Fit to be Fried

I awoke at 9:30 am the following morning to the realization that the pounding in my brain was at least in part emanating from the door of my hotel room. I looked around. Bryan and Schwarzenbach’s sister were already gone. When I answered the door, the face I saw didn’t surprise me one bit.
“You seen Bryan?” a very pissed Schwarzenbach asked me, flanked by two of the bigger tank mechanics from our platoon.
“Not since last night.” I didn’t mention that I’d last seen his sister at that very same moment. Schwarzenbach poked his head in my door to look around, and when satisfied of Bryan s’ absence, took off with his two cronies to resume his search. As for me, breakfast seemed like a better idea by the second. I changed my clothes and packed up my belongings, then headed down to the fast-checkout box to drop off my key, then on to the breakfast buffet, where I ran into my traveling companions once again.
They told me that Hopper and Raye would be heading home with some other members of their platoon, and Keaton and Katt asked me to join them for the day in Las Vegas.
“You mentioned something yesterday about never really seeing anything the last time you got to go” said Katt. It actually wasn’t true, I saw plenty… of strippers and hole in the wall bars. I remember not straying far from Fremont Street and public urination on cars. However, given the chance to see more of the place, I gladly accepted. Hell, what else was I going to do, they were my ride home.
The day passed beautifully, we drank and watched free shows and stole ashtrays in every casino along the strip, played video games in the biggest arcade I’d ever seen, and embarrassed the living hell out of Katt in the mall inside of Caesars Palace. Keaton and I started it off by walking down the wrong moving-walkway, when Katt caught up to us she tripped and nearly took a header into the guardrail. We hadn’t planned it, but she laughed it off with good humor that she would later regret, as Keaton and I snorted the perfumes and soaps in Bath and Body Works. We proceeded on our quest too make asses of ourselves by taking over Kay-Bee toys and chasing each other around with Light-sabers and Remote-Control cars. We decided o end the night with a little tradition from Katt’s childhood, the trip to the dinner buffet at Circus-Circus.
After the buffet, it was beginning to get dark, and it was time to start heading home. On the way out of the building, however, something caught Katt’s eye, and though I didn’t know it at the time, it would change my life forever.
It was a balloon. Katt said she wanted it.
Keaton gave an amused nod to the balloon, which was part of an arrangement outside the convention hall, but brushed it off that she was joking. I decided to take action. I whipped out my keys and slowly walked back to the balloon.
A minute later, I was blazing past Katt and Keaton, yelling, “RUN!” at the top of my lungs, balloon in tow. A conventioneer had spotted me stealing the thing and was now trying to get security after me. We high-tailed it to the parking garage, giggling like idiots, and sped off into the night. On the way home, I donned the paper hat I’d acquired from the Krispy Kreme in NewYork-NewYork, and got an even bigger smile out of Katt. It was quickly becoming one of my favorite pastimes, and it hung heavy in my heart to think that she was my friends girlfriend, and not mine.
It didn’t for long. They stayed together about a month after the Ball, and after trading IM ID’s and spending Thanksgiving and Christmas together as friends, Katt and I started dating. By the time the next ball we were newlyweds. The moral? Don’t ditch your sick date to go drink with your buddies. I can honestly say I enjoyed the next two birthday balls a lot more, in the company of my wife, than I did my first, but what the hell, I guess that one didn’t turn out too bad after all.