The Wonder Bread Summer by Jessica Anya Blau Page B

there were no chapters on what to do when you accidentally stole a bread bag full of cocaine.
    “You want to roll Roger out while I get this lovely little lady home?” Bud stood and tried to pull out Kathy’s chair for her, but Kathy didn’t budge. Bud pulled and pulled, as though he was attempting to move a stone sculpture.
    “I’ll drive your car,” Kathy said, and she finally stood. “You’re drunk.” She looked at Allie. “And you’re too drunk to drive, too.”
    “I don’t even know if I can walk!” Allie said. “I’ll get a ride with Roger.” Allie wasn’t sure where she’d go, but going with Roger seemed like a good place to start.
    Bud and Kathy walked ahead as Allie tried to push the wheelchair through the restaurant. There was greasy-looking carpet on the floor, which somehow made it hard for the wheels to move. Allie started and stopped several times. Then, just as she got some momentum going, she missed the door being held open by Bud and pushed Roger into the door frame. Roger squeal-laughed.
    “Smooth move.” Bud laughed.
    Allie pulled back and aimed for the doorway again. It felt as though she was trying to thread a needle, but she and Roger made it outside.
    Bud said a brief, sloppy good-bye and slipped into the BMW that Kathy had pulled up beside him. Kathy waved quickly out the window and Allie waved back. She wondered if that would be the last time they’d see each other. Then she wondered if she’d be sad about it tomorrow. Right now, she felt relieved.
    Allie looked around. “Where’s your van?” she asked Roger.
    Roger tapped out C-O-K-E.
    “Coke?” Allie asked. “You want a Coke?”
    Roger’s head flopped down hard on the NO.
    “Oh!” Allie said. “You want cocaine?” She figured anyone who made movies in Hollywood, no matter what the genre, did cocaine.
    Roger hit the YES, then spelled: I H-A-V-. Allie wondered if Bud wasn’t really as against drugs as Kathy thought. If Roger did coke so openly, he surely had offered it to Bud before. Although that didn’t necessarily mean Bud did it. Beth loved coke, and Allie had been best friends with her for almost two years before she tried it herself.
    “Don’t waste what you have,” Allie said. It seemed harmless to give just a little of the Wonder Bread coke away, and cruel to deny a guy in a wheelchair with a head pointer and an enchilada-stained mustache what was probably one of his few physical joys. She let go of the wheelchair and staggered to the Prelude. When she looked back at the wheelchair, it was rolling toward a parked car, but slowly enough that Allie didn’t worry. She retrieved the bread bag, locked the car, and returned to Roger, who had gently bounced into the parked car. Allie held the Wonder Bread bag against one of the wheelchair handles and her purse against the other handle as she pulled the wheelchair off the car it had hit and directed it to the sidewalk beside the driveway. The air was the perfect temperature, neither hot nor cold. If she weren’t so drunk, Allie thought she’d probably enjoy a ride in the Prelude with the moon roof fully open, the blur of smudgy gray night sky above her head.
    “You think your driver’s coming?” she asked Roger.
    Roger tapped YES.
    “Want coke while we wait?”
    Roger tapped YES, YES, YES.
    “Okay.” Allie rummaged into her purse and pulled out a Bic pen. She snapped off the cap and dug the pointed concave tip into the bag and pulled out a tiny pile. When she placed the cap under Roger’s nose, his head tilted and jerked and the contents spread into his mustache like powdered sugar.
    Roger knocked the pointer on the letter A .
    “Try again?” Allie asked, and Roger lifted his head and squealed. “How about this?” Allie shoveled her cupped palm into the bag then held the heap under Roger’s nose with the thought that maybe a twentieth of it would make it up his nostrils. Roger snuffled and rubbed into her like a dog rubbing into dead animals it