The faint call from the other room was barely audible: "Sally?..."
Since she had been frantically searching the folds of her sheets for her cell phone anyway, and it was well past the hour she had intended to go to sleep, Sally slowly emerged from her bedroom and wandered out into the living room.
"Jessica? Did you want me? Are you ok?" she said as she rounded the corner to find her roommate collapsed on the couch - half sitting with her upper body half laying on the cushion next to a large bowl twice the size of her face.
"I threw up in the peanuts..." Jessica murmured in a faint whine. "It's rather tragic."
Sally didn't see any other substance in the peanuts other than some discarded shells, but the genuine concern and disappointment from her roommate was not to be disregarded.
"I think I got vomit all over the place," said Jessica, pointing to the coffee table in front of her knees, and around the room in general as she sat up. Her slur was becoming more audible to Sally the more she kept talking. "I'm really sorry. The show was great. I got a little too drunk. And I rarely get sick, and I can't believe I threw up and I'm so sorry and the peanuts are ruined and I don't think you really care that much but I'm really sorry about it and I can't believe I did that." she continued after her last run-on with a brief pause, "I'm really drunk, please tell me what to do."
Sally didn't know whether a gut-busting laugh would be well-received in light of the peanut tragedy, so she toned it down to just a smile. "Jessica - it's ok. I don't see anything anywhere. Are you ok? Don't worry about the peanuts, they were left over from someone who brought them over anyway."
"I know...ok...ok...but I vomited in them. I'm really drunk. Please just tell me what I should do?"
Sally picked up the bowl and brought it into the kitchen. "Well, first let's get you some water" she said as she dumped the peanuts into the garbage, put the bowl in the sink and filled a glass with the Brita from the fridge. "You should probably have a glass before you go to bed. And anyway I'm sure you want to wash your mouth out."
As she returned to the living room, she handed her roomie the glass and sat next to her on the couch. "We should probably get you up into bed. Is that ok? Can you go upstairs?"
Jessica closed her eyes and took two deep breaths. In what she thought was a private mutter but was actually just as loud as her speaking voice she said to herself, "Pull it together Jessica. You can do this."
"Do you want me to help you stand up?" inquired Sally without letting on that she could hear the personal dialogue
"Well...I'm just worried I'm going to throw up again on my way up the stairs"
"Ok...why don't we get you a travel bucket? Will that make you feel better?"
As Jessica nodded, Sally went into the bathroom and came back with the small plastic garbage can.
"Here you go! Just carry this with you - I can take your water. So, we're all together...are you ready to upstairs now?"
Jessica again nodded and stood up, which Sally took as a sign to go upstairs. As she was more mobile than her heavily inebriated roommate, once she got to the top of the stairs she put the water down on the dresser and attempted to arrange the sheets and comforters and blankets strewn across the bed in an order that would allow for Jessica to easily crawl in. As she was shuffling blankets, she heard the sound of scraping coming up the stairs due to Jessica's using the support of both the wall and the plastic garbage can to steady herself.
Suddenly she heard a thud and the sound of shattering glass so perfect, it was like an audio engineering student's "A+" sound-recording project.
She turned to see her roommate collapsed at the top of the stairs, half between the stair wall and a lazy boy, with the lamp that had once rested upright in the very same spot leaning cockeyed against the wall. The bulb and glass lamp shade were no longer in their correct place but instead strewn about in pieces on the floor.
"Good God, Jessica! Are you ok?! Be careful, get up slowly" said Sally as she extracted her into an upright position and launched her as best she could onto her bed. "Let me check your arm. Did you cut yourself, are you ok?"
Seeing no scratches, she laid her roommate down and pulled the blankets up over her. "I think it's time you get some sleep" said Sally.
"Ok," murmured Jessica, "but let's not tell anyone about the lamp."
"Don't worry," said Sally as she walked down the stairs, "I won't."
Song of the Day: Can't Nobody Hold Me Down - Puff Daddy feat. Mase
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1 comment:
I just watched three episodes of Arrested Development and this story is the fourth. I don't even feel like I stepped away from the tv. Good god. I was laughing so hard I was crying.
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