Gao was crazy. I’m not sure I made it clear with the thing earlier about him shooting a bullet through the wall of his condominium.
“Gao. Let’s go play video golf at Applebee’s.”
We’re in the third floor hallway at Mead.
“Fuck that,” Gao says, “Let’s get Nina and go blacklight bowling.”
“I don’t want to go out with Nina today.”
Nina is Gao’s codeword for Darcy, this bitch from work he’s fucking. We both have girlfriends from work—how pathetic.
“No Nina?” he says.
I shake my head.
People are walking around us as we’re standing in the middle of the hallway. Blacklight bowling doesn’t mean blacklight bowling, either. Gao has codewords for everything. Blacklight bowling means we sit in Gao’s Eclipse and he bumps crystal meth. He heats it in these little foil squares. He says it makes him want to lie around all day and play with his nipples. Pete Makowski is walking by. I move out of the way for his belly. Did they give you that with your MBA as well? I think part of the reason MBAs like basketball so much is it rhymes with NBA. I’m serious. I think they look at those acronyms and the neurons in their brains get confused.
“Makowski.”
“Matthew.”
His belly moves on. Ash is there, she’s talking with Karen on some ID stuff. Louis Brickman is coming for us. If Brickman gets here he’ll want to come along. I don’t want to drink with Louis.
“Gao?” I dip my head to the side.
“What though?” Gao doesn’t want to play video poker. That’s a little too pedestrian for him, even if we get drunk off our ass.
“Friday’s?”
“Today?” he says. But he looks optimistic.
“I’ll meet you there in ten.”
Gao nods.
It’s 11:25.