“Besides,” he told the hollowed-out restaurant in a lecturely tone, “I bet my eyes are red, just like Dad’s when he has too marny mantinis.” He paused. That wasn’t quite right, but what the fuck.

He gathered up the darts, went back to the Beeber Line, and shot them. He missed Justin with all but one, and this struck Pete as the most hilarious thing of all. As he gathered them up, he sang a few lines of “Baby,” Justin’s big hit from last year. He wondered if Justin could have a hit with a song called “My Baby Shaves Her Pussy,” and this struck him so funny that he laughed until he had to bend over with his hands on his knees.

When the laughter passed, he wiped double snot-hangers from his nose, flicked them onto the floor (there goes your Good Restaurant rating, he thought, sorry, Burger King), and then trudged back to the Beeber Line. He had even worse luck the second time. He wasn’t seeing double or anything, he just couldn’t nail the Beeb.

Also, he felt a little sick, after all. Not much, but he was glad he hadn’t tried a fourth sip. “I would have popped my Popov,” he said. He laughed, then uttered a ringing belch that burned coming up. Blick. He left the darts when they were and went back to the mattresses. He thought of using his magnifying glass to see if anything really small was crawling there, and decided he didn’t want to know. He thought about eating some of his Oreos, but was afraid of what they might do to his stomach. It felt, let’s face it, a little tender.

He lay down and laced his hands behind his head. He had heard that when you got really drunk, everything started spinning around. Nothing like that was happening to him, but he wouldn’t mind a little nap. Sleeping it off kind of thing.

“But not too long.”

No, not too long. That would be bad. If he wasn’t home when his folks came home, and if they couldn’t find him, he would be in trouble. Probably George would be, too, for going off without him. The question was, could he wake himself up when the St. Joseph’s chimes struck?