The Last New Year Read Online Free

and unfamiliar
faces, unfortunately placed furniture, and a rainbow of illogically colored
alcoholic beverages. I was at my buddy Thwacker's place (I'll talk more about him later, no doubt), and he was having a party to
celebrate... well nothing, really.
    Except I guess he was celebrating the night before the night
before New Years . So it wasn't even the main event,
really, more a sort of pre-event to celebrate the fact that there is going to
be something to celebrate.
    That's right! It's New Year's Eve today! It's the last day
of 1999! Tomorrow it will be a new millennium—unless you are once of those pedants who insist it's not until next year.
But come on, when all the numbers flip over to 00 again, that's the big deal.
    But wow! New Years! I can't tell if I'm excited about it,
despite the exclamation points. I mean, it's not like I've ever really cared
about New Years. It's just a date on a man-made calendar. It's not like it
means anything important in the Grand Scheme of things. So I'm not excited. But...
    Something is worming in my gut, and it's not from my
hangover. It's like a little anxious flutter, but a good one, like I've
captured that feeling of going over the crest of the first hill of a roller
coaster and lodged it in my stomach. I'm excited about something, but I can't
remember what.
    I suddenly remember something: I spent most of the night
holding my drink and drinking and doing everything with my left hand (when I'm
really right handed!) for no real reason except that I was in a good mood and
felt like having a little secret. But that's not what I'm excited about, and
actually I'd dropped my drink several times.
    There was something though. Something had me giddy and
excited even before I started drinking. Something important and wonderful
happened, and the memory flits against the walls of my consciousness
annoyingly. Something wonderful. Did I meet someone? No, not at the party. There were the usual
gang of derelicts there. Fun people, but all the sexual tension that
existed had been dealt with one way or another long ago.
    So not at the party, then...
    It comes to me in a flash: Her.
    Her! Oh my Christ how could I have forgotten?
    I stand up like I've been electrified, my hangover
forgotten, my tongue peeling itself from the roof of my mouth. I grin like an
idiot at my dresser and bark harsh but delighted laughter that sends me into a
spastic coughing fit, which makes me laugh more until it all comes to a
shuddering halt and I'm still smiling.
    Dust motes cartwheel brilliantly in a shaft of sunlight
slanting in through the blinds. My skin tingles, my heart thuds, I glide
effortlessly from the bed and to the window, feeling the slight chill from
outside that radiates from the glass. I scratch my butt, grinning, and yank on
the cord. The blinds go up with a clattery fwoosh .
    A lovely, brisk winter's day, fairly typical for this time
of year in Washington, DC. A few wisps of white cloud inch their way across a
steel blue sky. Doesn't look like snow, but you never know. Come February we
might get a few big dumps, but this isn't Minnesota and the snowfall will be
rare enough that it's generally quite nice for kids off school and anyone else
not trying to brave the Beltway in the snow.
    But as nice as it looks, at street level it's no doubt fairly
miserable for pedestrians, with cutting wind howling down the alleyways and up
ladies' skirts and down the back of your jacket. Up here it just looks evenly
lit, gray and peaceful. Just like a perfectly normal late December day. Which it is, obviously. A perfectly normal
day.
    In the next building I can see Ape-Head through his big
apartment window watching television. In the past two years I've managed to
create a sort of superficial relationship with the slope-shouldered, heavy
browed and wonderfully ugly man across the way. We exchange mild, gesticulated
pleasantries most every morning.
    I don't know his real name. My roommate gave him the
appellation "Ape-Head"