“Mastin. You made it.”
Gao looks nervous. He’s tripping balls.
“Is anyone else from the office here?”
“Brickman, and Karen. Where’s your costume?”
Ash is with me. “What’s this?” She means Mastin’s suit.
“Did you get the invitation?”
Mastin smiles.
“Did you wear something naughty? It’s right there on the back, in English.”
Ash says: “It’s on the front.”
“It’s on the front. Did you get an invitation? Get this man a shot.”
Gao’s looking at me, pleading, like: get me out of here. Ash is showing Mastin the funnel bong that I constructed. He’s kneeling on the kitchen floor.
“Can you tell?”
“Hong Yang. No. You can’t tell. You look fine.”
“Cause that’s..Leonard Mastin.” Leonard Mastin is a VP at Mead.
“Don’t worry. I’m telling you. I can’t tell. If I can’t tell then he can’t tell.”
“Are you rolling?” Hong asks.
“No,” I say.
“Roll with me.”
“I promise I’ll tell you if you do anything weird.”
But Leonard Mastin is on the floor now and Ashley’s pouring straight Vodka down the rubber piping. Absolut. The blue bottle. 80 proof.
“Hong. See. You’re fine.”
“Where’s his outfit?”
“Yeah, we’re gonna work on that.”
“It makes me nervous,” Hong is saying, “if he doesn’t have an outfit.”
The vodka’s pouring into Leonard Mastin’s mouth. Some gets on the floor. He cranes his neck to get under the tubing and something falls out of his pocket. He grabs it with one hand and he’s standing and people are cheering and MJ flashes him and Ashley is opening his hand to see what he picked up and it’s a pacifier with little pastel angels painted on it.
Ashley stamps her foot. “What is this?” She holds the pacifier in his face.
“It’s something naughty,” he says, and he takes it out of her hand with his mouth.
I turn around but Gao is already distracted. He’s standing in front of the open freezer, frost clouds pouring all around him. I shake Mastin’s hand, and he’s sucking on the pacifier, and I say: “Get with Gao. He has something the two of you need to discuss.”