Angel Falling Softly - By Eugene Woodbury Page 0,36
a halt. The kid toppled over. He picked himself up from the back seat. There was a vigorous exchange of opinions between the occupants of the front seat and the back seat. Even from her vantage point, Milada could see the driver rolling his eyes. But he cranked the wheel over, made a wide U-turn, and pulled up to the curb next to her. The kid scrambled over to the side of the car. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” said Milada.
“What’s your name?”
“Milly. What’s yours?”
“I’m Chad. This is Cole, that’s Kevin there in the driver’s seat.” He reached over mussed Kevin’s hair. Kevin tried to look too mature for this sort of horsing around and didn’t quite succeed. Chad said, “So what’s a nice girl like you doing out at this time of night?”
Milada smiled slyly. “Who says I’m a nice girl?”
Chad and Cole stared at each other with wide eyes. “Whoa!” they both yelled and knocked foreheads.
Milada said, “And what are you boys doing out at this time of night?”
Chad held up two plastic grocery bags, each straining with a pair of six-packs. “Refills!”
“You’re going to a party?”
“We’re keeping the party going.”
“Wanna come?” Chad gazed up at her with pleading eyes. He looked like a dog begging for a bone.
Milada laughed. “How about Kevin here? I hope he’s not as drunk as you two.” Realizing how intoxicated the girl had been aroused in her an extra note of caution.
Chad and Cole shook their heads. “Kevin is our designated driver.” Chad spoke like he was narrating a driver-ed video. “He never drinks and drives.”
Kevin smirked. “Yeah, I’m a real Boy Scout.”
“He was, too.”
“A real honest-to-God Boy Scout.”
She asked, “A Mormon?”
“No, no, no, no, no. Hell, no.” Chad turned his puppy-dog look on her again. “Wanna come?”
She felt like patting his head and scratching his chin. “Sure,” she said. “Sounds like fun.”
Chad yelled, “Bail! Bail!” and grabbed Cole by the shoulders and pulled him out of the front seat. Milada couldn’t help laughing. Taking Cole’s place, she said to Kevin, “Interesting company you keep.”
“Yeah, a pair of regular court jesters.”
“Marry, sir,” Cole declaimed, “they praise me and make an ass of me.”
Milada replied, “Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.”
Cole perked up. He struck a dramatic pose. “Foolery does not walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere.”
“Ah, this fellow is wise enough to play the fool.”
“What are you two talking about?” said Kevin.
“Shakespeare,” said Cole. “Twelfth Night.”
Two blocks farther up First South, past a row of frat houses, Kevin made another U-turn and stopped in front of a shabby-looking structure after the American Foursquare design: a two-story, brick-faced house with a squat hip roof and broad overhangs. They tramped into the kitchen. From the sound of things, the party was still well underway. Chad and Cole set to work replenishing the alcohol. Amidst the litter of beer bottles and microwave popcorn bags, a haggard-looking boy sat with his laptop and a liter of Diet Pepsi, staring at the screen with bloodshot eyes. Milada peeked over his shoulder. It looked like C++. She repressed the urge to give him a business card.
“A beer?” Kevin asked her.
“I’m not much of a beer drinker.”
“How about wine?”
“That might be interesting.”
Milada wandered into the living room. The party was a decidedly low-brow affair. She blended right in. An iPod plugged into a stereo amplifier churned through an eclectic collection of Japanese idol pop and German techno MP3 files. Nobody was dancing. A couple lay tangled together by the radiator. Three boys—no, wait, one of them was a girl—crowded together on the couch cradling laptops strung together with CAT5 cable, eyes focused with blazing intensity on the screens, saying nothing except for triumphal yelps when an opponent’s character got blasted to bits.
“Wanna play?” Chad asked. He and Cole retrieved their laptops from the coffee table.
“Video games have never been my forte.”
Kevin handed her a Dixie cup. “Here you go. The best booze in the house.”
She took a cautious sniff. It was a generic red wine, the kind she imagined got shipped from the Napa Valley in tanker trucks. “What vintage is it?”
Kevin laughed. “It’s been in the back of the refrigerator for about a month.”
Milada took a sip. “Hmm,” she said, nodding, “cheap and unpretentious.” She drained the cup. The soft sting of alcohol at the back of her throat, the bittersweet taste of dextrose and tannin focused her appetite. She said to Kevin, “What about you? Are you, as they say, a gamer?”