The Hookup

“I’m up for it.” He sat back in the booth, sideways, and took a drag off his cigarette. “I mean, if it’s everything you say I’d almost have to be, right?”

“Dude, that’s what I love about you, always up for a new experience.” Carlo pulled out his phone and started tapping. “I’ll text the dude, and then we’ll wait for him to get back to us.”

“All right.” Freddy took another drag, then leaned forward and grabbed his empty coffee cup and looked around for the waitress. “How long does this dude take to get back to you?”

“I don’t know, man, this is the first time I’ve dealt with him. He’s a friend of a friend, you know?” Carlo set the phone back down on the table and leaned back against the padded back of the booth. “Jay says he’s OK, so...”

“Jay.” The syllable carried a lot of ambivalence. 

“Hey, Jay is a good guy, he got me the line on that stuff last week...”

“Jay,” said Freddy, “Is a lunatic.” He leaned forward and stubbed the cigarette out on a small plate. He waved his coffee cup in the general direction of the waitress, who had come into view.

“Yeah, but... he’d never fuck you over, is what I’m saying.”

“I’m not saying he’s going to fuck us over,” said Freddy, “I’m saying that Jay has a different threshold for danger than I do.”

“Well,” said Carlo, “Yeah.”

The waitress arrived and filled up Freddy’s coffee cup. Carlo put his hand over his own. His phone bleeped.

“Dude,” said Carlo, looking up at Freddy. “What’s your phone number?”

“You have my phone number.”

“Yeah, but it’s easier to ask you than to try to copy it out of the...”

“Yeah, OK.” Freddy rattled off the ten-digit number. Carlo typed it into his phone.

Freddy’s phone buzzed; a second later, Carlo’s phone bleeped again.

“Dude, this is it.”

Freddy looked up at him. Carlo was practically dancing in his seat. He pulled out his phone, opened the protective cover, tapped on the little alert. There was a new text message, with an attachment.

Carlo was navigating his own phone.

Freddy looked back down, his finger hovering. He tapped the attachment. A window popped up, some sort of blurry, swirly image. He turned his head, trying to figure out what it was.

When he woke up, he was lying half-under the table, one arm hanging off the bench, legs out in the aisle. He blinked a couple of times, sat up. His coffee cup was on the floor, the coffee in a pool around it.

Carlo was slumped forward over the table, face down over his phone. Freddy scooted up, wedging his back against the wall, pulling his knees up and wrapping his hands around them.

He blinked furiously, trying to wrap his brain around the coffee shop, the people sitting around having breakfast.

“You can’t do that shit in here.” It was the waitress. She had one hand on a cocked hip, and she looked pissed.

“Yeah, OK,” said Freddy. He put one hand on his head, looking around. “Listen, I dropped my coffee, could I...”

“What about your friend,” she said. “Is he gonna come out of it any time soon?”

“I don’t know, I’m not an expert on...” He waved his hand at the phone. “Whatever that was.”

She looked like she was about to laugh but was trying to stay pissed-off looking. “First time?”

“Yeah.”

“What was it like?”

Freddy looked down at his phone. The blurry picture was still up on the screen.

“Long,” he said. “It was like... I was somebody else, doing all this stuff...” he blinked at the picture, then hit the ‘Home’ button to get rid of it.

“Don’t worry,” said the waitress, “It only works the one time, you gotta get a different one to do it again.”

“How the fuck does that work,” said Freddy. It sounded like a good deal for whoever Carlo had Paypal’d money too.

“Something about how your brain sees that image,” she said. She reached behind her and picked up a coffee cup off the counter, set it in front of him. “Like, it works the once, and then you’re immune to it...”

“Huh.” He watched her pour the coffee into the new cup. He looked over at Carlo, whose head had fallen over sideways. He was drooling.

“Hey,” said the waitress, “You got a number, where I can get hooked up?”

“Nah,” said Freddy, “He’s got it. I’ll ask him when he wakes up.” He looked up at her. “What about you,” he asked, “You got a number?”

She rolled her eyes and went back to waitressing.