Mary hopped on the bus to the driver’s welcoming smile. Dion, on a ricochet rebound off his collision with the bus stop sign, received a tempered glare.
The haven of Montrose lay before them, they were racing against the sun. Dion, on the verge of some slobbering sentiment, rested his head on Mary’s shoulder and murmured how Old Peculiar, she were a cruel mistress yarrr. Too much movie talk, Mary decided, not that too much meant stopping, and she said so aloud, using her lullabye calmative voice.
-What? Dion tilted his face to her.
-sex is in all saints?
-Excess … In …. All …. Things … silly goose.
-Yeah, count me in, he sleepily agreed.
They alighted across the street from The Art Bar and though Mary was tempted, thirsty as ever now that she was staggering distance from home, Dion would prove an impediment, wobble-legged and lurching, all undulant judder beside her. And vociferously happy:
-Fiery the angels fell! Deep thunder rolled around their shoulders… burning with the fires of Orc …
His arms-to-the-heavens outburst frightened a fine pair of nearby Adonises so that the pastel one of the pair scooped up their toy canine and shaded its nervous liquid eyes with his well-manicured fingers.
Glancing up Montrose towards Bell Park and the museums beyond, Mary saw a familiar green van edging backwards into traffic. Brave Nature, or Fab Motion, or The Footnotes, off to sound check. God was in his citadel, all was right with the world.
-Just a few more blocks to your apartment, she said, starting back towards Alabama.
-Wazzat new sewn uh yours? Dion asked.
-cangit outta my mine …
He sang a line badly, loudly:
-We walk-a-crawl river inna dedda … dedda …
Mary filled in the rest.
-Dead of winter / we could hear the ice cracking six feet behind us / my friends were high but I was clean / when people get spacey it just makes me mean …
-Yeah, grey sewn, Mar … fuckin’ grey sewn …
-I thank you, and my friends thank you, and the Potomac river thanks you … Dion? … dude? … Are you going to be okay?
-Not now … but soon, he replied, taking a few staggering steps towards the off-center, thirty-foot steel cross at the entrance to St. Thomas University, before vomiting in splashy violence into a flowerbed.
-Ooh, Mary said, better get you home, babe.
Alastair, eyes bloodshot and hair spiky and wet from its recent plunge into a sink of icy water, let them in. Dion, protesting weakly that a quick lie-down and he’d be ready to party all night, was lowered onto the sofa. While Mary wrestled a cushion under his head Alastair watched from the doorway to the kitchen with a look of guarded amusement.
-Got him drunk, did you?
-I didn’t exactly use a feeding tube. He’s a big boy.
-He’ll feel terrible when he revives.
-Hair of the dog, then. Dark beer, by the way.
-That’s not what I meant. He prizes your opinion.
-And here I am, fluffing his pillow and untying his shoes. I live in a glass house by the way, so tell him it’s all cool.
-I hear you, Alastair said, and started to say something else, something involving Dion’s feelings but Mary gave him a look that made him stop.
She shrugged.
-When in doubt, complicate. Right?
-Human nature.
-Then let’s agree to be unnatural, shall we?
Alastair smiled and nodded. Mary was half way out the door when he called out:
-I see what he means.
Mary leaned back in, waiting.
-From a certain angle you do give off that Maria Schneider vibe.
Mary was silent and Alastair, flustered:
-uh, the actress in ‘Last Tango …
-in Paris’, I know who she is.
And Mary didn’t quite smile as she let the screen door close behind her and headed out into the Montrose evening.