Got a Match?

-Sorry, this one is a little longer...

The scent of clinking glasses and fizzing champagne drifted buoyantly through the rich, evening air, caressing the easy laughter and shameless gaiety of the several dozen guests still smiling clumsily beneath their cardboard hats. The New Year had arrived hours before to kisses and squeals of exaggerated delight but the flow of cheap wine and conversation had continued unabated throughout the morning hours of the still black night. Leonard leaned impressively against the canary-cream wall, his fingers drumming lazily against his empty glass as he surveyed the chattering room. He was wearing a tailored, pale grey suit with the shirt unbuttoned beneath the collar, his sharp yet subtle posture contrasting sharply with that of the other revelers now hanging off of each other in various states of intoxication. Though he had ingested beyond his fair due, he had no disposition to drunken extroversion. He sighed tragically and checked his watch.

On the far side of the room picking at his shredded napkin sat Audy. Barely beyond his teens, he was wearing a wrinkled white jacket and an eager, quivering expression that seemed to jog around his mismatched features. Bits of green paper lay scattered around his black canvas sneakers, the left of which seemed to have succumbed to a violent twitch, and was now tapping compulsively against the pale yellow carpet. He was sitting alone beside the bar, where a tanned young man with an unfortunate slur was doing his best to talk a tired looking brunette home with him.

“Is that so?”, the brunette feigned through a poorly stifled yawn.

“Oh yeah, ya know I did two tours, I did. Nasty ‘tuff that. Real nasty but I did it. I ‘hanly wish I hada known ya’ back then, Ida shot ‘em all fah you. Just fah you, ya’ so sweet.”

At this mention Audy’s bobbing head shot upwards.

“You were in the war, were you?”

The tanned man looked down, surprised at Audy’s presence, and then annoyed.

“Yeah so what?,” He turned back to the brunette whose gaze was now drifting longingly around the room, “Like I was sayin - ”.

“I was in the war too you know,” Audy said, rising to his feet and absent-mindedly knocking his chair into another group of party goers, spilling champagne down his side. “Yeah, yeah… over in Kunduz right, right near Tajikistan…”.

“Listen buddy thas really somethin’ special, great ta hear it, ok. Now willya leave us alone? Can’t ya see tha lady and I are a tryin’ ta talk hea?” The brunette to whom he was referring was still searching wildly around the room, clutching desperately at her own champagne glass. Audy continued.

“I still remember the first man I ever killed. He wasn’t even even a man really, just just a boy, but so was I right. Right?” He laughed nervously, the corners of his mouth twitching, his foot stamping double time. “Our convoy was ambushed j- just a few minutes out of base you know, and we lost some you know but we took them worse, and… and we came upon this one kid…k- kid my age, you know, and I was so nervous I just rushed it, I…I…I don’t even remember the actual thing ha ha you know, I was so nervous and it was done. The next one I didn’t even get to think about, you know, already so automatic, right?”

He was so agitated at this point that his foot twitch had developed into a full body shake and he was positively hopping back and forth, his hands wringing the balled up remains of a green cocktail napkin between them, grinning painfully beneath his wrinkled and champagne-stained dinner jacket. The brunette had flitted away to the far side of the room and was whispering conspiratorially with another woman of about her age and get-up, leaving the tanned man to stare dangerously after her.

“The second was really lacking in poetic significance,” Audy continued, his inflection darting up and down like a rabbit caught between two snares. “Ha ha… you got a match?”

The tanned man turned coldly back on Audy.

“You little shit. I’m gonna throtal the fuggen piss outta you - ”.

Across the room Leonard watched as a man standing beside the bar threw himself with the ease of a drunk upon a curious young man in a wrinkled jacket. Their bodies met and seemed to embrace for a moment, before the former, apparently succumbing to the booze, slouched down in the young man’s arms. The young man propped his unconscious fellow up against the foot of the bar, and bent in close so that his hands were hidden from Leonard’s view. He withdrew a moment later with a glint of steel, revealing a dark red stain that was spreading slowly over the drunken man’s abdomen. He slumped down beside him, and laid his wrinkled head upon the other’s cold shoulder.

Leonard sighed again. He had always hated these parties. Looking around, he saw nothing but cheap actors and pretentious suits; self obsessed, spoiled children. He wondered what they would do if anything real ever happened to them, if anything out of real life ever found its way into their privileged, drunken lives. He laughed coldly to himself.

Back beside the bar a crowd had started to gather. At the sight of the tan man’s stain a poor woman had fainted, and the room seemed to be ringing hollowly with the sudden emptiness of their forgotten laughter. Someone was shouting, and the curious man was dragged to his feet and held fast by several men made angry and brave by the night’s celebrations. The brunette had returned, sobbing without tears over the tan man’s body as another man held the dripping red knife beside her head, while still another dialed frantically into the telephone behind the bar. Leonard yawned in disgust. Dramatic children indeed.