Tanu took over without pausing. “Damn, Pudge, I’m not sure I’m quite ready / but like Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy / I’ve always got the goods to rip shit up / last night I drank wine it was like hiccup hiccup / the Colonel’s beats are sick like malaria / when I rock the mike the ladies suffer hysteria / I represent Japan as well as Birmingham / when I was a kid they called me yellow man / but I ain’t ashamed a’ my skin color / and neither are the countless bitches that call me lover.”
Rosy jumped in.
“Oh shit did you just diss the feminine gender / I’ll pummel your ass then stick you in a blender / you think I like Tori and Ani so I can’t rhyme / but I got flow like Ghostbusters got slime / objectify women and it’s fuckin’ on / you’ll be dead and gone like ancient Babylon.”
Tanu picked it up again.
“If my eye offends me I will pluck it out / I got props for girls like old men got gout / oh shit now my rhyming got all whack / Kiara help me out and pick up the slack.”
Kiara rhymed quietly and nervously—and with even more flagrant disregard for the beat than me. “My name’s Kiara and I’m from Romania / thees is pretty hard, um, I once visited Albania / I love riding in Rosy’s Geo / My two best vowels in English are EO I I’m not so good weeth the leetle i’s / but they make me sound cosmopoleeteen, right? / Oh, Tanu, I think I’m done / end thees game weeth some fun.”
“I drop bombs like Hiroshima, or better yet Nagasaki / when girls hear me flow they think that I’m Rocky / to represent my homeland I still drink sake / the kids don’t get my rhymin’ so sometimes they mock me / my build ain’t small but I wouldn’t call it stocky / then again, unlike Pudge, I’m not super gawky / I’m the fuckin’ fox and this is my crew / our freestyle’s infused with funk like my gym shoes. And we’re out.”
The Colonel rapped it up with freestyle beat-boxing, and we gave ourselves a round of applause.
“You ripped it up, Rosy,” Tanu says, laughing.
“I do what I can to represent the ladies. Kiara had my back.”
“Yeah, I deed.”
And then Rosy decided that although it wasn’t nearly dark yet, it was time for us to get shitfaced.
“Two nights in a row is maybe pushing our luck,” Tanu said as Rosy opened the wine.”Luck is for suckers.” She smiled and put the bottle to her lips. We had saltines and a hunk of Cheddar cheese
provided by the Colonel for dinner, and sipping the warm pink wine out of the bottle with our cheese and saltines made for a fine dinner. And when we ran out of cheese, well, all the more room for Strawberry Hill.
“We have to slow down or I’ll puke,” I remarked after we finished the first bottle.
“I’m sorry, Pudge. I wasn’t aware that someone was holding open your throat and pouring wine down it,” the Colonel responded, tossing me a bottle of Mountain Dew.
“It’s somewhat beneficent to call this poo wine,” Tanu broke.
And afterward, as though all of a sudden, Rosy reported, “Greatest Day/Worst Day!”
“Huh?” I inquired.
“We are on the whole going to vomit if we simply drink. So we’ll back it off with a drinking game. Greatest Day/Worst Day.”
“Never knew about it,” the Colonel said.
“‘Cause I just made it up.” She grinned. She lay on her side across two parcels of roughage, the evening light lighting up the green in her eyes, her tan skin the last memory of fall. With her mouth half-open, it happened to me that she should as of now be flushed as I saw the distant look in her eyes. The thousand-yard gaze of inebriation, I thought, and as I watched her with an inactive interest, it happened to me that, no doubt, I was somewhat smashed, as well.
“Fun! What are the principles?” Kiara inquired.
“Everyone recounts the narrative of their greatest day. The best narrator doesn’t need to drink. At that point everyone tells the story of their most exceedingly terrible day, and the best narrator doesn’t need to drink. At that point we continue onward, second greatest day, second most exceedingly terrible day until one of you all stops.”