Re: quicklog: Atticus, Casper, Carver, Michael, Will
[Michael leaned back in when he heard Atticus talking about him. A stage whisper.] I can. Don't let me play.
[He was back in a jiffy with the bartender, who doled out beer and shots of whiskey for the party, setting them on a chair near the pool table. Michael picked up his personal glass of pisswasser and sipped it before downing a long, cool swallow. Yep, great idea.]
The last person to leave is paying for beer. [Cheerful, and with everything already very much on his tab.] I intend to win this hundred meter dash.
[Michael smiled and joked a lot for a supposedly dead guy. Obliviousness aside, he had a deeper, longer look than he'd had in high school. He'd been around and seen a few things in the ten years since he'd seen these people, but it was the very old and the very recent that weighed heaviest on him. He did his level best to laugh and not think about either one, since there was nothing he could do about them now.]
[Sanguine.] Don't appoint me responsible adult. You'll only regret it. [It was a joke, but it came with an unfortunate, unintended tinge of realness. He hadn't been the leader of their little band, but he had been one of its earliest members. He'd seen the rest of them come on. And, afterward, he'd felt responsible for not working harder to break it all up when it started going south, those last few months.
He hoisted his pool cue over his shoulder. It didn't seem like Will was going to break, so Michael pointed to himself, as if he'd been nominated, and then lined up his pool cue. He had done this a time or two in college, drinking with post-grads and betting them horrors over games of pool. 'Lose and submit your worst paper to the New England Journal of Medicine,' that sort of high stakes thing.
He broke, then leaned back, watching a ball roll directly into a side pocket.] Stripes for me, gents. [He took his second shot, as allotted by the gods of pool, but got nowhere near the pocket.] Alright, Atticus. Loser buys the winner a six-pack of Mexican coca-cola. None of this corn syrup bullshit.