And when the bar staff have all but thrown us out, we walk to the hotel and sit by the pool again. I go to the room to pee and to grab a beer and some peanuts and my phone. All the things I'd take with me to a deserted island.
I come back to find Jill and Joy and the friends we'd bumped into sitting at a table. And some guy I don't recognize. I suppose he's another friend. We all start talking now that there is not deafening music playing.
I offer my bag of peanuts (it's a big bag) to everyone at the table. Everyone declines except the guy I don't know. I introduce myself. So does he.
When he gets up to use the bathroom, I ask the rest of the table how they know him.
They don't! Apparently he just followed the fun crowd to the pool! And here I am offering him my peanuts!
We shut up just in time for him to return though we can not understand why he would want to. It's not like anyone is talking to him (and he'd not getting any more peanuts, that's for sure). He sits down in the same spot like he belongs there. There are 20 other tables he could sit and be catatonic at but he wants the chair between me and Jill, natch.
In an effort to ignore him, I turn on my phone. (My girlfriends have been highly impressed that I have left my phone at home on a Saturday night. I am a phone junkie. I'd rather leave a limb at home.)
It begins its familiar dinging. I have texts.
John.
3 hours ago: "You were right about this bar."
2.5 hours ago: "This was a mistake."
2 hours ago: "Where are you girls right now?"
An hour ago: "Did I lose you?"
I reply, ignoring the sort of sappy question.
I am not lost. I am at the pool.
And then I think that if I expect to see him, I should be a little nicer. Maybe a little more inviting, less snarky.
Come to the pool, I write.
He writes right back. Will you be there a while?
Well, there is a weird random guy sitting next to me that doesn't seem willing to leave and I am fading, so unless "a while' means "under 10 minutes" then no. I have never learned to text without full articulation. Prepositions, punctuation, etc.
"We're on our way. Don't fade."
"Here I come to save the day!
He must have been on the Drunk Bus. The bus that takes everyone from bar to bar so no one risks a DUI. It is pretty tame on the way out to the bars. Like a fraternity on wheels on the way back. And it stops every few blocks to let staggering drunks out to zig zag home on their wobbly pins. Some are carrying pizzas which often haven't completely survived the ride. I assume the John is on the Drunk Bus because 1) I would be if I were him, and 2) It is taking forever for him to get here. Good thing the creepy random weird guy isn't actually capable of doing anything predatory. He's completely saturated in alcohol. Brain in a jar drunk.
Eventually the random weird guy rises unsteadily on his feet and begins to walk ever so slowly away. Barely manages to miss the pool (I would NOT be going in for a rescue) and leaves the hotel. Once he's gone our old friends decide it is safe for them to leave as well and they head to their cars. They pass John going in the other direction. He's looking for us in the dark.
"Hello, Mighty Mouse! Crisis averted! How did you come here? By way of Ogden, Utah?"
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