Early August, early morning

There was a lot of darkness that night, somehow; I’m not sure if it was a new moon, or if there were just a couple of streetlights busted where I parked, but something ratcheted up the tension of parking along the street two blocks up from my condo at 4:30 in the morning. Usually just getting the car parked gave me a huge sense of relief; another trip home from somewhere way too far away under the influence of one thing or another (or several), a drive that even I couldn’t kid myself into believing was a good idea that hadn’t ended with me either sitting in jail or wrapped around a telephone pole.

Tonight, though, my nerves were still tight enough to make me drop my keys as I got out, which led to a solid two minutes of profanity-laced bending over, searching, crawling around, and near panic before my hand finally brushed one of my house keys, I think, and I was able to straighten up and start my stagger home.

I can’t even remember if I saw them first or heard them; two guys emerging from the alley in the middle of the block after I went by, the smell of a cigarette that one of them tossed into the street, an almost hypnotic rhythm of their footfalls and mine, counterpointed by their murmured conversation and the pounding of blood in my ears that was growing ever louder and more frantic.

I didn’t want to go into my building with them following, and I was quickly reaching a level of panic that I was afraid that I would no longer be able to contain, so I mounted the steps to one of the row houses that made up the block next to mine. I fumbled with my keys, both to give them time to walk by and because my hands were shaking uncontrollably, and I snuck glances at the two men as they grew closer. My heart stopped the same moment they did, less than five feet away from me, hard looks in both sets of eyes.

“Back off, man, I’ll call the cops...” I said thickly, trying to reach for my cell phone while not dropping my keys again, all the time thinking, “Is it ‘fire’ you’re supposed to yell if you want people to really respond to you? I know it’s not ‘help’...”

“Dude, are you high? This is my fucking house, so why don’t you get off my stoop before I call the cops,” the first one said.

Words like, “oh...yeah...shit...sorry...” all piled out of my mouth at the same time as I made a big show of looking at the number and “realizing” it wasn’t the right house. “I think I’m on the wrong block, man,” I ended on, weakly, and quickly resumed my walk home, risking only one glance back to see the two guys still looking after me in disbelief. I started laughing, and I couldn’t stop until long after I finally crawled into bed, a sick laughter that was equal parts relief and fear that persisted until it was finally overwhelmed, as I was, by merciful sleep.