Bathroom Scene from Traffic

Caroline pauses after hearing a faint noise outside her bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, she freezes for an instant to contemplate freebasing the cocaine she has in her hands. It’s getting late and her parents could be home any minute now. However, anticipation for the rush is undeniable.  Her heart is pounding. The high will only last a few minutes. There’s enough time to come down before the parents get home. She must do it now.  

Caroline ignites the propane lighter cooking the cocaine rock that is resting on a piece of foil in her hand; melting it down into a vapor she inhales deep down in her youthful lungs through a straw.  “Caroline! Open this door immediately,” her dad suddenly demands while standing outside the locked bathroom door in her tidy upper-scale bedroom trying to open it. Quickly, she hides the paraphernalia above the cabinets taking a gasp to collect her voice. “Who is it? I’m going to the bathroom,” she says in a rush struggling for composure.  “OPEN THE GODDAMN DOOR!” her dad screams ripping the brass-layered door handle up and down in a burst of rage. “One minute,” she says with alarmed assurance, quickly spraying freshener in the drug filled air. The frenzy stops. Her dad stands still for a moment starring at the door, flooded by the obvious.  Catherine emerges from the bathroom. The cocaine sets in as she attempts to make her way around her dad. “Excuse me, I got to go to bed.” Her dad grabs her arm but the drug has a firmer grip. “Oh Geeze…,” he somberly says as her body goes limp against the side of a white Victorian-themed wardrobe.  The charred black tip of her left index finger tells him more than she will. 

When I was 14-years-old I got the chance to travel to France with my family on one of my grandpa’s buying trips. He’s an antique dealer and travels to parts of Europe about once a year to buy antiques to ship back. One of papaw’s contacts, Patrice Vetu, picked us up from the airport in Paris and we drove for little over an hour to the town of Rouen. It’s a small French town where Patrice lived and worked. Our bags were still in the car as we pulled up to a massive, somewhat run down, warehouse in a rural area on the outskirts of Rouen. Papaw didn’t want to wait to see Patrice’s inventory, so this was our first stop. We all walked into the warehouse that was full of Patrice’s antique furniture. Papaw and my parents went straight to work looking for pieces they wanted to buy while my brother and I were free to explore.
The weathered exterior of the warehouse was deceiving. The inside was three stories of thick concrete floors supported by large concrete columns. The staircases on each corner of the rectangle building were solid concrete that had held up quite well throughout the years. I was awestruck by the enormity of the place. It looked better suited for manufacturing tanks than storing antique furniture.
Its scale was offset only by the extraordinary amount of graffiti that creatively covered just about every surface. I walked around studying and appreciating the anonymous artwork. Each one was different in style and size. Some of them were lettering and some were detailed images or murals, but all were very colorful. Every floor was something new. The top floor was empty of furniture but littered with hundreds of used spray paint canisters and lids, which gave me a sense of what it took to paint all the graffiti. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. I would compare it the feeling one must get when they bust open an ordinary rock to discover it is a geode.
On the second floor two large metal doors lead outside to a platform connected to a rusted fire escape. I stood out there for a moment examining the French countryside around me. It gave me a strange sensation. It was my first time in a different country. I remember looking at the aluminum siding that covered the building’s exterior. The corrugation of the tin was different from what I was familiar with back home and it reinforced the sense of unfamiliarity I was already feeling. I remember thinking how funny it was that I got culture shock from something so ordinary. The whole experience at the warehouse was totally unexpected and one of the best parts of the trip.

p. 46 #2 Cueing Lines

"When needed, I suspend belief and ...."

"Forgetting, unfortunately, that we've met three times before..."

"Thinking abstractly,....

"I felt I was back in high school, where everyone was judged by what car they drove, as I..."

"......, but I guess it would...."

"Giving in to my ego I...."

"Never being in this situation before, I...."