49...

Bryan led the charge back towards the stairs, gracefully maneuvering his way through the rush. Frank saw the table loaded up with snack foods and gave Bryan a tug and the back of his shirt to have him hang up a minute. Bryan saw the fat laden bounty and nodded, eyes wide and smiling.
Diving his fist into a bowl of tortilla chips, Bryan said something apparently witty and not the least bit inappropriate to the polo shirt clad gentleman standing next to him. Frank was annoyed at the self conscious streak that flew through him at the thought of gathering a plate of food in front of others; one of the hundreds of friendly neurosis his mother had seen fit to pass on.
The babble of loud and varying conversations, mixed ungraciously with inane and vaguely hip-hop flavored popular music, was grating on Frank’s nerves. It made him think taking a couple of those satay skewers and pushing them through his ears. Seriously, he wondered to himself, why do you even come to these things?
He reached a cubed piece of sourdough into the spinach dip shoveled into a hollowed out loaf of said bread when a voice broke through the wall of distorted noise like a small, affirming rub on the back in the midst of flailing punches.
Frank turned towards the voice. This truly lovely young lady stood there smiling at him, a shine of sincere clarity in her eyes. She looked as if she belonged here with these people in that she appeared to be well bred, obviously took care of herself, but somehow yet stood out from this crowd. There was nothing in particular he could point to, but somehow the word honesty floated up to him.
“I’m sorry?” he said with a confused smile.
“I said, I’d advise against that spinach dip. It tastes like it was made with low fat yogurt or something.”
Frank laughed slightly, not as a social convention, but by the idea that she would decide to share this information with him. She began laughing as well, and man her eyes sparkled.
“Thanks. I’d be really bummed out by a mouthful of bad spinach dip.”
She suddenly threw her small hand to her mouth and a look of shock and embarrassment crept in to her features.
“You didn’t make it or anything did you?” she asked with a tentative smile.
“No,” Frank said, laughing again.
Suddenly this bulk of a man, this wavy-haired minstrel of the inane walked in front of Frank, his back giving off a definite posture of wanting nothing to do with Frank. In fact, he immediately acted as though Frank was never there.
“Hey, where do you work out?” he asked in exactly the sort of dumb ass voice you might expect.
Really, Frank wanted to ask him, you’re going to approach quite possibly the only interesting person in this whole place with, “where do you work out”? Fucking nimrod!
The woman smiled apologetically at Frank. Frank gave a little wave, trying to impart the knowledge that he was happy to have had that slight moment of connection with her with vague and clumsy movements of his fingers. Before he turned completely for the stairs, he noticed a placid look come to her face, a small death sheen in her compelling eyes as she began to address this pile of flesh disguised as a man.
Frank felt his heart break a little bit.