Bloodied Nose

Tequila is a bad idea. That is not say Tequila is not fun. Nothing stops a night of Drunk Shakespeare, not even Sierra somehow acquiring food poisoning, abruptly stopping the salt lick hands and biting of limes. We stumble to the bathroom and I keep her sweat darkened locks from touching porcelain. The trip prompts our quick cash out and a slurred call to the cab company, who sends a speedy street bee to Shakespeare’s Den. We stumble out of chipped red doors, across rain-dampened sidewalks, trying to catch the evasive banana peel handle.

“8…850 Char…Chairman Street” Sierra’s address stumbles from her lips, between the nausea and liquor.

“You got it, ladies,” the cabby says, hat slung low on his brow and glasses flashing streetlamps, “Anywhere else?”

“Might have you take me home,” I say, “but I don’t know quite yet.”

Low Bollywood music floats through the cab as flashes of greens, blues and golds illuminate Sierra’s sharp nose and long fingers that fall between the valleys of my knuckles. I grip them tight, being her anchor. She turns, eyes all fogged up, “To be or not to be, Ophelia, my sweet?” She pulls my hand up to her mouth, kissing the back.

“Did you forget my name Si? I didn’t think you drank that much,” I chuckle at her exaggerated eye roll.

We turn onto Chairman Street, with the iron vine streetlamps and little fences, stopping in front of Sierra’s purple door. I fight the car handle only for the door the fly open when the cabby unlocks it. I fall face first onto the curb, scratching up my nose. I hoist myself up from the curb, legs leaving the cab like I had turned into spider, spinning and grinning with blood oozing from my nose, I grab Sierra from the drab grey cab interior, catching her as she stumbles on the curb, we don’t need matching bloody noses.

“What is a name anyway? A Rose by any other name would be just as sweet,” Sierra mumbles as she tries to stumble up her step, throwing a wink over her shoulder that causes her to trip.

“Wait a second. I’m gonna get her inside.” I say to the cabby, paying for the drive to Sierra’s and the minutes he’ll spend sitting here, probably with more bills than necessary. I weave us up her concrete steps, drop the keys twice, first when Sierra fishes them from her purse and again when the world spun as I tried to pick them up for her, fumble with the lock, opening the door I pat the doorway and hold up two fingers to the cabby.

I lead Sierra past her broken-down brown couch, drop her cement block of a purse on the kitchen counter and have her sit on her bed. I plop onto the floor to pull off her shoes, then stumble up to push her further into the bed, wrapping her tight in covers. She’s already asleep, little snorts escaping her lips. I drag myself back into the kitchen, get her a big glass of water, she’ll wake up thirsty, and the Tylenol.

After putting that on her bedside table, I contemplate crawling under the covers with her, but decide that would be a bad decision in my current alcohol fuzzy state. I try to get back to the cab, but the squishy red pillow on the brown couch looks so much more appealing than the quest back to the cab’s banana peel door handle and long trip to my own bed.