It was like three days after the really freaky stuff started to happen before Garrett realized what was going on, sort of, and even then it wasn’t Garrett that figured it out.  Carlos was over at Garrett’s place and he asks, like, “Hey, where’s all this wine comin’ from?”  And Garrett says something like, “I don’t know, man, somebody keeps leavin’ it here.”  Garrett was pretty wasted, but there’s nothing new about that.

So we get to figuring stuff out.  We know all of Garrett’s friends, because they’re us, and we wouldn’t be leaving any wine lying around.  I mean, everything in his kitchen is full of wine.  Milk jugs, soda bottles, ketchup packets, even the sink is full of soapy wine.

At first we’re thinking, “Naw.”  You know what I mean.  But then Carlos says, “Why don’t we do a test or something?”  Carlos always had his stuff together like that, you know.  He could think these things out even when he was wasted, and I mean we were wasted.  Well, you would’ve been, too, what with all that wine just sitting there waiting to be drunk.  Don’t get me wrong, some of that stuff was pretty crappy, but some of it was pretty damned good.  And it’s not like you’d really care after your fourteenth glass.  At any rate, Carlos takes in this glass of water to Garrett, and he no more than touches the glass and it turns to wine.  It was a white wine of some sort.  It probably would’ve tasted better had it been cold, but we were in the middle of an experiment.  So Carlos gets some soda and POW!  Red wine.  We tried everything in the house.  No matter what Garrett touched, it turned to wine.  Well stuff like tacos and pizza didn’t.  It had to be liquid.  But that’s still some pretty weird stuff.  It was like that Midas dude, only everything Garrett touched turned to wine instead of mufflers.

We thought it would be cool to see what would happen if Garrett actually touched wine.  You know, would it turn to water?  Se we went to this really nice wine place, you know, where they meet you at the door and everybody wears suits.  And we gave Garrett this bottle of something called Don Perry Gnome, or something like that, and it turned into a wine cooler.  Man, you wanna talk about being pissed off.  We barely made it out of there without this dude calling the cops.

So we get back to Garrett’s place and Elizabeth comes over and the first thing she wants to do is call a priest or a nun or someone like that, but ol’ Garrett says, “No way.”  It’s not that Garrett had anything against priests or nuns.  I mean, he went to confession when he had to and mass when he couldn’t get out of it.  And he was always polite to the nuns, calling them “Sister” and all like he really meant it.  But once the church found out about Garrett turning water into wine, well, you could just kiss the partying days goodbye.  I mean, you can’t very well tell a priest to get the hell out, and who wants to be wasted when there’s a nun around?

Then Steve gets this idea, well, after we got rid of Elizabeth.  You know, there’s a lot of wine there.  More than we could really drink.  And what the heck, it wasn’t like we couldn’t get more in a hurry.  So Steve starts telling everybody he knows, and Steve knows a whole bunch of dudes.  Next thing you know, we’re selling all this wine really cheap.  Steve even has them bring something to put it in.  And it’s not like you have to have an ID.  Well pretty soon we’ve got all this cash.  Hell, there must’ve been a hundred and fifty dollars there.  And we were starting to think that we’d finally hit it, when everything went to crap.

I guess some kid went home wasted and his parents freaked or something.  At any rate, this kid narced on us.  So the law shows up.  Well, we all booked it out back, except for Garrett.  Mind you, Garrett’s not had anything but wine to drink for, like, three weeks.  He even had to drink wine on his breakfast cereal.  You know, those little marshmallows are really pretty good with red wine.  At any rate, Garrett’s wasted.  Don’t get me wrong, I mean, Garrett could hold his own against anybody.  I remember one night when he got in a chugging contest at some bar and just blew everybody away, and then he even got us all home.  But that was just one night.  Three weeks straight is going to mess up anybody, and I don’t care how cool they are about it.

So the cops get all involved, and next thing you know, here comes Liquor Control.  It’s like they want a piece of the action.  They didn’t care how Garrett was making all that wine; they just wanted money.  Garrett made like he didn’t know anything about any of the money, which I guess was pretty easy because he didn’t, but they didn’t really believe him.  They leave all these forms and make all these deadlines and tell him what will happen if he even tries to give any of that stuff away.  And Garrett just says, “Cool.”  And he’s still got to deal with all the distributing to a minor stuff.

But it gets worse.  It’s about then that these two really mean dudes show up.  The Marciano Brothers.  They had a card.  They gave it to Garrett after beating the living hell out of him.  They said he was moving in on their territory.  After they left we snuck back in, and I’m telling you, Garrett was messed up.  Luckily he was so wasted, because if he’d been straight, I bet it would’ve hurt like hell.  And it’s not like Garrett could really call the cops, even if he could’ve focused long enough to dial 9-1-1.  After all, they told him to stop making wine.  Like that was going to happen.  Even his toilet was full of wine.

It’s like a day after the Marciano Brothers had been there when these other dudes show up.  They said they worked for somebody named Winesap.  They didn’t have a card.  They told Garrett that if he went with the Marciano Brothers they’d kill him.  And they meant it, too.  And then they messed up Garrett’s apartment.  They broke all of his furniture and busted the TV.  Which was cool, because they left Garrett alone, and the apartment looked pretty much the same when they were done as it did when they started.  Only we were really bummed about Garrett, because these guys weren’t messing around. 

I mean, you figure out what to do.  If he tried to tell anybody what happened, no one was going to believe him.  Water to wine?  Comon!  Besides, it’s kind of hard to explain anything to anybody when you’re so messed up.  Se he’s screwed there.  And without filling out all those forms, Liquor Control wasn’t going to do diddly, except turn him into the cops.  Winesap or Marciano, what’s the difference?  Either way he goes, he’s screwed there.  I suppose he could’ve booked it out of town, but nobody had a car that would run except for Marcus, but it really wasn’t Marcus’ car, so that wasn’t going to work.  Besides, it’s not like going somewhere else is really going to change anything.

But then Garrett just ups and dies.  I don’t want to sound cold about it, but yeah, he dies.  Alcohol poisoning.  We were all bummed about it, not just because we weren’t getting free wine anymore.  Heck, most of us had stopped hanging out there when the bad guys started showing up.  I mean, we all really liked Garrett.  I guess it’s all pretty ironic, you know, what with how Garrett liked to party so much and all.  But then, it could be like Marcus always said:  Irony is God’s idea of a practical joke.