Miles the Madman

by Tyler Carey

When the phone rang, my eyes flashed open and I sat bolt upright. Not only was I not expecting a call at five in the morning, but I knew that there couldn't be anyone good on the other end of the line. When the other end squawked, "Frank! It's Miles!" I realized just how bad things could be.

"Miles? Miles Miller from Hatfield, Massachusetts?" I asked, hoping, praying that I was wrong.

"That's the one! Jeez, you're a hard fucker to track down!"

"Yeah, my number's unlisted."

"Totally! I got out of the pen about a month and a half ago, and I was surprised to see how far away from Hatfield most of you guys had gotten! I ended up getting your number from Faye."

"Oh?" I asked, confused. "How's Faye?"

"She's alright. She married a guy from up here. I ran into her at the Stop & Shop."

"There you go," I said with as much warmth as I could muster. "So, what's going on, Miles? Why the call at five AM?"

"Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. I took the bus from Springfield last night, and I just left the Port Authority."

"You what?"

"I'm on a bus out to Coney Island to see you."

"You what?!?" I screamed.

I almost yelped when Laura, my wife, conscience and better-half elbowed me. "Tell them you'll call back when we're up," she mumbled, and rolled over on her pillow.

"Y'know," Miles said, "I thought about you every day when I was in prison."

"That's comforting," I said. "About that, Miles, what were you in prison for?"

"Prison?" asked Laura, gaining consciousness now, whether she liked it or not.

"Oh, that was just a little misunderstanding between me and some of western Massachusetts' finest regarding my legal status as a medicinal marijuana patient. I got out about a month and a half ago, and I figured that it was about time that I see New York."

I couldn't help but laugh. I sobered quickly as all the pieces in the puzzle began to assemble in my sleep-addled mind.

"So, you're on your way out to visit me?"

"Yup!"

"Right now?"

"Yup! Two years in the can, and I'm antsy! I was intending it to be a surprise, but I needed directions to your place from the bus stop. Which stop should I take, by the way?"

I panicked. "Why don't you just wait at the Port Authority? I could meet you there when I go into work in the morning."

"I'm already on my way," he explained. "I'm calling you on one of them cell phones."

"You're out of jail for a month and a half and you have a cell phone already?" I asked. Laura was leaning up on her elbow shaking her head, at this point.

"Yeah, and speaking of which, I don't have too many minutes left. So, how do I get to your place from the bus?"

"Well," I stalled, "It's confusing. How about you just get off at the aquarium and I'll pick you up there."

"Oh, damn, man!" Miles said enthusiastically. "I didn't think you'd still have a car, living in this city and all. Still got that beat up Dodge Lancer?"

"No, I got a Jaguar." Damn, I shouldn't have said that, I thought.

"Hot damn! Can I drive her?" Miles asked.

"Uh, we'll see. Where are you now?"

"Gee, I dunno. Still in Manhattan, I guess. How long you figure it'll be?"

"Well, just hang out in front of the aquarium. I'll meet ya. I gotta get dressed, and all. See you in a bit." I hung up before he could complain.

"Jail? A visit? What the hell was all of that about?" Laura asked.

"I...I need some coffee. Why don't you rest. I'll explain it all, later."

"No! You tell me right now!" she said. I walked towards the kitchen, and Laura followed quickly after. "What's going on?" she asked.

I got the percolator out of the cabinet and filled it with water and coffee grounds. "Remember how I went to school up in Amherst, Massachusetts?"

"You're stalling."

"Yes, I am." I plugged the percolator in, rubbed my eyes and leaned against the counter. "Anyway, when I was living up there, I made friends with a townie named Miles Miller. He was a couple of years older than me, so he was able to buy beer for me and my buddies when we were all freshman. Despite the fact that he didn't go to school with us, Miles was really one of the pack. He...y'know, he was kind of like the crazy neighbor on a sitcom."

"How crazy?" Laura asked.

"Well, one time, we were betting each other that if you jumped off the dorm balcony that you'd probably break your ribs. Miles was the one who tried it, and he did." I started to laugh.

"That's sick. Why are you laughing?"

"Because, after we took him to the medical center and they gave him some painkillers, he tried the same stunt every two weeks, just to get more painkillers."

"Sounds like the kind of guy you'd hang out with."

"Sure." My smile faded a bit, though. "It's just that there was always something a little...I dunno...dark about him."

"Great," Laura said. She went to the fridge and took out some English muffins. "For instance?"

"Well, the last time I remember hanging with him was on the way back from one of our runs to the medical center. He had just gotten another vial of Vicodin, and he chopped them up on my dashboard and snorted them."

Laura moaned. "And you're bringing this guy here?"

"Hell no! He was just in jail!"

"Yeah, you didn't really explain that part."

"It was kind of news to me, too. Apparently he got busted for pot possession and spent the past two years in jail."

"Which means that he probably got five and served two."

"Yeah," I said. "I'm glad I married a lawyer!" I joked.

"I'm not kidding around, Frank. Five years? Means he was probably dealing."

"That's pretty likely. We all bought from him in college."

"Ohhh, Jesus..." Laura said. She took the English muffins out of the toaster and started to butter them. "Pour me some coffee?"

"You got it." I filled two mugs and put some milk in Laura's. "Look, I'm not gonna bring him back here."

"Then what the hell are you going to do with him? Just drive him around New York for a day? Y'know, he could be dangerous."

"Naw, he's not dangerous. He's just...a nutball, y'know?"

"Frank! You're a businessman! This man was a guy who sold you dope and bought you beer when you were seventeen. His past few years have been spent sharing a cell with a hardened criminal! He's a liability! You don't owe him anything!"

"No, I don't owe him anything, but I'll...I'll find a way to defuse the situation."

"Frank, you've got to leave for work in two and a half hours. Pick the guy up, say hi, drop him off somewhere and never see him again, huh?"

"Y'know, maybe I'll just take the day off. I've got lots of personal time kicking around..."

"What? When I wanted to go to the Hamptons last weekend you said you were too busy, and now you're just going to take a day off to spend time with Charlie Manson?"

"He's not Charlie Manson; he's more like Clyde Barrow. Come on laugh! It's funny! Y'know, 'I'm Clyde Barrow! I rob banks!' Funny!"

Laura shook her head and chewed her muffin. "You amaze me! Two years of marriage, and not a single 'nice' trip since our Honeymoon, and you're blowing a personal day on a crook." She chugged her coffee and searched the kitchen table for a pack of cigarettes. I'd thrown most of them out a few days earlier. Bright move, huh? "Look," Laura continued, "All I want is to take a three day weekend at some point during the remainder of the summer, to go out to the Hamptons and spend some time with the beautiful people."

"The beautiful people? What do we have in common with the beautiful people?" I asked.

Laura stood up and stormed off to the bathroom, where I think she had hid a pack of smokes.

I knocked on the door. "Come on, Laura, open up. I'm sorry. Look, I'll take a week at the end of the month, if I can. We'll go to Vermont or something. Sound good?"

Laura opened the door a crack and breathed smoke through it. "Tell me just one thing, Frank! Who's 'Faye'?"

My shoulders sunk. "Faye? Oh, uh, I guess I forgot to list her on my disclosure form when we got engaged, huh?"

Never marry an attorney. You can't slip anything by an attorney.

Miles was standing at the chain-link fence of the aquarium making dolphin noises, as if he expected one of the dolphins to walk up to the gate and open it. He was wearing a denim jacket, and his hair was wet from the rain. He had a canvas backpack slung over one shoulder. A hand shot up and waved as I pulled up.

I got out and extended a hand to shake. Miles wrapped his arms around me in a bear hug. "Frankie! Jeeezus, is it good to see someone I know." For a little wiry guy, Miles had a lot of strength.

"Good to see you too, man," I said, and patted his back lightly. "So, what brings you down to New York?"

"Well, I...you remember when we used to talk about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? I was thinking we could go to Vegas."

"Huh?"

"Y'know...come on, man...after we saw that movie, we used to spend nights at a time smoking dope, planning some great big burn on the Vegas strip," Miles recalled.

I shook my head. Through vague mists and clumps of forgotten memories, I did remember some late night discussions, but this was something else entirely. "You're really just springing this on me, man..."

"No!" Miles said, too sternly for my tastes. "It was a plan! It was a dream!"

"Easy, buddy," I said.

Miles smiled and shrugged. "Sorry, man. I'm sorry." He put his hand on my shoulder lightly. As his arm stretched out of his sleeve, I noticed a latticework of tattoos on his forearm. "You just gotta realize," he continued, "that whole fantasy was kind of what kept me going while I was in the slammer."

I nodded and looked up at the misty rain. "I dig. I was wondering why I had been on your mind. I mean, we hadn't seen each other for what, six years?"

"Seven. May, 1995 was the last time I saw ya."

We stood silently for a moment, eyes locked. It would be a cliché to say that a lot of water had gone under the bridge since then. In the mid-90s, we were grunge-loving stoners. Now we were as different as could be. An ex-convict and a middle manager for a Fifth Avenue corporation. This was like some monstrously failed screenplay for a Walter Matthau-Jack Lemmon picture. "So," I said, "you wanna go to Vegas, huh?"

Miles held up a hand to hi-five me. "Fuck yeah!"

I didn't return the hi-five. "Let's go to Atlantic City and see how that goes." I turned to get in the car, and Miles bounded after, like some puppy pit bull.

The New Jersey Turnpike may be the most vile stretch of road in this great country to drive on a weekday between 8 and 10 AM. We sat bumper to bumper for mile after mile, and goddamnit, I almost went crazy with Miles' crazy chatter about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I think he had every goddamn scene and line memorized. He had it all planned. We'd check into Caesar's under assumed names, and he'd immediately try and go find us some mescaline.

"I don't think that's such a hot idea, Miles," I said, flipping the radio dial absent-mindedly.

"What? You don't use mesc anymore?"

"I never did, Miles. I tended to just like drinking beers and smoking joints."

"Awwww, man! Mesc is the best! It rolls on like speed and weed, and then slaps you across the back of the head with a heavy trip. We've totally gotta find some."

"I think I'll pass, man."

"What, do you have to go for piss tests at work nowadays or something?" Miles asked.

I shook my head, and chuckled sardonically. "Do you have any idea what it is that I do for a living?"

"No," Miles said. "Why, do you?"

I laughed a little. You had to give him credit for sticking to the whole Grateful Dead/Ken Kesey fight-the-machine thing.

"You mind if I put a tape in?" Miles asked

"Have at it," I said. "So long as it's not the Fear and Loathing soundtrack."

Miles paused and shuffled in his bag. "Yeah, that's cool. I've got some others, too."

By the time we reached Route 36 and the Jersey Shore, we were cruising to Crosby Stills and Nash. They were very sarcastically asking me if I was "living for telephones, and managers, and where I've got to be at noon." Sonofabitch. I knew all that hippie stuff I'd bought into would come back to bite me in the ass. Little hints of memories crept in and out of the lyrics. Sunny days laying in fields, smoking dope, when I should have been working. Road trips in the mountains. Fishing from ponds with big burly guys who had names like Sunshine and Captain Mindfuzz. Making love on big bearskin rugs in this hippie crash pad in Northern Vermont. Man, those were the days, I started to think.

Caesar's Palace isn't as impressive a building as you might think. I'd never been to A.C. before, but after Foxwoods and the new Mohegan Sun, y'know...it's all the same shit. A bunch of guys from the Elks lodge, a busload of seniors looking to blow their pension checks, a ton of townies trying to regain last week's losses, and an unbelievable number of redneck thugs, just looking for trouble. Miles and I got a room under my real name, which bothered him to no end.

"What happened to the plan, man?" Miles whined, as we rode up in the elevator with an old lady who leaned on a walker. On the front of the walker was a bin that held the lady's mountain of poker chips. I saw Miles eyeing them. After a few moments of my staring at his face, his eyes shot up to mine, and then sunk in shame.

"I'll front you $200 of chips, Miles. If you blow it, no sweat, but that's all I can afford to front you."

"Really?" he asked. "That's awesome. And here I was afraid that I was going to have to blow my whole paycheck."

"Paycheck?"

"Yeah, they paid me real good for two years of washing dishes at the state prison in Northampton."

"Yer fucking kidding, right?"

"Hell no. Paid better than most legit gigs I'd had on the outside. They took taxes out, though, which I thought was a little unfair."

"Huh, yeah I guess taxes don't really go to support the prisons or anything," I said acerbically. Miles just ignored me.

Our room was one of those tiny ones with two tiny beds crammed in. Nauseating wall-to-wall carpeting caught your eye wherever you looked, and there wasn't much of a view. I hadn't brought anything at all along, but I left Miles to unpack what little was in his bag, while I washed the dirt of the road and the rain off in the shower. When I emerged, Miles was intently watching some pay-per-view porn. "You, uh..." I said, "You want me to leave you alone for a while?" Miles didn't even take his eyes off the set. "Yeah, that'd be great."

"Cool," I said, extraordinarily unnerved, "I'll meet you down by the big buffet near the lobby. I think they still had some bagels out."

"Uh huh," is all he said.

Forty-five minutes later, after I'd polished off quite a bit of coffee and two everything bagels with nova lox and cream cheese, Miles skipped into the lobby. "Whoo-hoo!" he bellowed. "Let's go get our gamblin' on!" I shook my head and grinned. Miles' energy was contagious. Over at the bursar's I got $400 worth of chips and split them up with Miles. "What's your game?" I asked him.

"I played a ton of craps in jail," he said absent-mindedly. He was staring at the chips.

"Yup, don't spend 'em all in one place," I said.

"No, it's just. The chips..." He rolled up his sleeves, and there on his blistered arms were these intricate old sailor-style tattoos.

"We used poker chips for the ink on tats in the can, man."

"You what?" I asked, confused.

"You'd melt the chips down and have a guy with a set of tiny needles apply the ink that separated off to your skin." Miles showed off one of the curlicues proudly. "Man, I did some dumb shit in there." He smiled and walked off towards the craps table.

Within fifteen minutes, Miles had some busty gun moll blowing on his dice, as he rolled win after win. A few hundred bucks ahead, we went to play some poker. We sat at a table, where they were dealing some overly complex variety. After a few minutes, I excused myself, and told Miles I'd be over at the blackjack tables.

I sat for a good two hours with no sign of Miles. I lost all the chips that I'd bought. After sipping yet another bad complimentary cocktail, I took off in search of Miles. He wasn't at the poker table, and the dealer hadn't seen him for a while. No craps. No mini-baccarat. No roulette. Finally, I went to the bursar, and figured that I'd get another $100 worth of chips to bide my time. "You didn't happen to see that scrawny guy I came in with, did you?" I asked him, in passing.

"Sure did," he said. "Lucky little bastard cashed in a couple a grand about an hour ago.

"A couple of grand!?!" I yelled.

"Easy, buddy," the bursar said. "I'm sure he'll cover your bus fare back, or whatever. You sure you want that extra $50 of chips?"

"No, I'll pass, thanks. You see which way he went?"

The bursar pointed towards the hotel doors. "Right out the front. He was asking me which way the boardwalk was."

"Sonofabitch," I muttered to myself, and tore off out onto the boardwalk.

If you have the right kind of eyes - hungry, sad eyes - you can spot a heroin addict or a dealer from miles and miles away. It's a survival technique amongst the junkies. Like a bear sniffing out a wounded deer on the other side of the woods, a junkie can find junk very easily when he's in need of a fix. And now Miles was somewhere in the Atlantic City sprawl hunting down that bag of dope that he'd probably sniffed out of the scenery the second we crossed the Outerbridge Crossing into New Jersey.

I hadn't bothered to mention to Laura that the last time I'd seen Miles, he was shooting up in an attic apartment in Hatfield. It was the first and only time I'd ever seen anyone shooting up. He looked ecstatic but miserable. A rush of pleasure wafted over his face, but then he just looked pathetic - a surgical rubber loosely tied around his arm, a tiny trail of blood coming out of his forearm, and a syringe, spoon and matchbook casually dropped in his lap. So much for the great hippie dream - it died for me that day.

I raced up and down the boardwalk, past the abandoned gin mills, cotton candy stands, arcades and anywhere else that I thought on some very off chance might have housed some punk looking to score or deal. Despite my MBA training, I couldn't 'get into the customer's position', as we were trained to do. I was no junkie. I couldn't think like a junkie. The only things I knew about them came from William S. Burroughs books. After an hour of searching aimlessly, I realized that Miles had probably scored by now, and was well into the ritual of using. I didn't think he'd head back to the hotel room and use there, so I sat on a bench and wracked my brains as to where he might be.

And then I saw him.

I tried to tell myself that it wasn't him. I saw this body just kind of flopped over on its side on the sand off towards the shoreline. There was no one else on the shore that day. It was too wet and too cold. I hurdled the barrier to the beach and took the six-foot drop and rolled over onto the sand. Off on my feet, I ran towards the body. It was Miles. He was laying on the ground with some foam at his mouth and his eyes twitching. I pulled the needle from his arm and shook him.

"Come on, you sonofabitch! Wake up!" I yelled. Miles' eyes rolled straight for a second and then his lids started twitching again. I think I must have yelled for help, because I suddenly saw people lining up at the railing.

Miles' eyes went straight for a moment again, and he whispered, "Tell them...tell them I was the monsterrr.... reincarnatrrr...of hooray....Horatio..." He started to fade out again.

"Alger!" I said. "I know! Now cut this Hunter Thompson crap!" I shrieked.

A cop came up and waved to some folks on the boardwalk. In a minute or two, two EMTs appeared with a stretcher and carried Miles off. But, a cop and an ambulance never appear that quickly. I couldn't understand it.

I went off in a separate vehicle with the cops. They made me explain what was going on, as we tailed the ambulance to the hospital. I didn't say nothing. My wife's a lawyer - I'm too smart for this shit. When we got to the hospital, I provided Miles' admission info, but then clammed up when it came back to me.

I was taken into holding while the cops decided whether or not to charge me with possession or even attempted murder (I was still holding the syringe when they arrived, you see). I used my one phone call to call Laura at her office. It was probably the one smart thing I did that day. She said she was going to take the next bus down from Port Authority. Jesus, she's a great woman. Far more noble and powerful of character than anyone I've ever known.

While I waited, waited what felt like hours, one of the cops walked up to me and asked, "So what did this guy think he was doing?"

I chuckled. That probably didn't help my case. "He thought he was Hunter Thompson."

"Huh?" the Cop asked. He scratched his head and sat down across from me. "Tell you what - your wife ain't gonna be here for a while. You're gonna wanna get your story straight, right?"

I wasn't sure I liked where he was going with this.

"I'm gonna just leave this pad and pencil on this table. If you wanna write a few drafts of what happened..." the cop squinted at me, "...just to make sure you got it right...you go right ahead." He stood up to leave.

"Can I have some coffee?" I asked.

"Sure. I'll be back in a few minutes."

I took the pencil and looked at the paper and began to write. I'm not a writer. I'm not a storyteller. I'm a pencil pusher with awful luck. I just wrote down what happened. I wrote:

When the phone rang, my eyes flashed open and I sat bolt upright. Not only was I not expecting a call at five in the morning, but I knew that there couldn't be anyone good on the other end of the line. When the other end squawked, "Frank! It's Miles!" I realized just how bad things could be...