Jess replied: You can’t drive me to Canada. You don’t have a passport, you big loser.
Don’t need a passport to visit our neighbors to the north, I told her.
Uh huh. Look it up. You totally need a passport.
We spent the next few minutes arguing back and forth about the passport thing (she ultimately proved to be right, but I kept pretending not to believe her even after I knew better, just to annoy her).
When finally that debate wound down, she wrote: Wanna come over? I have wine and a chick flick.
You do not. You hate wine and you hate chick flicks.
Ok, ya got me. I actually have tequila and The Terminator. Which somehow made sense as a theme night when I was putting this plan together. Maybe cuz in the movie she goes to Mexico at the end? Come over.
I grinned at that and replied: Love to, but I have a hot naked Russian in my bed.
And Jess shot back: Then what the fuck are you doing texting me, you idiot?
He fell asleep due to excessive sex. I’m in the living room trying not to wake him.
I C, Jess wrote.
And after a long moment, I typed: It’s going to fucking kill me when he gets married, Jess.
Her response was instantaneous: I’ll be right over.
Jess’s apartment was a solid fifteen minute walk from mine, but in under ten minutes I heard her key in the lock. She stuck her head in the door and whispered, “Is he still asleep?”
“Yup.” I got up from the couch and crossed the room to give her a hug.
Jess was wearing a black trench coat over light blue flannel pajamas that were covered in a repeating pattern of yellow rubber ducks. I, of course, had given her the pajamas last week as part of my ongoing series of duck jabs. The look was so utterly unlike her that I had to smile as I whispered, “You’re wearing the duck jammies!”
“They’re comfortable. And it’s not like anyone was going to see me in them tonight. At least, not until I hopped in a cab and came over here.” She, too, was whispering. “I brought the tequila. And Ahnold.” She pulled a bottle and a DVD out of her spacious red handbag, then deposited the purse, coat, and five inch heels she was wearing in the kitchen, coming back with a couple shot glasses.
I set up the DVD, muting the sound and putting on subtitles so as not to disturb Dmitri. “That’s better anyway,” Jess whispered, gesturing at the subtitles with her shot glass. “I never know what the fuck Ahnold’s saying.”
“Does he even say anything in this movie? Besides I’ll be back?” That last part I whispered in a heavy Austrian accent, of course.
Jess poured a couple shots of tequila as she shrugged and said, “I really don’t remember. Last time I saw this movie, I was six.”
“Your parents let you watch The Terminator when you were six?”
“No, they didn’t let me. But when did that ever stop me?” She handed me a shot glass and whispered, “Let’s make this a drinking game. Every time someone gets shot, we’ll do a shot. Ah, there, now it’s a theme!”
“If we do that, we’ll die of alcohol poisoning,” I told her as we both curled up on the couch and leaned against each other. “I think that like, a hundred people get shot in this movie.”
“Oh, it’s nowhere near a hundred. And even if it was, we’d probably pass out way before we died.”
“Comforting.”
I pressed play on my remote. “Oh man, that Army guy just got shot. And we’re only a minute into the movie,” I observed, and tossed back my tequila.
“Kinda shot. Kinda blown up. I’ll allow it,” Jess said, then tossed back her shot as well.
“Also, 2029? Really? This dystopian future is less than twenty years from now.”
“What’s your point?”
“Nothing. Just saying.” I tucked my feet under me and draped my arm around Jess’s shoulders. “Hey, look: four minutes into the movie and there’s buck naked Ahnold. He was actually pretty hot back in the day.”
Jess shrugged and said, “I guess. If you like that sort of thing.”
“Big muscles?”
“Republicans.”
I bit back a laugh so as not to wake Dmitri. “Ew, heart ripped out. He wasn’t shot, though.”
Jess refilled my shot glass. “I’m issuing an amendment: one shot per corpse. Cause of death irrelevant.”
“Works for me.”
We settled in to watch the movie, and after my sixth shot in thirty minutes I exclaimed in a stage whisper, “I’m out,” and set my glass upside down on the coffee table.
“Wimp,” Jess said, tossing back her sixth shot like it was water.
We watched the movie for a few more minutes, and eventually Jess whispered, “So what are you going to do?” It took my slightly drunk brain a minute to catch up and realize she was referring to our earlier text conversation.