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The party isn’t actually fun. It’s just sad. A lot of the stuff the gang does is maybe just sad.
But whatever, Mac thinks dismissively. The prank thing turned out great. Better than they could have anticipated. Dee had really fallen for it-- she’d banged that first fake manager guy even though he was disgusting, and for real thought she was going on TV, and easily gotten self-righteous over her brother. It’s maybe their best prank ever, Mac figures. He can’t think of anything they’ve executed better.
Eventually everyone funnels out of the bar. Eventually it’s just Mac, Frank, Charlie, and a huge fucking mess.
“Alright, you got this covered? I gotta go,” Mac says, grabbing his jacket.
“What? Are you serious? You’re not going to help me clean up?” Charlie demands.
“No, dude. It’s Charlie work,” he dismisses. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay buddy?” And he’s out before Charlie can protest further.
He stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets. Starts on the walk home. No, he figures. It really wasn’t that fun of a party. It was just loud. And most of the people there-- none of the gang even knew them, since they were just actors Frank had hired to sell the whole thing.
And Dennis got that look in his eye. Flashes of light, glinting, reflecting Mac’s own guilt back at him. Guilt for leaving Dennis out when he knows damn well that neglecting the guy is just about the worst possible crime against him.
Yeah. Guilt. One of Mac’s most intimate acquaintances.
He draws his jacket tighter around himself. Lets it fully cover his Joke’s On Dee tee shirt.
When Dennis smiles for real, usually, his mouth is closed. Tonight he was baring his teeth in a hazy white grin.
Mac makes it to their apartment. Lets himself into the building, heads up the stairs. Almost braces himself for what he’s going to see when he opens the door.
But the apartment is empty. Dark. Silent.
“Dennis?”
As if in response, rain ticks its way onto the glass of their windows.
“Dennis,” he says again for no real reason. He takes his jacket and shoes off. Locks the door.
He doesn’t bother with a light. There’s enough coming in from the street lights outside. Kind of impossible to escape it in the city. When he and Dennis were teenagers, he remembers, they used to drive and drive and drive until they could see stars. Then they’d park. Turn on some music. Pass a joint back and forth until they were dry-eyed and giggly. And then they would make fun of Dee and Charlie and whoever else. They’d complain about their parents. They’d bitch about school. They’d talk about their favorite songs and the best kind of cookie and how Dennis was excited to go to college. Hours and hours and hours, it would take, and they were somehow never finished with their conversations even then.
Mac nudges his roommate’s door open. “Den?”
The bed is disheveled. Dennis always ends up sleeping diagonal if he’s in a bed alone. Dashes of moonlight or starlight or streetlight-light flit through the window, haloing his pinewood hair. His face is smushed into the side of a pillow. His foot is hanging off the bed.
His foot is hanging off the bed.
Mac frowns. Waits for his eyes to adjust to the darkness a little better so he can see, for real, what’s going on. Dennis is very very fussy about just about everything. He wouldn’t be able to sleep with his foot hanging off the bed, right? That’s not normal.
Hesitantly, Mac steps forward into Dennis’ room. Uses the meager light of his phone screen as a flashlight.
Empty bottle of whiskey. There we go.
He sighs. At least it’s not crack or ketamine or something. At least it’s just booze.
If Dennis is passed out, Mac figures, he doesn’t have to really worry about waking him up. So he goes the rest of the way to the bed, puts Dennis’ leg back under the blanket, makes sure the guy can breathe, and checks his pulse. He doesn’t really know why he did that last thing. Maybe just to make sure Dennis didn’t actually kill himself, like Mac had joked about earlier.
Stupid joke, he thinks, tucking the top of the blanket closer around Dennis’ shoulders. He leaves the room. Keeps the door ajar just in case.
+
Considering the empty bottle of whiskey, Mac almost doesn’t expect Dennis to come out of his room the next morning. He showers, gets dressed, gels his hair back, and goes to get a bowl of cereal. By the time Dennis wanders his way into the kitchen, it’s almost time to leave for the bar.
Wordlessly, he turns to the coffee maker. Starts brewing it, his travel mug at the ready.
Mac watches. Blinks. Figures Dennis must not be too hungover after all.
“So I had this idea,” he says, putting his spoon and empty bowl in the sink. “A way to get new business to the bar. What if we, like, catfish a bunch of lonely assholes on the internet, and then when it comes time to meet up with them, we suggest meeting at Paddy’s-- then they’ll come, and get stood up, and they’ll be all sad, and they’ll end up just drinking and drinking and drinking all the sadness away, and we’ll make a shit ton of money, and also they’ll be lonely and stuff so I bet they’ll want to bang us ‘cause they’ll be that desperate.” He grins, tilting his chin up a little, pleased with himself for coming up with such a badass idea.
“Fine,” Dennis says, unscrewing the cap of his travel mug. His hair is still a little damp from showering; he flips it off his forehead.
“We just need, like, fake pictures we can use, and stuff.”
“Okay.”
“Do you know where we could get those?” Mac asks.
“Why are you asking me?” Dennis huffs.
“Because you’re good at this type of thing.”
“Am I?” Dennis yanks the coffee pot out of the coffee maker. Sloshes some into his travel mug. “I think I’ll pass, man. You can rope Charlie into it.”
“But he can’t even read,” Mac protests. “I’d have to do all the catfishing myself. I don’t want that kind of responsibility.”
“Then ask Dee,” Dennis suggests, an edge to his voice.
Mac tilts his head sideways a little. Tries to get a read on the situation. Usually, of course, he’s amazing at figuring out someone’s threat level and their intentions, but right now, Dennis is being annoyingly mysterious.
“I don’t want to hang out with Dee, dude,” Mac finally says. “She’s annoying. She’s always, like, making me stop places so she can get a coffee or flirt with some jabroni or use the bathroom. And she’s so judgemental. Everything I say, she’s like, Mac, that’s rude, that’s sexist, that doesn’t make sense, that’s blah blah blah. Whatever, dude. You really don’t want to do it?” He wilts a little, disappointed-- it was a great plan. He’d thought Dennis would be all over it. Deception, money, banging, taking advantage of pathetic losers-- all the elements are there.
“Then find someone else,” Dennis insists. He screws the cap onto his travel mug. Stalks to the door; puts on shoes and a jacket. Leaves the apartment without another word.
Mac hurries after him, fumbling to get the door locked, so he won’t have to walk to Paddy’s.
+
“Guys, guys, everyone act natural, the people I catfished are on their way,” Mac says, shoving out of Paddy’s back office.
Dee makes a disgusted face, tossing down the towel she’d been using to wipe up a spilled beer. “What? If you catfished people why did you invite them here?”
“They don’t know I catfished them,” he says, giddy about the scheme. “They think they’re meeting these like hot blonde chicks but there ARE no hot blonde chicks!”
“How many people is this?” Dee asks.
“Four or five.”
“So you have four dudes coming into the bar and they’re gonna be mad because they’re getting stood up,” Charlie says. “Why is that a good thing?”
“Yeah, why dudes?” Dee adds.
“You guys, come on, you’re missing the point,” Mac huffs. “They’re going to come, and they’re going to wait for the girls, so they keep going, oh, just one more drink, she’ll be here soon, but she’s never going to come-- so they’re just going to keep drinking while they wait, and then eventually, they’ll realize she isn’t coming, and they’ll get sad, and they’ll start drinking ‘cause they’re sad instead. And all this time we’re making like so much money, you guys. But really I did all the work, so I should get all the money.”
“Hmm, no, but I’ll tell you what you can get, is more limes,” Dee says. “We’re almost out of limes up here.”
“Get your own limes, you bird.”
Silence.
Mac pouts, turning toward Charlie and Frank. “Why didn’t you guys laugh?”
“I dunno, man, it’s just not as funny when Dennis isn’t here,” Charlie says, squirming a little on his stool. “He’s, like, sitting in that booth all the way over there, he didn’t even hear-- it’s just not as good when it’s not all of us.”
“Yeah, I never got that joke anyway,” Frank pipes up. “I always thought Deandra looks more like a lemur than a bird.”
“A lemur?” Dee protests. Charlie laughs.
“Okay, that wasn’t even funny!”
“You had to be there,” Charlie says to Mac.
“I was here! I just heard it! Jesus Christ, you guys.”
The door opens. Two dudes come in at once, and Mac immediately recognizes them. He shoots a glare at his friends before hurrying toward them.
“Welcome to Paddy’s, gentlemen, how are we doing tonight?” He asks eagerly, clapping his hands together.
“Uh, fine,” one of the guys says. “Can I get a beer?”
“Yeah, one for me too,” the other guy says.
“Coming right up, fellas!”
He heads behind the bar, rips the tops off two beers, and sets them down in front of the two guys, who settled at separate tables. Within a few minutes, the other two guys show up too, and they’re all sipping beers, glancing at their phones to check the time, waiting for imaginary blondes.
Being super sneaky about it, Mac watches them. Guy number one leaves after twenty minutes. Guy number two finishes his beer, but when Mac asks if he wants another drink, he refuses. Guy number three leaves half an hour in. Guy number four eventually wanders over to guy number two’s table and starts talking to him.
“Hey, are you waiting for someone? I’m waiting on a date but she’s like forty minutes late,” Guy number four sighs.
“Me too, actually. She isn’t answering my messages either.”
“What’s your date’s name?”
“Sarah.”
“Mine is too,” guy number four says. “Did she have blonde hair and a blue eyes?”
“Yeah,” guy number two says. He takes his phone out. “Here’s her picture.”
“That’s the same girl I was talking to!”
“Are we being catfished, bro?”
“Yeah, dude. I think so. That fucking sucks.” Guy number two sighs. “You wanna get out of here? Get a burger or something? I’m starving and there’s no way she’s gonna show.”
“Sure, man. Let’s go eat.”
Mac watches, slack-jawed, as they each leave a few bills on the table and head out of the bar.
“Great job, Mac,” Dee pipes up. “You got four guys to each buy one single beer. And you created a new friendship. You must be so proud.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Mac snaps, pushing past her to head out from behind the bar.
He stomps over to the booth Dennis is sitting in. He’s reading a book.
“Why wouldn’t you help me?” Mac demands, crossing his arms over his chest.
Dennis blinks. Closes the book without a bookmark, because, lowkey, he wasn’t actually really reading it. “What are you talking about, Mac?”
“The catfishing thing! You wouldn’t help me with it, and now it got all ruined, and we didn’t even make any money or get any chicks to bang!”
“Oh, me? I thought you didn’t want my input,” Dennis says innocently.
Mac blinks. “What?”
“I thought you didn’t want me to be involved with plans,” he says. “Since you didn’t let me in on the prank on my sister.”
“Dude, that was one thing.”
“So you admit it?” Dennis demands.
Mac shifts his weight impatiently. “What, dude?”
“You admit that you need my help to do good schemes?”
“If I say yes, will you help me?” Mac asks impatiently.
Dennis sits back, grinning smugly. “Sure. I’ll tell you why your plan didn’t work out. Because you didn’t keep texting the guys after they were waiting. If you had send them messages saying, oh, I have car trouble, oh, my cat is stuck on the fire escape, I’ll be there in ten minutes, I’m so sorry I’m late, they would have kept waiting and kept drinking. And you were never going to get to bang any of them because you got a bunch of dudes when you should have been going after girls,” he explains. “And, you didn’t play the angle of the sympathetic bar tender. If you’d done that, you could have easily coaxed them into three, four, even five drinks.”
“Okay,” Mac says, nodding, though he’s already half-forgotten all of Dennis’ advice. “Okay. Fine. Now will you help me try again, man? Please?”
Dennis nudges the book aside. Stands up. “Of course, Mac.”