Gary decided he wouldn't worry about the party. Instead, he smoked a joint and watched Trigun. Gary liked Trigun. He liked Wolfwood. Sure, Vash the Stampede was cool (just saying his name gave Gary a sense of satsifaction) but Wolfwood was Gary's favorite. Something about a character who carries around a giant wooden cross full of guns on his back was . . . well, it was complex. It definitely wasn't expected.

Tonight, later, here, during the party, when things got crowded, Gary would make use of the back lawn for people to congregate. There was a lack of ample party space inside his house, not because his house was small - it wasn't. It was because it was filled with half-painted canvases which tended to dominate all the rooms. Gary started a new painting every couple of days. Finishing one was another story. Yes, outside would be good. And anyway, it would be the right temperature tonight. Cool, but not cold. Crisp. Yes, crisp felt good at a party. Kept people awake. But it made for bad swimming weather. Perhaps encouraging a swim would be out of order.

"This shit has to be cleaned," he thought. He was reclining on the couch, feet propped on the coffee table. Right after Trigun he would clean up a bit. He tried to console himself with the thought that his place had been in worse condition before. But the fact remained: it certainly was not tip top at the moment. Cigarette ashes littered the coffee table underneath his feet and legs. This was due to Gary's reckless flicking habits. He liked to hold the cigarette between his thumb and middle finger and flick the cigarette hard with his pointer, aiming, of course, at the large glass ashtray, but rarely hitting that target.

Gary did not make his living painting canvases, as he might have hoped, but he was not far from that. He painted walls; but he didn't just paint them white, or beige, or 'Pageant Blue' or 'Brooklands Green.' He painted murals on grocery store walls. He painted landscapes on theater sets. Occassionally, he was commissioned to paint grafitti on warehouse walls downtown. This was not the type of grafitti that made some social or religious statement in a less-than-subtle manner - cities do not pay for that kind of art. No, his stuff simply made the city look nicer. The city used it to cover up the other stuff. He'd developed quite a reputation in Austin for his work, and somewhere along the line, amazingly, he discovered he could charge top dollar for his time and effort. Furthermore, he found himself being invited to parties in town where the cool, the artistic, the intellectual gathered and discussed fashionable topics. He would go to these parties, join the conversations, and eventually he made friends in certain important circles, until one day he was throwing his own parties. Now people came to his house and looked at his walls, his half-finished canvases, and commented on them. They didn't care that his house was messy, that it smelled like oil paints. They liked it. They would spend hours on his couch, smoking his pot, laughing, wondering what came next.

And this was the awful truth. Nothing came next. Nothing ever came next. And eventually what came next would most certainly be nothing. And this troubled Gary. He had a natural distrust for anything that was too easy. He always found that good fortune was usually a non-permanent condition. And this, this position he found himself in - it reeked something dreadful of a tenuous and fickle stroke of luck. To do what he enjoyed and be compensated handsomely for it, well, he'd enjoy it while it lasted.

Trigun was over. Gary took a shower. People would arrive soon and he should at least be clean. He wondered how many people might be coming over - he tried to remember who he had invited. Karin and Dennis, for sure. Probably Risa, which of course meant John. Toby, Ryan, Chris, Meg, Telly, Jason. Oh, it was too tiring to try and think it through. There would be a lot. Those people would invite other people and still others after those. It was like a fire in barn. All it needed was a spark.

He went back into the living room and turned on the light that hung over his bar area.

"Let's have a party," he said.

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