly not optional.
“This isn’t what I had in mind when I invited you, Canada,” she said.
“Hi. Madison, right? Look, we’re sorry to bother you,” Liam noted. “We didn’t know what to do, and he’s . . . very drunk.”
“This is Liam,” Norris continued. “He’s sober.”
“Neither of us knows where he lives, we couldn’t find his phone, and you two are close, or were close, and I know you’re in the middle of a big family wedding right now, but um . . .” Norris offered in a single breath. “Long story short: we demand shelter.”
“I guess he is real.” Maddie finally sighed with a skeptical look at Liam, stepping aside and waving them into the kitchens. “Welcome to the Bone Yard, Liam. We’ll get Patrick upstairs, get him some water, and there’s plenty of food. I can call his cousins after the speeches. Meredith is at her aunt’s in Houston.”
“Um . . .” Liam asked quietly as they maneuvered their way through the steaming kitchens, a few steps behind Maddie, “is there a reason why she just snorted at my existence?”
“Well, apparently, you coming up to me wanting to learn hockey was a flimsy backstory,” Norris explained. “She thought you were my imaginary friend.”
“Interesting. I could be,” Liam conceded. “I could be imaginary. Reality is a matter of optics.”
Norris rolled his eyes as they followed Maddie through the kitchen, which was currently bustling. For the occasion of the wedding, the regular Bone Yard staff had been replaced by one of Austin’s premiere catering services, which consisted of extremely focused chefs putting final touches on their masterpieces and a flurry of cater waiters from the catering service walking through and circling them with perfectly balanced trays of tiny food. The inconvenience of four teenagers—one thoroughly sloshed—did not seem to be a concern for them at the moment.
“So, drunken party crashers aside, how are the festivities going?” Norris offered as they followed Maddie.
“Let’s see,” Maddie said, throwing a quick glance to her phone. “One lost necklace, one baseless accusation of necklace thievery, two bridesmaids feuding, and one spilled tray of drinks in mason jars, which revealed the necklace to be in another family member’s purse.”
No wonder the cater waiters were keeping their backs stiff. As far as large emotional gatherings of large emotional people went, the McElwees family wasn’t for beginners.
“Sorry to be adding to your plate,” Liam said sheepishly.
Maddie smiled to him as if the two were already friends.
“Nonsense! Everything’s right on schedule,” Maddie said, distractedly tracking for an opening in the foot traffic that would presumably let them get to the restaurant’s second floor. “You did the right thing bringing him here.”
“Nice dress, by the way,” Norris said, without knowing why he said it.
“Thanks. We usually ditch the leggings and pom-poms for anything that comes with shrimp puffs.”
“Very good. Blue, but also a little green, which is very good also, obviously.”
Norris clocked the slow, deliberate rising of Liam’s eyebrow.
“Turquoise,” she laughed. “Remind me to include color palettes in our lessons.”
Turquoise was her color; she looked wholesome in a way that could probably sell a thousand units of that dress in department stores around the country, to girls of all ages hoping for a similar outcome.
“Looking good from behind too, Madz,” Patrick slurred, coming back alive. Maddie ignored him and pushed forward, gently moving stray guests who had wandered inside for the AC out of her way by touching a shoulder here and there with a Sears catalog smile, apparently unbothered by the fact that Patrick was openly ogling her.
“Madz and I used to date, y’know,” Patrick said to Liam.
“A long time ago, dummy,” Maddie said without any bite.
“We were good together, though,” Patrick slurred, restless, which Maddie pretended not to hear as she collected half a dozen water bottles from a nearby table.
“All right, the coast is clear,” she whispered as they headed up the stairs. Pulling the two-hundred-pound mass that was Patrick up the narrow wooden stairs of the Bone Yard required some readjustment from both Liam and Norris, and Norris slipped his arm to Patrick’s lower back.
“Hands above the waist,” Patrick slurred. “Don’t be a fag, dude.”
Norris abruptly released his hold.
“Oww!” Patrick mewled, tripping forward and falling into the banister, headfirst.
“Norris!” Maddie chastised, turning around at the crash. “He’s obviously drunk.”
“No, he’s obviously an asshole,” Norris corrected. “The drunk is just helping it come up to the surface.”
The rest of the stairs were navigated in complete silence.
Maddie fished a set of keys out of her tiny turquoise clutch purse and handed them to Norris. “Dad’s office is locked. No one should bother you there. I’ll send water up soon.”
Norris hated the idea that he might just be the latest in a string of people to take advantage of her generosity like this. He reminded himself that it wasn’t technically him—it was Patrick’s dumb ass.
They put Patrick down onto the sofa with as much gentleness as Norris could muster in his heart right now, which was absolutely none. Patrick winced as he was dropped, prompting Liam to throw Norris another dark look. This one, Norris happily returned.
“Please make sure he doesn’t throw up on anything,” Maddie implored.
“How are we supposed to control his intestinal floors?” Norris asked with crossed arms. Liam was right—he had rapidly lost all interest in Hairy Armpits’s well-being.
“Obscure Canadian healing techniques?” She shrugged. “If he does, Dad will be able to smell it, and he’ll piece it together, trust me. He turns into freaking CSI whenever underage drinking is involved. All our heads will roll.” Maddie adjusted her dress in a mirror hanging from the wall and whacked Patrick upside the head on her way out.
“Ow!”
“You deserve that.”
They’d been in the office for a few hours now.
Norris texted his mom to tell her he was at the Bone Yard and got a be good and lips emoji in reply. Maddie had a cater waiter drop off a few bottles of iced water and a tray of hors d’oeuvres for them, and an empty ice bucket, texting Norris that she was being held up. Before Norris could inquire, she sent him a photo of herself posing with six more women dressed in slightly different versions of the same turquoise dress, smiling brightly. Right. They’d crashed her family wedding after all.
Norris texted her that they had the situation under control and settled in on Big Jim’s chair, throwing a look over to Liam who was thumbing through one of Big Jim’s books on the history of the jalapeño.
“Hey, are you all right? You’ve been a little weird since the car.”
Liam shrugged, without looking up from the book. “Don’t worry about it.”
A weird tension had developed between Norris and Liam since Patrick had made the comment about Liam having a mental breakdown. Norris had no idea how much truth Patrick’s drunken assertion held and was waiting for Liam to say something about it, but he was pretty sure that if it weren’t for Patrick’s intermittent seismic snoring, they would be sitting in complete silence.
“You can leave, y’know,” Liam offered. “I’ll look after him.”
Under the fourteen layers of calm and collectedness that made up Liam’s epidermis, he could sense that Liam was angry with him. For what, Norris had no idea. This had been an unexpectedly trying day.
“It’s okay. I’ll stay.”
“Why?” Liam inquired. “He’s not your responsibility. And you obviously hate him.”
“Do you really not have a problem with him being a bigot?”
“I’m not defending what he said.”
“You’re kind of defending what he said,” Norris challenged. “Why are you staying?”
“He’s a teammate,” Liam answered. “That means something.”
Norris exhaled in frustration. Liam definitely wasn’t imaginary; Norris’s imaginary best friend when he was six was a floating chaise longue, laughing at all his jokes. He would never invent someone this complicated.
They could hear the faint echoes of heartfelt speeches followed by rounds of clapping in the backyard. Norris had been curious to check out the reception before this entire mess.
Patrick began to stir in his drunken stupor and then quickly sat up with a hand tightly keeping his vomit-filled mouth shut. “Mmbathroom,” he mumbled. “Mmbathroom mmnow.”
Before Liam could do it, Norris rushed over to his side to hand him the empty ice bucket. Maddie’s foresight was definitely impressive, Norris thought before suddenly stopping short, keeping the bucket just out of Patrick’s reach.
Judith called these “teaching moments.”
“Y’know, I’ve been on the verge of liking you lately,” Norris warned, holding the bucket at bay. “But use that word again and I won’t bother to pee on you even if you’re fatally stung by a jellyfish and your life can only be saved by my pee.”
“Norris . . .” Liam started.
“Sorry, Liam, but this is really between me and Pat here.”
Patrick frowned in confusion, definitely looking the part of someone between stomach virus and food poisoning, but Norris wasn’t buying it.
“You know what word,” he said simply. “You might not care, but I’ll never speak to you again, let alone play hockey or any other ice-based sport with you. Are we good?”
Patrick nodded frantically and a few wretches later the bucket was no longer empty. After downing all the bottles of water on hand, he returned to the couch, like a giant cat, wrapping himself in a nearby throw blanket with the Longhorn logo.
“Do you want to try calling your parents? Even if you lie about where you are?” Norris asked Patrick, putting a stray towel over the pungent bucket of bile. “They have to be getting worried by now.”
“That’d be incorrec . . . incurr . . . wrong,” Patrick slurred, wiping his mouth. “My parents are in fucking San Antonio, dude.”
“Like all weekend?”
“Most weekends,” Patrick mumbled, falling back into the sofa, snoring wetly again.
Norris and Liam shared a look. He had no idea what the home life was like that led to someone like Patrick Lamarra, but it couldn’t be a fun one, all things considered.
“Um, I need some air,” Liam suddenly said, standing up. “The vomit is getting to me. . . . I’m going to go for a walk. I’ll be back.”
“O-okay,” Norris said, left alone with Patrick’s snoring and the bucket of vomit. It seemed like a fine metaphor for the turn this day had taken.
A half hour later, Liam was still missing in action. Norris had sent him a text but hadn’t received any replies yet. He did however receive a new text from Aarti. It consisted of a dish emoji and two brown heads, one male one female and then a question mark. As it turned out, tiny drawings was one of her favorite means of communication. Something about the photographer in her liked to see how people interpreted them. Norris kept a loose log of all the obscure ones she’d used with him in his notebook and what their meaning had turned out to be. She seemed vaguely disappointed whenever she had to actually translate them into words when he was stumped. This one, however, only amounted to “brown people eating” in Norris’s mind. To be fair, it had been a long day. Was she asking him to grab a bite to eat?
Norris thought about looping her into the situation for counsel, but no matter how much he wished he could see Aarti, it felt like too many questions to answer. A hockey practice turned into wedding siege, being sequestered with a vomiting football player, Liam being weird. Norris didn’t quite know where to start.
“So, how are we doing up here?” Maddie asked, coming into the room and startling Norris out of his reply to Aarti. It wasn’t urgent; he could get back to her later.
“Good enough,” Norris said, putting his phone away. “Um, did you see Liam down there?”
“No, but I was loading gifts into the cars, so I might have missed him,” Maddie explained, kicking off her shoes and making the sound all girls and women made when removing uncomfortable heels.
“You’re too nice,” Norris noted with a sigh.
“Where did he go?” She frowned, rubbing her heels.
Patrick yawned and scratched at his belly. The guy had a remarkable ability to bounce from moments of tension to this weird, aggro cheerfulness—the human version of an expressive set of dog ears.
“The wedding crowd is starting to thin out,” Maddie said. “I’ll wait until the happy couple has been dismissed and drive Patrick home.”
“Thanks, Madz.” Patrick smiled at his ex-girlfriend.
Maddie smiled back and Norris found himself annoyed again, like he did whenever he tried to imagine the two of them making out the way Meredith and Patrick did in basically every doorway of the school.
“Although, I don’t need supervision.” Patrick groaned.
“Yes, you do,” Maddie and Norris agreed in unison.
“Yo, did Liam really bail on us?” Patrick asked, stretching from the sofa and looking around like a kid just waking up from a nap. “That’s rude.”
You projectile vomited this afternoon, Norris considered bringing up.
“No. I don’t know, maybe,” he said instead, cracking open a water bottle. For all he knew, Liam had really left. He seemed genuinely upset, though, at what, Norris still had no idea.
“What happened?” Maddie inquired, bringing her legs up on the sofa. She looked earnestly curious but understandably exhausted.
“No clue,” Norris said, although that wasn’t totally true. Things had been strained ever since Patrick’s comment in the car. “Actually, he’s been weird since this guy said something about, like, a mental breakdown?”
“Oh, it’s that Liam!” Maddie exclaimed before turning to smack Patrick’s arm.
“Wait, what?” Norris asked.
Maddie shrugged. “I hadn’t realized that your convenient friend that you hang out with when you’re not roaming the halls alone was, y’know, Liam-Liam. Anderson is a big school, but something like that doesn’t happen without everyone hearing.”
“Hearing about what, Maddie? I’m so confused.”
Maddie looked genuinely remorseful.
“Dude tried to off himself,” Patrick said.
Tried to off himself?
“Maddie, is that true?”
“I don’t—” Maddie paused, interrupting herself. “You’re his friend, Norris. Isn’t that a question for Liam?” Her tone was measured. Norris could tell this would be her final word on the matter.
“This is your fault, Patrick!” Norris snapped at Patrick, feeling the need to blame someone for the situation. “Why did you have to go and out him as a Prozac popper in the car?!”
“Wellbutrin, actually,” came Liam’s cool voice. It was the exact same tone he always had, and his face matched it. If he wasn’t standing in the doorway, holding a couple of plates, there would be no way to tell he’d just overheard Norris being a complete asshole.
Shit.
Fuck.
Shitfuckcocknuggetasshole.
“Hi,” Norris quickly said, followed by “Hello, hey, what’s up!” Greetings were now incantations that might hopefully rewind time in five second bursts.
“Are you ready to go?”
“Yeah, yeah, I think so,” Norris said, looking around for something to do. Anything but make eye contact right now.
“I figured we deserved some cake,” Liam said with pursed lips.
“Thanks, dude!” Patrick said, snatching a piece of cake and biting into it like he hadn’t just expelled a bucket of viscera.
“Thanks for hosting us, Madison,” Liam added. “It was very welcoming of you.”
“Um, y-y-yeah, of course,” Maddie said, throwing Norris a glare. “It was great to officially meet you, Liam. You should stop by more often.”
“I’ll be in the car when you guys are ready to leave.” Liam nodded tightly before exiting the room. “Take your time. The cake’s really good.”
All three watched as Liam put down the cake slices and exited the room with a stiff back.
“Dude,” Patrick said disapprovingly, mouth full with cake. “Way harsh.”
“How bad was that?” Norris asked Maddie, hands over his face. Eviscerating Patrick wouldn’t help in this situation. This one was on him.
“Go talk to him,” Maddie urged, her voice channeling so much concern that it was rapidly filling Norris’s stomach with bile. He could use his own bucket right now.
“You’re being too nice, it’s freaking me out.”
“Go talk to him, you northern hillbilly.”
“Better,” Norris replied, as he headed out to the car.