• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

I shrugged. “Everyone lies from time to time. It’s only human.”

Alphus mimed a laugh.

Ridley, who is scarcely ever serious, grew emphatic in his signing. “Alphus doesn’t lie, and he has an infallible knack for knowing when others are lying. He can beat any lie detector cold.”

We all drank from our drinks. I proposed a little test. I would make a series of statements and he would indicate with his thumb whether they were true or false.

“My mother loved chocolates,” I began.

Thumb down. Indeed my mother was allergic to chocolate.

“I like to listen to Broadway musicals.”

Thumb down again.

“My favorite color combination is black and orange.”

Thumb up. Something about the colors of Lord Baltimore touch me deeply.

“I don’t miss my wife and daughter.”

Thumb down. A bit of a softball, that one.

Ridley signed to me covertly. “Tell him you don’t want him to leave.”

I shook my head. “That’s not true. But it’s not false, either.”

“Try him.”

I did. Alphus pondered for a long moment. His thumb went up, went down, and then went sideways.

“Amazing,” I muttered to myself, half thinking that Alphus could be a very effective investigative tool.

The remainder of the evening is something of a blur. I vaguely remember the three of us holding hands in a circle and careering around the open parts of the room in a silly, sick-making dance. To that music. I like Ravel very much, but I will never be able to listen to Bolero without getting the equivalent of an auditory hangover.

I’m afraid the damage included a vase Diantha valued (it had belonged to her mother), a lamp of some antiquity, and stains on the carpet that look to be permanent.

I ended up drinking directly from the gin bottle while my companions shared a fifth or two of what Alphus called “industrial whiskey.” I remember him urinating into the fireless fireplace. I remember Ridley telling us — his mask of gaiety momentarily askew — of a young woman who had left him for a burly guy with no brains and a deep voice. I remember finally the bliss of silence as my friends fell asleep, or lost consciousness. Ridley lay down on the sofa and Alphus curled in an armchair while I managed, just, to climb the stairs holding on to the banister and, fully clothed, fall into bed.

So I woke up with the mother of all hangovers. I moved slowly. I took off my clothes and dumped them on a chair. In robe and slippers, I made it to the bathroom where, after prodigious urination, I showered in warm and then, slowly, cold water, placating the Calvinist within. And feeling marginally the better for it.

Indeed, I remembered waking up in the middle of the night in the middle of my self-induced coma knowing where I had seen Stella Fox before she made the news. But now I couldn’t recall it. I could only hope that, like a piece of paper missing in the jumble of my desk, it would turn up.

Neither Ridley nor Alphus was where I had left them the night before. Ridley, I assumed, had gone home and Alphus up to his leopard-proof hammock. Still slowly, still hurting, I made coffee. I make enough for two of us as Alphus likes several cups, which he takes with milk and sugar, to start off his day. He also goes through a lot of bananas, which I bring home in large bunches.

Presently, I heard him upstairs in the same bathroom I use, as the more luxurious one doesn’t have a shower. Other than enough hair to clog the drains and a heady mist of deodorant, he leaves few traces of himself behind.

We also have a morning routine of sorts. None the worse for drink, he came downstairs, signed “hello” a bit sheepishly, and made a face that is his equivalent of a smile. Per usual, he turned on National Public Radio, though, like myself, he prefers BBC when he can get it. He poured and doctored his own coffee, peeled a banana, unsheathed the Bugle, and checked the headlines.

With some excitement, he turned to show me the front page. There, above the fold, next to a not very flattering picture of myself, was the headline: “Museum Ponders Plans to Make Neanderthals White.