“Says here that the U.K. is now the number one target for Al-Qaeda attacks,” Enon quoted the paper between puffs of his cigarette and sips of whiskey.

“We must be slipping,” I replied.

“I’m not really sure how that can be,” he said. “We’ve made a mess of everything we’ve touched over in the Middle-East.”

“Kind of an insult, if you ask me,” I said. “I mean we really, really try, don’t we? The Brits don’t want it, and I see them trying their damnedest to avoid any kind of distinction like that. But us, we really try. We want to be number one.”

Enon passed me the bottle, gesturing loudly that he thought I needed a swig. I took the bottle and sipped it twice. Kite had just finished rolling a joint, and showed off the crooked and pregnant looking hand-made cigarette. She was just learning how to do this. Enon gave her a nod of approval, but just enough to suggest that she still needed a little bit of practice. Kite presented the joint to me, indicating I should light it, which I did, then passed it back to her.

“So what are we going to do?” asked Kite. She likes to pretend that she’s actually interested in our discussions about politics and world events. “I mean,” she went on, “how are we going to get them pissed off at us again?”

Enon took another sip of the whiskey then closed his eyes. He appeared to be deep in thought, but he was really only holding his breath after taking a hit off of Kite’s joint.

“I think the British problem is that they tend to do things a little bit more correctly than we do,” Enon finally said after exhaling loudly. “While we only ever fuck everything up, we look like a bunch of clowns over there.”

“So they don’t feel like messing with us because we’re such screw-ups?” Kite asked.

“Sounds about right,” I injected. “They are probably just laughing at us, while they consider the Brits to be a viable threat.”

“Yup,” Enon said, holding in another hit while he passed the joint back to me.

“Seems like we used to be able to get everybody pissed all the time,” Kite reminisced. “We must be slipping.”

“Yeah, I miss the good ol’ days,” I said, laying back and looking up at the stars.

“Yeah, the good ol’ days,” said Kite. She laid back beside me, hissing loudly as he puffed on the joint.

“The good ol’ days,” agreed Enon. He stood, gulped one large swig of whiskey, then rested the bottle on my belly as he rolled over to lay next to Kite. I propped my head high enough to sip the whiskey one last time, then laid back again, closed my eyes and thought of how peaceful thing were.