Part 8
The bright young men on the couch across from Ryan and Starla had procured a pack of cards, and a passing boy with a rat-tail and a shirt with a moose on it place a large, heavy mug in the middle of the coffee table in the center of the three couches. The mug was currently half-full of a horrible combination of raspberry flavored Skyy vodka, PBR, and cheap whiskey.
Starla pulled a card from the deck.
"Four's whores!" Cried the young man on the couch perpendicular to the dark green mess Ryan and Starla were on. He had been earnestly been trying to fuck the girl next to him until the game became loud enough. She now smiled absently around the circle of players.
"Do I have to drink?" The girl asked vacantly, staring down at her bottle of Bud-Light with Lime. Her head nodded. A section of her hair had been flipped over to the wrong side of her part and stuck up, almost jauntily, like a knight's plume. It bobbed and tipped with the slow, irregular movements of her head.
"No," Ryan turned to her, "You don't have to."
She stared at him blankly, lips parted. Her eyelids drooped. She was wearing bright pink eye shadow.
"Take a drink, hun," The man on the couch leaned his shoulder into her. He wrapped his arm around her waist. With the other he lifted her hands, which were both wrapped around the bottle, towards her face.
She turned to the man. Her eyeliner on one side was smeared to her temple and nearly down to her cheekbone. She began to drink. Several drops of beer dripped form the corner of her mouth and down her jaw. She wiped them ineffectually with her wrist, like a cat or a small child.
"Good girl," The man said, kissing her wet mouth and wiping the beer from her chin with his thumb, "It's your turn."
She nodded staring into the man's eyes, and took another drink.
"No, no, no," He grasped her hands and gently lowered the bottle, laughing, "Draw a card, silly girl."
"It's a king," She stared at the man.
"Pour some of your drink into the mug," He said.
She started to pour several inches to the left of the cup, soaking a bicycling magazine.
"Here, let me help you," He gently guided her hands to the mug.
"Oh man, is that the third king already?" One of the bright young men asked.
A lanky young man in a yellow cardigan and tight, rolled-up jeans danced up, "Need some help filling that thing?" He poured a heavy dose of Jagermeister into the mug. He laughed gleefully to himself and pranced away.
The Christmas lights never seemed to stop blinking. Whatever the band in the next room was playing something in a time signature Ryan had never heard and featured an inordinate amount of alarming, high-pitched guitar squeals at irregular intervals. Ryan stared down at the drink in his hands, wondering if he was drunk. He tried to count how many beers he had already drunk, and couldn't remember.
"Fear," Starla said.
"What?" Ryan looked up. The players were all looking at him expectantly, eyebrows raised. The drunk girl was the only one not staring at him. Her head was resting in the man's lap.
"We're doing categories," Starla said, "I said FEAR. Name a band."
"Oh, um... The Thermals," Ryan said.
The eyebrows dropped. There was silence for a second, then the two young men started laughing. They high-fived.
"Take a drink, man," Said the boy with the rat-tail from his position on the floor. Ryan noticed he was barefoot. "The category was 80's hardcore punk."
Ryan drank.
Starla was laughing, she elbowed him lightly, "I didn't know you liked The Thermals." She said this as if he had just told her he liked playing with My Little Ponies, or Barbies.
The attractive young men were still laughing, and talking into each other's ears.
"Excuse me for a second," Ryan said, standing. He swayed slightly on his feet. Shit, he already was drunk.
He wandered in the direction the thought the bathroom was, passing by the kitchen. A drunk girl was hanging from the fridge handle, shouting for more beer.
Ryan knocked on the first door. There was no answer, so he hesitantly opened it, and walked on a gay couple. One man knelt in front of another's dick, holding it mere inches from his lips. He turned and stared at Ryan, "What the fuck are you staring at, asshole?"
Ryan mumbled an apology, shut the door quickly and walked away, glancing around the hall to make sure he hadn't been spotted.
The second door he tried contained a group of people snorting what appeared to be coke.
A third contained a small brown, yapping, wire-haired dog which bolted from the room, yipping triumphantly. Ryan simply shrugged and tried the upstairs.
He finally found the bathroom at the end of a long, dark hall. It wasn't much larger than an airplane bathroom, and it reeked of piss and mildew. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling. A young man with bright red socks and high-water pants was hugging the toilet and mumbling quietly to himself. Thick-framed glasses lay on the filthy floor beside him. Ryan considered moving him for a moment, but the young man seemed firmly rooted to his spot. After a moment, he decided that in all likelihood he was never seeing these people again, and pissed in the sink.
During the entire three to five minutes Ryan estimated it took for him to find the bathroom and piss one of the attractive, bright young men had already transferred couches and was sitting next to Starla. As Ryan walked in he stretched and draped an arm over the back of the couch, around her shoulders. He then leaned into her and whispered something in her ear. She slowly smiled and began to laugh. She looked up at Ryan and smiled. Outside, a dog began to bark.
"It's your turn," Starla said, still laughing.
Ryan stood and drew a card from the deck on the table.
"For the record, I hated The Thermal's new album," Ryan said, pulling a card. It was the King of Hearts. He stared at the mug in the middle of the table, now over three-quarters full.
Ryan dropped the card on the table. It landed face-up. The players broke out in simultaneous laughter, except for the drunk girl, who appeared to have passed out.
"Shit," Ryan breathed. The mug would have comfortably fit two cans of beer stacked on top of each other. He continued staring at the mug, hands at his sides.
"Come on, drink up, man," The bright, attractive, blonde-haired, blue-eyed young man with his arm around Starla said. Ryan noticed he had a zit on his chin.
"Yeah, drink it," The other bright-attractive man who could be the first's brother said, "Don't puss out." Ryan grabbed the mug, and looked in. It reeked of a horrible combination of raspberries, limes, licorice, and alcohol. He looked around the room and every eye was on him. Even the drunk girl who woke up and stared at him through slitted, sleepy eyes. She smiled vaguely, staring at a spot somewhere past Ryan's head.
He glanced at Starla. She smiled brilliantly, beautifully up at him. Her teeth were a strand of pearls, straight and white and shining.
Ryan breathed in, grasped the mug by the handle, raised it to his mouth, and began to drink. The dog was howling.
The players began to clap and cheer.
Just then, a horrible, prolonged scream broke through the cheering. At first Ryan thought it was the band, before he realized it was coming from outside. He coughed and stopped drinking. The barking increased its pace, punctuated by frustrated whines.
"Don't stop now," Rat-tail said.
One by one, heads began to turn to the window.
The scream raised in pitch and volume.
"Paul's out there." The mug slipped from his hands, splashing nearly all the players. The sickly sweet, greenish concoction dripped down Starla's legs.
She wiped some of the liquid from her eyes, "What the fuck, Ryan?"
"I-- I'm so sorry," He took a step toward her, hands out.
But the attractive, bright young blond man already had a protective arm around her, "Yeah, what the fuck man?"
Ryan could suddenly see the rest of his night with Starla spelled out before him. The bright, attractive young man had already positioned himself as the hero of the evening. They could clamor for spots as the guy who helped clean her up and, with any luck, get her out of that now-soaked shirt. Ryan could spend the rest of the night hovering around her pathetically, like a sad, beaten stray dog. He did have the edge though, to get a towel since he was standing. He glanced in the direction of the kitchen.
The scream outside stuttered, faltered. Turned into a sad, sobbing wail.
The bright, attractive young man pulled out a handkercheif. He was gently drying Starla's neck and chest.
"I have to go," Ryan ran out the door.