Chapter Two

The rest of the night at Mick’s was a haze. An admittedly pleasant haze, though. Both the night’s pleasantness and haziness were owed, largely, to alcohol. After purchasing the "mystery prize" winning bottle of Coke, Red had gone a little whimsical and bought the entire bar several rounds of beer. This resulted, ultimately, in a multitude of drunken morons uttering unintelligible taradiddle and performing random acts of shamelessness that they would forever regret.

For example…

Mick had decided to privilege his customers by performing one of his allegedly miraculous bar tricks. After placing an empty glass rim-down on the counter, he’d produced a pen, rested it atop the glass, and explained to his audience that with a simple flick the wrist he could propel the pen to the inside of the glass. Simple enough, right?

Like hell. Mick had struck the end of the pen just hard enough to send it riffling through the air. Coincidentally, its course was interrupted by the left eyeball of some unfortunate female bargoer. The pen proceeded to roll down the cheek of the innocent bystander, landing at last in her equally innocent glass of beer.

The woman was screaming and complaining before long. Mick explained to her, however, that she was in fact lucky, since he usually performed the trick with his preserved finger. Besides, the sleight-of-hand would have been successful (according to Mick, at least) had he been sober.

Red was, at this point, still laughing. Of course, he’d had quite a bit to drink, and probably would have laughed at phonics. "The pen is mightier than the sword!" He wasn’t entirely sure why that statement was at all relevant. But it had to do with a pen.

N cracked up. "Where did you hear that?"

"What?" said Red. "The pen-sword thing? That’s a… a common--"

"Well," continued N, "I suppose that if the pen were really long and sharp…"

"No, N, you aren’t getting the point. The pen—"

"Or if it shot poisoned darts! Yes, that would work." He took another shot.

Red glared. "No, man… no. It’s… a symbol—"

"Oh, or if the ink were poisoned. That would be bad-ass."

Red slammed his fist on the counter. "N! It’s symbolic… it’s like… our expression is more powerful than violence."

N laughed some more. "That’s hippie shit. Imagine robberies… ‘Give me your money, bitch, or I’ll write on your ass!’ Would you believe that? Or police--hell, imagine police. ‘Freeze or I’ll draw pictures!’ It’s nonsense."

Red mumbled something inaudible. "Come on… you know that’s not what I’m saying. I’m talking about like… like pens wrote all the important stuff. Take the Constitution for instance—"

"Legal bullshit."

"Moby Dick--"

"Whale bullshit."

"Catcher in the Rye?"

"Bread bullshit."

"The Simpsons?"

N paused for a moment. Then he shrugged. "Damn. You’re right."

Meanwhile, darts were flying everywhere as a hopelessly inebriated Becky decided to explore new targets. There were darts in the bar, in the tables, in walls, in Red, and even on the dartboard. On one occasion she’d aimed for a bottle of vodka just above Mick’s head. Her shot was dead on. The bottle shattered, and shards of glass crashed to the ground. Mick found this quite amusing until about ten minutes later when he attempted a barefoot polka dance.

Sam and Vinnie were engaged in a more sophisticated challenge. They were fencing with light sabers. Well, with what they perceived as light sabers. To the rest of the world they were wooden pool cues.

The most significant event of the night, however, was a certain conversation involving Red, N, Becky, and sixteen hands of blackjack. Oh, and three pairs of shoes.

(Shoes are what really drunken people use when they don’t have bidding chips.)

Becky had left the dartboard for the bar at one in the morning to get smashed. She’d been successful. As Red and N were in similar states, the three figured they would exhibit roughly equivalent card-playing skills. They pulled three chairs up to a round table and piled their shoes in the middle. Becky dealt.

"You know," she said, "I met the silliest man the other day. He was homeless, poor guy, but he reminded me of you, Red, because he said something about Coke. That’s where you work, right?"

Becky a couple years younger than Red and a student at the university. She was a fun girl, in general, and when she brought her friends to play darts at Mick’s they were generally the object of several hundred hit lines—about thirty of which were Red’s. So they had a general understanding: Becky tolerated his pleading in exchange for a few good laughs, and Red tolerated her constant rejections in exchange for her toleration of his… wait a second…

"You want a hit?" asked Becky.

"Sure," replied Red, and he forgot his thoughts. "Actually, I’m an inspector at the Pepsi bottling factory." He stared at his cards, blankly, for four seconds. "I’ll stay. I hate Pepsi though—drink Coke."

"What do you do, N?" Becky drew another card.

"I work as—"

"Oh, hell! I busted." Becky frowned. "Oh yeah, I almost forgot to finish my story about the poor homeless guy. You know how they can be, those poor souls… sometimes they’re just crazy. Well, after I gave this guy a dollar he told me I reminded him of a vampire hunter he knew once."

"A vampire hunter?" Red said it absent-mindedly, because he was trying to remember some thoughts of his that had disturbed him a few seconds ago.

"Yeah, crazy, right? Anyway, he kept going, and I was in no hurry so I listened to him. He said it all started in India. Oh, I forgot—he said he was a vampire hunter too. He was only beginning in India, and he was looking for a book that a vampire had written on garlic."

"I thought vampires hated garlic," said Red. He watched N, who had been strangely silent and strangely lucky—he’d won every hand so far.

"Yeah, well apparently that’s not completely true. He had to explain this to me too. He says there’s two types of vampires. There’s the classical type, which most vampires are, that hate garlic. Then there’s this other group, smaller, that actually loves garlic. In fact they kill just for recipes involving it. Now while this guy was in India, he says, some real important Coke executive was there too, who he believed to be a vampire. He believed that because it was told to him by Vishnu."

"Is that a fact?"

"Probably not, obviously. But the story was funny, so I kept listening. This guy was partnered up with some chick—the one that looks likes me."

"Lucky guy."

Becky chuckled. "Anyway, they went to the bookstore that supposedly had this book, and when they asked the bookkeeper about it he said someone was already looking at it toward the reading section. You can imagine what this guy was thinking, so he and his ravishingly beautiful partner who looked like me went to investigate. Sure enough, they saw a man dressed in a black stylish suit, very business-looking and clean-cut, reading the book on a couch."

"I’ll bet the homeless dude and his beautiful partner that’s just like you hooked up at least once. Know what I mean?"

"Actually yes. They got it on every night in India."

Red’s eyes lit up.

Becky laughed. "No, not really. Nothing happened between them. Anyway, they confronted this businessy character and asked him about the book he was reading. He replied in a strange accent that he was reading a book on garlic."

"Hold on," interjected N, who still hadn’t lost a hand. "This man’s characteristics—his stylish selection of outerwear, his ‘strange’ accent, and his fondness for cookbooks—lead me to believe that he was no vampire at all. He was, in fact, only a homosexual."

Red and Becky laughed, but N only grumbled something.

Becky continued. "So when this guy brought out a crucifix, just to see what happened, the corporate dude hissed and drew back for a second. Only for a second though, because after that he tore out the gorgeous girl’s throat, turned into a bat, and flew out a nearby window."

"Well, it’s safe to say that’s pretty ridiculous."

"Yeah, for sure. But after the vampire had gone, this guy noticed a couple of things before going into shock over his dead partner. One of the things was that there was a half-filled Pepsi bottle there on the coffee table, which he thought was strange for obvious reasons. Anyway, isn’t that funny?"

"Typical, blood-sucking Pepsi fans. How did this guy get to Miami, anyway?" Red wasn’t really interested, but he felt that in a few seconds he’d remember…

"Well, the other thing he noticed was that when he left to get his partner to the hospital, the book on garlic had been sitting there on the table. When he went back later that day, it was gone. It wasn’t on the shelves either, and the police hadn’t taken it. He promises me he’s traced it back here, and that it’s somewhere in Miami."

He’d lost it again. Oh well.

N had all the shoes, plus some peanuts they’d started using. Red was broke and tired, and the night was coming to a close.

The night had come to a close. And so the few sober people took the many intoxicated people back to their homes. In the end the doors were locked, the lights were shut off, and Red and N came stumbling out of Mick’s place.

Their illegal parking job had, not surprisingly, merited them a rather large ticket. N plucked it from the windshield wiper, crumpled it up, and started to chew on it. He then took a seat on the passenger side and proceeded to gurgle. Red, the slightly less plastered of the two, took his seat behind the wheel. He rolled the windows down, ignited the engine, and put the car in reverse. It was 3:41.

Thankfully, Red’s car was only minimally damaged in the collision with the Mercedes behind him. He drove off.

The car ride was silent—aside from the gnawing and gurgling noises coming from N. The night sky was polluted with city light, and the stars were barely visible. The full moon hung precariously on the horizon. Everything was out of focus: buildings wavered unnaturally, traffic lights multiplied, and the occasional car faded in and out of existence. The city was almost surreal. Discarded papers and wrappers floated eerily. A neon Michelob sign buzzed and flickered in the window of a nearby bar. Red’s seat belt squeaked as he adjusted it.

Red was thinking about his mystery prize. He’d been thinking about his mystery prize for the last seven hours and forty-five minutes. With the help of the alcohol flowing through his veins and arteries, he had come up with quite a few ideas as to precisely what the prize would be. He had in fact assigned to each of these ideas a statistical probability.