Farts Like Gold: 47 - it won't bake a pie

Lucy wasn't in the dining tent. Neither was Tony. In general, it seemed that the party had thinned out quite a bit. There wasn't anyone there I felt like talking to. I pulled a bottle of Scotch out of my office box and used a drizzle of it to rinse out an abandoned mug. I took the bottle and the mug with me and stepped out into the night.

The dryshack was crowded but oddly quiet. About a dozen people were huddled around Tony who seemed to be playing something on his bass. It was an electric bass and he didn't have an amp. I couldn't hear anything from where I was just inside tent. Lucy wasn't in the crowd.

I moved forward to just behind the circle of people listening to Tony. I still couldn't hear much but at least I could see his fingers move. Somehow that helped fill in the music. Everyone was chilled out and focussed on the quiet, oddly tinny bass licks Tony played. I stood behind them for a while, but there wasn't anything even vaguely comfortable left to sit on and so I left.

It wasn't raining any more but the wind regularly knocked sprays of wetness off the trees that towered above the far side of the shack. I didn't want to go back to the dining tent and to go back to my own tent would be to admit defeat. I walked alongside the dining tent. It glowed yellow in the darkness. The truck that Tony and I had driven up in was parked beside the cookbus. I put my mug and the Scotch bottle on the hood of the truck and leaned against the bumper. I was far enough away from the dining tent and dryshack for it to be properly dark. I leaned back and looked up. I couldn't see any stars but I could make out the silhouette of the treetops against the moon-washed clouds.

The folding door of the cookbus creaked open. Cassandra stood on the bottom step. "You lurking around my kitchen, again?" she said.

"Just enjoying the break in the rain," I said.

She poked her head out the door of the bus and looked up. "Any stars, yet?" she asked.

"Not yet, but I live in hope."

Cassandra swung down into the mud outside the bus. She walked over and leaned against the truck beside me. She looked up at the sky. "Hope's a good thing to have sometimes but it won't bake a pie."

I thought about what she said for a minute. "That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever," I said.

"Yeah, well, mystery, thy name is me, I guess," she said. "It's freezing out here. Let's go back inside." She pushed herself off the truck and waited for me.

I didn't move. "I'm not really in a party mood," I said.

She stood there for a minute, then said, "Well, what about the truck, then?"

"Yeah, why not. Tony probably stashed some cheese balls behind the seat for an emergency."

I got in the driver's side. Cassandra got in the passenger side. I was right about the cheese balls. There was a bag behind the seat. Cassie leaned forward while I pulled the seat down and fished them out. We drank scotch from my mug and shared them.

>> Farts Like Gold: 48