I was becoming used to being woken in the wee hours. Usually it was the rowdy return of band members and accompanying drunken entourage to the living room where I had made a makeshift bed on the floor. Sometimes it was muted slaps and breathy orgasmic cries as the guitarist's latest nubile conquest voiced involuntary appreciation for his sexual athletics. This night there was neither, yet sluggish sleep was struggling against an unreasonable annoyance.
Tink, tink.
I had come to Dubai to join my friend. His band was two thirds through its standard six month contract, and had already been elevated to celebrity status by enthusiastic crowds of itinerant groupies, bored rich locals, and multifarious international hangers-on. By the time I stepped off the plane and into the heavy burqa of heat shrouding the desert city, the usual partying had merged into a solid purple streak of revelry.
Tonight, however, they had returned early; the guitarist to his bedroom for a rare night alone, and my friend to pass out on the couch near my bed. A single potent Xanax had been washed down with mouthfuls of Jack Daniels to join the other drinks consumed during three anarchic sets. His resultant stupor had resolved into a slow purr of rhythmic snoring.
My friend was not in a good way. Unhappy and nearing the end of his rock and roll shelf life, he had turned more and more to drink to soften the fall, supplemented with pills to help him sleep. In the weeks since I arrived I had seen him drink solidly through four hour gigs, and then finish full bottles of JD at home. I would have been in hospital or dead. He just kept on going.
The irritating clinking pulled me up through viscous sleep. Reluctantly I opened my eyes. My friend was on the couch, still snoring peacefully. A half empty bottle of JD rested on the table beside him. As I watched, his arm moved as if pulled at the wrist by a puppeteer's string, and settled his limp fingers around the bottle's neck. The ring finger then began tapping mechanically against the glass. It was an insistent and purposeful movement, disturbingly at odds with the rest of his deathly still body.
A thin line of fear slid down my back. Again the finger lifted and tapped: tink, tink, tink. Despite being helplessly unconscious, my friend's finger was moving on its own in an apparent effort to wake him. Tink, tink. His eyes dragged open, swimming beneath heavy lids as they struggled to focus through alcohol and sedation. His head turned laboriously to follow the sound. He recognized the bottle and grunted with ironic humour. Unsteady, he obediently raised it to his mouth, took several long pulls and instantly fell back asleep.
I waited. After a few moments his finger began again. Tink, tink, tink, tink. I called his name. The finger paused, and then continued. Tink, tink. I called again, forcefully, and not just to wake him. I challenged the chill sheet of fear that raised goosebumps all over me. I was standing now, pushing back whatever unknown had animated my friend's hand and coerced him to drink and drink beyond even his superhuman tolerance. With hair prickling on the nape of my neck, I called his name to banish the demons real or existential that were driving him toward self destruction.
He woke, or rather consciousness raised brief unseeing eyes above the ocean of chemical oblivion that smothered him. "Time for bed bro. Better go to bed," I insisted. He grunted, made several failed attempts to rise, and then stumbled mindlessly down the hall and into his room where I heard him fall onto the mattress.
I capped the bottle of JD tightly, not without some unease. It was just an ordinary bottle, I knew that. But this night, even stone cold sober, it felt unnaturally hard and cool as I hid it amongst the other empties.
