Chapter 2

Right as Robby reached out for Doug's door, it flew inwards on its own and an impressively inebriated young man stumbled out. He took two steps and stopped, just before impacting the opposite wall. The wood paneling would have made a significant dent in his head, yet the man stood with no awareness of the near calamity. He mumbled incoherently and wandered off down the hall, clearly on a mission of some importance to him that involved counting doors and bouncing off walls. Near the end of the hall, he seemed to finally achieve his mission. He leaned against the selected door and knocked once, and then started to slide down the face of the door. Before he reached bottom, the door opened and he fell inside, doing a face-plant on the carpet within. A woman's voice said "Oh, Nick," and sighed. That must have been the phrase "Nick" had been waiting for, as he then got up on his hands and knees and crawled into the apartment. The door closed with a bang when Nick's feet vanished.

Shaking his head, Robby entered through the now open door and looked around in amazement at the sheer number of people in the place. He realized almost immediately that he was not going to be comfortable here. Not only were there way too many bodies in the apartment, they were for the most part much younger than him. Thinking back, he came to the conclusion that Dawn herself couldn't have been much older than nineteen or twenty, and her companion may have been younger than that. Doug himself couldn't be more than twenty-five, and he was likely one of the oldest present. His comfort level severely curtailed, Robby decided to seek out his host and make his presence known, then sneak out at the first opportunity.

With a plan in place, he began to work his way around the room, keeping an eye out for Doug. He had barely taken three steps when he was accosted by a blonde vision holding two red plastic cups of what appeared to be beer. Taking the beverage offered by the young woman, his eyes got caught in the lush cleavage being presented by her costume. Managing to tear his eyes away before giving insult, he looked up to find pale gray eyes framed by the pin-straight hair surrounding her face. Looking further, he noticed that her costume was manufactured entirely of black leather: a floor-length skirt with a laced bustier, with the toes of her slim boots showing below. The bustier was so tight that it was possible that she wasn't really all that well endowed, it was just that the pressure of her top was pushing everything she had up and out. Still, it was very nice to see, and the outfit suited her figure to perfection.

"Hi, my name's Jasmine," she said in a voice that didn't quite seem to fit the outfit: a little too high, like maybe the bustier was even tighter than it looked. "Nice ta meetcha."

Not wanting to seem rude, he replied, "I'm Robby, Doug's neighbor." With a puzzled look, he said to her, "I'm sorry, I can't figure out your costume. What are you supposed to be?"

She grinned at the floor, putting her hands behind her back and twisting her upper body back and forth. Then, suddenly, she whipped her head up and opened her mouth wide with a hiss! Robby was so startled he nearly dropped his beer, managing to steady himself before making a mess. As he considered what might be wrong with her, he caught a glimpse of fangs showing in her mouth. Blinking with surprise, he leaned in to take a closer look. They were nearly perfect, with only the slight difference in color showing that they covered her real incisors and weren't truly fangs.

"Neat, huh?" she squeaked. "I'm a vampire!" She was still giggling from the fright she'd given him. His wan smile got her to settle down and soften her grin. With the fangs being obvious now, she continued her story.

"The female vampires you see on TV are all, well, you know, Elvira, Queen of Darkness. So, I thought, why can't a vampiress be blonde? So, I straightened my hair, and put on the fangs, rented the leather costume, and, ta-da! Me!" She stood with her arms in the air, twisting her body to show all sides. Robby was starting to get nervous because this woman was a bit more bubbly and vivacious than he was used to. And it seemed that she wasn't done yet.

"The fangs were the hardest. The instructions said to use denture cream to hold them in, but they kept falling out as soon as I let go. So I used nail glue. Just a drop inside, and they fit perfectly. What d'ya think?"

What Robby thought was that there was a visit to the dentist in the near future when she figured out that nail glue was just another name for crazy glue, and she wasn't getting those fangs off by herself.

Robby managed a little small talk with Jasmine, until she saw another victim for her costume trick, and she wandered off. Wiping his brow, he found a place to ditch the beer he hadn't really wanted and continued his search for his host. He got about half way around the room when he was accosted by another friendly party denizen.

Handing Robby a frothy orangey-red drink in a cup, the gentleman, nicely done up as Frankenstein's Monster, said, "How do you feel about 'sex on the beach'?"

Robby's jaw dropped nearly to his chest as he contemplated how to answer the question. "Ah, ah..."

"I meant the drink. That's a 'Sex on the Beach'," the monster said, pointing at the red cup with a chuckle. "My name's Ken, by the way."

Robby looked at the drink and said "Oh," then looked back up ... and up. Robby was no slouch at five foot eleven, but this guy must have been at least six four, maybe more, including the clunky boots he had on. "Hi, Ken. I'm Robby, Doug's neighbor." He couldn't find anything else to say at that point.

"My costume's pretty obvious, but I can't quite figure yours out," Ken said with a tilt of his head.

Robby had thought of this on the way over and went with his gut feeling. "I'm Nicholas Cage, from the movie 'The Family Man.' You know the one I mean, where he goes back to see what could have been?"

Ken started laughing and put his arm on Robby's shoulder. "I loved that movie. I think old Nick looked pretty good in that movie, wouldn't you say?" Robby just shrugged. He preferred Téa Leoni himself. He began to feel uneasy.

Pointing at his neck with his free hand, Ken said, "What do you think of my bolts? Pretty sexy, huh?"

Tipping his head sideways, Robby took a look at the sort of bolt-like thing secured to Ken's neck with what look like a blob of clay. Not sure what to make of it, he leaned in for a closer look. Ken moved his arm to Robby's waist, resting his hand on Robby's hip, then turning to speak in his ear.

"Hey, you seem like a nice guy. Whadda ya say we go somewhere private and get to know each other better?" Ken leaned back and gave Robby a hopeful smile.

Going beyond uneasy and straight into flustered, Robby handed the drink back to Ken. "Uh, I think I'll pass on that, Ken. I'm flattered, really, but I-I, well, um, thanks." Having said that, Robby moved away as quickly as he could. While keeping an eye on Ken, Robby failed to notice the woman standing by a snack table giving the room a jaundiced eye. Just before impact, Robby got a warning "Hey!" from the woman, and he managed to avoid knocking her down; meanwhile he landed on his butt at her feet. Rather than getting angry at him for his inattention, she squatted down beside him with a concerned look on her face.

"Hey," she said much more softly. "Are you okay?"

Blushing at his own misguided clumsiness, he said, mostly to himself, "There's a reason I don't come to these things often."

Not realizing that he was talking to himself, the woman replied, "Well, me neither, but my friends thought it would be good for me."

Looking up in surprise, he was immediately captivated by her eyes. She had sparkling green eyes, the exact color of new leaves in springtime. When he didn't say anything else, her eyes tilted up along with the smile that graced her lips, and she asked, "What's the matter, cat got your tongue?"