Chicago, June 1985. The air over Lake Michigan felt electrically sugared, like the city itself had just been plugged into a neon socket.
They were in Angela’s basement in Evanston. A folding table had been set up like an altar. On it: limes, a sweating bag of ice, a borrowed bottle of gin, something blue and radioactive in a plastic jug.
And in Dustin’s hands—held as reverently as a relic from Chartres Cathedral—was a thick, red-and-gold volume.
“Mr. Boston. The fiftieth anniversary edition,” he said softly. “Gentlemen. Ladies.” He flipped it open with a papery whisper. “This is our Bible.”
Drake, leaning against the ping-pong table in a leather jacket despite the heat, smirked. “You planning to found a religion, Everett?”
Dustin didn’t look up. “Already have. During the course of this summer, we are going to drink at least one of every cocktail in this book.”
Angela Thorne laughed—a bright, competitive flare of sound. “Every one?”
“Every,” Dustin repeated, tapping the page. “From the Aviation to the Zombie. Alphabetical order. Dressed as goths, we will roam the city. We will test the bartenders of Rush Street. We will infiltrate hotel lounges. We will document everything.”
Chuck Crown, sprawled on the carpet, propped himself up on one elbow. “Observing capitalism in its natural habitat.”
“Observe?” Patricia Crown raised an eyebrow. “You mean exploit.”
Drake stepped forward and took the book from Dustin’s hands, flipping through it. The pages were dense, clinical—measurements, ratios, the geometry of intoxication. It was so American it hurt. Order and excess bound together.
“This is like a systems manual,” Dustin said, eyes gleaming. “Inputs. Outputs. Controlled variables. Chicago is the laboratory.”
Angela crossed to the table and picked up a lime, weighing it like a relay baton. “And what exactly are we proving?”
“That we exist,” Drake said quietly.
There was a flicker of something in him then—the same intensity that filled his notebooks, the same brooding current described in his file . He looked at the list of drinks as if they were stations on a mythic pilgrimage.
Dustin snapped his fingers. “We’ll need a name.”
Chuck didn’t hesitate. “The Sickie Souse Club.”
A beat.
Then Patricia laughed. “That’s terrible.”
“That’s perfect,” Angela said, eyes flashing. “It sounds like something from a 1920s novel about degenerates with trust funds.”
“Which we are,” Graylyn replied.
Dustin grabbed a spiral notebook and scrawled it across the top of the page in block letters:
SICKIE SOUSE CLUB
Summer 1985
Mission: Total Cocktail Saturation
“We document every drink,” Dustin continued. “Location. Ingredients. Atmosphere. Sociological observations.”
Angela leaned over Dustin’s shoulder. “What’s first?”
Dustin turned the book back to A.
“Aviation.”
Drake looked around the basement—the wood paneling, the sweating ice, the bright ridiculousness of youth—and felt something lock into place. This wasn’t just drinking. It was reconnaissance. It was performance. It was a declaration of independence from fathers, colonels, secret operatives, Harvard legacies.
“We start tonight,” he said.
Chuck raised an imaginary glass. “To Chicago.”
“To Rush Street,” Patricia added.
“To the lake at 2 a.m.,” Angela said.
“To mastery,” Dustin finished.
And then—because no religion can begin without a hymn—Drake went to the stereo.
Colonel Thorne’s latest sound system was upstairs in the living room. This was the old one, one of those silver-faced, glass-eyed machines with dials that glowed like cockpit instruments. He flipped open the tape deck with theatrical gravity, slid in the cassette, and pressed PLAY with a priestly finger.
A crackle. A hiss.
Then that cathedral organ filled the basement.
“Dearly beloved…” came Prince’s voice through the speakers, thin and electric.
Angela froze mid-sip, then grinned. “Oh, that’s perfect.”
“We could really do this,” said Alvin with awe.
When the guitar tore open the air—sharp, ecstatic, unapologetic—something. The fluorescent lights suddenly felt too pale for what was happening. Drake cranked the volume. Patricia kicked off her loafers. Angela climbed onto the arm of the couch like it was a podium at the Olympics.
Dustin stood in the center of the basement, holding the Mr. Boston guide like scripture, and began to read over the music:
“Aviation. Two ounces gin. Half ounce maraschino—”
“Forget the maraschino!” Angela shouted, hair flashing gold under the bare bulb. “Let’s go crazy!”
Drake grabbed her hand and spun her off the couch. She landed lightly, athlete’s balance, and they began to dance—not politely, not ironically, but with the full animal permission of sixteen, made only more dangerous by the fact that they were fifteen. Chuck was pogoing against the wood paneling. Patricia, laughing in a way she rarely allowed herself in daylight, moved like she was shedding a decade of inherited restraint.
Dustin tried to maintain composure, but when the chorus hit—never gonna let de-elevator bring us down—even he surrendered. He placed the book carefully back on the folding table, as though setting down sacred law before entering battle.
“No,” Drake shouted over the music. “We’re taking the stairs!”
“To Rush Street!” Chuck yelled.
“To every hotel lounge with a piano!” Patricia added.
Angela pointed toward the small basement window where the summer night pulsed beyond the screen. “To Lake Shore Drive at two in the morning with the windows down!”
Dustin, flushed now, eyes bright behind his glasses, raised the cloudy Aviation high.
“We document the decadence,” he declared. “We analyze the bartenders. We measure the ratios. We conquer the alphabet!”
Drake grabbed the gin bottle like a scepter. “And if the world is going to be spectacle—”
“We’ll be the stars!” Angela finished.
The guitar solo spiraled upward, ecstatic and uncontained. In that moment the basement wasn’t suburban Evanston. It was a launch pad. It was a manifesto. It was the beginning of something that felt at once ridiculous and destined.
The Sickie Souse Club danced like the summer would never end.
And somewhere, in the circuitry of Dustin’s blinking machine, in the city lights flickering toward downtown, in the warm breath of Lake Michigan rolling in from the east, Chicago seemed to lean closer—
—as if taking notes.
Drake lifted the real bottle of gin and poured—too much, probably. The first Aviation of the Sickie Souse Club was cloudy, improperly balanced, and tasted vaguely like perfume.
They drank it anyway.
Upstairs, the summer of 1985 opened like a door.
Regnum Somniorum 