One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories(49)

“Is there any Advil? Tylenol?”

There wasn’t. They had already looked.

Josh turned to me. “Hey. You gotta lead this. I can’t do it.”

I was in no state to lead this thing.

“You have to lead this,” he repeated. “You have to lead this.”

I had always heard about the “hair of the dog” cure but had never tried it—officially because it sounded irresponsible, but really because it sounded disgusting. Whenever I was hungover, I thought I never wanted to drink again, let alone right then. But now, with Willie’s life potentially at stake, I pulled a beer from the minibar and cracked it open with the hard plastic opener we all had on our key chains.

“What are you doing?”

“Hair of the dog.”

“You want Willie to smell alcohol on your breath while—”

“No, I’m going to down it fast, then have some gum.”

“You have gum?” said Dave. “Who has gum? I asked if anyone had gum. Who has gum?”

“I’ll brush my teeth then.”

I swigged the beer and immediately coughed it all up onto the rug, exactly like a baby would if you gave a baby a beer.

“The f*ck! Now the place smells like alcohol!”

“We were pretending we partied last night. Remember?!”

“They would have cleaned the room. This is a high-end hotel, you f*cking morons!”

Josh reached for two bottles of club soda from the minibar and started spilling them all over the floor on top of the beer with overdiligent evenness.

“That smells worse!!”

“That smells like a gin and tonic!”

“Fuck!!!” said Josh. “This is tonic, not soda!”

“Fuck!!! Where’s the soda?”

I couldn’t take all this with my headache.

“Where the f*ck are you going?”

“Gift shop,” I said. “I’m going to get Tylenol. For everyone!”

“Get Advil.”

“Get Tylenol.”

“Get Advil Extra Strength.”

“Get Tylenol Extra Strength!”

“I’ll get both.”

“Just get the Tylenol! Regular Tylenol!”

“Why the f*ck would a person not get Extra Strength?!”

“Just hurry back!”

“I will. You make the room look like it’s been cleaned.”

“Too late for that! That ship has f*cking sailed!”

“Our best chance is to make it look like we’ve been partying all day.” Josh started emptying vodka minibottles onto the floor.

“What the f*ck!?” screamed Dave. “Do you realize how expensive that is?!”

“There is a life at stake here!” screamed Josh.

“How?! Whose?!” screamed Dave.

“Long term!” screamed Josh. “Look! We need a consistent message. And the message is that we got wasted last night!”

“Then what f*cking leg do we have to stand on?”

“We’ll have to adjust the speeches,” said Josh. “Like we all have a problem, but he has the biggest.”

“What?!”

“Adjust the speeches!”

Dave popped a pill from a prescription bottle.

“The f*ck is that?”

“Not Tylenol, don’t f*cking worry!”

“I’ll be right back,” I said. “Right back!”

“Wait! What’s the opening statement? Who speaks first?”

“What did we decide?”

“We didn’t decide.”

“Decide!”


I ran out the door to the elevator and headed straight to the lobby, stopping only to accidentally get out of the elevator every time it opened for someone else, which was four times. In the lobby I tried to figure out which direction the gift shop would be in. Everything was a clinking, garish red maze, especially in the state I was in now. The casino looked like a straight person’s attempt to replicate what he thought a gay kid he bullied in high school would have designed. I hated Las Vegas. Why hadn’t I pushed harder to do this on Dave’s birthday? I picked a direction at random and started running as fast as I could, which was not fast at all, in this state. A hand blocked me by the shoulder and knocked me down.

“Where you going, *?”

It was Willie. He was dressed in a sharp blue suit, newly pressed, over a crisp white shirt, a garment bag over his shoulder. His shoes were white buckskin, or something along those lines—whatever it was, it looked polished and rare. I was in puffy yellow-and-gray New Balance sneakers that I had promised Sarah I would only wear in the gym but somehow still found myself wearing all the time.

I was embarrassed to be in the same casino as a guy who looked as good as Willie did.

“Hey! Willie!”

He put his hands on my shoulders and took a moment to really take me in.

“You look like shit, my friend.”

“I’m okay.”

He draped his arm firmly across my shoulders. “Come with me. We need to catch up first. Just you and me.”


He walked me up to the bar in the center of the casino and ordered four tequila shots.

I said I was too hungover from earlier in the day.