by Rick Moody
Paul formulated his plan. He removed the cold six-pack of Heinekens from the refrigerator. He trudged out of the kitchen.
—Frankie opens them with his teeth, Libbets giggled, back in the library. This wasn’t news. It was part of Davenport’s arsenal of entertainments. Paul had tried the same trick on a couple of occasions, with painful results. He had settled for opening beers with house keys, which involved no bodily harm. Davenport, after licking the second joint and setting it aside, used his rear molars on a Heineken.
—Hell on the fillings, Charles.
He opened the other two, passed them around, and then lit a joint.
—Everything’s gonna freeze over, Davenport said. Big freeze.
—Yeah, Paulie, Libbets said, are you going to get home okay?
They explained about the predicted sudden drop in temperature, the predicted freezing of road surfaces, the devastation—you wouldn’t be able to get a cab, the airports would close down, everything would have to be delivered. All the food. All the health and beauty aids. Then Libbets put on an Allman Brothers tape—8-track, television on with the sound down—and they talked about Duane and the crash.
They drank. They smoked pot. Quickly. As though it were an obligation somehow.
No matter how many times the weather repeated its four symphonic movements, the specifics of rainfall and wind direction and velocity and barometric pressure seemed new to Paul. The false logic of marijuana was dawning in him. Six Crises, for example, absorbed his complete attention. He gulped for air: the enormity of this Nixonian schema! Urgently, Paul tried to make the various reversals of his life—his grandparents’ deaths, his stolen bicycles, his father’s drinking, his failure to make junior varsity soccer at St. Pete’s, the time in first grade that his mother made him wear tights in the East School Xmas pageant—add up to six crises. In a flash of specious enlightenment, he saw that every life could fit into this ingenious brilliant systematization. Libbets’s life. Davenport’s life. Daisy Chain’s life, even. Then Paul started thinking about Watergate, a seventh crisis.
—Holy shit, he said.
—How long have we been sitting here? Libbets said. I’m so stoned.
—Seven minutes, Davenport said. Who knows?
—How much beer is left? Paul said.
Davenport reached over to where Paul was sitting. He poked him in the chest.
—How the hell do we know? You’re in charge of the kitchen, cowboy.
They all laughed. HA! HA! HA! HA! Paul went to fetch still more beers, and while he was there he tried to decide whether or not Davenport and Libbets were really trying to get rid of him. The evidence mounted. It was in their facial expressions. They were using some kind of facial code. Paul remembered that he’d had the same thought last time he was in the kitchen. His mind couldn’t light on anything long enough to reason it out. His mind was a slippery, reptilian thing. How much time had passed?
The next beers went more quickly than the first. Paul was careful to permit Davenport to have more than his share. Libbets wasn’t counting. She was just happy to be there.
Then Paul excused himself.
The plan was happening at some lower level of cognition. It was like collective unconscious or something. Next thing he knew: Mr. and Mrs. Casey had decorated their master bath in a style according to their age and means. Lavender shell soaps—they were everywhere, no home without them—occupied a china soap dish. Floral wallpaper, also flecked with lavender, adorned the walls. The soap and the wallpaper and the tissue paper and the hand towels matched. The medicine cabinet yielded precisely the kind of paydirt he had been hoping for. Besides some Preparation H and some perfumed douches, there were several prescriptions: phenobarbital, Valium, Seconal, and an old one, paregoric.
The Seconals interested him particularly.
Before he could effect the next stage of his plan, however, he unzippered his khakis and took himself in hand. An inevitable part of marijuana intoxication. When Paul felt irritable and forlorn, he noticed he was also especially prone to jerk that thing. He had elaborated a number of complicated masturbation scenarios. He always liked to begin, for example, when the second hand of his watch was precisely at twelve. (There was a small wind-up clock on the sink.) He liked to finish before the second hand made it around twice. He also like to whack off to pictures of girls he found by randomly flipping through his St. Pete’s yearbook.
Once he had arrived at Libbets’s picture through this procedure, and though these yearbook episodes were usually memorable, he found on this occasion that he wilted in his hand. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it with a woman so adorable. He just couldn’t bring himself to that point. He had tried a variety of lubricants. Skin lotions, lip balms, even Stan Sinclair’s jar of QT tanning lotion. This failure turned out to be good luck. It proved that Libbets was appropriate for his worship. So appropriate that he got hard, this time, this day.
Shafts of light coursed through his penis. He could feel light in his scrotum, in every millimeter of that downy chicken skin. His ecstasy was religious. This orgasm would be compensation for Paul Hood’s troubles here on earth. Yes, the best orgasms were characterized not by joy—he couldn’t remember a joyful one anyway—but by earthly loss and the desire to fortify himself against it. With this in mind, he was about to tearfully leak a couple of teaspoons of disaffection in the sink. But a knock at the door interrupted him.
—Champ, Davenport called from the other side of the door. What the hell is going on in there? We are bored and desire your company. Come on out. Desist from choking that toad, champ. Desist.
Paul froze. Did Davenport really—
—Just gotta spill in the sink here first, Francis.
He giggled wretchedly at his floppy divining rod.—Then I’ll bring out the heavy chemistry.
—Okay, but don’t be long about it. If you’re gonna take your pleasures in there we want to know about it. We want to participate.
Paul caught his breath. Ran water through his hair. Took a deep breath. Back in the library. Star Trek with American Beauty soundtrack.
—What took so long? Libbets asked.
—Checking out the medicine cabinet, Paul said. Your parents have some excellent shit in there.
—What didst thou find? Davenport said.
—Wait a sec, guys, Libbets said anxiously. You aren’t going to take prescription drugs from my parents’ bathroom without permission?
—Never a thought in our minds, babe, Davenport said, holding in his lungs the last of another joint, so that his voice was husky and forced. But do you mean to suggest that you have never taken advantage of that most convenient supply? What are you, un-American?
—Lots of stuff, Paul said. Diverse items. Tranquilizers and sleeping pills.
He fell lengthways upon the couch.
—Elixirs, Davenport said, that have a promising effect, very promising, when combined in small dosage levels with alcoholic beverages.
—Let me go look, Libbets said. I’ll go look.
Once she had gone, Davenport’s demeanor changed. It was the strangest thing. Suddenly, he was friendly again. Suddenly. They were old friends after all. Davenport knew how Paul got encased in himself. They were old friends and they had been through a few things, but they could still have a good laugh about masturbation or at somebody else’s expense. That Davenport’s headband was stupid, that his beard was a little on the simian side—Paul could overlook this stuff. He could still like him.
So they talked about Thanksgiving. And since Davenport was adopted, as were his brothers and sisters, the notion of a collegial family get-together had its dark, obverse side. Davenport’s younger sister actually aspired, he claimed, to a life of prostitution. She liked to hang around the bars in Times Square. And his younger brother was racked by psychosomatic illnesses. Lately, he had been hospitalized with phantom kidney pain. Which of these children could one day run the Davenport venture-capital organization? Which would entertain at their Sea I
sland summer home? Francis Chamberlain Davenport IV, the likely choice, wanted to be a Jungian psychoanalyst.
—What’s to be thankful for at Thanksgiving? Davenport asked. Indian corn in plastic wrap for sale next to Velveeta? Butterball turkey with built-in thermometer? Rod McKuen? Helen Reddy doing “Delta Dawn”? Are you getting this all down, Charles?
They laughed. They sang. Half a line of “Delta Dawn.” And of “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero.”
—Okay, okay. Libbets turned up again. There’s plenty there. I don’t see how they could miss them. What kind should we do?
—Seconal, definitely, Paul said.
—Hey, as long as it does the job, Davenport said. I am not picky.
—You don’t think this is going to, you know, be a problem with the beers?
—Check the expiration date. Paul said. I thought they looked pretty cool.
The need behind teen oblivion overcame any reservations. Which was the way Paul figured it would go. Soon the three of them were crowded into the bathroom, around the medicine cabinet, looking at the little prescription containers. Libbets’s hands were shaking as she handed around the reds. And Paul was moved by this. He put his hand lightly around her shoulder, her soft and fragrant shoulder. Did she notice? They were each embarked on a solitary narrative of intoxication. Repartee wasn’t part of the whole thing.
Davenport looked the capsules over admiringly, like a collector of fine wines.
Paul let his settle under his tongue.
He felt a little bad about how easy it was, leading Davenport down this road, but in the long run, by late next week, they would forgive one another.
—Hey, maybe you should only take a half, old lady, Hood said to Libbets. Why don’t you put half in a glass of orange juice or something? You don’t weigh as much as we do.
—You guys aren’t trying to rip me off or anything, are you? Libbets said. It was almost like she was going to cry for a second. Paul was shaking his head, he was trying to wave her off. She swallowed the whole thing.
—No way, Davenport said. You mean so we could have our way with your sleeping body?
Davenport laughed grimly. Libbets had breasts and hips—she was curvy in fact, she was all gentle curves—hidden under her baggy army fatigues and sweatshirt. Two against one, that was Davenport’s idea. Her parents wouldn’t be home for days. No, Paul would defend her against Davenport. Take me, but leave the girl alone. She was friendlier than she wanted to be, she smiled more than she wanted to smile. The fact that she’d permitted losers like Hood and Davenport into her manse proved it. Thank God these exceptions arose. Thank God for drinking a bottle of wine with Liza during first class Friday morning. Thank God for snorting speed with Laura and Dave and going to the Tuck Shop to eat malted milk balls. Thank God for the confraternity of burnouts.
—Naw, Davenport said, we had a period in which we loved unconscious women, but we’re over that now.
Time stretched out. The world was full of information, but it was all happening more slowly. Paul buried his capsule in a potted palm by the window. But he was succumbing to the pot and beer. Some labyrinthine and endless decision was being made about whether or not to go to a nightclub called Max’s something or other. Would Sue Richards return to Reed Richards? Would Francis Ford Coppola make a sequel to The Godfather? Worlds real and imagined buzzed side by side, options and conclusions appeared and disappeared. When Davenport arranged himself on the couch, to watch Sanford and Son with the sound off, Paul saw how easy some things are, how you don’t need to try so hard. Davenport wouldn’t rise from that couch for twelve hours.
—I’m a hothead, Libbets, he said. I’m—
—Huh? Let’s go into the living room. Let’s let him sleep.
—He’s just crashed. This doesn’t last forever.
—Don’t you think we ought to eat something?
But they couldn’t just leave Davenport.
—I wonder how bad the weather is, Paul said.
—I was just telling you, said Libbets. Snow tonight. It’s gonna be bad.
—The last train to Stamford leaves at.… I have to be on that last train or I’m fucked.
Paul switched on the lamp that illumined the Casey family portrait and they sat on the floor in its ostentatious glow. On Paul’s radio program, on the ten-watt AM radio station at St. Pete’s, he made hideously sentimental dedications to girls he’d never met. He wrote notes to them and left these notes in a drawer. He burned the names, or threw them out; he writhed in spoiled and cowardly silence. His outbursts of feeling were as unpredictable as sunspots. As he took Libbets’s hand—she permitted it to be taken—he knew he was liable to say anything. His exacting standards vanished. He loved Cat Stevens. He wanted to fill a dictionary with flowers. He wanted to lie on golf greens with her. He wanted to spy on her through a hole in a newspaper. He wanted to make a better family than the one from which he came.
—Let’s go back to your room.
—Excuse me? Libbets said.
—I want to show you my etchings, he said.
—Etchings?
—It’s a joke, he said. C’mon. I just want to talk. I have stuff I want to tell you.
Libbets collapsed into indecision.
—Hey, Libbets, you didn’t set me up or anything, did you? You didn’t invite Davenport here because you were afraid to be alone with me, did you? You aren’t afraid to have me here in your house, are you? Because I came a long way to see you. You wouldn’t do that kind of thing, would you? Libbets?
II
The bright hues of the sixties had vanished from contemporary interior design. Let me interrupt again briefly here. Where the wives of southern Connecticut in the past might have embraced—carefully, hesitantly—gaudy neons and Day-Glos, they had by 1973 settled into milder pastels and earth tones. Subdued patterns figured prominently in upholstery fabrics and draperies, although you might also find in these items unusual marriages of color—puce and gray, or lavender and ocher. Vera Neumann, also known as Vera, winner of the 1972 National Home Fashion League Trailblazer Award, was the standard-bearer of these color harmonies. The decorator fabrics themselves were more durable than in the past. Synthetics and cotton/poly blends dominated. Plastics had also penetrated far into the home. Coffee tables, modular furniture, kitchenware, and electrical appliances—all could now be fashioned from plastic.
Shag rugs of rust and brown like fallen leaves and corroded automobiles or green and gray like cave algae or a thick beach-coating of seaweed—shag was the area rug of the area. Shorter piles with startling mandalas and floral prints were also possible because of new manufacturing technologies. Yet shag continued to exert its charm over the decorators of New Canaan. It was versatile—it could conceal crumbs, ancient pieces of chewing gum, spittle, disease-carrying fleas and ants and silverfish, shreds of paper, and other unrecovered items. And it helped the vacuum-cleaner business move units. The seating unit had come to replace the couch in the vanguard of living room accommodations. A minimalist vocabulary was evident in these ingenious designs, reflecting the influence of simple, primal iconography in sculpture and architecture. Single-color stylings decorated sleek, curvaceous, cornerless shapes. The modular pieces of these seating units could be easily moved and rearranged in a variety of amoebic configurations. The traditional couch—and with it the loveseat, the divan, and the chaise longue—was in eclipse.
The new seating units were often fashioned from polyurethane foam, a cheap, easy-to-manufacture, artificial filling. The Furniture Council of the Society of the Plastics Industry even presented a Poly Award for the groundbreaking adaptation of polymers. In 1973 it went to Donald A. Geddes, editor of American Furniture Design, who was named Polymer Man of the Year.
Benjamin Hood reflected on fashion only briefly upon taking his wife’s hand—noticing in passing her ring and the raw, red crevices that surrounded it. She needed lotion. Passing across the Halfords’ threshold, into the foyer with its large standing sculpture—a me
lted I-beam twisted into a sort of anguished helix—catching a glimpse of the clustering and valent neighbors arranged in the corridor, Hood realized the truth of the matter: his ascot was no longer in fashion.
In fact, sweaters, furry and dense and of Netherlandish origin, were numerous in the front hall at Dorothy and Robert Halford’s. There were a few old tweed jackets, but no ascots. Had Hood been in a mind to comfort himself, he might have approved of his ample shirt collar, spread wide on the wings of his lapels. But how had he managed to get out the door wearing the ascot? How had he let himself? Hood didn’t wear three-inch cork heels or white loafers. And he didn’t wear his hair long or wear double-breasted suits or pleated pants. His gesture toward what he saw as a more flamboyant presentation had been these ascots, fashioned of a silk he liked to feel against his neck, against spots irritated by his Wilkinson double-bonded razor. But these ascots were no longer appropriate. Only months before, Benjamin Hood had lived in the certainty that his dress was in accord with the prevailing climatic conditions. But now, just as quickly, he was solitary in his garb. He dressed poorly. He disgraced himself. His wife looked fine, in her slacks and Hush Puppies, but he disgraced her company.
Of women’s fashion at the Halfords’, Hood might have noticed ankle-length skirts, dignified and elegant, though there were also skirts at the knee and the midcalf. Here, too, sweaters were the accessory of choice, reflecting a polyphony of styles—sweaters of cashmere, mohair, and shetland. Sweaters, sweaters, sweaters. Sweaters, and pearls.
Dorothy Halford overtook them in the foyer. With a free hand, she waved a little celery canoe at them. It was loaded down with an aqua-colored dip. Dot wore a blue-and-gray crocheted sweater over a thin crepe de chine blouse, pants of gray flannel, black velvet beret. No makeup. She was petite; there was something Katharine Ross–cherubic, unthreatening, wholesome about her. She appeared both willing and unsullied in the brute arena of erotic love. She seemed to take no notice of how her guests, the Hoods, were turned out, and she couldn’t have seen the traces of a recent disagreement in their eager hellos.