Lysergically Yours | Page 5

almost by accident.
She smiled a big carnivorous smile and licked her lips. "I'm not even a student, are you?"
Johnny started to answer but then instead just grinned.
"Listen," Tinka said, jumping up from the chair and grabbing all the remaining pepperoni in her left hand, "if you like free food, meet me at Annesley Hall tomorrow at seven. You can be my date, I gotta jet."
She then took one quick look around and walked quickly to the exit, grabbing the last slice of sausage pizza on her way by. When she was almost to the door, she spun around and yelled: "And dress nice!" at Johnny while back-pedaling. She backed right into a terrified looking physics student in a button-down shirt and glasses. Quickly catching her balance Tinka turned around, winked at the boy and slapped him on the ass on her way out the door.
Johnny just kept grinning, shook his head and set to work on his pizza.
-=four=-
Johnny was too curious not to show up. He arrived at Annesley Hall at five minutes to seven in the nicest outfit he owned: a slick black three piece suit with a cobalt blue high necked shirt and no tie. He had bought it for his high school formal-- with drug money. Tinka was waiting for him on the stairs. He didn't recognize her at first, but when he did it almost bowled him over. She had transformed from an intimidating Asian punker girl into the most beautiful woman he had ever seen by simply putting on a dress and a hat.
The dress was a long form fitting red silk evening gown with red sequins and the hat was black and feathered and pinned into her hair, which looked downright aristocratic despite the fact that it peeked out wildly in red, black and blue around the edges. She also wore a black mink scarf that would have looked absurd on anyone but her.
Johnny was just about to tell her that she looked amazing, but she beat him to the punch: "Good Evening Dr. Page, you're looking sharp tonight."
"Sorry?" was the only thing Johnny could think of to say.
"You are Dr. Edward Emmanuel Page and I am your wife Bettie," she replied, checking her makeup in a compact mirror.
"Bettie Page?"
"Only by marriage, now come on." She shoved the mirror back into her purse and led him into the building. They ascended the stairs toward the main hall.
"Nice dress," Johnny said from two stairs behind and below Tinka.
"Thanks. Stole it from a costume rental shop." As she said this, Tinka turned and made eye contact with Johnny. It was then that he noticed that her eyes were just as wild and fiery as they had been the day before. It made her look less like a respectable aristocratic lady and rather quite a bit more like a walking time bomb in an evening gown.
They were at the top of the stairs and Tinka was about to push open the doors to the main hall when Johnny asked: "What's the occasion, anyway?"
"Chemistry Department Faculty Mixer" came the reply and then they were through the doors and inside. There were fifty or sixty people in attendance, mostly wise and friendly looking men in the latter half of their lives wearing old dusty suits with timid wives hanging off of their arms, although there were also a smattering of single men and women in their twenties and thirties. Johnny and Tinka, or Dr. and Mrs. Page, were clearly the youngest people present. The buzz of conversation was maintaining that preternaturally healthy level only attainable when a good-sized group of interesting people are coupled with free alcohol. Tinka liberated two glasses of red wine from a table near the entrance and handed one to Johnny.
Five minutes later, Johnny was at the buffet filling his plate with some of the best vegetarian sushi he had ever tasted and trying to avoid talking to anyone so as not to be caught out. His brain registered something incongruous in his peripheral vision. He turned to see what it was and was surprised by the sight of Lyle talking and gesticulating excitedly at a small group of ageing chemists not twenty feet away. He was dressed much as he had been the day before except that he was wearing a Dead Kennedy's Holiday in Cambodia shirt that didn't expose his nipples. At first Johnny thought that Lyle was intentionally making some sort of scene to disrupt the mixer, but upon looking more closely it became clear that the chemists were not only unoffended by what Lyle was saying, but actually quite interested. Johnny tried but couldn't make out the words from where he was standing. It was then that Lyle noticed Johnny. Their eyes met and Lyle raised his eyebrows briefly while he