Austin had introduced me to powdered sauce mixes. They are incredibly inexpensive and all he ate as an intern in D.C. the summer before me. He used to buy them all the time at the Stop and Shop down the hill from our college campus. Which makes me wonder why? He didn’t have a hot plate in his dorm room. He ate all his meals in the dining halls. What was he doing with all those packets of powdered pasta sauce mix? A question for the ages.
I may never know because Austin turned into a Yeti after my wedding. According to Peter, Austin got super drunk on a handle of bourbon on the bus back to the hotel. Then he broke a glass into the ice maker at a TGI Fridays, used his hand to try and clean it up, only to have the glass slice his hand — turning the communal ice into a crime scene. Austin was kicked out of the bar. He growled loudly and incoherently and then wandered into the woods of upstate New York never to be heard from again.
Austin had cautioned before I went to D.C. that he would boot and rally daily when he interned. It was the culture. Go out, wake up hung-over, go to work, and do it all over again.
I remember thinking that sounded terrible. I would never do that. Whoops.
Maybe the powdered pasta sauce was his secret hangover cure. I was about to find out.