Vegas and Pete: the series

Hot Pot at the Spa

POV Pete

Porsche sat with his head lolling slightly to the side and his leg up on Pol's knee. I thought all the noise around us would have woken him up by now, but it didn't. Arm and Pol had already started cooking the meat and if Porsche didn't wake up soon he wasn't going to be able to eat anything.

I'd come with Khun Kinn to the spa but hadn't gotten in myself. I was still wearing the normal uniform while Arm and Pol had gotten in the sauna with Khun Tankun so they were dressed in the spa's gray robes. I'd had to lug Porsche back to the table by myself. He now sat with his arm still raised up near my shoulder and I was trying to wake him up by waving an ear pick with smelling salts on it under his nose. But just like nearly everything else Porsche is asked to do, he was being stubborn about it.

"When is Porsche gonna be conscious?" Arm asks, watching him from his seat at our round dining table. It was set up for about eight guests. The table had a crisp white cloth on it and the big pot in the center was steaming away.

Pol, already with utensils in hand, says, "I'm starving, this smells so nice."

It truly does. The smell of expensive meat cooking was making my mouth water, but Porsche still hadn't moved a muscle. I could feel my stomach growling and I irritatedly waved the ear pick in the vicinity of Porsche's nose. I had been doing it for what felt like half an hour, but was probably only a few minutes.

Suddenly Porsche jolted, and let out a scared noise like someone waking up from a bad dream. I pull back and his arm moves from my shoulder.

"What's with you?" Pol asks Porsche chidingly.

I flex my shoulder and set the ear pick down on the table. "There he goes, my friend." I say, watching Porsche with a smile as he pulls his leg off Pol's lap and shifts in his seat. His eyes take a second to focus. "What's up, tough guy?" I tease him, finally sitting down in my seat. "Look at you."

"And your pale lips." Arm kids.

"Such a tough one." Pol piles on.

Porsche still looks bewildered and we all share a hearty laugh at his expense. "Where am I?" Porsche asks, seeming genuinely confused.

"Disneyland!" I shout raising my arms up like a presenter on a game show. Then I drop the act. "Are you crazy?" I ask him. It's not like we'd even gone that far; the restaurant was right in the same building.

For some reason Arm launches into what sounds like a Mandarin poem that I don't understand. "Don't judge a book by its cover." He finishes and we all stare at him like he's grown a third head.

"What did he say?" Porsche asks and I parrot the same question back at him laughing at the weirdness of it all.

"We're at a restaurant in the same building." Arm explains. "They changed your clothes, look at it." He points down to the robe Porsche is now wearing. With that now all summed up I tell Porsche to eat up, but he ignores it and asks where Khun Tankun was.

I gesture with my head over to the table in the room just across the hallway from us. "There, he's in that zone with Khun Kinn." The walls were made of mostly glass with some decorative slim wood bars in front of them. The room itself had no door so anyone could come and go from the hallway as they liked. Porsche turns around to look into the room and I pick up my chopsticks and hungrily eye our meal. "That's good, if they were here, I wouldn't be able to eat." I say. I was so tense around Khun Kinn I probably wouldn't be able to get a single morsel down without choking.

Pol agrees with me. "Hey it's boiling," He says. "I'm gonna lift it up now. I can't take it anymore." I know how he feels. Considering the meager meals we get in the dorms this was the height of luxury.