Benny counts quickly in this room of strangers. The skinny girl Heather beside him on the sofa has thirty-two white skulls printed on what’s visible of her miniskirt. It’s tricky, though, because if you counted the half-skulls created by seams, you could say there were thirty-six skulls in all.          A back door swings open and eight hard footsteps clack in the kitchen. 

 

            “Monica? That you?” Heather yells. “The Heineken is in the fridge under the cantaloupe.” That’s three “the’s” in one nine-word sentence. If she went on for ten minutes, there would be more than a hundred.

 

            Harsh, grating music suddenly turned up makes it difficult for him to hear voices distinctly except during whole notes. A small blonde in tightfitting black jeans, Monica, emerges from the kitchen holding a beer bottle. She points at Benny. “He a friend of Rod’s?” Her voice is shriller than the heavy metal guitar. She squeezes into a loveseat between two lanky, quiet boys.

 

            “His brother, I’m pretty sure,” Heather says. “Benny, right?”

 

            He nods.

 

            “I didn’t know Rod had a brother.” Monica keeps eyeing Benny across a low glass table.   “Where is Rod, anyway?”

 

            Gone now for twenty-two minutes, Benny notes, saying nothing.

 

            “Went out to pick us up some more weed,” one of Monica’s bookend boys drones.

 

            “Darn, he’s cute,” says the blonde, Monica. “Benny. Cute.” Benny’s mother told him his face and the sandy-colored loops encircling it were sculpted by angels. That, and his eyes, with their fine watery sheens, were bluer even than the sea.

 

            “How old are you, Benny?” asks Heather.

 

            Slowly he looks up from the rug to mascara-caked eyelashes. “Tuesday the 6th, I’ll be fifteen and a half.”

 

            “Okay…” She turns to Monica and laughs. “Maybe you better stick with Jason, girl.”

 

            More loud girls—at least four—cram through the front door, and Rod and Jason are behind them, too. They sit in plastic chairs. From his denim jacket pocket, Rod takes out a small grass-filled Ziploc bag, a colorful paper, and another small Ziploc bag of candy, just ten blue mints inside.

 

            In the kitchen archway, two more new people appear. There’s a boy wearing sunglasses even though it’s night. Beside him stands a girl whose long, sleek black hair seems to envelop her body. Her dark eyes are heavy-lidded, and she has tan skin and fiery lips. She is beautiful, perfect. She’s gulping wine straight from a bottle, sharing with no one, and in the crook of the opposite arm she holds a pert white Chihuahua. On the loveseat, Monica licks a cartoon cat printed on Rod’s paper.  Two of the new girls take candies from the bag. Both the paper and candy bag are passed to Benny, but he declines, sipping the same Sprite. He’s engulfed by people.

 

            The Chihuahua has huge black eyes, round as marbles. The beautiful girl in the archway and this Chihuahua—four eyes total—are staring at Benny, who focuses on the dog and smiles with absolute delight. “You like Confucius?” she asks. The Chihuahua yaps. One yap, two yips. “Confucius! Be nice.” With two free fingers, she strokes the dog under its throat.

 

            The girl finishes her bottle of wine and sets it on the table. She walks over to Jason and sits sideways on his lap and rubs her palm down the side of his face; then she hops onto Rod’s lap and tickles his neck—yet all the while her eyes have been slanting toward Benny, and finally it’s his lap she hops onto, still holding the Chihuahua. She brushes aside her curtain of hair and mashes her parted lips against Benny’s, full of fire, full of wine.  He blocks, lips tight, but with her tongue she’s prying and he opens. He closes his eyes. Sweetness, fire. He can’t liken these pleasures, this taste, feel, or smell, to anything he’s known. Her tongue lies almost motionless for delirious seconds against his. Then she makes slow loops around his tongue with hers. Benny counts one full sweet circle, then two, three, four…it’s a carousel of spinning tongues until the circles become uncountable.

 

            Now both her arms are wrapped tightly around him, and it’s warm behind his shoulders.       But surely this means the Chihuahua is gone.

 

            Benny opens his eyes. He gives the girl’s shoulders a gentle but firm push and clambers away. He’s going to see if the dog is hiding somewhere in the kitchen. Maybe it was frightened by the girl’s letting go or the din of at least fourteen humans in the 12-by-12 room or all the crazy music. Once he sees that the Chihuahua is okay and pets it, he’ll go back into the crowded living room and find the girl with the beautiful long black hair.