I’d spend my afternoon when I got out of bed this morning, but sometimes life takes you places you never thought you’d go.
“Bingo.” Vic points to a slick-looking guy in a light gray suit a block away, smoking a cigarette and talking on his cell phone loud enough for us to hear him.
“Why him?” Randy asks.
“Because he’s a self-absorbed douche bag,” Vic says, as if the answer should be obvious.
Vic doesn’t own a cell phone. Mostly, he says, it’s because he doesn’t want the obligation of having to answer phone calls when he’s not home. He doesn’t have voice mail or an answering machine for the same reason.
He’s not the easiest person to get hold of in an emergency.
We all watch the self-absorbed douche bag as he gets closer, talking so loud you’d think the person on the other end of the conversation was hearing impaired. “No, no, no. It’s like I told you. He doesn’t give a shit. And as far as I’m concerned, he can go fuck himself.”
When he reaches the corner less than five feet from us, hestops and takes a drag on his cigarette, then flicks the butt onto the sidewalk, his cell phone to his ear, no regard for anyone around him as he swears and walks away.
I glance over at Vic, waiting for him to do his thing, and I notice that his eyes are closed and he’s taking several deep breaths. His face has grown pale, his lips look thin and colorless, and he appears to have come down with the flu. Just as I’m about to ask him if he’s okay, he opens his eyes and gives me a weak smile.
“You might want to get out of the way,” he says, the suggestion coming out in a rough whisper.
I move aside and Vic takes a deep breath, then makes a face as if he’s just bitten into a rotten tomato before he lets out a burp, deep and guttural, like Darth Vader with indigestion.
For a moment nothing happens and I think this was all just some silly game of pretend we were all playing. Then the guy in the suit stops talking, leans over, and starts throwing up. And when I say throwing up , I don’t mean like your garden-variety street drunk spewing on the sidewalk at two on a Saturday morning. This is more like a busted water pipe. Or a fire hydrant.
Vomit pours out of his mouth across the sidewalk. He doesn’t even have time to make any noise until the first wave is out of him. Then he sucks in a long gasp of air and wipes his mouth before he lets out a groan that’s followed by another stream of vomit. For whatever reason, the entire time, he keeps the cell phone pressed to his ear.
“Holy shit!” Randy says.
Charlie and I watch in silence while Isaac lets out a machine-gun burst of laughter. None of the other people in the vicinity seem to notice Isaac’s reaction since they’re all too busywatching the suit lose his lunch and his breakfast and whatever he ate for dinner last night. After it goes on for another ten or fifteen seconds, I start to wonder if he might need some help.
I turn to Vic. “Do you think we should call an ambulance?”
The color has returned to Vic’s face and he no longer looks like a candidate for a blood transfusion. Instead he’s shaking his head slowly back and forth as the suit drops down on all fours and starts dry heaving.
“Fucking smokers,” Vic says. “It’s like they think the entire planet is their goddamned ashtray.”
From the New York Post , page 5:
GOT MEDS? PRESCRIPTION DRUG THEFTS ON THE RISE
A wave of prescription drug thefts has swept across Upper Manhattan, with thieves posing as potential buyers while targeting open houses and then raiding the medicine cabinets. Last weekend alone, three separate homes on the Upper East Side were hit while hosting open houses.
“We don’t know who the culprits are,” Detective Sergeant Steve Moura said. “By the time the owners realized their prescriptions were missing, the thieves were long gone. Sometimes the homeowners didn’t even realize they’d been robbed until several days
“Bingo.” Vic points to a slick-looking guy in a light gray suit a block away, smoking a cigarette and talking on his cell phone loud enough for us to hear him.
“Why him?” Randy asks.
“Because he’s a self-absorbed douche bag,” Vic says, as if the answer should be obvious.
Vic doesn’t own a cell phone. Mostly, he says, it’s because he doesn’t want the obligation of having to answer phone calls when he’s not home. He doesn’t have voice mail or an answering machine for the same reason.
He’s not the easiest person to get hold of in an emergency.
We all watch the self-absorbed douche bag as he gets closer, talking so loud you’d think the person on the other end of the conversation was hearing impaired. “No, no, no. It’s like I told you. He doesn’t give a shit. And as far as I’m concerned, he can go fuck himself.”
When he reaches the corner less than five feet from us, hestops and takes a drag on his cigarette, then flicks the butt onto the sidewalk, his cell phone to his ear, no regard for anyone around him as he swears and walks away.
I glance over at Vic, waiting for him to do his thing, and I notice that his eyes are closed and he’s taking several deep breaths. His face has grown pale, his lips look thin and colorless, and he appears to have come down with the flu. Just as I’m about to ask him if he’s okay, he opens his eyes and gives me a weak smile.
“You might want to get out of the way,” he says, the suggestion coming out in a rough whisper.
I move aside and Vic takes a deep breath, then makes a face as if he’s just bitten into a rotten tomato before he lets out a burp, deep and guttural, like Darth Vader with indigestion.
For a moment nothing happens and I think this was all just some silly game of pretend we were all playing. Then the guy in the suit stops talking, leans over, and starts throwing up. And when I say throwing up , I don’t mean like your garden-variety street drunk spewing on the sidewalk at two on a Saturday morning. This is more like a busted water pipe. Or a fire hydrant.
Vomit pours out of his mouth across the sidewalk. He doesn’t even have time to make any noise until the first wave is out of him. Then he sucks in a long gasp of air and wipes his mouth before he lets out a groan that’s followed by another stream of vomit. For whatever reason, the entire time, he keeps the cell phone pressed to his ear.
“Holy shit!” Randy says.
Charlie and I watch in silence while Isaac lets out a machine-gun burst of laughter. None of the other people in the vicinity seem to notice Isaac’s reaction since they’re all too busywatching the suit lose his lunch and his breakfast and whatever he ate for dinner last night. After it goes on for another ten or fifteen seconds, I start to wonder if he might need some help.
I turn to Vic. “Do you think we should call an ambulance?”
The color has returned to Vic’s face and he no longer looks like a candidate for a blood transfusion. Instead he’s shaking his head slowly back and forth as the suit drops down on all fours and starts dry heaving.
“Fucking smokers,” Vic says. “It’s like they think the entire planet is their goddamned ashtray.”
From the New York Post , page 5:
GOT MEDS? PRESCRIPTION DRUG THEFTS ON THE RISE
A wave of prescription drug thefts has swept across Upper Manhattan, with thieves posing as potential buyers while targeting open houses and then raiding the medicine cabinets. Last weekend alone, three separate homes on the Upper East Side were hit while hosting open houses.
“We don’t know who the culprits are,” Detective Sergeant Steve Moura said. “By the time the owners realized their prescriptions were missing, the thieves were long gone. Sometimes the homeowners didn’t even realize they’d been robbed until several days
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