Free Frank Sinatra in a Blender by Matthew McBride

road Sid cranked the heat and it warmed their faces. He yawned and stretched his neck to the side, happened to look down and saw Telly’s dirty white tube sock with bright wet patches of blood showing through and staining the immaculate floorboard.
    “Oh Johnny, ya wanker, you forgot the bloody teeth.”
    They’d smashed a few of Telly’s teeth out with the hammer. No Nuts pulled out a few from the side with channel locks, but quickly abandoned the task after he got to the ones in the back.
    “Them sumsbitches ain’t coming out,” he’d declared.
    Now Sid looked down at his floorboard and told No Nuts he could fuck up a crowbar in a sandbox without bloody trying. Said he was gonna buy him a new floor mat.
    “I’ll throw ‘em out the window, Sid.”
    “You do that, Johnny.”
    They drove under the Mraz U-turn exit as they passed the old minivan plant where a new Town & Country once perched high atop a platform in front of the complex. Now it was a lifeless carcass being demolished brick by brick. Sid told No Nuts that was too bad about Chrysler.
    They left Fenton and blew past Hot Shots and the Stratford Inn headed back to the city. No Nuts started complaining about the economy.
    •••••
     
    We finished our business, had a few more drinks, and did three more lines of coke. I took another Oxy. I was about as ruined as I’d ever been when I felt that familiar sense of total disorientation about to overpower me. I thought I’d lost my keys. It didn’t take long to realize I should’ve never taken that last Oxy.
    Even I recognized it was time to go, and Nick Valentine was all about memorable exits. My system was operating on a monumental supply of alcohol and a Whitman’s Sampler of chemicals, but at least I’d given up coffee.
    I told the boys I’d see them tomorrow and bumped Big Tony’s fist. I told that stripper with the pigtails and the platforms shoes she was the most amazing woman I’d ever seen in my life. And I let her know in no uncertain terms how much it would mean to me, on a personal level, if only I could take her back to the office and introduce her to Mr. Stout.
    I yelled for Flames to have a good one, not even realizing I’d gotten this current drunk confused with my previous drunk. Then, with all the confidence and false sense of security that a good pharmaceutical high can offer, I yelled out for those guys at the end of the bar to go fuck themselves. I stumbled out the same door for the second time and walked right into the waiting arms of another topless dancer. But this one was holding a bowl of chili.
    She was the skinniest girl I’d ever seen and her nipples were hard and sharp, like carbon tacks in the freezing air. If I had locked my keys in the Vic, I could carry her to the car and turn her sideways. Use her nipples to cut through the glass and unlock the door. She asked me if I wanted any chili.
    “Fuck yes!” I grabbed the bowl from her hands and kept walking.
    I found my keys hanging from the ignition, which meant I hadn’t lost them. I wouldn’t need to use her stripper locksmith services after all.
    When I pulled out onto Franklin Street, I punched the accelerator hard and made the rear tires spin across the intersection. I licked the plastic spoon clean and tossed it onto the passenger side floorboard along with the empty bowl. Goddamn that was good chili.
    I only had one rule when it came to drinking. Don’t eat while you’re drinking.
    There’s nothing worse than fucking up a fifty-dollar beer buzz on a five-dollar hamburger, so I always kept the two separate. Like any good drunk should.
    And as much as I enjoyed Oxy, one of the unfortunate drawbacks from painkillers was hunger. I hadn’t eaten all day. I’d bought a pizza from the gas station but when I took it out of the mini to get the last ice cubes, I forgot to put it back.
    As hungry as I was, I was not entirely opposed to the idea of eating a frozen pizza that had been thawing for five hours. But