Joey and I are drunk as fuck. It turns out that you can barely taste the vodka when it mixes with kombucha, and the more vodka you drink, the better tasting the kombucha gets. We’ve gone through three bottles of kombucha and an entire bottle of vodka. It’s an alert drunkenness, but it feels like the kind of intoxication that will last for hours and hours and hours.
“OK Sam. Don’t hate me OK man,” Joey says.
“Man, you saved my life. Why would I hate you?”
“I did call 911, and I didn’t know you had lost your memory. It’s just been a rough year for me, you know. Things have been difficult, and I shouldn’t have done what I did. I’m really sorry man.” Joey says.
“Joey, what the fuck are you talking about?”
Tulsa sees my level of stress starting to raise. Did Joey sell me out? Does he know who tried to bury me?
“Look man. I don’t know anything about the grave or your memory or any shit like that. You know?” he asks.
“No I don’t know. I don’t understand what you’re saying. You haven’t told me anything.”
Joey walks over to a wooden coat rack near the door where his jacket is hung, rifles through it and comes back to me. I stand up, thinking I’m going to have to defend myself.
Tulsa starts barking viciously at Joey, snarling, growling, shouting.
Joey hands me a wallet and cell phone and says: “these belong to you.”
“How did you get my wallet and cell phone?”
“I saw you on the side of the road passed out. There was nobody else there. I was the only one to stop. I wanted to make sure you were OK, so I called 911. You looked like a guy who would be OK, and I really needed the money, so I took your wallet and phone. I was going to sell the phone and the credit card numbers, but I couldn’t do it. When you called me, I knew that was my opportunity to make things right, but I kept being a coward, over and over again, until now. Thank Jesus for liquid courage.”