RICHH: GOOD ANSWER--pt. 1 We had a cousin of Karen's staying with us. Her name was Ellen. She was fat and on Prozak. She'd just gotten out of the hospital Ellen was anorexic, then bulimic, then bulimic-hold-the-purge. Then she was depressed. Then she tried to die. Now she was on Prozak. Karen had somehow convinced Ellen's parents and he doctors that it would be a real mistake to send Ellen back home. She needed a change of scenery. She should stay with us. So she did. She and Karen had been very close as girls until Ellen had to move out of New York when her father was transferred. As it turned out, Ellen was not the living, breathing buzzkill that she had been made out to be. She was always smiling and laughing and telling some of the rudest jokes we'd ever heard. "Ellen," said Karen, in a short terrycloth bathrobe, "Rich, How, Ree, come on, let's play something. We all hit the living room at about the same time and it was funny because the opening credits to the Simpsons were on. At first, Ellen was a little wary of getting stoned because of the Prozak, but when she saw how we washed down Lithium with vodka, she changed her mind. "Oh God," said Howard, "Check this shit out. We were watching this special last night, about the terminally-ill. And--" "Oh...myGod," said Karen. "That was a piss." "At the end, as the credits were rolling, you heard this doctor doing a voiceover. He said, 'When we are presented with a terminally-ill patient, we as doctors have pretty much shot our collective wad." "No way." "Yup. You get the feeling someone doesn't know what a certain salty idiom means?" "You think?" "It was too funny." It was the door. "I'll get it," said Karen. It was Josh. He and Erin had had some kind of fight not long ago and that was pretty much that. Despite his looks and easygoing charm, Josh had problems keeping a relationship going for more than a few months. It always depressed him. "Hi Josh," said Ellen. "Hi Ellen." He sat down between Maria and Howard. Ellen took a sip of a Coke out of a McDonald's cup. Karen was playing with Howard's hair. "You guys are so adorable," said Ellen, the end of her Coke gurgling. "You know anything about papryomancy?" Josh, said Howard, pulling some pot out of a bag and onto Hotel California. Howard handed Josh some papers. "It's the ability to prophesy through contemplating the way people roll. Go ahead, roll a joint." "Wait a minute. Gravity's--" "Yup." Josh took rolling joints as seriously as he did his painting. He used two papers, had to be Jobs. "Um, How, listen. I can't card off of this." "What's wrong?" "It's gotta be Europe '72. I mean, Don Henley..." "But Joe Walsh..." "Good point." So he began. It's useless to describe, it happened so fast. In about twenty seconds, he was caressing his perfect joint with the flame of a Bic. I took the joint from him and looked it over and showed it to Howard. "This line here. It's long, isn't it? Does that mean--" Howard shook his head, and he and Josh both said, "Length is usually intensity, not time." "You gonna light that thing or you gonna worship it," said Karen. Howard threw it at her and Josh winced. "Hey. Hey...that's my baby." Karen lit it. "Oooh," said Karen, "Ellen has the hottest story. Tell em." "Tell what?" "You know. The school one." "Karen. I can't. I--" Karen passed her the joint. She took a deep hit and held it for a long time. No one actually saw her exhale it. Josh said, "Go on, tell." Ellen said, "All right. When I was in eleventh grade I went to this fucking Catholic school. It was a complete nightmare. But it was weird. In eleventh grade I was going from anorexic to bulimic and for a few months there I looked awesome." "I remember," said Karen. "I was a psycho bitch from Hell, but gorgeous. I got all sorts of action. I had some kind of chemical problem, too, because I was constantly, constantly--" "Some things never change." "--horny. And evil. Very evil. Me and these two other girls, we had this little evil club and we would pick out certain freshman girls and decide to make their lives miserable. And we got to be damned good at it." Howard put on some Joan Jett. [Well I don't give a damn bout my bad reputation...] "Okay, well, there were these two blonde Barbie Doll girls that we really couldn't stand. Ugh. Sophomores I think. We talked about these two constantly and what would be the perfect thing to do to them. Finally we came up with a plan. Maggie, my one friend, slipped this rolled-up joint into one of the girls' bags. Then, we took turns spying on them for the rest of the day. "Well, connected to the gym was like this shed thing where they kept like old equipment and stuff. No one went in there except it was the one place where you could get high safely. No one ever went in there, the door locked, and all the smoke got sucked outside. The shed had these doors that led outside too, out towards the parking lot, only these doors hadn't been opened in years and had this big chain lock on the outside of them. Only we had come by the school that weekend and Maggie had gotten a hold of a pair of these mongo boltcutters that her dad had. He was a volunteer fireman. The chain was all rusty anyway and real easy to cut with these. So we were ready." Josh got up and grabbed a bag of fig newtons from the fridge. "So, to cut to the chase we saw them head towards the gym between classes, we headed outside, Maggie threw open the doors and Anne, the other girl snapped this SX-70 camera she had. We took their joint and held them there and smoked it while the picture developed. It was beautiful. A perfect picture. Both of them, looking extremely 'caught', with a joint passing between them. They both started crying and we made a big show out of putting the letter into this envelope that was addressed to one of the sisters. So, I said, if you don't want this dropped in the mailbox, meet us here Saturday at one for your punishment. Since it was like, only Tuesday, they had almost a whole week to stew on it." Howard put on an album. Brownsville Station--Yeah. 'Smokin' in the Boy's Room' was the song. RICHH --end pt. 1