Ian bursts out of the bathroom, his small frame wrapped with a towel, his face completely transformed. His hair is straight, more vividly black, and hung comfortably—his blue eyes lit up like dayglo denim. He looks more like his normal energetic self—though energetic wasn’t quite the word for it. Ian was usually more than energetic. The average person thought he was on speed if they didn’t know him better. And the strange thing was that most people universally agreed that Ian’s demeanor rubbed off like a virus. The moment he walked into a room, it seemed that the party had arrived. Nick often referred to the effect as his “daily dose of Ian.” Searching the room through piles of clothes, Ian looks for something tolerably dirty (or tolerably clean depending on how you look at). “I made about twenty sales last night,” he announces to Travis.

“Really?” Travis seems genuinely surprised—the summer was always slow.

“Yep.” He speaks in his mile-a-minute style. “We had a bunch of people over here last night. I told a couple people that I could hook ’em up, and before I knew it I was talking to a whole crowd.”

“Word spreads.”

“Yep.”

“You didn’t tell ’em it was you, right?” Travis asks, a little wary.

“No, no, course not, dude. I’m in the know. I know a guy. That’s all, Vaquero.” Ian takes his clothes into the bathroom.

“Cool. Hey! You mind if I get a beer?” Travis calls into the bathroom.

“They’re in the refrigerator—help yourselves,” Ian calls back.

“Fakes?” John asks.

“Huh?” asks Travis moving over to the mini refrigerator by the couch.

“Is that what he was selling?”

Travis just nods as he opens the refridgerator door. Setting the gin bottle on the top, he peers inside. Sure enough, the miracle cube is packed full of magic silver cans. Travis pulls out a beer and offers it to John who waves it off, then shutting the door he opens his can, doing some math in his head. Twenty times approximately fifty divided in two. “Twenty should set me straight for the month, dude,” he hollers at the bathroom door.

Coming back into the room in a red, blue and yellow Spanish soccer jersey and a pair of meticulously unkempt jeans, Ian remarks, “Yeah, and I could use it.”

John didn’t need false I.D.—he was older than Ian and Travis by about two years but says, “I might have some people who’d buy off you.”

“Cool,” says Ian.

“Can I get a cut?”

“Of course, dude. Totally.”

“Don’t tell ’em who we are,” adds Travis.

John just makes his “duh” face.

“I just wanna’ be sure,” Travis says, sipping from his beer. “I got a right to be paranoid.”

“Say, does Rachel still have hers?” Ian asks.

“Yep. She uses it everywhere.”

“It’s everywhere you wanna’ be,” Travis adds, resounding a television commercial with a big thumb’s up to Ian.

“We ready to go?” Ian asks.

“Nah. Le’me finish this,” Travis replies, sipping from his beer.

Ian nods and regards the refrigerator. “Four o’clock? That’s late enough to start,” he finishes, reaching for the door and pulling out two beers. Sitting down next to John, Ian hands him one. John regards it for a second, questioning whether he wants it, and then opens it. Almost on cue, all three pull out cigarettes and pass John’s silver zippo around. “Did you see Rachel last night?” Ian asks.

John just rolls his eyes and takes a swig of his beer.

“He’s pissed off,” Travis offers.

Ian smiles and looks at John, “Is she cheating on you or anything?”

“No,” John answers, annoyed.

Ian nods.

Looking around the room at Ian and Travis with that mischievous grin, John sticks his stomach out, swelling it almost into a ball, and begins stroking it. Travis immediately starts laughing. This time he was in on the joke.

“What?” asks Ian. He could tell something was up, that he was out of the loop.

“Touch it,” John says.

Smiling Ian looks to Travis for some clue as to what this is about, but Travis just smiles idly in return.

“Touch it,” John urges more seriously.

Reaching out warily and laughing from nervousness, Ian moves to put his hand on John’s stomach, but as soon as he was within a hair’s reach, John sucks it back in and throws his arms out, screaming manaically. Ian jerks his hand back and leaps in his seat while Travis howls in the background. “What the fuck?” Ian asks laughing.

John just shrugs.

“Did Rachel call you fat or something?”

“No.”

“You’re not fat, dude. You’re… stout…” Ian struggles with the words, trying to be honest, but not hurt his friend’s feelings.

“Thanks,” John replies curtly.

“What?” Ian asks.

John just drinks his beer, looking away and pretending to be hurt.

“C’mon man, what?”

Pushing his bottom lip out, John continues pouting.

Turning to Travis, Ian asks, “What’s up tonight?”

Travis sits up in his seat, suddenly excited, “You mean something’s actually going to happen tonight?”

Ian shrugs. “They’re havin’ another keg tonight,” he says, meaning the fraternity.

“Cool.”

“We could grab some free beer and then head downtown.”

“Let’s go to Lowrie’s.”

Ian and John both make faces.

“C’mon. It’s nickel night.”

Raising his eyebrows, Ian thinks about it. Nickel night usually proved to be fun. Lowrie’s was a dive bar. They catered—held a monopoly on, actually—the meat market in town. It was a kind of joke, too. When some poor soul who didn’t know his way around asked for directions to the nearest “happenin’ place,” they always got directions to Lowrie’s. Still though, on Thursday nights Lowrie’s sold everything for a nickel (with a five dollar cover charge). The basic object of nickel night (from the point of view of the attendant at any rate) was to drink enough to make-up for the cover, and then drink like a fish to see how good a deal you could get. The place usually packed it in on Thursday nights, especially when school was in session. The drinks were a nickel, but it took a half an hour to get one. Summer was different. If you got a table, or a booth preferably, the meat market was tolerable.

“C’mon, we haven’t done that in a while.” Travis enjoyed it the most of anyone in the pack. Of course, he was single, and though the women at Lowrie’s weren’t his type, it was fun to flirt or be leered at, or at the very least accomplish some leering. John and Nick never felt quite the same. Ian could sympathize.

“Let’s see what we all feel like later,” Ian offers in compromise.

“All right,” Travis says, leaning back. It was compromise enough to get them to think about it, and really he didn’t have his heart set on it anyway.

Looking at his empty can, John holds it up and looks to the other two. They’d finished smoking. “Ready?” he asks.

Travis and Ian reply by chugging the last of theirs and getting up to go. “Head ’em up and move ’em out,” Travis calls as the three of them shuffle out of the room. There was a trail to be blazed.

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