Chapter 5: Troutskin and Brambles
Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4.

     When we finally stumbled into my cabin at around three in the morning, Elizabeth asked if she could use my bathroom. We were both quite drunk.
     “Down the hall and over the little footbridge to the left,” I said. “But be careful of the blackberry brambles of they’ll scratch your face all to hell.”
     “Thank you,” she said.
     I put on some soft Indian music and hunkered down on the sofa, which is upholstered in troutskin and held together by blackberry brambles. I, in turn, was upholstered in faded brown corduroys and a green flannel shirt, and held together by Boone’s Farm wine, strawberry.
     When she finally found her way back I was half asleep.
     “Where have you been?” I asked. My voice was imploring and soft, and must have approached her like a teddy bear emerging from a winter’s hibernation inside a princess’s underwear drawer.
     “Throwing up,” she said.
     I rubbed my eyes, struggling to sit up. “Oh, ” I said. “In that case, then, I hope you remembered to flush.”
     “I couldn’t. I mean, I would have, but that damned stream of yours doesn’t have a handle.”
     I smiled. Many a night of drinking Boone’s Farm strawberry wine had ended with my making a run for the john, only to end up pissing in that stream. The trout never complained, though. They’d moved to the suburbs long ago.
     And you don’t get much of an argument out of a bunch of rocks and Pepsi cans.

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Chapter 6.

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