A Lady Under Siege(3)

“You can’t beat candlelight,” he crowed. “It makes you girls look straight out of some Renaissance painting. But girls, girls, girls! In the bar you said you were up for just about anything, am I right? Padding your bohemian resume by slumming with older eccentric-type guys, am I right?” He gestured to a derelict hot tub in the back corner of the yard, filled for the moment with dusty old tires. “Wish my hot tub was up and running—we’d be bobbing for panties by now! Assuming you wear panties—I should check that—”

“I do, but not into hot tubs,” said the drunker of the two girls, Kaitlin by name. She made a playful little show of lifting her short skirt and pretending to wriggle out of her underwear. Derek was mesmerized by the candlelight flickering across her thighs.

“Good answer! I’m liking you more and more,” he grinned. “Shit—I wish that hot tub did work. Have a drink, there’s wine I think”—he rummaged around the table, shaking various bottles experimentally—“two shots of Limona here if we’re lucky, half a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps if we get desperate, there’s Bourbon around here somewhere, and I know there’s more wine in the house—”

“Drop the voice, Derek,” said Ken, busy rolling a joint on the underside of an overturned plate. “You’ll wake the neighbours.”

“Fuck the neighbours! Hurry up and spark that sucker, the girls are getting impatient, aren’t you girls? Remind me your names again—you’re both brunette and gorgeous, I’m having trouble telling you apart.”

“Violetta. She’s Kaitlin.”

“Fantastic names—love em! Look at that beauty of a moon, you two. Matched by you! Oh Luna, Oh Isis, or Toth, or Thoth, or whatever the hell the ancient Egyptians called you, bestow us with your blessings!”

“The Egyptians had ten moon goddesses,” Kaitlin said.

“Whatever!” Derek hooted. “Bloody goddess gridlock was their downfall. Monotheists kick ass, you understand? It’s human nature—big eat small till one God rules all. How do you know about goddesses, anyway? You study them at that high-priced college of yours?”

“She’s on full scholarship,” said Violetta.

“Hurray for you! These days only an idiot would pay for an education, when you can get it for free just going to Google Books and reading the classics. Epictetus, Cicero, de Sade, Dostoevsky, all there, all free!”

“That’s not exactly how it works,” said Kaitlin. “In our course packs they give case studies that aren’t online or anywhere. Like, I’m majoring in development—”

“Development? Of what?”

“You know. The Third World, how to help them, how to improve conditions in places where—”

“Hail Mother Teresa here! Ken, what the f*ck! Spark that motherf*cker and pass it around!”

“I’m not Mother Teresa,” Kaitlin protested, “But I can’t look at suffering and inequality—”

“Have a glass of wine, my dear. It’s an old joke, but children in Africa are going to bed sober.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Fate handed me this life, I didn’t choose it, just as the starvelings of Somalia didn’t choose theirs. Better luck next time.”

“Next time I’m coming back as Penelope Cruz,” said Violetta.

“I thought you were her,” Ken said, handing her the unlit joint. “Do the honours.”

“Aren’t you sweet?” she purred. “But I do honestly believe in reincarnation. It’s like a karma redistribution mechanism.” She held her long hair back gracefully with one hand while she lit the spliff from a candle.

“Good for you,” Derek applauded. “If it brings you comfort, cling to whatever flotsam bobs along the ocean of your mind. May we all live forever among the harp-playing angels of heaven, and may the afterlife be one giant after party. For now, we’re still in the party party, and let’s all get down in the earthly, earthy, deliciously dirty dirt of it.”

Violetta held out the joint to him. He took it from her and inhaled ferociously. The girls watched his face puff up pink as diaper rash. He held it in for an eternity, then unleashed a smoky explosion of phlegmy hacks and coughs, exaggerated for comic effect. “Smooooth,” he croaked.

THEN FROM A HEIGHT, from the shadows, came a woman’s voice. “Excuse me, can you be quiet? I have a ten-year-old with school tomorrow.”