Paradise Lot: Interludes (Dionysus's Story)

Chapter 4 - Drunken Dwarves and Frolicking Fairies

I staggered out of 3B and looked down over the railing at a scene that was more appropriate for a rave than a hotel lobby. Dwarves were falling all over themselves, giggling in low baritone guffaws, fairies slow danced as they hovered anywhere from three to ten feet off the ground, each engaged in a drunken back and forth sway like live ornaments hanging on invisible strings. And EightBall did what any drunk teenager does—he dry heaved in a potted plant.

The only creature that looked half OK was Penemue and that was because he had spent his last fourteen years of mortality—and forty thousand years of immortality—drunk off his face.

The angel gave me a thumbs up.

I gave him a half smile back as I tried to walk down the stairs. Who knew that going downstairs would be so difficult?

I stumbled over to Penemue who rubbed EightBall's back, encouraging him to let it all out. The boy dry-spat into the potted plant and lifted his head when I approached. "Jean-Luc! Did you get some?" He lifted his hand as to high-five me, but lost his balance and fell flat on his back.

"Hello to you, too," I said, then asked the twice-fallen angel, "What's going on?"

"The boy and I are talking."

"Yeah," EightBall slurred, "Penemue was going to tell me some great and terrible secret that ... that ... what did it do?"

"Marred my soul. A secret that weights so heavy on my heart I feel it will break me lest I let it go—"

"No Penemue. Now is not the time," I said.

"Now is the only time we have."

I shook my head and, pointing an unsteady finger in his face, said, "Don't you think it's weird how drunk we all are when none of us have been drinking?"

"Speak for yourself." Penemue pulled out his bottle of Drambuie.

"No, I need you sober." I looked at the half empty bottle. "Relatively speaking. What's going on?"

"We're drunk."

"Oh come on ..." I said, the words stretching out of me, "You gotta know more than that! You're the great Penemue. The angel who knows the hearts of man, the fallen one who taught humanity how to read and write, and my best friend."

Penemue looked down at me as his eyes started to gloss over with tears, "I'm your best friend?"

I nodded. "Yeah, man! I mean angel. Yeah, angel! You are. The bestest friend I ever had."

"Bestest is not a word."

"It is to me," I slurred. "Bestest! I love you, angel."

"I love you, too, human," he said hugging me.

EightBall, still lying on the ground like a beached whale, pointed up at us and said, "Hey, what about me? I love you guys, too!"

"And we love you." The three of us engaged in a three-way hug. Well, we tried to, but given that EightBall was flat on his back, it came out more like fumbled accessories of limbs.

Penemue wiped away a tear and said, "And it is because I love you EightBall that I must inform you that—"

"That he's buying you a PlayStation," I interrupted, shaking my head. Then in a stage whisper that I meant to be a whisper-whisper, said, "Now's not the time. We got to figure out what's going on."

Penemue shook his head, "But—"

"A PlayStation Four, right? You're not going to cheap out and get me a Three are you?" He looked disappointed.