“It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risk everything.”
Frank ordered his third shot of mescal and stared up at the television screens. Quite a show the boys were putting on.
After returning from the car and the white powder, the girl was all the way live. Frank watched her gesturing and smoking and laughing and carrying on.
Belle of the ball.
And Bryce and Clayton—and now Larry—were being quite attentive to the pretty young lady. Larry had a certain ghostlike quality on the screen.
The longer Frank watched, the madder he got. He could see the girl periodically fading, her limbs getting heavy and her head starting to droop, and every time she began to sink, one of the young lions would hunch over for a moment and then straighten up and put his fist under the girl’s lovely sculpted nose and she would sniff up some powder off his hand and look around guiltily while Clayton and Bryce rocked out with something resembling glee.
Call it glee with an edge.
An agenda.
Frank watched them go through this routine a few times. It soon became obvious that without the cocaine propping her up, this young woman would be a gelatinous mass incapable of looking after herself.
Frank knocked back the shot of cactus juice, got up from the barstool and started towards the upper level, his legs heavy and the rest of him anxious, despite the booze. He wanted to get the hell out of this place and this state so bad he could taste it.
He needed to have a talk with those guys.
And that girl.
Especially the girl.
Was she aware they’d dosed her drink?
Did it matter?
It did.
Mattered to him.
Frank walked around the outside edge of the dance floor, bodies flailing wildly now and the music getting louder and faster. The mirror ball spun. Shards of light danced across the floor and scraped the walls, strafing the gyrating crowd as the band segued into the Door’s “End of the Night.”
Even with the air conditioning, the body heat coming off the crowd was intense.
Frank was sweating.
He started up the steps to the upper tier.
Larry popped out of the crowd like a specter.
Beyond Larry, Frank saw Cook and Parker going out the upper-level exit, the girl propped up against their arms and walking poorly.
Poorly?
She could barely move without help.
“Bus service for Rancho Deluxe now boarding at gate seventeen,” Larry said, idiot grin on his face.
Seemed to be over his grief.
(End of Chapter 26)
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