I sat up. “Is she sick?”
“She’s drunk. Wasted. And she’s throwing up. Heaving. It’s gross.”
“Okay, I’ll be right down. Give me a second.”
“Daddy-o?”
I was on my feet, searching for my pants. “What?”
“I’m really drunk too. I mean, really wasted too.”
“What? Well, don’t move. Don’t drive. Stay there! Just stay there!”
“Whatever you say, Daddy-o.”
*
Mindy was on her hands and knees in the parking lot, a small pool of vomit in front of her. A streetlight was bathing everything in a bluish-white glow, and in that glow, my daughter looked unearthly, a zombie dog on the prowl. Karen was standing over her, gently petting the top of her head. Under normal circumstances, I would have been heartened by this, applauded her big sister efforts, but Karen had her shirt off and was standing there in a black bra.
“Really hot out,” she said when she saw me.
“Put your shirt on! What is wrong with you?”
“She’s airing her tits out,” Mindy said, wiping her mouth with the bottom of her shirt.
“Yeah,” Karen said. “Men don’t know what it’s like. Tits sweat.”
“Put it on.”
“She loves showing her tits off,” Mindy said.
Karen started struggling back into her blouse. “You’re the one who took your shirt off in the bar.”
“You took…?” I walked closer, giving the vomit pool a wide berth. “Get up. Stand up. Watch where you’re walking. Don’t step in it.”
From of the corner of my eye, I spotted a very short man wearing a tight black T-shirt and a plethora of gold chains. In a heavy Spanish accent, he shouted, “Hello!” and smiled.
I jumped. “Who’s he?”
“Manny,” Mindy said. She was sitting on the ground, eyes deranged.
“Who?”
“Manny,” Mindy said, “He bought us tequila. So I was going to have sex with him. It’s the least I can do. He bought us a lot of tequila.”
Manny nodded his confirmation, smile widening. “Hello!”
I discerned from his size and just-happy-to-be-here smile that he didn’t pose a real threat. “Thank you, Manny, for walking them here,” I said. “I can take it from here, though. I’m their father. You can go now. Gracias.”
“I think he wants a blow job,” Mindy said. She heaved air, a dry gravelly sound. “He implied that at the bar. He bought us tequila. Shots.”
“Be quiet. Don’t talk. Just be quiet.” I turned back to Manny. He kept smiling and nodding in a way that suggested English wasn’t even a second language. “Vamos,” I said. “Gracias though. Gracias very, muy mucho.”
“Dad, he’s not going anywhere until one of us blows him,” Mindy said. “You might have to do it,” she said to Karen.
“My blowing days are over,” Karen said. Her eyes were closed, and she was wobbling, her arms out to her sides like she was surfing.
“Hello!”
“Dad,” Mindy said. “Would you mind blowing him? Take one for the team? I don’t think he’d mind.”
That was it. I pointed at Manny. “Go! Beat it! Get out of here. Vamos! Run!”
The tone of my voice did not require a UN translator. Manny’s smile quickly disappeared. He gave the girls one last furtive look and skulked away.
“And I thought he was the one,” Mindy said.
“Get up. Come on, it’s late.”
We crossed the lot slowly, Mindy stopping every few feet to dry heave and then marvel at the night sky. “So many stars. So many stars. We don’t have them in New York. We have, like, nothing in New York. I don’t think we even have a sky. It’s like a big nothing.”
“A void,” Karen said.
“A what?” Mindy said.
“A void.”
“Yes! A void! That’s it! There’s nothing above us there. Nothing above us, just, like, nothing.”
“That’s weird when you think about it,” Karen said. Then they both started laughing very hard for some reason.
“Have you done drugs?” I asked.
“No, why? Do you have any?” Karen asked.
“Keep moving. Both of you.”
Just outside the hotel door, Mindy came to a complete stop, stuck her neck out like an ostrich, and threw up. This started an ugly but not unpredictable chain reaction. Karen covered her mouth, gagged, then threw up an amazing volume of spew, some of which splattered on my pants. Surrounded now by an inlet sea of puke, with vomit shrapnel embedded in my jeans, my own gag reflex, which was historically at threat-level orange, kicked in. I ralphed right alongside my daughters.
“Family! Family!” Mindy yelled, pumping her arms upward.
“USA!” Karen screeched.
“I feel bad Mom and Ethan are missing all this,” Mindy said, wiping her mouth again with her shirt. “We do so little together as a family.”
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, disgusted. The night had devolved from making love with Mary to this. I opened the door wide. “Get inside. Come on. Take the damn stairs. The stairs. Over to the right. Hurry. Second floor. Come on, I don’t want anyone to see us. You’re going to my room.”