111.

   The party blasted into the night. We ate, we drank, we sang, we danced. Late, when all was drunk and foggy, the captain found our table and slammed herself down. “I couldn’t help overhear the Big Guy’s lecture today.”, she laughed. She had ascended that narrow stage of eloquence all of us negotiate when we are three sheets to the wind headed for a reef. Articulation can be brilliant just before the fall, with razor sharp wit and flashing metaphor. “Oliver, the world is and always will be a dark ocean where survival of the fittest is the only law scratched on the stone tablets. Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. We’re really no different from ants. Two great armies that face each other on the battlefield are the same whether they be insects or men.” Then her heel caught on the stage curtain. The booze had got the upper hand. Her eyes blurred. Her words slurred. She suddenly clasped her hand over her mouth and hiccoughed. A thin string of vomit slipped through her fingers and into her glass. She lifted her glass trying to regain her composure completely unaware of the little packet of puke that wiggled and sparkled in the light like a jellyfish. “To us!”
   But the darkness had descended. She sagged in her chair. A scowl crossed her face. “I’m boring you.” Glares stabbed at us across the table. Then suddenly she was back and as all professional drunks do, she gathered her self-confidence around her shoulders like a moth eaten mink and crowned her face with a proud smile. She lurched to her feet and with a final “Fuck you all! Bottoms up!”, downed her drink and staggered off into the party.
   “That’s a good woman.”, said Conrad .