Munmun(19)

Usher understood it and even he admitted, yeah, this type of thing is super boring, that’s your life when you work at the bank I guess.

The day of the party Prayer didn’t watch tablets. Instead she spent the whole day in Chess’s bathroom, prepping.

She took the nice Japanese robe that she escaped Grant’s house in, and washed it painstakingly three times in Chess’s sink, and then she spent many hours heating up a paperclip with a candleflame and twirling her fine notgood hair into it to get it all bouncy, and it sort of worked. And she took a little coal from a blownout candlewick onto her fingers and smeared it around her eyelids and lashes and it was way too much and she looked like a rackoon, but then she papertoweled some of it off and even I had to admit, it looked pretty fancy and good.

She had no shoes obviously but she figured out how to stalk around on tiptoes in a refined and sophisticated way, and she walked like that the entire way to the apartment complex, with me and Usher bodyguarding as usual.

Why did poor Usher help bodyguard, answer, because Prayer asked him to. I was the most disgusted with her that I could get.

“How can you even look at his face,” I said.

“Warner, please,” she said. “This is why we came.”

“Usher, you seriously don’t have to join, no matter what my poisonhearted demon sister asks you,” I said.

“It’ ’s why I c cc came, t tt t too,” he said, trying to smile, but no smile happening on that gray twisty face.

We walked over in silence, getting plenty of looks and confusion from middlepoors about this little parade of one tiptoeing partygirl and two grubby slumboys wordlessly bodyguarding her.

The apartment building was breezy, outdoorsy, a few stacks of apartments sharing long balconyhalls, hooked around a goofy pale pool. The party was on the secondfloor, there was no elevator, the stairs had no littleramp, so to keep her robe clean, Prayer literally stepped on Usher’s back and then got hauled up by me, each step.

Then at the top she didn’t want lawstudents to see Usher or I, so she made us chill way down at the end of the balconyhall by the stairs while she tried to knock on the door.

No one heard her or answered it.

Finally another middlerich came clomping up the stairs behind us. It was Glen. Usher and me cowered in the shadows, out of sight.

Politely, teetering on tiptoes, Prayer waved and said, “Hi, Glen, I’m here for Ken’s party.”

But he didn’t see or hear her. So she had to do some medium shrieking.

“Oh, look who it is,” he said. “Prayer.” And he knelt down so she could step into his hand, and he carried her inside, and the door closed, and it was just me and Usher out there.

“Usher, man,” I said.

Usher shrugged.

“This is just terrible and awfull and I kind of wish you hadn’t come,” I said.

Usher shrugged again.

“My sis doesn’t deserve everything you’ve done for her and it makes me sick and sad,” I said.

“N no, it’s the op posite,” he told me. “I ddon’t d deserve her.”

“Oh no,” I said. “Usher, shut up.”

“It’s j just obvious,,” he said. “She dd deserves w way better than m me. She des serves to sc cale up. Unt til then I j just want to h help her how w wever I can n.”

“Usher,” I said. “Going forward, I need you to shut up unless it’s to say, Actually I changed my mind, I’m great, and your sister is terrible.”

We sat there and listened to the glitzy thrummy music of the lawstudent party, mostly menvoices talking. Through the walls they alittlebit sounded like the soft hoots of apes.

In my head I tried to figure out what were they saying or who were they saying it to, which one is talking to Prayer, will he really be my brotherinlaw someday, will they have a nice normal middlescale house and two brats growing up going to schools talking on bendy phones and everything, will I live in a littlehouse stapled to the outside, is it even possible, and is this how it starts.

Then up the stairs came a jackedup inky middlepoor guy carrying two littlepoor women, and that’s when it got super weird and bad.

? ? ?

He was holding his arms up and flexing them, the women were sitting one on each armmuscle, crosslegs with specialmade skirts and stockings, definitely a trampy vibe from these two.

“Hello boys,” said one, fanning evil fingernails stickily.

“Ugh, don’t talk to them,” said the other, adjusting her tits.

As for this superstrong halfscale guy, he said nothing, just looked at Usher and I way too intense, like he was instantly memorizing our entire faces.

Then he carried the women down the balconyhall to the party, and knocked on the door, and Glen or Ken opened it and reached down and picked up the two women and handed this guy a roll of munmun so pink it looked alive, like flowerpetals.

The door closed and this guy walked slowly back toward us, closing the munmun into his belt.

“So, mind if I ask,” said the guy, leaning over us. “What are you doing here.”

He was super jacked and so inky it was a little hard to tell his original color of skin. His hair was crosshawked, each hawk all traced with tats, and his shoulders were each the size of his head, with a face inked on each one, so a lot like he had three heads.

“Sure, if I can ask you the same thing, buddybrat,” I said, and then I couldn’t say anything else or breathe because his hands were wrapped around my face and head, picking me up and dangling me.