A guy came up to us with plastic cups of beer. “Are you ladies students here?”
“Hell, yeah,” Lula said, taking a cup. “We’re studying all kinds of shit.”
“Anyone want to go upstairs?”
“Mostly we want to go downstairs,” Lula said.
“We’d like to see the cellar,” Connie told him.
“The cellar’s locked,” he said. “Nothing going on down there anyway.”
“Then why is it locked?” I asked.
“We keep the beer down there,” he said.
“I want to see the beer,” Lula said. “I get turned on by beer. Most people want to drink it, but I like looking at it. You can’t imagine what I could do to you if I had enough beer to look at. You’d never be the same. You’d be ruined when I was done with you.”
“Damn,” he said. “I haven’t got a key. Professor Pooka has a key. So what’s it going to be? One or all of you want to make me happy?”
“You’re gonna have to get happy all by yourself,” Lula said. “We don’t make people happy until we know them better. We got standards.”
“How much do your standards cost?” he asked Lula. “What can I get for ten bucks?”
“You can’t get nothin’ for ten bucks,” Lula said. “If I was in that business, which I’m not, I wouldn’t even look at you for ten bucks.”
“How about twenty? I bet I could get a tug from you for twenty.”
“This here’s insulting,” Lula said. “Do you know what you could get for twenty? You could get a snootful of pepper spray. I got some in my purse.”
Lula reached into her purse and pulled out her gun.
His eyes got wide and he jumped away. “Crap! I know who you are. You’re the nut who shot up the balcony.”
Someone yelled, “She’s got a gun! It’s the shooter! Call the police. Run for your lives.”
“I was just lookin’ for my pepper spray,” Lula said.
People were bolting up the stairs and out the front door.
“This isn’t good,” Lula said. “This here’s pandemonium.”
I turned Lula around and pointed her toward the kitchen. “Follow Connie!”
We ran through the deserted kitchen and out the back door. I smacked into Dean Mintner and knocked him flat.
Connie and I picked him up and set him on his feet.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see you here in the dark.”
“What are you doing out here?” Lula asked him.
“I’m watching. I’m taking down names and collecting evidence.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“I don’t know yet,” Mintner said. “I haven’t figured it out.”
“This is why I’m not going to college,” Lula said. “Everybody’s a goofball.”