The Lucky Ones(61)

“What should we do, Deacon?” Allison asked him.

“I’m thinking a talent show.” Deacon snapped his fingers. “Roland, you start.”

“I have no talents,” Roland said.

Deacon shifted his eyes left to right rapidly. “That’s not what Allison said...”

“I said he had no talons.”

Roland held up his hands. “It’s true. I have no talons.”

This was the pot talking.

“I would watch a show called America’s Got Talons,” Deacon said. “Anyway, talent show now. Make up something. Impress us.”

Roland exhaled heavily and then stood up.

“Fine,” Roland said. “How much do you weigh?” he asked.

“That’s a personal question,” Allison said. Roland stared. “All right, one-twenty-mumble.”

“Did you say one-twenty-mumble?” Deacon asked.

“That is my exact weight,” Allison said.

“Thora?” Roland asked.

“One-forty-mumble.”

“Deac?”

“One-seventy-mumble.”

“Okay, then, you,” Roland said. “Up.”

“Me?” Deacon pointed at himself. “You want me?”

“I don’t want you. But I’m going to use you.” Roland laid down, stomach to floor.

“What is happening here?” Deacon asked.

“Sit on my back,” Roland said.

“This better not be a weird sex thing,” Deacon said.

“It’s not a weird sex thing,” Roland said. “It’s a totally normal sex thing.”

Deacon sat down on Roland’s midback, crossed his lanky legs and waited.

Then Roland put both hands flat on the floor and lifted himself in a perfectly formed push-up.

Thora and Allison applauded.

“This is it?” Deacon asked. “This is your big talent? You showing off you can do a push-up with a man sitting on your back? I could do that, please don’t make me prove it.”

“No,” Roland said. “This is the talent.”

Roland proceeded to do twenty push-ups with Deacon on his back, the final four of them on his knuckles.

“This is humiliating,” Deacon said. “I mean, impressive, but humiliating.”

“I’m enjoying the show,” Allison said. Roland wasn’t a show-off, so it was quite a sight to see him putting his strength on display.

“That’s it. I’m out,” Deacon said, clambering off his brother’s back after Roland hit twenty. “Show’s over.”

He collapsed back down into the big chair as Roland stood up and dusted off his hands.

“Thanks, little brother,” Roland said, smiling angelically. “Much obliged.”

“So am I,” Allison said as she reached for Roland’s arms. The push-ups had made the veins in his biceps bulge out, and she planned on running her hands over them for the next ten hours or until she was no longer stoned out of her gourd.

Roland sat down on the chair and dragged her into his lap. Allison went willingly and happily. It was nice to feel like a girlfriend, part of a couple that other people knew about. No secrets here.

“Someone else go,” Deacon said. “Thora, you do a thing.”

“I don’t have any talents, either,” she protested.

“Now we both know that’s a lie,” Deacon said, then proceeded to poke her repeatedly in the arm saying, “Go, go, go,” with every poke.

“Fine!” She stood up at last with a put-upon sigh. “Pot doesn’t interfere with inner ear stuff, does it?”

“I have no idea,” Deacon said. “But now you have to do what you were going to do.”

“I really don’t want to end up in the hospital.” Thora took her cardigan off and tossed it to Deacon.

“I have never had a better idea in my life,” Deacon said.

“Zip it,” she said. “If you make me laugh, I’ll fall over.” Thora stood in the middle of the floor on the checkered rug and took a steadying breath. Then she raised her arms in the air and bent backward in a bridge.

“Bravissima!” Deacon said.

“One problem,” Thora said from the floor. Her voice sounded strained and nasal. “I can’t get back up.”

Deacon hopped up and wrapped his arm under her lower back and lifted her back to a standing position. Once she was up, he spun her in his arms in a silly parody of a waltz. He spun her once more and led her back to the chair.

“Your turn,” Thora said to Deacon. “What’s your talent?”

“You’ve been smoking my talent for two hours. It’s Allison’s turn.”

“I don’t have any talents, either,” Allison said.

“Enough with the false modesty, people, and fucking do a thing,” Deacon said, fists in the air as if he were about to start a cartoon battle with them all.

“Fine. I can do a thing. I have some poems memorized. I don’t know if that counts as a talent, really, or a skill.”

“Recite!” Deacon said, and snapped his fingers.

With a sigh Allison rose and stood in the middle of the room on the rug, which had apparently become their stage.