How many? That was the big question. The answer, in its ambiguity, its scant existence, looms just as large.
Beer, wine, cider, and of course, the hard stuff. Why did they always think the hard stuff was such a good idea after all else?
That and what had been said?
His mind ran over the blurred and resistant memories of the night before as his hand ran over the stubble on his face. Was there going to be trouble? Uneasy eyes around the morning campfire or would it just be the typical morning-after patois of groaning, joking, and mumbling punctuated by the occasional wet splatter of someone getting ill in the bushes?
His head ached. His eyes throbbed and stung. The buzz and flicker of the campground washroom’s overhead fluorescent tubes felt personal. The odor of the damp, urine and sanitizer soaked concrete floor under his loosely booted feet an assault. His stomach flopped restlessly in its bed, seeking a more comfortable position and finding none. His tongue was a dead thing in the sticky pit of his mouth, clicking with viscosity.
He stopped at the sink and peered in at the reflection of himself in the smudged surface of the abused and flaking mirror, the lower corners chipped and jagged inside the steel frame. How many other sets of eyes had peered in before his, seeking answers, he wondered.
“That beard,” his brain muttered at him, “that beard has got to go.“
