I tell them the story. They half understand. But they roundly agree the Angel was a stupid hick. What the fuck did they know I say, ‘I know, I spoke...to her for four hours.’ J.W. says I am out of my mind. Sans lies, I recall why. Thursday. The jacket I wore was borrowed. My memory evaded me since midnight. The evening was quite memorable. A pothead friend, Coke, brought his sketchy drug buddies over and they brought acid. We planned to hold it until the weekend but such plans rarely survive the. Ilaughed and enjoyed the musical tones."Are we done? Are we going home? What am I to do about work on Monday?"My wife smiled. "Your birthday celebration has hours to go before wehave your party! We're just getting ourselves ready."She reached over and pulled my visor down on the passenger side. Sheflipped open the mirror. "What do you think?"I look at my reflection. "I'm overwhelmed. But what do you mean, justgetting started and a party tonight?"She smiled. "It's all your surprise. I'm not. For the rest of the dinner, we talked a lot but I heard very little… almost drifting in and out of consciousness while I looked at her… her thick, red lips …the strands of red, spiraling hair flirting over her eyes… and, those stockings… oh, those stockings. I guess I rushed through dinner, she didn’t mind. I could see as we walked to the car, hand in hand with some heavy flirtation, that the night had really just begun. As I opened the car door, to be a gentleman of course, she sat down… left. Then she went to their packs and tied the rope around them."I said get that armor on! We have to stop him," she said, and with no further explanation, scampered easily up the tree with the rope. She pulled the packs up behind her and secured them high up to a branch where they could not be seen from the ground. She leaped to the ground and changed to the centaur. Jonath was barely finished securing his armor, and got on her back. She took off in a gallop immediately, heading back the way they.