"Putting out the embers."
I take his gloves and toque from him and add them to the drippy pile beside me.
I've got a foam tumbler of whiskey and I pass it to him.
The night passes in the warmth of twenty sweaty, boozy, speedy bodies, and I
hobble from pissoir to whiskey, until the whiskey's gone and the pissoir is
swimming from other people's misses, and then I settle into a corner of one of
the ratty sofas in the parlour, dozing a little and smiling.
Someone wakes me with a hard, whiskey-fumed kiss on the cheek. "How can you
*sleep* on *speed*, Maxes?" Daisy shrieks into my ear. I'm not used to seeing
her cut so loose, but it suits her. That twinkle is on perma-strobe and she's
down to a sportsbra and cycling shorts. She bounces onto the next cushion.
I pull my robe tighter. "Just lucky that way." Speed hits me hard, then drops me
like an anvil. My eyelids are like weights. She wriggles up to me, and even
though she's totally whacked, she manages to be careful of my knee. Cautiously,
I put my arm around her shoulders. She's clammy with sweat.
"Your Dad, he musta been some pain in the ass, huh?" She's babbling in an
adrenalised tone, and the muscles under my hand are twitching.
"Yeah, he sure was."
"I can't imagine it. I mean, we used to watch him on the tube and groan -- when
the bugouts got here and he told everyone that he'd been invited to explain to
them why they should admit humanity into the Galactic Federation, we laughed our
asses off.
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