Even more trivial

"I'm really drunk," he said.

"That's OK," I replied. "Last week, I almost quit my job. I got drunk then."

"What would you do if you quit your job?" he asked in drunken exaggeration, listening, caring.

"Move to New Orleans," I replied without stopping, without thinking, without anything, and he looked at me in abject horror.

"You can't move to New Orleans. How would we get our cookies?"

I laughed.

"I could mail them."

"We could set up a FedEx account," he mused.

"You can't do that," the other protested. "Part of it is just you dropping by, on a boring Saturday, and bringing us cookies."

They decided I could not move to New Orleans, that DC had everything I needed, and I agreed to stay for a while longer, based on the recommendation of the boys I knew so well but didn't know at all.

I baked for them. I knew who preferred spiced cookies, white chocolate chip, banana bread and pumpkin cranberry bread. I knew what they read and why, and I knew how they acted when drunk. I knew why they got drunk. I knew who hid, who shutdown, who did not. We had known each other for years; I barely knew their last names. I tended to do things backwards, knowing the details before the generalities, the little things before the big.

When they invited me to join them in trivia, in poker, I figured they were just being nice. I had been a couple of times before, part of a large group, but last night, it was just the three of us. One very drunk man, one very undrunk man and myself.

We lost.

We lost big time.

Through the fifth round, we had done pretty well. Held our own. Tied for first for the first three before slipping into second. And I contributed with the painters, chick flicks, Star Wars trivia. Even with South America, a little, although the undrunk man had lived in Peru for three years, maybe four.

"Really?" I asked, somewhat surprised. I had only just discovered that he grew up in Missouri, spoke Spanish and disliked the Impressionists.

The anatomy questions threw us and we floundered with food and drink. I shared a plate of pasta and a fork with the drunk man who got exponentially drunker as the other and I stared at each other and struggled for words from high school biology. Striated muscles. The pituitary gland. Ossicles.

We didn't place and they sent texts to all who normally bolstered the team.

"I'm sorry," I apologized. "I should have known the Matisse."

"At least you were here."

They waited at the back gate. I stopped en el baño on the way out and figured they'd left but they waited to walk me home on a perfect May night. I didn't need my jacket but didn't mind it either. Comfortable.

"This is the kind of night when I would just sit on a porch reading Faulkner," the drunk man said as we walked.

After a block or two, stopped at a corner, at a light, I turned and asked, "Really? Have you ever sat on a porch and read Faulkner?"

"I have. In Colorado, I had a nice porch."

"It's not the porch. It's not even the free time. Faulkner makes my head spin."

"I can see that," he said, knowing I had Faulkner on my shelf, knowing that spinning heads wouldn't stop any of us from reading.

Even after the beer, my friends used words like "verisimilitude," words I barely remembered hours later, words I could not contrive, in conversation as we walked. When I needed to turn, they turned with me, even though it took them out of the way of their own walks home.

"This is the longest walk ever," the undrunk man said.

"You cannot imagine how much I need to pee," the drunk man said.

I laughed and enjoyed the walk, thinking it the perfect length on a perfect night.


Tag: Trivia Friends