It was a cold dismal night, like the beginning of a crime story that starts out badly and only gets worse. It was two-am when they pulled up to the party.

————

It was raining so hard that Noah’s whiskey tasted like downspout water. Nina was watching from the window, dressed in her Saturday night fuck me first, love me later slinky black dress. She watched him standing in the parking lot of The Soviet Union bar under an umbrella, with red neon lights blaring like some angry army. Noah had been waiting nearly an hour for God to come with the weed. As usual, God didn’t show.

Nina motioned from the window making the telephone-sign with her hand for Noah to come in and call God, again. He threw back his whiskey and went inside.

“Typical repulsive God to not show up and you standing out there like some moronic believer. You screwed up by giving him the cash first.” She was irritated and pacing, clacking back and forth over the wooden floor in stiletto heels.

Noah frowned and dialed God’s number, got his message service: Hi, this is God. What I can create for you?

“Where in the fuck are you?” he grumbled into the phone, and then hung up.

Across the bar Nina had warmed up to a local bearded lumberjack with a purple patch over his right eye. His left eye zeroed in on Noah, like a backwoods cyclopes. The jack had bought Nina a whiskey. She threw it back then whispered in his ear. He looked at Noah again, sat up straight and strong, and belly laughed out loud. Nina kissed him on the cheek and walked over to Noah.

“Let’s get the fuck out of this dump.” she growled.

They left The Soviet Union and headed for a party hosted by friends Cairo and Jen.

It was a cold dismal night, like the beginning of a crime story that starts out badly and only gets worse. The storm pelted the windshield, as if somebody had spit in their faces, and the headlight beams melted in the rain. It was already one-thirty-a.m. They should’ve been at the party two hours ago. Nina was rifling through her Khors-knockoff designer bag manically looking for a joint that may or may not be there. By now, her cheap perfume had turned Noah’s stomach, had made him nauseous. He opened the window halfway. The cold air settled his nerves, but the curvy roads were testing his motion sickness which was elevated by Nina’s dirt-cheap toilet water. She found the joint, lit it, inhaled deeply and passed it to Noah. He pulled a deep drag, blew the smoke out the window, his nausea settled down.

Nina and Noah had met when she had worked at a whiskey joint in Highland Park, Los Angeles. She was the night bartender. Standing a statuesque five–nine to his five–eight she had been pursuing a modeling career. She was lean and leggy with long, dark hair, serious curves, and an attitude that said: Fuck you. Coming from Armenian and Spanish descent Nina was hot blooded and perpetually pissed-off, and she had just fallen out of a two-year marriage. Compounded with her stalled career, and now at twenty-nine, she was looking to leave LA, to find herself, to find something, to find anything better than working at that shithole whiskey joint.

Noah had worked retail at a cheap shoe store near the bar. One late-afternoon before going to work Nina had come into the shop, and it was love at first shoe fitting.

Several months into their sexually charged and emotionally turbulent relationship Noah got a call from a bank saying that his recently deceased uncle, whom he really didn’t know, had left him a sizeable amount of money and a small mortgage-free cabin in Northern California. Without giving notice to their cheap bastard employers, they quit their dead-end jobs as quickly as a second passes and went North to the redwoods. On the day that they had arrived at the small cabin a full-blown winter storm had dumped on them and didn’t let up for a week. They were cabin-bound with only whiskey, weed and canned foods, and they pretty much fought and fucked their way through the week until the storm had passed.

It was two-am when they pulled up to the party. The house was lit up all-about with multicolored, blinking lights, along with blasting spirited music. Through a window Noah saw Cairo dancing to a tribal beat. There were people everywhere, drinking, smoking, kissing, ingesting shrooms.

When Noah finally parked the car in the driveway, Nina flew out of the passenger seat squatted behind the open door and pissed like the Hoover Dam broke open. She then stood up pulled her form-fitting dress back into place and shouted, “Fucking relief.” And in those stiletto heels she stumbled along the dirt path heading to the house looking like the woman who rose from hell. On the path a raggedy-looking older dude eyed her with the greasy hunger of a geriatric vulture. He had a sloppy sideways grin with long, thin grey hair, and he was wearing a tie-died tee-shirt with the Grateful Dead logo on the front. It resembled a toddler’s pajama top.

“What are you looking at, moron?” Nina shouted, “Go and jackoff somewhere and get over it.’’ She went into the party and headed for the bar, while shoving stoners out of her way.

Noah sat in the car for a few minutes taking in the cold air. He was still woozy from the country curves. Then, in the orange bug light of the rear porch he saw God standing there in a cloud of smoke while hitting a bong with two other familiar faces.

A skinny old geezer with long white hair and a long white beard that reached down to his middle chest, God stands four-feet-five and strikes one as being haggard troll. He had a hundred stories and none of them interesting. Born and raised in the Humboldt area, God is the creator of all things weed––one cannot find a bag of weed in this great redwood territory without believing in God. He was talking to two local Mexican potheads, Gabriel and Jesus. The scene resembled a religious revival with God preaching a sermon while waving the bong around like an aspergillum, as if blessing the other two. As always, God rambled on with one of his stories while Gabriel and Jesus’ heads bobbed and wobbled and nodded in obligatory responses.

Just as Noah was ready to step into the light to make himself known Nina stormed out of the back door like a gorgeous hurricane with a whiskey in one hand and a joint in the other. Towering over God and spitting out a slew of profanities she was like a wild cat with rabies that had cornered a terrified rodent. The two Mexicans, knowing of Nina’s notorious temper, disappeared as quickly as spit in a raging river.

“We waited a fucking hour you pile of geezer crap. Where the fuck is our weed?” Nina was, and to not be redundant, pissed off. “And you’re gonna’ cut us a sweet fucking deal for wasting our precious time and …”

The two of them noticed Noah at the same second. Nina threw back the whiskey and stomped into the house. God was shaking, like he was about to piss his jeans, but he composed himself, as quickly as a cat falling and landing on its feet.

“Dude, brah, you gotta keep that psycho on a short leash, and let me tell ya what happened. I––I was gonna …’’

Stopping God in midsentence, Noah wasn’t up for one of his dull epic stories, nor for any of his stock excuses. God handed him the bong. Noah refused.

“Listen, God, it’s hard for me to believe in you when, for the second time, you’ve screwed up and left me short.”

God hit the bong and his face disappeared in another cloud of smoke. When Noah could see his eyes again, he continued,

“I wanna believe in you, but with all of the frustration you’ve created, especially short-changing me an eighth-ounce the last time––ya dig what I’m sayin’?––here’s the deal. You’re gonna give me the weed that I paid for and half of my dough back. You’re gonna take the loss for my time wasted, or I’ll whistle for Nina and she’ll come and jerk you upside down and hang you by your feet until every last bud and buck falls from your pockets. What’ll be?”

God looked down for a few seconds while he nodded then looked up, “Dude, brah, I can’t do that. Ya’all have to learn to play my game by my rules. When I contradict myself ya’all have to still believe in me, otherwise ya’all can go to hell.’’ delivered with a self-righteous smirk.

Noah knelt down so that he was looking the short man square in the eyes. God stepped back and was shaking, and Noah could see Nina through the window shooting back another whiskey while chomping at the bit watching. That was when he motioned for her to come outside.

Nina opened the back door so hard that it smashed into the porch wall, knocking out the bug light and the porch itself shook like tectonic plates had slipped. God was now in the dark and the inside light behind Nina displayed a startling silhouette. She looked like one of the Four Horsemen. God was whimpering when Nina grabbed him by the collar, slammed him to the floor, and sat on his chest. By then God had wet his jeans a bit.

“Listen, you grubby creep, reach into those grimy pockets and give us our goods or I’m gonna squat and piss on your face.”

Noah backed up, smirking at the scene unfolding before him, thinking, God deserved this a long time ago and not just from us.

“Listen to her, God, she’s got flames in her head she’s burning with temper.”

Just as Noah finished the sentence Nina pulled up her slinky dress, pulled her silk panties aside and squatted over God’s face. “Okay, okay, okay.’’ he screamed, “alright, alright, stop, please, please.”

Noah motioned for Nina to stop and to let him up. The little man got up, beaten and humiliated and half out of breath. He then cried out, “You freaks are out of your screwy gourds, and further more …’’

Nina grabbed God by the collar of his grubby shirt to shut him up, and then shouted, “Only when a swindler like you rips us off.”

She let him go with a shove. The little turd hit the wall with a thud, and breathing heavily he reached into his pocket and handed Noah a wade of hundreds and then opened his backpack and gave Nina a quarter-pound. Without another word, God left the porch, hobbled along the path, and disappeared into the darkness, like Gollum under a bridge. Nina threw back the whiskey that she had held on to the entire time without spilling a drop. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, looked at Noah with a hot intensity, and said, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.” She adjusted her form fitting dress, wiggled her hips, shook her head back and forth, as if to snap out of a daze, and then headed down the steps while her ankles wobbled in the heels and she slipped a few times in the mud but caught her balance.

Noah looked inside the house saw Cairo and Jen and a few others undulating to trance rhythms. The crowd had thinned out. Noah suggested that they go in and mingle with their friends for a few minutes.

“Naw, I’m too horny for a dull socializing nightcap. It’s two-forty-five. Let’s go home and fuck ‘til the sun rises.”

That sounded like a much better deal to him. They got in the car and Nina lit a joint, hitting it strong and deep, while Noah backed up into the darkness. He then took the joint from Nina and they drove off with the damp chilly air coming through the open window and filling the car with the scent of wet earth, redwoods and rain.

A minute down the dirt road they came upon God standing there with his head hanging low, like a garden gnome with a snapped neck. Nina rolled down the window and yelled,

“Fuck you, God. I never believed in you.’’

That long night of anger, frustration, and demands, had come to a glorious ending. And to make life more interesting, Nina and Noah had decided that it was time to buy their own Humboldt pot farm and to run that duplicitous God out of business. Maybe even out of town.

By D.A. Helmer

From: United States

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