10.

Grod pulled into a driveway in Seattle around dinner time the next day, just as he had claimed. Despite his assurance I had been skeptical, but now I knew how he did it: by going fast as hell. At this rate it was only a matter of time before we would become victims of some glorious high-speed collision, I thought. He stopped only twice, on my request, for bathroom breaks.

A glance at the gas guage showed full, but I decided I must have been asleep during gas stops. With the scenery indiscernibly blurred and any hope of verbal communication obscured by the screaming engine and gushing wind, there was little else to do but sleep.

Grod stopped the engine and got out of the car. The house in front of us was old and weird-looking, with tall, empty windows and long shingle siding beneath faded green paint. Grod pulled the screen door open and banged on the door as I slowly climbed out of the Mercedes and stretched my limbs. I realized that, again, I was feeling hungry.

I joined Grod on the porch, where he knocked again. We heard footsteps inside, and after a moment, the door flew open.

"No shit, look who it is," said the man standing in the doorway.

"Jeff!" Grod said to him as they patted each other on the shoulders. "This is Paul Crawford. He's going to write my book. Paul, this is Jeffery Stephenson. Me and him knew each other up in Heaven when he was an angel."

"You know I'm still an angel, dude," corrected Jeff.

"Jeff here is a fallen angel," Grod clarified to me.

I extended my hand, "Nice to meet you."

He slapped my hand, "Pleasure's all mine, bro." We stood silently for a moment and then Jeff said, "Hey, how's about instead of talking about this out here we head inside and light up a bowl?"

"Hell yeah, man," Grod responded, and followed Jeff inside. I stood still for a moment. Something had been nagging at my mind for the past few hours, and I realized now what it was. My laptop, and for that matter, all of my possessions, were still in my house several thousand miles away. Thinking about that, I stepped into the house.

It was strangely cold inside, and all of the rooms were completely dark. I sighted Grod and our host at the end of the hallway the front door opened into, and walked quickly to catch up with them. We entered a somewhat shoddy living room with a vintage green sofa facing a small TV set filled with the unsettling face of Beatrice Arthur and then The Golden Girls.

Jeff took a seat on a recliner next to the sofa where Grod and I sat down. "You're the last person I'd expect to see down here, dawg." Jeff said as he picked up an enourmous green and orange bong from beside his chair.

"He," Grod looked up, "kicked me out."

Jeff leaned forward and looked up, "No way!"

"Can you believe that shit?" Grod said. He pulled out a small baggie and tossed it Jeff, "Use mine."

Jeff caught the bag and opened it up and sniffed a few times before he started packing it into a small piece of glass that slid out of the bong. "Damn, dude, that's some dank shit." Grod grinned endulgently.

"Hell's finest," he said.

"Man, I wish I could get into hell." As Jeff loaded the bong, I took in his appearance. He looked about Grod's age, and his semi-long, shaggy hair was grey. He was wearing an old flannel shirt, t-shirt and cargo pants, and his eyes were hidden behind small, dark sunglasses. I didn't have much trouble imagining him as an old friend of Grod's. Nor did I have trouble seeing that he was just as mental.

"Hey, what's this thing," Grod said, pulling a book from one of the shelves in the room. I couldn't read the title, but it was large and extremely old-looking, with a strangely stitched leather cover.

"That, my friend, is The Book of Truth," he said proudly.

"No," Grod said amused. He opened the front cover and started laughing, "No way."

"Yeah dude," Jeff said and returned to Grod the baggie.

"I had no idea it was you," said Grod, leafing through it's ancient pages. "Do you realize how pissed God was when he found out this was missing from his library."

"I heard, man," Jeff was smiling. He half-stood up to hand me the pipe.

"But he didn't find out it was missing until a couple thousand years after you left," Grod said, still examining the contents.

"Yeah, Damon found some book that looked just like it."

"And you put that in the real one's place," Grod concluded. He added, "I wondered why that poor bastard got assigned to lavatory duties after that."

"You gonna smoke that thing, or what?" Jeff turned to me.

"I've, uh," I said, rather embarrassed, "uh, how do you use this thing?" Grod walked over to me and pointed at the piece of glass.

"Cover that hole with your mouth and breathe in," he said.

"This one?"

"Yeah. Here, give it a try." He pulled a match out of one of his pockets and struck it on the palm of his hand, then held the flame to the small heap of green leafy stuff filling the bowl. After I started he said, "Now keep sucking in." He grabbed hold of the bowl and lifted it out of the device sending a burning sensation down my throat into my lungs. I handed the bong to Grod and slowly exhaled a long plume of smoke. Immediately my diaphragm began to spasm involuntarily as fire raged in my throat.

"There you go, kid," Grod laughed, raising the bong to his mouth. I kept coughing, closing my eyes as tears ran from them. My throat was burning, but it wasn't as bad as the whiskey had been, and after a few seconds the pain began to fade, replaced by a pleasant, soothing coolness.

I zoned out for a short time until the whiney voices of The Golden Girls reeled me back into reality. "Rose!" whined Dorothy and Blanch through the haze. Then slowly I began to pick out the shapes of Grod and Jeff who were leaning forward staring it me. I looked at Jeff. "Yeah," he laughed at me, "This dude's stoned."

PREVIOUS | NEXT