Right now, I’m glad we didn’t. I’m feeling a little fuzzy, the champagne from the car finally hit me, and we’re just starting our night.

Before our first drink round arrives, Rene has already got a small court of preppy young college guys surrounding our sofa-level table. She does know how to kickstart a party. The college guys from NYU are really only interested in Rene, but by the third round of drinks I’m exhausted from laughing and dancing, and we are crowded around our table playing quarters, since the band is on break and the giant video monitors are blasting.

Rene bounces a quarter, making it into the glass, and she forces a shot on me. She holds the tequila shooter in my face. “Pound it, Chrissie.”

I pound it and Rene laughs, but her latest male conquest gives me a sympathetic smile. I can tell he can tell I’m pretty messed up at this point by the way I laugh, how wobbly I am just sitting, and the flush spreading on my cheeks. Rene has forced on me every shooter round she’s won, but the guys stopped picking on me three shots ago.

“I think we should take a break from the drinking.” Jimmy Stallworth motions for the waitress to bring me a glass of water. “Do you always let your friend get you so messed up?”

I shake my head weakly. “Never. I don’t know why she is being so rotten to me tonight. She never forces me to take every shooter.”

Rene waves off his concern. “Oh, don’t worry about, Chrissie. She’s a lightweight, but she never passes out.”

I turn my head to find Victor staring at me strangely. “Do you need to go outside for some air?” he asks.

I smile weakly at him, but Rene grabs my arm. “No, no, no! You’re not taking her anywhere.”

When the water comes, Jimmy Stallworth forces it into my hand and orders me to drink. I’m halfway through the glass when the video on the monitor changes. The moving lights cast strange colors and shadows all around me, I’m in a totally groggy frame of mind, but not too groggy to recognize the gorgeous guy one story tall on the monitor…or is my mind playing tricks on me? Is that what happens after too much alcohol? You just start imagining you see a guy everywhere.

“Is he everywhere?” I try to focus my blurry vision on Jimmy Stallworth. “It’s strange…two days ago nothing, and now I see him everywhere. Is he really on the monitor or am I imaging it?”

Rene shakes her head. “You’re all right, Chrissie. He’s really on the monitor.”

I breathe a heavy sigh of relief. “I’m already seeing double. It would be really bad if I were seeing things not there.”

Jimmy Stallworth sighs heavily and pushes the glass back up to my lips. “OK, no more drinks for you, and lets have some more water. Do you have a way home? I can get them to call a cab for you. I think you should take your friend home before she passes out. She’s really fucked up, Rene.”

Rene points to the monitor. “No, she’s not wasted. She’s talking about the video. We know him.”

Victor leans across me to speak to Rene. “You know Alan Manzone?”

Rene shrugs. “We flew to New York with him.”

“Bullshit,” says Jimmy Stallworth. “California girls are always full of such shit.”

I shake my head. “No, we know him.”

“Then who is that sitting over there giving Rene the serious fuck me stare?”

I turn my head in the direction Jimmy indicates, but I’m seeing double, so this just isn’t going to work.

“What? Are we in eighth grade or something?” Rene snaps. She looks. She frowns. “That’s Kenny Jones, Blackpoll’s drummer.”

“Well, if you know Manzone you must know Kenny Jones.”

Rene shrugs and springs to her feet.

I just want to sit and Rene is trying to pull me to my feet. I stare up at her. “Are we going home?”

“Come on, Chrissie.”

I lean into her and my thoughts fade in and out of my brain and the floor feels like it’s coming up to meet me. I am suddenly too hot and I am really glad that Rene is always here for me.

* * *

It hurts just to try to open my eyes. It’s not possible to feel as badly as I feel. The light in the room is muted, it must be morning, and I am in bed and every muscle in my body aches.

I struggle to roll onto my side. The spot beside me is empty, but the blankets are pushed down. Rene’s everything bag is lying beside me. At least I did manage to bring Rene home with me. On the bedside table there is a glass of orange juice and two Tylenol.

My befuddled brain struggles through fractured snapshots of the night before. I remember going into the club. The drinks. The NYU preppies all hot in their boxers for Rene. The drinking games, but then only bits and pieces. I don’t remember how we got home. I’m still wearing my black halter dress and panties, but I don’t have my bra on. I find it lying on the floor beside the bed.

I sit up and take the Tylenol and drink the juice. I fall back into the pillows and tug the blankets tightly around my aching flesh.

Rene runs into the bedroom. She is ecstatic. She drops on the bed with a bounce that makes my head swim. “Finally! You’re awake. You are not going to believe this. You are never going to believe this.”

I pull a pillow tightly over my head.

“I hope you don’t feel as bad as you look. I should have stopped forcing shooters on you,” Rene says matter-of-factly.

Ya think? And why is she waiving a newspaper?

She collapses beside me on the pillows. Just the motion of her body nearly makes me to throw up. She snaps open the paper.

“I’m on the front page of the New York Post, Chrissie.”

“What?”

As miserable as I feel, that gets me into a sitting position. She is on the front page. It’s a picture of her exiting the plane with Alan. I feel even more sick, but not from the alcohol. There are also pictures of her in the club last night. Did Rene really dance on a table? I don’t remember any of this, and even the single photo that has me in it has that surreal feel of not being me because I don’t remember any of this.

“Let me read the caption. ‘Manzone, the edgy rock superstar lead singer of Blackpoll touches down at JFK with Rene Thompson, daughter of legendary civil rights attorney George Thompson…blah, blah, blah, the couple has no comment on the singer’s unexplained six month absence.’”

Rene slaps the newspaper and grins. “The New York Post, Chrissie. Eliza is going to die.”

I curl in a ball and hug the blankets more tightly around me. Things just seem to work out for Rene without her even trying. Front page of the New York Post. Eliza thinking we’ve taken Manhattan by storm. At the club last night, every man in the room after Rene.

“I have a terrible headache. I want to sleep,” I whisper. I hear sounds from the kitchen and lift my aching head. “Rene? Is there someone else in the apartment?”

“Oh, that’s just Jimmy Stallworth.” Rene does a dismissive shake of her head and then her eyes settle on me and widen. “Oh shit, I knew you were wasted last night, but I didn’t think you were so fucked up that you wouldn’t remember.”

I sit up, alarmed. “What?”

“How much do you remember?”

What’s the last thing I remember? What’s the last thing? I frown. “I don’t know. We were playing some drinking games with some guys…Oh god, was one of them Jimmy Stallworth?”

Rene makes a face. “Yep.” And then her eyes sharpen intensely. “Do you remember seeing Manny?”

I don’t like how she asks me that. “Oh god. On the monitor?” I ask nervously.

Rene shakes her head.

My eyes round. “Alan was at the club last night?”

Rene nods. “Yep, with Nia,” she says with heavy meaning.

Nia? Nia? The latest tall, brunette supermodel du jour. I saw Alan last night. Alan was with Nia. Why don’t I remember any of this?

Rene’s expression shifts into anger and disgust. “He was such a prick. Pretended he didn’t even know us, which is probably good because you were pretty fucked up by the time he strolled in.”