sliding doors

Two things were happening at the same time.

I was in a fancy liquor store with Joe, doing a fancy whiskey tasting. It was $25 for five strange whiskeys. One was extracted from acai. One was grown out of rock crystals. One was a pile of dark black pebbles that turned out to be the magic tea we needed to contain the evil water god we had set loose earlier in the evening, reducing her to nothing more than a small babbling brook.

But I was also on a high school orchestra trip, doing the whiskey tasting in a store that was part liquor store, part gambling den, part Ikea, with the little sister of a bass player in my year. It wasn't actually that guy's little sister, though. That girl's body had recently been re-inhabited by the former best friend of that girl's best friend after the latter died in an unfortunate accident that no one knew about but me, and I only knew because the girl living inside that girl's body had just told me. Needless to say, I was confused, and kept trying to get her to explain as we sipped our whiskey, but she couldn't because the best friend in question was standing right next to us.

In the first version of things, Joe and I ended up in the liquor store after tricking the water god into entering a cave intended for the new chimpanzee at the zoo next door. We then blocked the cave with a large pile of rocks, but we knew she would get out eventually. I'm not sure how the god got loose in the first place. I may or may not have accidentally invoked her earlier in the evening while riding the commuter train. But I knew that if we smuggled out enough of this black pebble tea, and either steeped and drank it or smoked it, possibly while reciting some sort of incantation, the god would be sealed into the chimpazee cave for some time period short of eternity but long enough that we wouldn't have to worry about it in our great-great grandchildrens' lifetimes.

In the other version that was happening at the same time, this second violin player I hated plopped down between me and the re-inhabited girl. "Can I borrow twenty-five dollars?" the annoying violin player asked. The girl, who was much too nice now that she was this other girl, took out the money, no questions asked. Before she could hand it over, I insisted on asking what the money was for. "Gambling," the violin asshole said, with a smug smile. "I already lost a hundred! I have to keep going." I refused to let the girl give her the money, and the violin player pouted and told me I was a bitch before storming off to the linens department.