Party Favors

TRIC ZINE #19, 2005

The biggest problem was there weren't enough hours in the day. If you could just solve that one, thought Kyle, everything else would flow like butter. Or beer, or the inside of a leaking glowstick, or whatever flowed better than butter. Right now Kyle wished that knucklehead Billy Hickman would hurry up and answer the goddamned phone at the Zippy Lube, because he had a hundred miles to drive in the next three hours, and his jalopy wasn't feeling so hot. But the phone just rang and rang. Kyle wondered what the fuck Billy could possibly be doing at four in the afternoon to not answer, the shop probably full up with customers all jammed together in the waiting room, listening to the phone ring. Keep shit like that up, people start wondering if they brought their rides to the right place.

Finally, Billy came on the line. "Thanks for calling the Benjamin Street Zippy Lube, can I help you?"

Kyle had been cradling the phone on his shoulder while he rushed around his apartment looking for the mixtapes. Usually he kept them under the couch, in two padded carrying cases he liberated from Sound Depot a long time ago using a returned receipt scam, but they weren't there. This worried Kyle, because Rooster, one of his weed buddies and occasional employees, had been couch surfing for two months, until he'd met some cracked out girl from Dover at the last party they went to in New Jersey and shacked up with her. That one had been at an abandoned mental institution, hidden in the woods just off the Garden State Parkway, overgrown with vines and crumbling floors, a real safety hazard. The promoters brought in their own generators, Dieselboy came down from Philly, and there were over a thousand kids there. Not that he suspected Rooster would do something like steal the tapes, but with partykids, you never knew.

So when Billy answered the phone, Kyle nearly dropped his cordless into the back of the closet where he was now digging through boxes of CDs and t-shirts, looking for the mixtapes. "Shit, Billy, where the fuck you been? I was hanging on for two minutes straight!"

"Oh, hey Kyle," said Billy. "I was gonna call you today. I need a little sumthin' sumthin'. Just like, fifty worth."

Kyle whirled around fast and bumped his head on the closet door. "Fuck! Fuck! Not you, dude. What do you need? On the cheese sandwich tip, you gotta talk to Rooster, that guy who was staying here. But I can facilitate. Listen, you gonna be there for awhile? I gotta bring by my jalopy."

"Yeah, I'm here," said Billy, and Kyle could hear him ringing up a customer. "Me and Otis just came back from a pizza break."

"Cool." Kyle hung up and tossed the cordless over onto the couch, aiming for the middle, but the phone bounced off one of the worn cushions and fell on the floor. "Bitch ass motherfucker!" Kyle could see the back of the phone had come off again, and the rechargeable battery was loose. Cheap thing did that all the time. He was surprised it still worked at all. As he bent down to pick it up, Kyle noticed something that looked like newsprint stuck to the black marble coffee table he'd lifted from the UD Student Union in Newark. Kyle loved that table, he'd found it one night while wilding with his friend K'Gai. They'd carted it out around three-thirty, the campus deserted, everything still in the night air around them, carrying the table upside down with two chairs, another triangular-shaped corner table, a mirror, and a lamp balanced precariously in a big illicit furniture pile. As soon as they made it into the bushes across from the Student Union, campus cops drove right by. If they'd been held up a minute more smoking that joint in the elevator, they'd have been busted for sure.

Peering closer at the table, Kyle realized the newsprint was from last week's Delaware Loafing. It was stuck to the table in a ring that looked approximately the size of a beer can. Kyle was pissed. He picked up the phone, tried putting it back together, and wondered why Rooster couldn't have taken a goddamned shower now and then while he was crashing with him. Fucking walked around coated with a thin layer of grime, a glaze, really, always looking half plastered, or high, probably because he was. So it was no wonder his glaze stuck to whatever he touched, including his beer cans, which then left a ring on the table, and that's how the newspaper got stuck. It all made sense, once Kyle thought about it long enough.

But Rooster didn't care enough to clean it up. Why should he? It wasn't his place. Kyle just left the ring there, too, because he was late, and didn't have time for spring cleaning. Kyle was usually late, especially when it came to showing up on time for parties. Hurrying just to be on time for a bunch of goddamn ravers rubbed him the wrong way, even though it also meant he’d wind up making less dough. But getting to a rave on time was close to impossible, anyway. Shit, he had to spend days just digging through all his boxes and making sure he had enough stuff on hand, then nearly a whole afternoon packing the car from back to front. At least twenty boxes crammed full of shit, some of them big boxes. A few were shaped weird, so they wouldn’t fit quite right in his jalopy unless he tied the hatchback down. It was a hassle.

Usually he’d be low on something or other, so he’d have to make a trip to the dollar store and stock back up. Then maybe swing by the Big Jawns and pick up a couple gallons of antifreeze, ‘cuz his jalopy wasn’t really running so great ever since he hit a deer one night coming back from a party in rural Pennsylvania. Kyle never should have bought the used radiator, but he only paid $750 for the jalopy, so he refused to pay more than four hun for any single repair. That’s why the shit ran so funny. Something with the heating and cooling system. The temperature gauge was all fucked up, too. So not ten minutes after he got on the road, that gauge would be right up to the top. But as long as he didn’t go over 60 miles an hour, it wouldn’t go any higher. If it got up like, an inch or so above the top, he’d pull over and add some more coolant. “Car needs a drink,” said Manda one day while they got off the highway halfway to Baltimore, looking for a gas station with antifreeze on hand. Manda used to help Kyle out before Rooster showed up, he was a good guy. Rhymes with Panda. He was from Burma, where there weren’t any raves. Or at least not very good ones.

And it wasn’t just mixtapes they’d be selling. Kyle had moved beyond that scam a long time ago. He did CDs, t-shirts, breakdancing and kung fu videos, toys that lit up, and all the barely legal drug accessories he could think of. Pacifiers, of course. And glowsticks. But if the promoters got cold feet, or the venue owner came around to check out what the vendors were selling so they could sell the same shit themselves next time around, you could always make a case that neither product had anything at all to do with drug use. Glowsticks? Everybody loves glowsticks. They bring back the fun and magic you enjoyed as a child. Crack the stick, and suddenly you’re running through the wet grass on the Fourth of July, waiting for the fireworks to start.

Pacifiers were basically a fashion statement. Just like all the frigging beads and other little kid shit these ravers liked to wear, big floppy hats, and fuzzy bear slippers, like they were going to a goddamned slumber party. It was harder to pull the wool like that about stuff like masks. Face masks. They were a huge item for about a minute. You’d bring in a couple jars of Vicks, buy a box of 100 masks for fifteen bucks from Wal-Mart, then smear a dab on each and sell ‘em at two dollars a pop. The kids couldn’t slip them on fast enough. Kyle wasn’t satisfied until he looked up from his table at three in the morning, peak party time, and saw everybody in the fucking place running around with masks on their faces, pacifiers dangling, clutching a handful of cheap plastic glowsticks.

For once, Kyle had the car almost packed with time to spare before getting on the road, assuming Billy Hickman could hook him up with no holdups at the Lube. But that was before the mixtapes turned up missing. After a few more minutes, Kyle decided the tapes were expendable. Everybody wanted CDs these days, anyway. It was a good thing Kyle knew Harold from the video store, that kid was a frigging electronics genius. Last year, Harold hooked Kyle up with a CD burner and some high tech type of bubble printer that printed real nice, glossy CD labels. Ever since, Kyle had slowly been adding CDs to his product line, bootlegs of the already-bootlegged mix CDs that DJs from faraway states like Connecticut and North Carolina were always handing him at parties, hoping he’d call them up to order multiple copies at $8 apiece wholesale. Kyle figured it wouldn’t be long before all the kids got CD burners, so he should move ‘em while he could. These fucking ravers all had rich parents, and it was 1999, goddammit, everybody was getting rich, even the poor slobs stuck working at hot dog shacks were doing a little day trading on the side.

With the CDs under one arm and the last box of t-shirts under his other, Kyle hustled out his front door and locked all three deadbolts rapid fire. He slid into the front seat of his ride and gunned the engine. Once Kyle was listening to that Car Talk show on the radio, and heard he should wait at least six seconds for the engine to warm up before putting a car in gear, but he still hadn’t found time to try it out. He sped the whole way through his neighborhood, came out on Benjamin Street, and ran two lights in the eight blocks it took to get to the Zippy Lube.

Kyle never carried drugs with him in his jalopy, especially not when he was going to vend at a party, so he was usually a little careless with road rules. Twenty times a night he’d get asked if he sold beans, or knew where the kids could get some, but he honestly didn’t. Not just for fear of selling to the wrong undercover, he also didn’t want to be responsible for some underage kid’s overdose. Plus Kyle knew too many fools who got popped, and he liked life on the outside too much to pull a dumb stunt like trying to sling beans at a rave. Even though he’d probably have made ten times the cash he usually brought home from the glowsticks and whatnot just selling a little on the DL. Using runners, maybe, like this other vendor he knew did.

As Kyle pulled up to the Zippy Lube, he noticed the parking lot was full, as usual. You'd think they were selling drugs, too, for all the business that spot did, but it was their leave-a-twenty-on-the-dash inspection policy that really sealed the deal. It was wide open like that even before Billy started working there, when his friend Otis used to be the assistant manager. That was before Otis got fired for pulling a practical joke on the rest of the crew, by giving them a sealed note and sending them all to the bank at once to make the night's deposit. It was a hold-up note, and the tellers forked over three grand to the hapless Zippy Lube gang, oblivious until they got out to the parking lot, saw the money and realized something funny was up. Lucky for them they didn't run, just hung around looking stupid until the cops wheeled up. It was never clear if this was Otis' master plan to get rich quick and escape from the Lube, or if he was just fooling around, but he got fired fast and barely escaped jail time.

Kyle slammed his car door shut and hurried inside. The waiting room was crammed full of customers, most looking bored and irritated. A line stretched three deep at the counter of heads waiting to pay. Billy was nowhere to be seen, but Otis was there, a slice of pizza in one hand, adjusting the reception on the waiting room's wall-mounted TV with the other. Since getting fired, Otis swung a paper route for the Wilmington News Journal in the mornings, then dropped by the Lube in the pm to hang out with Billy, just like he still worked there.

"Yo Kyle! Whassup, dawg!" Otis was all smiles when he saw Kyle, and the other customers glared at him. Crooked inspections or not, the whole waiting room looked like they'd been waiting too long for Billy to get back from wherever he'd frigging disappeared to.

They bumped knuckles, and Kyle grinned. "Otis, good to see you, man. Where's Billy?"

"Oh shit, you lookin' for him too? Join the club, boy!" Otis took a bite of his slice, piled high with green peppers and black olives. "He was just here, I think he went downstairs to get somebody's paperwork."

Just then, Billy popped back into the waiting room and on cue, the first person in line began to tear into him. Kyle stepped up to the counter, ignoring the drama, and nodded to Billy.

"Hey Kyle," said Billy, rolling his eyes. "Sorry, all the dumbasses in Wilmington been through here today. You waiting long?"

"Naw, man," said Kyle. "I just got here. But I'm totally rushed, I gotta be where I'm going in like, two and a half. Can you squeeze me in?"

Billy laughed. "No problem! Hey, Otis! Get my man's ride here started, okay? I'll be there in a minute."

Otis wolfed down the last of his slice and grabbed Kyle's keys. "Special treatment, right? Yo, where you gotta be?"

Oblivious to the dirty looks coming his way from the entire waiting room, Kyle followed Otis out to his jalopy. "I gotta drive to fucking Clinton, it's like somewhere in suburban D.C. But I gotta be there to set up early, like by seven. Goddamn promoters all paranoid about what we're selling, and it's right near Andrews Air Force Base, so military intelligence probably sending crazy undercovers there to keep tabs on the scene, keep the enlisted away from the ecstasy. It could be a nightmare."

"Whoo-wee, boy!" Otis marveled at Kyle's car, packed from one end to the other with boxes and gear. "You got enough shit in there? You better hope you don't blow a tire or nothin’, 'cuz you ridin' a little low! Then you'd have to unpack all those boxes just to get to your spare, and man, you'd be fucked!"

"Yeah, well, I'm gonna be definitely fucked if I don't get outta here soon enough," said Kyle, as Otis climbed into the front and started the engine. "Treat her gently, dude. She’s seen better days. Like, every day before I started driving her."

Otis giggled, and in a flash wheeled the car like a pro into the Lube's only empty bay. Otis liked to show off, and working on a friends and family favor like Kyle's car gave him a chance to show just what the Lube was missing not having him around anymore. He disappeared down the back stairs, and then Kyle could hear him cursing as he started monkeying around beneath the jalopy. Kyle walked back into the waiting room. He felt a little sleepy, all of a sudden, and figured he'd curl up in a chair underneath the TV while Otis got his ride good to go. Billy was still at the counter, busy arguing with another customer. The TV was tuned to WWVD, Channel 9, Delaware’s local news leader, and there was a program on about people who claimed they’d seen honest-to-god angels appearing in downtown Wilmington. Kyle sat down in the first chair he saw and started nodding off immediately.

The next thing Kyle knew, he was waking up in slow motion to the sound of a very loud backfiring. He looked around, noticed he was all alone in the waiting room, and wondered what time it was. Through the heavy plate glass windows separating the Lube's waiting room from its inner bays, he could see Otis in the driver's seat of his jalopy, gunning the engine. Billy was standing near the back of the car, watching a gigantic plume of thick, black smoke streaming out of his exhaust pipe, shooting out into the parking lot behind the Lube. Kyle thought he must be dreaming, because the smoke seemed to fill the entire back parking lot, and he could almost smell it through the plate glass windows, too. They usually cleaned his exhaust system like this, hooked up some special flush treatment to get out all the impurities, but Kyle had never seen his car smoke so much before. He had a sudden, sinking feeling that something might be wrong.

Right then, Otis started to scream. "Shit! Shit! She's gonna blow, man! Run!" With that, the two of them took off in different directions, Otis running out the Lube's front doors, Billy disappearing into the hazy clouds of black smoke that shrouded the back parking lot. And then Kyle saw his jalopy's poor, overworked engine burst into flames, and he was up from his chair, running out the waiting room's side door himself, still not knowing if he was dreaming or not, but not wanting to take a chance and find out wrong. A few seconds later he heard the explosion, and as he darted into the path of oncoming traffic he looked up and saw flaming glowsticks and pacifiers and oil-smeared plastic CD cases hurtling through the air into the Benjamin Street treetops, and he marveled at how colorful they seemed even in the daytime, and how he was definitely gonna be late to the party now, right before a delivery truck hit Kyle head on and all he saw was black.