After work- which consisted mainly of conversations with fulminous, Chris B., and %%diary-floodtide%%- I ventured into a bookstore to spend a little of the money I got for my birthday. After bugging the hell out of the workers when I couldn't find two new hardcovers that had been right in front of me, I settled on Orhan Pamuk's Snow and a novel by Alan Furst, Dark Star. Was tempted to buy Cynthia Ozick's new novel, until I remembered that I miraculously disagree with her on everything and find her essays to be shrill exercises in rhetorical grandstanding. That said, her new book sounds like something I would've wanted to have written if I were far smarter and more well-versed in Jewish mysticism than I am. Maybe next month.

This week's drama is of a more ominous sort than usual. Monday night after the evacuation orders were rescinded I went to Cricketer's for a couple drinks. A bartender, S., was there with her fiance, and a cocktail waitress, V., was on the job, as well as my closest regulars, Big Mike and Keith, and an incredibly annoying real estate agent named Chris, who everyone else seems to like but who drives me batshit. I don't know what it is, whether it's his drooping eyelids, his coke-dealer self-importance, his pretensions to intellectualism, his bragging... it could even be all four. This bunch had been scheduled to come in for a birthday party in my honor Sunday night, but the hurricane had gotten so bad that no one had wanted to leave their house.

Anyway, Monday. We started out with a couple beers. S. and her fiancee (who I like very much, despite my chronic flirting with S.) had been at the bar all afternoon, and were ahead of me by at least a six-pack or two and a couple shots each. For awhile we sat around and played National Trivia Network, trying to drive up the bar's score so that we'd get listed in the top 20 at the end of the round. S. and her fiancee killed their bucket of Coors, and V., the cocktail waitress, stopped by the table to chat for a few minutes, ending up perched on Chris's lap. V.'s a thirty-five year old woman, very attractive, quietly and visibly lecherous, married but not quite constant.

Big Mike, my closest bar friend, weighs at least 400 pounds; he can put away thirty or forty beers without breaking a sweat, and so he did. After awhile V. started making out with Chris a little bit. I was startled, but not shocked. She's never seemed all that fussy. She seemed glassy eyed and too sober to be that drunk, but I didn't think much of it. Then I noticed that S. was nodding out like a heroin addict, her eyes fixed on the other end of the bar. She'd gotten quiet and was just sort of staring off and nodding. When she spoke, though, her speech wasn't slurred.

V. started making out with her. People making out in the bar isn't unusual. S. making out with people is. V. usually absconds with her conquests. Mike and I just sat there and tried not to watch. He's a real gentleman, one of the kindest people I know here. Keith and he and I got into a political argument and V. bought me a drink. S.'s fiance led her out to their car, saying nothing, but waving goodbye. V. gave me a sort of impromptu lapdance in between sips of her water. She took my hands and put them right on her breasts and started grinding into my pelvis. I didn't mind, though I was a little surprised. She claimed to not be drinking. I insisted on buying her a drink. She politely refused.

Keith took her to a bathroom when she was done. He came back a few minutes later and said that she was beginning to go through a divorce and he felt the need to little-brother her through it, chivalrously, though. Chris had slipped out awhile before without anyone noticing. When V. came out of the bathroom- "She's pretending to vomit so that people will leave her alone-" Keith and Mike drove her home.

Then yesterday I showed up at the bar and S. told me V.'s heart had stopped and she'd been taken to a hospital. It turns out she's diabetic. Someone had slipped GHB into her drink and it had messed with her blood sugar. After a little interrogation I found that S. didn't remember making out with V., either, and didn't remember much after I got to the bar. She was surprised and a little dismayed, but since she'd been with her fiance the whole time she wasn't too rattled.

I feel somewhat responsible since the party was partly mine. Mostly I'm trying to play Hercule Poirot so I can bust some kneecaps. The people at the bar are the only friends I have and while I'm not fond of Chris I would've trusted him with my drinks, until night before last, anyway; what disturbs me even more is the possibility that it might have been Mike or Keith, both Sensitive Guy types who I thought I knew well. Shannon, last night's cocktail waitress, says the bar staff will figure out who it was. I can understand suspicion falling on me, since I've only been going in there for around six months and I was certainly in a position to take advantage of V.'s state (and in a sense I did, though inadvertently.)

Everyone feels protective of the bar staff- they're our therapists, they hang out with us after hours, they buy us drinks and they're without exception genuine and kind people. I want to find out who slipped the drugs into the drinks and kick their ass.