Sex, Drugs & No Idea

3: Molly

The lines of MDMA were laid out before them. Six of them, racked up and ready for deployment. Frenchy rolled the hundred-dollar bill into a tube between his slim fingers. He always insisted on a hundred-dollar bill when snorting drugs––a product of watching too many nineties action films. The drugs didn't care what bill you used to hoover them into your face, but Charlie appreciated all the times that Frenchy had been so spangled that he'd left a curled hundred note on his coffee table for him to find in the morning.

The three young men were now back in the sanctity of Charlie and Hugo's home and sitting on the comfortable, leather Chesterfields around the coffee table. Actually, Frenchy was kneeling on the carpet, his long legs folded under him. With his hands crooked in front of him, rolling the bank note into a conduit, he looked very much like a Parisian praying mantis.

"I can't believe you didn't tell me that she fuckin' died, Charlie," Frenchy said, looking at him. He lowered his face to the table, swept cleanly across a line of molly, sucking it up into his right nostril. He raised his head, winced and clamped his nostrils shut with forefinger and thumb, released them briefly, sniffed hard, clamped them again.

"Aaaaaah, shit, that fuckin' burns, man!" He blinked his watering eyes a couple of times.

Charlie knew what he was feeling; the torrent of mysterious chemicals spearing their way up behind his eyeballs and expanding like fireworks through his head.

"She's actually dead?" Frenchy asked. "That's a bit fucked up that you didn't tell me that, man. You should've."

"I didn't want to have to rehash it, man. I didn't want to think about it," Charlie replied.

Frenchy handed the note to Hugo and he vacuumed the next line up. He cursed and winced and laughed and then handed the note on to Charlie. Charlie took it from him, used a credit card to push each end of the line together to form a wee bump, blocked his left nostril and gave a short, sharp inhale.

He pictured one of those pressurized tubes that companies used to send inter-departmental message capsules to each other. This time it was a package of A-class drugs being sent from the loyal blue-collar lads in the Nostril Division to the mad scientists up on the top floor of the Brain Department.

Charlie sat back in his chair and exhaled as the drugs seeped rapidly into his system. He opened and closed his eyes a couple of times, and, suddenly, he was feeling marvellous and in desperate need of a cigarette.

"Why the fuck didn't ya tell me about Sophia then, Charlie boy?" Frenchy asked for what seemed like the thousandth time. He did another line.

Charlie's breathing was heavier and he could feel his heart rate picking up. "I'll tell you about it after these rails. We'll have a ciggy and have a chat. Always better on drugs, mate." Charlie exhaled and smiled slowly.

Frenchy laughed and grabbed Charlie in a headlock, whilst Hugo snorted up his last line of molly.

"You know I'm here for you, man," Frenchy said.

"Yeah, yeah," Charlie said.

"Same here," said Hugo.

"Shut up," Charlie replied.

Charlie banged up his last line, licked his finger and wiped all the remnants off of the table and rubbed them on his gums. He sat back on the sofa and his head fell back and he closed his eyes for a second or two and gave himself up to the sparkling chemical riptide.

"Smoke?" Frenchy suggested.

"Smoke," Hugo agreed.

They walked out onto the balcony, pulled out chairs, clinked their beers together and laughed. No one sat down.