Chapter Eleven Julian
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JULIAN
It’s an armpit of a day, ninety percent humidity and eighty-four degrees at seven in the god-forsaken morning. My left arm feels hot and gummy beneath the Velcro cast, but there’s no rest for those with pizza belly.
It’s been two weeks since the Pot Luck, but my body hangs on to cheese bloat like it’s a piece of doorframe in icy Atlantic waters that was definitely not big enough for two, justice for Rose DeWitt Bukater.
But maybe another long, sweaty run on the river trail will finally wring me out—my fifth one this week.
When I arrive, there’s only one car in the parking lot. A purple car.
No. A purple Kia Soul.
My pulse quickens.
Whatever, lots of South Jerseyans drive unnecessarily flamboyant cars.
If I were afraid of them all, I wouldn’t be able to leave my house.
Still, I take the path in the other direction.
A minute later, a car door slams, and I whip around, but nothing.
No movement in the lot. No one on the path. The cough-syrup car sits unchanged.
I swipe my slick forehead. I’m going crazy.
The fall of my footsteps resolves into a steady, comforting beat, and I slip in my headphones.
I’m listening to a middling podcast because this guy I knew from med school named Todd who sucked is the guest, but on impulse, I switch the settings to allow background noise.
There’s nobody else on the path except for a runner far behind me.
From the look of his tiny running briefs and racing tank, he’s serious about his exercise, so he can’t be a stoner. He won’t bother me, but… still.
“A debilitating neurodegenerative disease is experiencing an uptick—what’s been your clinical experience with Parkinson’s disease in the emergency medicine setting, Dr. Todd?”
He goes by Dr. Todd? Insufferable.
“Well, Nancy, akinesia, or the sudden impairment of motor function, can become quite severe in Parkinson’s disease patients.”
No shit, Dr. Todd. I glance back. The runner’s closing the distance, his ropy legs cycling toward me in a churning stride.
I pick up my pace.
“—in advanced stages of the disease, or with sudden disruptions of medication, concurrent infections, even a bad fall, a Parkinson’s patient can enter a full akinetic crisis, which is life threatening and must be attended to immediately—”
Loose gravel crunches behind me, and I lurch around.
It’s the runner, so close now his mirrored sunglasses reflect my anxious face.
His hair is buzzed bald, a Phillie Phanatic sweatband ringing his dome.
He runs alongside me, his even strides effortlessly keeping pace with my panicked ones.
I’m fumbling to turn off the podcast when additional footsteps crackle along my other side.
Except for the long, frizzy brown hair bouncing off his chest like unappetizing cotton candy, the man to my left is the other’s perfect twin.
Same mirrored shades, same sweatband, same tiny racing briefs.
It’s like being escorted by a pair of Dickensian ghosts.
Which one is my future? Which is my past?
I run faster, but they easily match my pace. I slow down, and the same. The fuck?
The distinct, funky smell of men sweating out marijuana surrounds me like a cloud. My head flaps wildly between them.
These men are stoners. They sport an eerie, echoing smile.
“Look, I don’t know what you want,” I pant out, “but—ahhh!” My foot connects with stone, and I go flying, straight over the path’s low, rocky border, down the short embankment below, and into a reedy patch of smelly, stagnant water.
I come up gasping, spluttering dirty water out of my mouth.
The creepy twins are in the distance now, their shoulders quaking in synchronized laughter.
I hobble to my car, sneakers farting in a wet, squelching harmony as I glance nervously over my shoulder. There’s a message on my windshield, scrawled in sunscreen:
Withdraw the complaint.
Nomi sent henchmen after me?!
My windshield wipers smear the sunscreen into an impenetrable, mineral glaze, and I growl, grab my sweat towel, and start buffing the glass.
I’m still wet when I reach downtown, sloshing angrily toward Nomi’s dispensary to confront her when my face stares back at me from a lamppost. On neon pink paper, there’s a photocopied picture of me pretending to smoke a beer bottle, which must’ve been taken at Nomi’s Pot Luck.
In bold font, it states: have you seen this cat?
There are only three rip-off tabs at the bottom left, which feature my actual cell phone number.
As if on cue, my phone rings from an unknown number.
“Hello?” I answer in horror.
“Yeah, I’m callin’ about that free couch. Ever been urinated on?”
I hang up on the unhinged laughter. I have twenty-seven missed calls, all from unknown numbers. I rip down the flyer, but on the next lamppost, there are more.
Me, lying in the bushes. free couch to a good home.
Me, staring dreamily at Nomi. lose weight and feel great with rx maxum pillz!
And in an incredibly low blow—me, passed out on Nomi’s couch wearing her Kiss & Tale Bookshop T-shirt with my pizza belly on full display. looking for bon jovi tix?
I race through downtown, desperately tearing down flyers while onlookers laugh behind their hands at the smelly, wet man from the pictures.
If anyone from Philly Gen catches sight of these, I’ll be fired for good.
After I finish, I stand panting in front of Nomi’s dispensary.
On the door it states: “Opening delayed due to Dr. Julian D’Angelo’s unwarranted zoning complaint.
For now, find the Stranger Drugs pop-up at the farm stand on HWY 5. ”
I shriek like a madman, then jump into my car and tear off for the dinky set of farm huts huddled at the edge of town.
Fresh rhubarb, cartons of overflowing strawberries, and the reddest tomatoes I’ve ever seen spill forth from bins, baskets, and shelves, but it’s the skunky smell of Nomi’s goods that’s drawn a line.
She’s set up in the second hut, a similar spread of edibles from the fundraiser arrayed on platters beneath glass cloches.
I stomp up to the hut, but an old woman blocks me with her cane.
“Line starts back there, kid.” She jerks her head to indicate the seven people behind her waiting.
I have to wait in line to chew Nomi out?
A small laugh bubbles up from behind the counter, but when I turn to glare at her, Nomi’s smirking down at the stack of cash she’s counting diligently in her hands.
“Fine,” I bark out, then spin on my heels to the back of the line. Selling marijuana on the side of the road—how is this possibly legal? That sparks an idea, and I whip out my phone in glee and text the local police hotline.
“Illicit drug deals occurring at the HWY 5 fruit stand—come quick! Many criminals!!”
I’m about to close out the messages app when the family text chain blazes to life.
The D’Angelo Family Sex Gods
MOM
Julian, what have you done now? Your face is all over town!
JULIAN
If you see any of those flyers, please, tear them down!
MARCO
He filed a zoning complaint against Nomi’s dispensary, that’s what happened! People are upset.
VERONICA D’ANGELO-BORK
A zoning complaint?! What are you, Julian, a seventy-two-year-old republican with nothing better to do?
MOM
But you like her! You kissed! This is a hell of a way to treat a good woman!!
JULIAN
MOM. Can we not discuss this on the family text chain?
MOM
After your disappointing behavior at the Pot Luck, I’m not talking to you, remember?
How could I forget? Mom’s version of the silent treatment is nonstop explanations for why she’s giving me the silent treatment.
MARCO
Julian, you need to withdraw that complaint. You’re embarrassing the entire family.
My head rears back. Me?! Embarrass them?!
JULIAN
I’m doing this FOR the family, for ALL of Sparrow Nook. If you saw HALF of what I’ve seen in the ER, you’d know how dangerous marijuana is!
AUNT EDNA
People insert foreign objects into butts sober, too.
JULIAN
?????!!!!
MOM
Oh, honey.
ELLIO
You see what you’re doing to your mother? Withdraw the complaint!
ALDO
This woman heard my last name at the bar last night, and then she wouldn’t give me her number. Because of YOU, Julian!
JULIAN
You sure it’s not because you were wearing last season’s Armani Exchange jeans?
MARCO
HOOO
ELLIO
HOOOOO
AUNT EDNA
Now that was uncalled for.
UNCLE ROCCO
Can someone pick up a Stocks pound cake?
MARCO
Gotchu, Pop. JULIAN, WITHDRAW THE COMPLAINT!!!
Julian has left the chat.
I shove the phone into my back pocket, steaming. One person’s in front of me, and he’s taking forever. He asks about each item on the menu, what kind of cannabis was used, and what will work best for his anxiety.
“Exercise,” I say, interrupting Nomi’s spiel. “Exercise will help your anxiety. Not drugs.”
The man flinches as if I slapped him.
“Do not speak to my customers like that, or you will be asked to leave.” Nomi glares at me.
“Me, leave? You’re the one operating an illegal drug trade on the side of Highway Five like it’s the goddamn Silk Road!”
Nomi turns and offers the nervous man a soft smile. “Sorry about that. Where were we, Mr. Franklin?”
The man lowers his voice to a whisper, and the two continue to have the world’s longest conversation.
If Nomi’s trying to bore me into leaving, she’ll have to work harder than this, though.
My morning was ruined in a modern-day reenactment of The Shining, I’m covered in an itchy layer of pond scum, and I just pulled a reed out of my ass crack.
I’m not going anywhere.
As the man’s handing over the cash for his startlingly large haul of baked goods, a cop car comes to an epic, screeching halt in front of the hut, lights on, sirens hiccupping like, wut wut!
The nervous man shrieks, then hustles away.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Franklin, it’s completely legal!” Nomi calls after him.