Halfway through the first buffalo chicken, and everything was going according to plan. We had sent the beautiful Sweta to pick up our order so that at the very least she'd make them feel guilty for poisoning us.
A week prior my boss had sent me and twenty co-workers on an all expense paid trip to a resort hotel 40 miles east of the city. I had spent most of my time drinking warm J&B Scotch in the sun by the pool - complete with imported sand shores - and by falling in love with a Cuban girl who was apparently my co-worker.
It wasn't love, obviously, but I did enjoy the rhythm of our conversations and her body. I'm not sure what we even talked about, but the familiar sound of normal words being exchanged back and forth between two humans, one male and another female, helped to start put my mind back together again on that first day.
A long night out soaking the liver, and many stares and eye locking glances later, and I was quite certain she despised me. She was married, and seemed unwillingly to break that commitment so we worked our way past infatuation and a strange kind of brother/sister banter phase into the relative safety of disgust and mutual disdain.
Many cab rides and relationships of mine end this way.
The calzones were now just being picked at, and the Conductor was pouring champagne for the three of us. Sweta was talking about heading to the east side, but Conductor and I had decided early that afternoon that her opinion would not matter tonight. We already had plans to shoot pool at a local college bar--we needed some thing unpretentious for a change.
Conductor and I went to sit by the pool with our drinks while Sweta sat on the balcony smoking. We pulled the chairs close to the edge and let our feet drift into the cool, clear water with the night's shadows moving slowly over the surface, casting eerie shadows onto our submerged legs.
Someone had used the gravel to spell out "Alicia Sucks Dick" on the edge of the pool.
"Sounds like a fat girl." The Conductor mumbled.
Some of my neighbors were on the roof of their building, eyeing the pool from three stories up.
"Jump!" I yelled.
A girl in a black skirt looked down at us skeptically.
"It's really deep." Conductor assured them.
The girl called back something that we couldn't hear. A guy with short hair and bad tattoos appeared next to her, also looking down at the pool. We yelled at him to jump half heartedly, then lost interest.
I had been onto that roof many times, and had vaguely wondered about the success rate of jumping into the pool from there. Once, while up there with a friend, I had asked her if she'd be impressed if I could land it.
"Not really." She had said. "Girls my age aren't really impressed by things like that."
What a terribly boring thing to have said. I had hardly seen her this year since she started dating some jamoke that worked in television. But it was really a perfect relationship for her, as she was addicted to meaningless programs that I did not understand at all, and he got paid for setting up the stage props for that drible. Or maybe taking them back down.
For all I knew he was a fluffer on a porn set shot in a bedroom.
"Why are people so boring?" I asked Conductor. He was spinning his warm drink around in his glass.
"Because most people are morons."
I nod in the silence, and contemplate jumping into the pool. I'm beginning to sweat in the night humidity. Once, in Eugene Oregon, I had drove drunk to a friend's apartment complex just to jump into his pool in my underwear. The next day the management had closed it for 'rules violations', which seem to consisted of a ban on late night swimming.
"There's a wall to climb tonight. This is my fifth gin-champagne, and I'm not even buzzed." Conductor sighed and finished off his drink.
"It's gonna be a battle. For sure. I got pretty fucked up last night." I vaguely remembered dancing with a blonde girl in cut off jean shorts. I didn't recall how I got home, but remembered taking a cold shower after staggering through my front door drenched in sweat.
"Yeah." Conductor looked up to the patio, where Sweta had stamped out her cigarette and returned back inside. The smoke rose up from the ashtray into the hot, still sky for miles.
"Good music and drunk women. Speaking of which - let's get moving."
"How are we going to get there?" I asked.
"Sweta will drive." Conductor kicked apart the stone note. Alicia would not suck any more dick tonight.
