“Do you dare me to be brave?”
“Do that,” was the vote.
“But are you serious, Doone?”
“Jesus,” said Doone. “It’ll be no test for judgments and sinkage tests if someone for starters doesn’t do more than jog about the territory like mindless bulls. There must be two people making tracks, beyond. Me, playing the woman for sure. And some volunteer amongst you.”
The men inched back on their bike-seats.
“Ah, you and your scientific logic will be the death of brewing and the burial of gin,” said Finn.
“But Doone, your verisimilitude, if there is such a word. It’ll be hard for us to conjure you up as a female.”
“Why not,” offered Riordan, “go fetch a real lass here? A gal from the nunnery—”
“Nunnery!” cried all, shocked.
“Or one of the wives?” said Doone.
“Wives?” cried all, in worse shock.
And they would have driven him like a spike into the earth, had they not realized he was yanking their legs to steer them crooked.
“Enough!” Finn interjected. “Do we have pencils and paper at hand to align the sums and recall the burial sinks, plot on plot?”
The men muttered.
No one had thought to bring pencil and paper.
“Ah, hell,” groused Riordan. “We’ll recall the numerals, back at the pub. Out with you, Doone. In time, a volunteer, playing the male counterpart, will follow.”
“Out it is!” Doone threw down his bike, doused his throat with gargle, and trotted, elbows in a grand rhythm, over the endlessly waiting and terribly damp boneyard of sexual beasts.
“This is the silliest damn thing we ever tried,” said Nolan, tears in his eyes for fear of never seeing Doone again.
“But what a hero!” reasoned Finn. “For would we dare come here with a real crazed female if we did not know the logistics of tug and pull, devastation or survival, love-at-last as against another night of being strangled by our underwear?”
“Aw, put a sock in it!” shouted Doone, far out now, beyond rescue. “Here I go!”
“Further out, Doone!” suggested Nolan.
“Cripes!” cried Doone. “First you say it’s a silly damn thing we do, then you instruct me to the land mines! I’m furthering by fits and starts.”
Then suddenly Doone shrieked. “It’s an elevator I’m in! I’m going down!”
He gesticulated wildly for balance.
“Off with your coat!” Finn yelled.
“What?”
“Eliminate the handicaps, man!”
“What?”
“Tear off your cap!”
“My cap? Nitwit! What good would that do?”