but I know that won’t happen since the people here aren’t exactly the kind you’d walk up to and ask for directions. Or the time. Or even a piece of gum. I’m talking to C and I’m getting the vibe, though not from her, that I’m acting too excited about our talking. The truth is that she’s a nice person and I’m having a great time talking and this is fun and this really has nothing to do with flirtation. This isn’t an after the after-after hours kind of thing where it’s no longer about even upholding the facade of interest but about sloppy, drunken sex and deep morning regret.

I’m standing in the middle of the room, probably looking lost, when R comes up to me and says something. But either he is talking too softly or the ambient noise in the room is too loud. Maybe it’s both. He speaks and it comes out as nothing.

______ or ________

That’s all I hear. Or.

Mute voice falling on deaf ears.

_______ or whiskey?

How do I answer a question (or what I assume is a question reflecting on the inflection at the end of his sentence) that I don’t know all the options of? I shrug and say something to make him go away.

Whiskey

I suddenly wonder if he was simply having a hard time making up his mind about what sort of liquor to imbibe or if he was offering to buy me a drink. If that latter, I wish I had not said whiskey.

My head jolts up during the crack of a cue against a ball. C smiles at me while M and A talk, drink their beers, talk louder. I blink a few times since my contacts are now dry. In true, slightly drunken form, I toss out a comment to nobody and everybody.

I can’t get a Deathcab song out of my head
Oh my gosh! Me too!
So much so, that I just had a dream with the song playing in the background
Yeah?
It was a dream about sausage -the food- not the...

I trail off realizing that differentiating between the edible substance and the euphemistic symbol will only untruthfully dig me into a ditch I don’t want to explain my way out of.

The dream wasn’t even really about sausage. I dreamed I was driving home with her, that Deathcab song playing from somewhere like we were in a music video. Nothing specific happened, there was no flash of light, no long thought out conclusion, I just knew. It was over. Something about the way we were talking. Then in true dream-style I skipped to after I dropped her off and I was walking down an alleyway (to get home?) and there was something about sausages and cigarettes but I can’t remember what and that’s not even what the dream was about and then the crack of a pool ball woke me up.

Billy Jean came on over the crappy speakers and I did a few Michael Jackson-esque moves to make my friends laugh while secretly watching a guy do a bump of China White out of the filter end of a Parliament. I considered moonwalking. Changed my mind. I can’t moonwalk. Then I notice people getting tense. I think it’s the music.

Why is Michael Jackson making people tense?

I have an overwhelming desire to change the song. I want to hear that Deathcab song even though it won’t leave my head and playing it again will likely make things worse. I can see the jukebox across the room and all I need to do it put in two quarters and I can override the autoplay feature.

But there’s a problem.

A man who I immediately assume is the devil incarnate is getting into a fight with four other men. He’s wearing a blood-red shirt, a black tie, and a black suit. His shoes are impeccably shiny. I shake my head at the cliche. The devil should have a better sense of fashion.

He is so fast and so good at fighting that it’s not like watching those kung-fu films where you can hardly follow the guy’s fist or feet, but exactly the opposite. Everything moves slower. He uppercuts a guy into the air, then seems to walk, nonchalantly, to the next guy, who has yet to even catch up visually to the devil-man. He jumps into the air and crushes him with the heel of his foot. He then walks back over and before the guy he uppercutted even hits the ground, he kicks him, mid-chest, which pushes the guy across the room and into the other two guys he is fighting.

All of this is happening in front of the jukebox.

All I want is to change the damned song.

Then I woke up.