Out of Bounds (Unplugged) | Previous: VIII. Finally! The Party
Out of Bounds (Unplugged)
Chapter 9.
IX. Finale! The Party
"Look!" said someone in a voice filled with wonder and amazement. "Outside! It's snowing."
There was an instant rush to the line of double French doors that filled the exterior walls of the ballroom. The band surrendered to the impulse of the moment and racked their instruments, stepping off the stage to join the general exodus.
Drummond sauntered up to where Dolly stood on the edge of the stage. Xe Doll was still holding and rocking the shuddering Sappho. As he got closer, he could hear that the tall woman was crooning some formless tune to her lover. Drummond grinned at Dolly.
"You look very fucking pleased with yourself," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
"With good reason," he said, his grin getting broader and more shit-eating with each passing second.
"Knowing you, you would... ."
"Yup. Care to come see?"
"Yeah. You never did tell me what happened at the Ice?"
"Well... " he drawled. "It's all part of the same thing. Shall we join the others outside?"
By the time he and Dolly reached the door, the room was empty. He looked back and saw Xe and Sappho standing at the edge of the stage, the only people in the room. Xe was rocking the poet back and forth like they were desperately lonely teenagers doing their first slow dance. He caught Xe's eye and jerked his head toward the outdoors. It'll do Sappho good, he thought to say, but Xe nodded and ducked her head to say something to the poet, who nodded in reply. Slowly, they started to make their way toward the door.
Dolly jerked on his arm. "Holy shit, Drummond! This is fucking brilliant!" He turned and she filled his eyes. The contrast between the morose Xe and Sappho and the childishly delighted Dolly couldn't have been more stark. Her eyes were bright and sparkling, her cheeks round and smiling. Already she had frost and flakes of the snow in her red-gold hair and it made her look like a fairy or a Christmas angel. The combination with her white robe gave him a shiver that had nothing to do with temperature.
Impatient to be out in it, she tugged him along, laughing and dancing, careless of her footing in the accumulating slush underfoot. The crew from the motor pool had set up the snow machine at the bottom of the slope, the very limit of the Dean's residence's large, formal lawn. From there it threw the ground-up ice crystals in a high arc over the roof of the four-story, Victorian gray stone mansion, where the flakes dispersed around the building to create the illusion of a local, White-Christmas snowfall. The white powder fell in slow, lazy fat flakes in such vast profusion that, even in the hot July dusk, it was accumulating on the ground.
She stopped and faced him, melted flakes on her face like tears of joy. "How...?" she asked, then stopped him with her fingertips on his lips. "No. Don't. I don't want to know about temperature coefficients and weather gradients and all that."
He chuckled. "Actually, I was going to say the truth... It was magic."
"And you did this?" She pressed against him and put her face up for a kiss. "I knew you had poetry in your soul!" she murmured.
"Did you ever have any doubt?" he asked, giving her the kiss she demanded.
She tilted her head to one side and gave him a crooked smile. "Never. It's what attracted me to you to begin with. Last fall. Remember?"
"I sure do," he said, surrendering to the moment and the hot jet wash of nostalgia that took him over. "Gods, Dolly! I love you!"
"I love you, too, Drummond."
"Oof!" he exclaimed and stumbled against her, bent double at the waist..
"What?" she asked in sudden alarm, bending her knees to see up into his face.
"Son of a bacchae!" he yelled, laughing. He stooped and scooped up a double-handful of the snow from the ground and whirled to face to the rear. "Alright, you coward!" He roared. "Attack a man from behind? Come out and fight like the mouse you are!"
And they were pelted with snowballs from all sides. Drummond was stooping and throwing snowballs as fast as he could. Dolly just stood there, astonished, spitting ice crystals, a mound of melting white sliding down one cheek, her eyelashes frosted white and her bangs soaked against her forehead. Then a glint came into her eye and she crouched, bending her head impossibly to take a part of her robe in her teeth and tear. Having started a rip, she quickly shortened the garment to mid-thigh-length by tearing the thing on a horizontal line around her legs. Then she knelt and unbuckled her sandals, throwing them through an open door into the ballroom. She stood, her legs unencumbered, her feet able to feel the surface on which she was standing. She was ready for combat. She scooped up a snowball and, with a fair imitation of Xena's ululating war cry, she charged into a line of attackers that included Joxer from King of Assassins, Gabrielle from Blind Faith, and Prosper Book, with Cyane from the Sin Trades. She crashed through their line at a gallop and skidded around a group of the kids from the Design College who were making a miniature snowman in a bird bath. Pausing only to grab more handfuls of snow, she came up on the line of snowballers from the rear. She caught Book and Cyane unawares and pummeled both of them unmercifully, ducking groundward several times for more ammunition.
This relieved the pressure on Drummond, who took advantage of the opportunity to gather up an opposing force composed of Xe Doll, another Xena... from The Reckoning if the white leather was any indication, and several Centerites. A squad of Trolls, their weapons stacked on the back lawn, charged up and added their considerable weight to Drummond's team. Despite this, his force was badly outnumbered and his queen was in enemy territory.
The entire lawn had erupted into several similar free-for-alls. Drummond caught a glimpse of a squad of Lao Ma's marching across the front lawn, spare ammunition carried and fed to them by a motley crew of Garths, Palomons, and the occasional odd Xera. They easily swept all from their path until they met up with the unlikely combination of David and Goliath standing side-by-side and taking on all comers. Their high-low combination was unbeatable.
Meanwhile, Drummond's and Book's two teams ended up facing each other at a distance of about five yards and just slugging it out.
The advantage would have gone to the side with the greater numbers, which had coalesced around Prosper Book's able leadership, except that Drummond's side had Dolly, who refused to play fair. She ran in and out between the lines, yelling like a rebel banshee or worse, jumping off the shoulders of the willing Trolls to tumble through the air and knock down members of the opposing team to send them sprawling in the wet snow.
Finally a quick huddle of Book's team reached the conclusion that Dolly had to be taken out of play and Rennie MacDougal was detailed to the task. He caught her up in his arms and carried her kicking and screaming to dump her in a newly-formed snow drift off to one side of the battlefield. She sprawled in the wet snow, snarling imprecations at the mad redheaded Scot, who stood in front of her laughing at her predicament and dodging backward as she sent a lethal kick toward his shin. She yelled bloody murder until Drummond had to come rescue her. MacDougal allowed himself to be chased away, still laughing his head off.
Drummond squatted next to Dolly. "Had enough?" he asked.
"Hell no! This is fun! More! More!" she shouted greedily, laughing.
"I don't think so. Your lips are turning blue. You need to get warmed up."
"You can do that," she exclaimed, throwing herself at him. He caught her and rubbed her back. In doing so, he pulled the shortened robe up over her ass which was, predictably, bare.
"And you are out here--as usual--without pants on!"
She grinned up at him. "No bra, either!" She showed him, loving the way his eyes widened and his pupils dilated in appreciation of her charms.
"And you are soaked clear through."
"Woo-woo!" she whooped, jumping up. "Wet toga contest! Best chest in the West!" she threw her arms up in the air and shimmied around in a little dancing circle. "Bets tits in the... whoops!" she stumbled into Drummond, who put his arms around her in an attempt to restrain her.
"Enough, Dolly. Please. For me. You'll get sick if you don't get warmed up."
"Fuck, Drummond, it was ninety degrees out today!"
"Doesn't matter. You have been practically immersed in freezing water for a good forty-five minutes. People have died from less exposure. Come on. The snowball fight is over and they've started a bonfire."
He got her over to the fire and commandeered a blanket to wrap around her, then stood there shivering himself until somebody found a bearskin rug for him. He wrapped up in it and pulled Dolly under it with him for good measure, propping the stuffed head up on theirs, which forced them to remain cheek-to-cheek in order to keep it balanced there.
Gradually, the motion of the crowd stilled and soon everyone just stood around the fire, staring into its mesmerizing depths, the larger group coalescing into puddles of murmured conversations. Then somebody somewhere started singing. Others joined in until they had most of the revelers singing along. They went through everyone's repertoire of campfire songs: Kumbaya, Michael Row Your Boat, If I Had a Hammer, Make New Friends, Betsy from Pike, and all the other ones you know by heart.
Then somebody said, "Hey! It's Solstice. We need a Solstice carol."
And that's how they ended up, on a hot July night, standing in a heavy snowfall around a huge bonfire singing...
"Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
Had a very shiny nose...
The End
Out of Bounds (Unplugged) | Previous: VIII. Finally! The Party