Martini Blisters

Six friends had gathered in Bill Hawthorne's room at the Algonquin to throw themselves a party. Madeline brought a man she had met earlier that evening at a social club on Worth street and Donna had brought her cousin who was backpacking upstate and was in the Big Apple for the weekend. So in total eight had attended Bill Hawthorne's party, including Bill himself, who brought nothing but green fairy, a deck of cards, and a clear baggie of ecstasy that he always kept in his jacket for nights like these. 
Barton Loweman, Bill's best friend and high school sweetheart, made it his job to keep the record player "spinning to the good stuff all night," and it seemed clear that only he knew what the good stuff was. Everyone at the party including the stranger Madeline brought and Donna's cousin knew Barton as simply "Loweman" and it was only Bill Hawthorne who got to call him "Barty". "Billy" and "Barty" were their names for each other and on nights like tonight they would tend to show off their tattoos of the other's face and name. It was only to the rest of the world that they were Hawthorne and Loweman.
Edna had always resented the pairing because ever since she first met them she found both to be particularly attractive. She slept with Loweman twice before at hotel parties similar to this one, but she knew it was because both times Loweman did cocaine and would have fucked the bed had she not been there. She had never slept with Hawthorne though, she always found him too intimidating a presence. She had always wanted too, though. "Hawthorne was a dark, strong type that clung to loose-canon Loweman," she would say, "with his rolled up t-shirt sleeves and mustache, Hawthorne gives off that labourers look. It drives me crazy."
The last person at the party that night was Tom Belamy, a photographer from Minnesota who engaged himself to Donna a year and a half earlier and had come in his own car. He did black and whites and would often snap portraits of the gang which he hoped to eventually publish the series. Donna loved Tom's work but hated his profession, on account that there was no money to be made on spec. She was an assistant at an accounting firm and wished he would sell his camera and find a better paying job. Tom made no effort to appease this wish. He would eventually go on to publish his series and make a more than substantial career for himself in photos. 
The party had begun at two thirty in the afternoon when Madeline had come back from her morning in the city. Drinks were poured, and that was that.