An Old Couple, A Young Couple

To get to the heart of the matter:
we were all pretty drunk.

Every so often, I would get up and refill everyone's glasses
with ice and gin and clear soda water.
It was only us four:
my wife and I,
and the Corporal and his wife,
and we were going around the table swapping stories.

The retired Corporal was shirtless at the table,
red in the face and arms, but pale in the chest,
and very drunk.
(He was taking his drinks straight with lots of ice.)
His wife was also in her bathing suit,
and you didn't have to look closely to see the cellulite.
But, to her credit, she'd had three children
who also had children of their own.

The ex-Corporal was in the midde of telling the story
of the birth of their first child.
The dispute was whether or not the wife said a particular word
in the heat of childbirth.

They'd been married 42 years,
and the story has been retold a million times, I could tell.

We all looked on, in mild amusement.
The drunk ex-Corporal kept feeding the mutt under the table.
Then, he tipped over his drink,
spilling over blocks of ice.
Still, we all looked on.

Ice melted freely on the big, wooden table.

Music played unrelenting from the overhead speakers.

Time moved on without our say-so.