It all started when my friend Peggy called me from the Tin and Lint, one of our favorite bars. It was only 4:30, but Peggy was already schnockered.

"C'mon down," she said, paraphrasing Monte Hall. "There's some kind of convention in town, and these guys are buying drinks like there's no tomorrow."

"I'm on my way!" I assured her and hung up the phone. These were during my days on the dole, halcyon days for me in which my only concern was getting up early enough to make my 8:30 Wednesday appointment at the unemployment insurance office. "Yes, I looked for work. No, I didn't turn down any work." I can still recite the required answers, in their proper turn, all these years later.

Half an hour later, I was descending into the murk that was the Tin and Lint's (or, the T&L, as we referred to it) ambience from a bright, sunlit street outside. It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust, and then I saw it -- Peggy, sitting on the bar, crossed legs dangling in front of her, sipping from a marguerita glass.

Now I need to tell you that there's a certain significance to Peggy's drink of choice. Those of us who know her can usually predict what kind of night we'll have by what Peggy orders. Margueritas were a really bad sign.

Before I had a chance to skulk back out the door, she saw me. "Gina, come here!" She hopped down from the bar, and might have fallen if it hadn't been for the several strong arms that reached out to support her. The goofy grin on Peggy's face and the coy glances she gave to the men around her only deepened my dread of what was to come.

I was living with Lew then, and he was working second shift. This was our favorite of the three shifts he rotated into, since it let us sleep late in the morning and we still had four good hours of drinking time before the bars closed. I called from the T&L to tell him what was happening, and he groaned.

The next thing I remembered with any clarity was Lew trying to shake me awake. I think I was still quite drunk, because even I didn't recognize the sounds that came out of my mouth. Lew laughed -- at this point in our relationship he still had a sense of humor -- and started hitting me gently with a pillow. I didn't want to wake up, but couldn't ignore the puffy blows raining down on me. Irritated, I grabbed another pillow and began fighting back.

Things escalated until Peggy and her boy du jour were also involved. I'd forgotten that they'd accompanied me home until I heard them squealing from the next room. They brought in the pillows from the guest bedroom, and after fifteen minutes of frenzied activity, the air was thick with feathers and we were all rolling around on the bed laughing.

It was August and we'd all worked up a sweat and the feathers stuck to our bodies as if they'd been glued. Lew suggested that we take a ride to the lake and everyone agreed that it was a good idea. We stopped on the way for a couple of sixpacks, and were soon skinnydipping in the wonderfully cool water. The beer reinforced the drunk that Peggy, her boy toy and I had spent most of the evening working on, but Lew was satisfied with one beer and laughed as the rest of us cavorted in the water.

Peggy had fallen in and it took all three of us to get her to shore, sputtering and coughing up the water she'd inhaled. When Lew stopped laughing, he said it was time to go. Peggy and her friend pulled on their clothes, but I didn't feel like getting dressed. I got into the car with a towel wrapped around me and refused to budge.

I started getting romantic with Lew on the ride back, and he tried halfheartedly to fend me off. I suppose that his driving was a little erratic, and that's probably what attracted the attention of the sheriff's deputy who turned on his siren and lights behind us.

"Oh, God!" Lew groaned. "Not this!"

He told Peggy to hand me my clothes and insisted that I put them on, glancing periodically into the rear view mirror at the flashing lights. I managed to pull on a tee shirt after a few minutes of wrestling it into submission, but when I tried to pull on my jeans, I hit my head hard on the dashboard. "That's it!" I told him. "Pull over now. I'll just wrap this towel around my waist."

The deputy was immediately suspicious. He couldn't help but see all of the commotion in the car as we tried to get me dressed, and I'm sure that it must have looked like something far more sinister than it was. He made Lew get out of the car, and searched him. Then he made him stand, leaning with his hands on the car while the deputy went back to the cruiser with Lew's license.

We still weren't too worried at this point, since Lew had never had even a parking ticket. But when the deputy returned, he pulled Lew's wrists behind him and handcuffed him. The deputy leaned down and looked at me through the window. "I'm taking him in, miss. You'll have to drive the car."

"I can't!" I told him automatically. "I don't have my license with me." I was also far too drunk to drive, but I didn't want to tell him for fear of him assuming that Lew was too.

"That's alright, miss. Just follow me."

"I'm going to be sick," Peggy said suddenly, and just barely opened the back door before her stomach's contents exploded their way out of her. The deputy looked into the back seat with a look of pure disgust, and Peggy's friend just smiled back at him and shrugged.

The seriousness of the situation sobered me quickly, and my mind raced through possibilities and ramifications as I followed the deputy -- at far past the posted limit -- to his headquarters several towns away.

Peggy had passed out after having thrown up, and I left her in the care of her man of the hour, and as I ran up the steps to the sheriff's office, it suddenly dawned on me that I'd never asked what his name was. It wasn't until I was walking in the door and saw myself on the closed circuit video monitor that I realized I was still wearing the towel. I felt like a fool, but would have felt even more foolish had I run out to pull my jeans on.

I spoke with the desk sergeant, who told me that Lew was being arrested for drunken driving. I protested, saying that he'd only gotten out of work at eleven, and that he'd only had one beer all evening. The sergeant said bluntly that the breathalyzer had told them differently. I asked if I could see him, and the sergeant told me that I had "no standing," legalese for "you're not family and you're not his wife."

Desperate, I went to the pay phone on the opposite wall and called my father, a town justice. He wasn't any fan of Lew's, but believed me when I said that Lew was sober and that it had been my foolishness that had caused his erratic driving, and I even confessed to the reason why Lew hadn't pulled over immediately. My father sounded disgusted, but he told me to go sit down while he straightened things out. I thanked him and hung up, following his directions.

Several minutes later, the telephone behind the sergeant's desk rang. I could only hear snatches of the sergeant's side of the conversation, but it was enough to know that the paperwork on Lew was going to disappear. Half an hour later, Lew was buzzed out of the secure area of the sheriff's office, looking angry and confused. I could tell he was about to become belligerent, so I pulled him out the door and told him the story outside.

We were all very quiet on the way home. Lew dropped Peggy and the still unnamed boy toy off at her apartment, and we went home. There were still feathers everywhere, but we were both too tired to do anything about it. We brushed away whatever feathers we could from the bed and fell asleep in each other's arms.

The next day, we got up earlier than usual and took a ride to a department store. After a few minutes, we walked out with a cart full of pillows -- foam pillows.

Props to the CHPercolator List for the prompt
April 22, 2001
1466 words