ANOTHER BLACKOUT. I rose painfully from the trampled carpeting. My head throbbed with the sudden rush of blood and the muscles in my back protested with waves of sharp pains. Most of my memory was gone. All I knew was that it was now morning and that I appeared to be the only survivor. It could have been the day after the last day of the world. Caressing a cramp low in my neck, I stared in disbelief at the scene of destruction before me.

Someone was going to have one hell of a hotel bill to pay.

A couple of empty beer cans rattled across the floor as I made my way to the lanky figure huddled under a dark blanket in the corner of the room. I glanced curiously at the two empty but thoroughly disheveled beds and then bent down and gave the blanket a violent yank.

"What the fuck, man!" the lanky figure choked as the blanket whipped away.

It was Josh. His bleached-blonde hair jutted aimlessly in different directions and his t-shirt had a lengthy tear down the center. His eyes were blood-shot. He looked like a refuge from skid row. Jose Cuervo had really done a number on him.

He blinked his glazed, vexed eyes and repeated himself.

I grinned and said, "Time to get up, Beavis."

"You didn't have to wake me like that!" he snapped.

I laughed. "I doubt you want to get left in Canada."

With an alarmed look—forgetting how hungover he probably was—he shot suddenly to his feet.

"Where'd everybody go?" he stammered.

The door to the room burst open. Josh's brother Barry spilled in, trailed by two of our girlfriends.

The sight of the cracked and broken doorjamb and I recalled the maddened break-in which had occurred hours earlier. Stephano, another friend in our group, mistaking our room in his drunkeness for his room next door, became enraged when his key wouldn't fit. Swearing furiously at the Establishment that would conspire to keep him from his hotel room, he kicked open our door. Not long afterward the police arrived—or maybe Mounties—and cleared the room of unregistered occupants. We told the police that some old raving drunk had forced open the door, that it wasn't one of us, that the drunk had been shouting something about "Betsy Lou." They bought our story, warned us about Vancouver's derelicts and pedophiles—not that we were that young—and left without further incident.

"Everyone's eating at the cafe across the street," Barry said now. "So if you and Josh are going to eat you'd better hurry. We're all leaving in a few minutes."

We left the room in complete disarray. Empty handed, as we hadn't any luggage.