Rock All Night

79




My goodbye to Shanna wasn’t exactly the warmest in the history of our friendship. We switched to slightly less incendiary topics – like all the drama surrounding her sex life, which was always a conversational winner with her – and then I saw her off to her taxi.

“You know I wasn’t trying to bust your balls, right?” she slurred before she climbed into the cab. She’d had a couple of ‘the world’s best hangover cures’ by the end of breakfast, not to mention a few mimosas. “You know I’m just worried about you, right?”

“Yeah,” I grumped, though I said it more to get rid of her than out of any sort of real agreement.

“My original advice still stands.”

“Which was what?”

“Go live life – and write the f*ckin’ article.”

“That’s what I’m doing. Well… except for the writing part.”

“Yeah, I know. But I have a collorary… corror…”

“Corollary?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” she said, and pointed at me like I’d said the magic word. “Little f*cker’s hard to say when you’re drunk… coro…lary…”

“Which is…?” I said impatiently.

“What? Oh, yeah – go live life… but make sure it’s actually real life.”

I frowned. “Versus what?”

“Versus a fantasy.” She said it like vershus a fantasy as she stumbled towards the cab. “Fantasies are awesome – f*ck yeah they’re awesome – but sometimes you gotta know when to come home and write the f*ckin’ article.”

“What if real life can be a fantasy?” I challenged her.

She paused, halfway into the cab.

“If you figure that one out, let me know how to do it,” she said, toppled into the backseat, and waved as the cab took off into the sea of San Francisco traffic.