I stamped full force on one of his knees, but that didn’t do it. I had to jump into the air and come down with both feet. His left leg snapped like a matchstick on my first attempt, but it took me four times to break the right one. He remained unconscious throughout, moaning a bit, then crying out when the right leg broke.

I stumbled, fell, landed on one knee, got up again. Another wave of dizziness hit me, this one accompanied by nausea, and I clung to the wall and gave myself up to dry heaves. The dizziness passed, and the nausea, but I still couldn’t catch my breath and I was shaking like a leaf. I held my hand out in front of me and watched my fingers tremble. I’d never seen anything like that before. I’d faked the shaking when I took out my wallet and dropped it, but this shaking was perfectly real, and I couldn’t control it by force of will. My hands had a will of their own and they wanted to shake.

The shakes were even worse on the inside.

I turned, took a last look at him. I turned again and made my way over the littered pavement to the street. I was still shaking and it wasn’t getting any better.

Well, there was a way to stop the shakes, the ones on the outside and the inner ones as well. There was a specific remedy for that specific disease.

Red neon winked at me from the other side of the street. bar, it said.

Chapter 21

Chapter 21

I didn’t cross the street. The kid with the smashed face and broken legs was not the only mugger in the neighborhood, and it struck me that I wouldn’t want to meet another one with drink in me.

No, I had to get to my home ground. I was only going to have one drink, maybe two, but I couldn’t guarantee that was all I would have, nor could I say with assurance what one or two drinks would do to me.

The safe thing would be to get back to my neighborhood, have one or at the most two shots in a bar, then take a couple of beers back to my room.

Except that there was no safe way to drink. Not for me, not anymore. Hadn’t I proved that? How many times did I have to go on proving it?

So what was I supposed to do? Shake until I fell apart? I wasn’t going to be able to sleep without a drink. I wasn’t going to be able to sit still without a drink, for Christ’s sake.

Well, fuck it. I had to have one. It was medicinal. Any doctor who looked at me would prescribe it.