The Enthusiasts

29

"To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science." – Albert Einstein

"Looks like someone's improved," Keith mentioned to Sasha. Cheeco began mingling with the new party guests, rubbing his dark-mixed coarse hair against Keith's leg while sniffing between crotches until finally settling in a comfortable resting position next to Sasha again.

"Yeah, he's doing great," she replied, kneeling down to pet the dog. "You gonna come over for a drink? Tonight was so troush'd up, we all need one," Sasha suggested.

"No, I'm just headed to bed. Thanks." Keith left abruptly with a parting stare at Cheeco. He headed for the medic room where he'd spend the night.

Sasha joined Gabby, Teddy, and Achak who had conglomerated inside the Party House. Teddy had already forced Gabby to watch how quickly he could finish three shots of a dark brown-colored moonshine — stashed in secret behind a hollowed breakaway at the back of the kitchen's deep-corner lower cabinet. The backyard pulp-mash had been bottled inside a Jose Cuervo Tequila bottle last summer. The hooch had a fast-settling black pulp which anchored almost immediately to the bottom of any container after being poured, transitioning to a yellowish three-a.m.-piss-hue tinge which strained up to the top of the glass. It was a drink only to be served after some vigorous shake-mixing if one were to savor in its fragrant complexities. Gabby counted out seconds, and Ted had three shots poured and swallowed from a Lady Pink Bachelorette shot glass by a count of six. Gabby pointed out he'd spilled at least one drink on himself during the frantically-rushed process. The big man, appearing unfazed, noticed the sopping dark stain dove-tailing into a wide plume before soaking a dark-shaded oval into the cotton fibers of his favorite gray T-shirt. The shirt still bore a faint outline of its screened graphic print featuring a man punching an Android — unsympathetically portrayed as a boxed layering of formed, lifeless sheet metal with sets of useless buttons and knobs covering its housing like The Jetsons' Rosie — on its front. Teddy had liked the idea of a shirt telling a story for as long as he could remember. The dark liquor stain began mingling with some blood spatter left from the group's recent engagement, now telling a tale of a much more visceral and gruesome human/robot battle taking place on the printed worn-out garment that was tattered and full of holes like everything else in Ted's closet. Teddy belched, and then he took another shot of moonshine for good measure.

Achak was throwing darts solo in the corner. He really didn't want to be there, but the thought of being alone right now was still less appealing to him. The loss of the three 'party-liveners' became glaringly evident. It was clear that drinking whatever was left in the house from Teddy's mashed and fermented stash was the only activity considered worth partaking in tonight.

It took five shots for Teddy to comment on Sasha's new look. "What happened to you? You trying to impress me, or what?" Teddy swashed his girthy, freckled body around the close quarters of the kitchen held in between the two ladies. After no verbal response, he passed out more moonshine bombs to his campmates. "Okay fine, I'll let you both have me tonight." The alcohol was ripping through Teddy's system faster than the time he and his sister had shared a bottle she'd lifted off their father's finest tapped McKlinsky's. He was fourteen. He remembered seeing stars within stars that afternoon before getting cussed and beaten somewhere between acceptable and vindictive by The Old Man after he found his medicine cabinet ransacked. Teddy had taken the blame. After the first sheepish sip of the juice, they'd lost any and all sense to even try and hide the evidence. They were two plastered kids, enthralled by watching brain cells evaporate and recede downstream. Their eyes had followed the course of that winding, slow-flowing river that cut through the section of glades where Teddy and his sister Catherine spent summer days on end just staring out into the wilderness off their back porch. So worth it! he and Sis would cackle to each other over a pint of their own homebrew whenever the incident was brought up years later.