The girls’ high-heels clattered on the slate disturbing birds as they ran ahead, hand in hand, swallowed by the darkness of the path down through the trees.
I adjusted the weight of a carton of beer, watched the tail-lights of our cab twinkle and disappear up the street. Took two steps.
A looming figure appeared from behind the fence.
Despite a stoop to his shoulders he towered above me. In the crook of his right elbow he held a large watermelon, in his left hand he clutched a walking-stick. Through my yellow Hunter S. Thompson shooting glasses and because the LSD had taken hold, he looked like an extremely tall three-legged pregnant hunchback.
—Can you help me with this melon son? he rasped at me, exuding a mist of second-hand store, damp cardboard and shaving cream.
Struggling to focus I looked at my carton of beer, then back at him.
Shaking my head I made my way down the path.
—Is this where the sex party is? he called after me.
—This is the number on the invitation dumb-ass, I say under my breath. —But not a destination for the aged.
At last year’s annual ‘Live Sex’ party we found a dead guy slumped in the neighbours garden, a pretty gay boy with blonde spiked hair and glitter on his cheeks. Someone revived him, or so I hear. The year before that a hairdresser got so wasted on drugs she began to get friendly with the household dog…sexually friendly…and the whole room looked on in disbelief. One year I was the unfortunate victim of a Red Mitsubishi – a notoriously bad batch of ecstasy tablets. Several people died, overheated, cooked inside.
