Nano 2012 Day Twenty-Seven

"The get up. It just suits you and everything I've talked to you about."

Kusa looked really proud at this, "Well thanks, I try to just dress like myself, you know? But you have to take pride in your dress code."

"That's right. So what's been happening?"

"Not a lot. The usual trouble with my car and my cat."

"Nink jumping into the seat whenever you open the door to drive somewhere? I remember you talking about that."

"Yeah, I'm just worried it'll get dangerous."

Menelaus started to relax. This conversation was easy, he could take part in this.

"Oh wait, this is rude of me, who are you?"

Menelaus was slightly taken aback and then realised Kusa had probably never actually seen him and they hadn't really walked about anything specific. "Oh, I'm M in the chat room"

"Oh that's right! Hey M, how are things?"

"They're not bad, you know. Everything is coasting along for me really."

"Yeah I can imagine with the copywriting and everything. How is your friend doing, the one that got hit by the car? Peter?"

"Yeah he's doing alright now. Just needs to be careful doing something like swimming or yoga where he needs to do deep breathing."

"Because his ribs got hurt, right?"

"Yeah, that's right." Kusa was nodding to himself. Menelaus was impressed, he didn't remember Kusa saying he had a photographic memory.

"So you're some sort of memory master, huh?"

"What, why do you ask that?"

"Well, all those details about me, my friend and his accident, I mean, that was months ago."

"Well, it was pretty exciting at the time. That sort of thing tends to stick."

"Yeah I guess that's true. How are you going with your book."

"It moves slowly, like the turtle across the universe."

"Carrying the world on its back, right?"

"You got it. Hey, I'm going to go get a drink, OK? It was nice talking to you, M"

"Yeah nice talking to you too, Kusa."

Kusa went off to the tables and Menelaus was left wondering about him. It's still pretty amazing he remembered all that, he thought to himself, maybe he looks over chat logs before he comes to something like this? The more he thought about it the more he couldn't put it past him. It would be the sort of thing he would do. Though he wasn't as bad as some of the ones they'd had to kick over the years, he still had a paranoid streak to him that became very obvious after a while. Menelaus waiting until Kusa had gotten his drink from the table and had drifted away and started talking to someone else before he went to the table himself and got himself a cocktail. He didn't want it to look like he was a hanger-on, or like he was incapable of talking to anyone at the party if he didn't recognise them first. When did he become so socially stunted? If he was being honest with himself, he couldn't think of a time when he was socially 'superior'. He always was a bit awkward, very shy, constantly worried that his presence wasn't wanted or, at best, tolerated. He walked back to his 'spot' with the cocktail and then drifted closer to the wall and stood there listening to the music. It sounded a bit like the old trip hop he used to listen to but with a bit of that dub-hop... was it called 'wub'? He really didn't want to ever refer to anything as 'wub'.

He enoyed it though, the girl had an entrancing voice, even when it was being put through a stutter effect; although he really didn't like when it was forced through a harsh auto tune. She really didn't need it in his opinion and it seemed to be thrown in for the sake of having it there, rather than it actually adding anything to the music. Although for all he knew, it was some crazy mix that had been made of an original song, or a 'mash up' or whatever people were listening to. He suddenly felt very old and he wasn't even that old. He sighed. He saw someone new come in, this time it was a girl with long blonde hair, in jeans and a tshirt. She had a plastic flower brooch in her hair and red fabric docs on. He wondered if it was Calliope. Could he be two for two? He decided not to approach her though, she would find out who he was and approach him if she wanted to talk. He finished his drink and turned to the nearest person to him. They were deeply involved in a conversation with someone, however, that seemed to have gotten very flirty and involved a lot of laughter, with the two getting closer and closer to eachother everything the laugh track was turned on. Ok, probbly not a good idea to interrupt the potential love birds.

He walked around a little more and saw Kusa talking to someone in an orange tshirt and camo pants, with a claw pendant around his neck on a thick nickel chain. Okran? It must be, he talked about that necklace all the time, and all his marital arts training. As if triggered by the thought, he saw the guy suddenly go into a combat stance and then pretend to attack a chair, relax and continue talking to Kusa as if he was demonstrating the best way to take down.... a chair? Menelaus sniggered. Jesus, this party was boring. What was he doing here? Oh that's right, two reasons: 1) He couldn't turn down free booze and food. Something he was never able to shake from his starving students days and 2) He wanted to talk to calliope about whether her agent had read his book. Although, now that he thought about it, there was nothing to connect his story with calliope at all. He hadn't talked about her, she didn't know his full name and her agent probably got thousands of books in the mail. He was an idiot. Well, maybe he would've talked to her about a new writer he was *excited* about? But if he was excited, surely he would've called him immediately. Nope, he's just an idiot. Oh well. He thought about leaving. Maybe Tina wasn't doing anything? They could be having crazy sex right now. Or they could be having nice, normal missionary sex that wouldn't wrench his hip out of place. Yeah that sounded pretty good as well.

He walked towards the exit and was just going through the glass doors towardds the hall when he heard behind him, "Hey, M. Is that you?" he turned and saw that the blonde he had picked as Calliope was talking to him. Two for two after all. He walked up to her and said "Actually, yeah I am M. And you are?"

"I'm Calliope, you might remember me from the chat channel?" She had a smile in her eyes. Good, that was a good sign. "Ah yes! I know you! How are you?"

"I am good! And how are you?"

"I'm pretty good. I like this party. Did you put it together?"

"I helped organise it, yes." Calliope shifted her drink to her left hand and put her right hand on her hip. She looked like she should have been wearing a red ball gown and had a long cigarette holder in her hand with that pose. It looked very classical which was really interesting. "Are you enjoying it?"

"I am actually, it's quite ritzy. I like what the DJ is playing too, did you pick the songs?"

"No, Kusa was in charge of that actually. He has quite good taste."

"Ok great, how interesting. And the alcohol?"

"Yes, having alcohol was totally my idea." Callipe smiled a toothy smile at him that made him feel uncomfortable. Was she coming onto him. "More importantly, would that help your writing career?" a little voice in the back of his head said. He tried to silence it. "Good one." He said, "I mean, it was a great idea. These are really nice martinis as well! I don't think I've ever had one quite like this one, it slides down the throat so smoothly!"

"Yes, it's called a "dirty martini", it's because it has the juice from the jar that the olives come in, in the drink. So there is a little slick of olive oil in there. It helps both the texture and the flavour tremendously. And it's like your giving your engine a little tune up. He laughed, she smiled again. "You want to ask me if my agent saw your story, don't you?"

"Well, no, that'd be silly. I mean, he gets so many and there's no way of knowing if..."

"Well, he has."

"Really? How did you know?"

"I told him to let me know if something came through by someone whose name was "Menelaus". Do you think anyone else in this city has this name and is also a writer? I think it would have to be a pretty small chance."

"Well, it'd be nice I guess. Sometimes I wonder."

"Really? Don't you like being unique?"

"It gets lonely sometimes."

"Yes... I can imagine it does." She gazed at him for a few seconds. Menelaus felt his face burning up. Calliope was at the same time quite similar to and quite different to what he was expecting. If he really thought about it, he could see all aspects of her personality reflected in how she conducted herself in the chat room but this intensity was still something that you can't really pick up in a chat room unless someone is into obsessively talking about themselves, and Calliope was not that person.