18. Regan #2
Sandro gets up to fetch more beers, and I can’t help noticing that tonight, even Maria is drinking, matching us men bottle for bottle. Good for her. Everyone needs to let their hair down occasionally. Seems like for Maria, tonight’s the night.
We play ‘Guess Who?’ after that. Two teams…
WV Vs NY. NY wins, but Maria tells us that ‘Guess Who?’ has always been one of their firm favorites.
After ‘Guess Who?’—and another round of beers—I propose ‘Twenty Questions’, where one person thinks of something—and it can be anything at all—and the others have to guess what it is by asking up to twenty questions to narrow things down, but with the limitation that you can only ask questions that can be answered with either a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’.
I start, and my thing they have to guess is ‘alligator’.
Maria kicks them off with a great first question.
“Is it an animal?” she asks. To which of course I reply in the affirmative.
They carry on whittling the possibilities down by learning it’s native to the US, has four legs, is not furry, is not a pet, is larger than a dog—generally anyway—, is not found in herds, is not a herbivore, is not usually eaten, is not usually found on farms, has sharp teeth…
by which time Grant sits back and smiles.
“I reckon I know it,” he says with confidence.
“Want to try?”
“Yeah, I think it’s either a caiman or an alligator, and I’m leaning towards ‘alligator’, so that’s what I’m going to say.”
“Well bro, that was an inspired guess. ‘Alligator’ is exactly the word I’m thinking of. Well done, you guessed with three questions left. Just in time. Your turn to think of something, and I’ll join in with the guessers… after another well-deserved beer, that is.”
We play a few more rounds of questions, finishing with Abe thinking of the word ‘beer’. Then Grant suggests ‘Charades’.
“What’s that?” asks Sandro.
“Oh, it’s easy. You’ll like it,” I say. “You get into teams, and then one person from your team thinks of a book, a movie, a play or a TV program. Then they act out whatever it is to their team, who has to guess what it is they’re acting out.
However, the person acting cannot speak, they’re only allowed to mime. ”
“Oh... that!” Sandro laughs. “In Italy we call it ‘il gioco dei mimi’—literally ‘the mime game’. I haven’t played that for years.”
We decide not to bother with teams, and we’ll all just be one big team.
Maria starts. She ponders for a moment or two, tapping the edge of her beer bottle against her top teeth, deep in thought. Then she suddenly brightens. “Okay, I’ve got one,” she says.
She stands up and slightly self-consciously takes center stage in front of the rest of us.
She starts by miming an old-fashioned movie camera and we all chorus as one: “It’s a movie.”
She nods, and then counts momentarily in her head, before holding out four fingers.
“Four words,” I call out, and she points at me, smiles and nods again.
Then she holds out just one finger.
“First word,” I call out, and she points to me and nods.
All good so far.
Next, she makes a ‘T’ shape using the index fingers of each hand.
“First word is ‘The’,” says Sandro.
Once more she points and nods.
“’The Sound of Music’,” says Abe.
Shocked by what appears to be some kind of voodoo skill from Abe, Maria laughs out loud and says “Yes. Though how you guessed it from just that, I do not know.”
“That’s Abe,” I say. “No one really knows how he does what he does. Honestly, I don’t think even he knows, half the time.”
It’s well past midnight by this time, and Sandro makes his excuses and heads for his bed.
More beer is drunk, and the rest of us play on for a couple more rounds of ‘Charades’ before I have a brainwave.
“How about one final game of something else, just to finish the night on?”
“Alright.” The others agree, and I dive back into the game cupboard. I know exactly what I’m looking for and eventually I find it, right at the bottom, hidden under a whole pile of other stuff.
“Here we go.” I wave the brightly colored box in the air, and Grant groans.
“You have to be joking!”
“What, ‘Twister’? What’s wrong with ‘Twister’?”
Maria looks at the box. “What? You guys seriously play Twister?” she asks, surprise in her voice.
“Course we do,” I say defensively. “It’s a perfectly respectable game requiring balance, flexibility, tactical awareness and athletic prowess.”
“It requires none of those things,” says Grant. “And in the general run of things, no, we don’t. It’s been there for years. We’ve maybe played it twice.”
“That’s because you lose every time.”
“I do not.”
“You absolutely do.”
Abe silently takes another pull from his beer and bends down to unfold the mat across the wooden floor.
“I’ll operate the spinner.”
“Alright, big man. We won’t insist on making you lose your dignity. Not tonight, anyway.”
Maria laughs out loud at that.
“I’ve never played before,” she admits.
“Oh, then this should be entertaining,” says Grant darkly.
“Don’t worry,” I reassure her. “The rules ain’t too complicated. Even Grant can understand them.”
Five minutes later, we’re all regretting our life choices.
Twister turns out to be significantly harder than it looks, particularly when two of the three players are built like refrigerators, and even more so when all three of them have had about eight beers apiece.
“Right hand blue,” Abe says calmly.
“Easy.”
Unfortunately, ‘easy’ rapidly becomes considerably less easy once the game progresses beyond about six turns.
Within minutes, Maria is laughing so hard she can barely hold herself upright.
“This is impossible!”
“No whining,” I tell her, trying unsuccessfully to stop my own laughter.
“Left foot yellow.”
Grant groans and stretches awkwardly across the mat, nearly taking me out with an elbow to the side of the head.
“Watch it, asshole.”
“Occupational hazard.”
Maria squeals with laughter as she nearly loses her balance altogether.
Instinctively, I reach out and steady her by the waist before she can fall.
“Careful.”
“I am being careful,” she protests, breathless with laughter.
At almost the exact same moment, Grant catches her other arm before she topples sideways completely.
For a strange second, all three of us freeze.
Maria between us.
Grant’s hand wrapped around her wrist.
Mine spread against her waist.
Her hair brushing lightly against my chin.
Then Abe spins again.
“Right hand red.”
The moment breaks.
“Sadist,” mutters Grant.
The game continues.
And somehow gets even more chaotic.
At one point Grant practically folds himself over my back trying to reach a green circle.
Maria collapses laughing and takes both of us down with her.
Beer bottles wobble dangerously across the table nearby.
Abe remains standing off to one side throughout all of it, quietly spinning the wheel and calling out instructions in the same calm voice he’d probably use directing artillery fire.
“Left foot green.”
“Oh, screw you,” says Grant.
Abe merely spins again.
Eventually Maria ends up half sprawled across Grant’s chest laughing so hard she can barely breathe, whilst I’m twisted around trying unsuccessfully to keep one foot on yellow without dislocating something important.
“This game is stupid,” Grant announces.
“You’re only saying that because I’m winning.”
“You are literally underneath me.”
“Strategic positioning.”
Maria wipes tears from her eyes. “Oh my God, my stomach hurts.”
For the first time all evening, I glance over toward Abe properly.
He’s leaning back against the kitchen counter now, beer bottle loose in one hand, spinner dangling from the other.
Watching us.
Expression unreadable as ever.
“I need the bathroom,” he says quietly a moment later, setting the spinner down beside me and nudging it into a position I can just about reach.
Nobody really pays much attention.
“Yeah, alright,” I mutter distractedly, trying to untangle my trapped leg from underneath Grant.
The game carries on for a few more spins, before someone yelps, and there’s a crash as the three of us land in a laughing, sprawling heap of bodies and limbs on the kitchen floor.
We pick ourselves up and limp, hop or otherwise make it back into our chairs.
“Phew, I am sweating after that,” Maria wipes her brow.
“You got away easily. You didn’t have Regan pinning you to the floor with his fat ass.”
“My ass is pert and elegant!” I reply, genuinely shocked at the allegation.
“What happened to Abe?”
I glance vaguely around. No Abe.
“Dunno.”
“Didn’t he say he needed the bathroom?” suggests Maria.
“Yeah, that rings a bell. And so do I.”
“What, you ring a bell?”
“No, dummy, I need the bathroom.”
“We all need the bathroom.” I say.
“Yeah, let’s call it a night. Nah, leave that.” Maria had started collecting bottles, but Grant waves her down. “We’ll do it in the morning.”