“Except I’m Tina Howard Wallace now,” the woman in the black dress said. “My husband’s around here ... somewhere ...” She looked around vaguely, spilled some more of her drink, and swallowed the rest before it could get away from her. “Isn’t it AWFUL, I seem to have lost him.”
She looked at him warmly, speculatively, and Bart could barely believe that this woman had given him his first touch of female flesh—the sophomore class trip at Grover Cleveland High School, a hundred and nine years ago. Rubbing her breast through her white cotton sailor blouse beside ...
“Cotter’s Stream,” he said aloud.
She blushed and giggled. “You remember, all right.”
His eyes dropped in a perfect, involuntary reflex to the front of her dress and she shrieked with laughter. He grinned that helpless grin again. “I guess time goes by faster than we—”
“Bart!” Wally Hamner yelled over the general party babble. “Hey buddy, really glad you could make it!”
He cut across the room to them with the also-to-be-patented Walter Hamner Party Zigzag, a thin man, now mostly bald, wearing an impeccable 1962-vintage pinstriped shirt and horn-rimmed glasses. He shook Walter’s outstretched hand, and Walter’s grip was as hard as he remembered.
“I see you met Tina Wallace,” Walter said.
“Hell, we go way back when,” he said, and smiled uncomfortably at Tina.
“Don’t you tell my husband that, you naughty boy,” Tina giggled. “ ’Scuse, please. I’ll see you later, Bart?”
“Sure,” he said.
She disappeared around a clump of people gathered by a table loaded with chips and dips and went on into the living room. He nodded after her and said, “How do you pick them, Walter? That girl was my first feel. It’s like ”This Is Your Life.”
Walter shrugged modestly. “All a part of the Pleasure Push, Barton my boy.” He nodded at the paper bag tucked under his arm. “What’s in the plain brown wrapper?”
“Southern Comfort. You’ve got ginger ale, don’t you?”
“Sure,” Walter said, but grimaced. “Are you really going to drink that down-by-de-Swanee-Ribber stuff? I always thought you were a scotch man.”
“I was always a private Comfort-and-ginger-ale man. I’ve come out of the closet.”
Walter grinned. “Mary’s around here someplace. She’s kinda been keeping an eye out for you. Get yourself a drink and we’ll go find her.”
“Good enough.”
He made his way across the kitchen, saying hi to people he knew vaguely and who looked as if they didn’t know him at all, and replying hi, how are you to people he didn’t remember who hailed him first. Cigarette smoke rolled majestically through the kitchen. Conversation faded quickly in and out, like stations on late-night AM radio, all of it bright and meaningless.
... Freddy and Jim didn’t have their time sheets so I . . . said that his mother died quite recently and he’s apt to go on a crying jag if he drinks too much ... so when he got the paint scraped off he saw it was really a nice piece, maybe pre-Revolutionary ... and this little kike came to the door selling encyclopedias ... very messy; he won’t give her the divorce because of the kids and he drinks like a ... terribly nice dress ... so much to drink that when he went to pay the check he barfed all over the hostess
A long Formica-topped table had been set up in front of the stove and the sink, and it was already crowded with opened liquor bottles and glasses in varying sizes and degrees of fullness. Ashtrays already overflowed with filter-tips. Three ice buckets filled with cubes had been crowded into the sink. Over the stove was a large poster which showed Richard Nixon wearing a pair of earphones. The earphone cord disappeared up into the rectum of a donkey standing on the edge of the picture. The caption said:
WE LISTEN BETTER!
To the left, a man in bell-bottomed baggies and a drink in each hand (a water glass filled with what looked to be whiskey and a large stein filled with beer) was entertaining a mixed group with a joke. “This guy comes into this bar, and here’s this monkey sitting on the stool next to him. So the guy orders a beer and when the bartender brings it, the guy says, ‘Who owns this monkey? Cute little bugger.’ And the bartender says, ‘Oh, that’s the piano player’s monkey.’ So the guy swings around ...”
He made himself a drink and looked around for Walt, but he had gone to the door to greet some more guests—a young couple. The man was wearing a huge driving cap, goggles, and an old-time automobile duster. Written on the front of the duster were the words
KEEP ON TRUCKIN’
Several people were laughing uproariously, and Walter was howling. Whatever the joke was, it seemed to go back a long time.
“... and the guy walks over to the piano player and says, ‘Do you know your monkey just pissed in my beer?’ And the piano player says, ‘No, but hum a few bars and I’ll fake it.’ ” Calculated burst of laughter. The man in the bell-bottomed baggies sipped his whiskey and then cooled it with a gulp of beer.
He took his drink and strolled into the darkened living room, slipping behind the turned back of Tina Howard Wallace before she could see him and snag him into a long game of Where Are They Now. She looked, he thought, like the kind of person who could cite you chapter and verse from the lives of classmates who had turned out badly—divorce, nervous disorders, and criminal violations would be her stock in trade—and would have made unpersons out of those who had had success.
Someone had put on the inevitable album of 50’s rock and roll, and maybe fifteen couples were jitterbugging hilariously and badly. He saw Mary dancing with a tall, slim man that he knew but could not place. Jack? John? Jason? He shook his head. It wouldn’t come. Mary was wearing a party dress he had never seen before. It buttoned up one side, and she had left enough buttons undone to provide a sexy slit to a little above one nyloned knee. He waited for some strong feeling—jealousy or loss, even habitual craving—but none came. He sipped his drink.
She turned her head and saw him. He raised a noncommittal finger in salute: Go on and finish your dance—but she broke off and came over, bringing her partner with her.
“I’m so glad you could come, Bart,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the laughter and conversation and stereo. “Do you remember Dick Jackson?”
Bart stuck out his hand and the slim man shook it. “You and your wife lived on our street five ... no, seven years ago. Is that right?”
Jackson nodded. “We’re out in Willowood now.”
Housing development, he thought. He had become very sensitive to the city’s geography and housing strata.
“Good enough. Are you still working for Piels?”
“No, I’ve got my own business now. Two trucks. Tri-State Haulers. Say, if that laundry of yours ever needs day-hauling . . . chemicals or any of that stuff ...”
“I don’t work for the laundry anymore,” he said, and saw Mary wince slightly, as if someone had knuckled an old bruise.
“No? What are you doing now?”
“Self-employed,” he said and grinned. “Were you in on that independent trucker’s strike?”
Jackson’s face, already dark with alcohol, darkened more. “You’re goddam right. And I personally un-tracked a guy that couldn’t see falling into line. Do you know what those miserable Ohio bastards are charging for diesel? 31.9! That takes my profit margin from twelve percent and cuts it right down to nine. And all my truck maintenance has got to come out of that nine. Not to mention the frigging double-nickle speed-limit—”
As he went on about the perils of independent trucking in the country that had suddenly developed a severe case of the energy bends, Bart listened and nodded in the right places and sipped his drink. Mary excused herself and went into the kitchen to get a glass of punch. The man in the automobile duster was doing an exaggerated Charleston to an old Everly Brothers number, and people were laughing and applauding.
Jackson’s wife, a busty, muscular-looking girl with carroty red hair, came over and was intro
duced. She was quite near the stagger point. Her eyes looked like the Tilt signs on a pinball machine. She shook hands with him, smiled glassily, and then said to Dick Jackson: “Hon, I think I’m going to whoopsie. Where’s the bathroom?”
Jackson led her away. He skirted the dance floor and sat down in one of the chairs along the side. He finished his drink. Mary was slow coming back. Someone had collared her into a conversation, he supposed.
He reached into an inside pocket and brought out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. He only smoked at parties now. That was quite a victory over a few years ago, when he had been part of the three-packs-a-day cancer brigade.
He was halfway through the cigarette and still watching the kitchen door for Mary when he happened to glance down at his fingers and saw how interesting they were. It was interesting how the first and second fingers of his right hand knew just how to hold the cigarette, as if they had been smoking all their lives.
The thought was so funny he had to smile.
It seemed that he had been examining his fingers for quite a while when he noticed his mouth tasted different. Not bad, just different. The spit in it seemed to have thickened. And his legs ... his legs felt a little jittery, as if they would like to tap along with the music, as if tapping along with the music would relieve them, make them feel cool and just like legs again—
He felt a little frightened at the way that thought, which had begun so ordinarily, had gone corkscrewing off in a wholly new direction like a man lost in a big house and climbing a tall crrrrystal staircase—
There it was again, and it was probably the pill he had taken, Olivia’s pill, yes. And wasn’t that an interesting way to say crystal? Crrrrrystal, gave it a crusty, bangled sound, like a stripper’s costume.
He smiled craftily and looked at his cigarette, which seemed amazingly white, amazingly round, amazingly symbolic of all America’s padding and wealth. Only in America were cigarettes so good-tasting. He had a puff. Wonderful. He thought of all the cigarettes in America pouring off the production lines in Winston-Salem, a plethora of cigarettes, an endless clean white cornucopia of them. It was the mescaline, all right. He was starting to trip. And if people knew what he had been thinking about the word crystal (a/k/a crrrystal), they would nod and tap their heads: Yes, he’s crazy, all right. Nutty as a fruitcake. Fruitcake, there was another good word. He suddenly wished Sal Magliore was here. Together, he and Sally One-Eye would discuss all the facets of the Organization’s business. They would discuss old whores and shootings. In his mind’s eye he saw Sally One-Eye and himself eating linguini in a small Italian ristorante with dark-toned walls and scarred wooden tables while the strains of The Godfather played on the soundtrack. All in luxurious Technicolor that you could fall into, bathe in like a bubble bath.
“Crrrrrrystal,” he said under his breath, and grinned. It seemed that he had been sitting here and going over one thing and another for a very long time, but no ash had grown on his cigarette at all. He was astounded. He had another puff.
“Bart?”
He looked up. It was Mary, and she had a canapé for him. He smiled at her. “Sit down. Is that for me?”
“Yes.” She gave it to him. It was a small triangular sandwich with pink stuff in the middle. It suddenly occurred to him that Mary would be frightened, horrified, if she knew he was on a trip. She might call an emergency squad, the police, God knew who else. He had to act normally. But the thought of acting normal made him feel stranger than ever.
“I’ll eat it later,” he said, and put the sandwich in his shirt pocket.
“Bart, are you drunk?”
“Just a little,” he said. He could see the pores on her face. He could not recall ever having seen them so clearly before. All those little holes, as if God was a cook and she was a pie crust. He giggled and her deepening frown made him say: “Listen, don’t tell.”
“Tell?” She offered a puzzled frown.
“About the Product four.”
“Bart, what in the name of God are you—”
“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” he said. “I’Il be back.” He left without looking at her, but he could feel her frown radiating out from her face in waves like heat from a microwave oven. Yet if he didn’t look back at her, it was possible she would not guess. In this, the best of all possible worlds, anything was possible, even crrrystal staircases. He smiled fondly. The word had become an old friend.
The trip to the bathroom somehow became an odyssey, a safari. The party noise seemed to have picked up a cyclical beat, IT SEEMED TO fade in and FADE OUT in syllables OF THREE AND even the STEREO faded IN and OUT. He mumbled to people he thought he knew but refused to take up a single thrown conversational gambit; he only pointed to his crotch, smiled, and walked on. He left puzzled faces in his wake. Why is there never a party full of strangers when you need one? he scolded himself.
The bathroom was occupied. He waited outside for what seemed like hours and when he finally got in he couldn’t urinate although he seemed to want to. He looked at the wall above the toilet tank and the wall was bulging in and out in a cyclical, three-beat rhythm. He flushed even though he hadn’t gone, in case someone outside might be listening, and watched the water swirl out of the bowl. It had a sinister pink color, as if the last user had passed blood. Unsettling.
He left the bathroom and the party smote him again. Faces came and went like floating balloons. The music was nice, though. Elvis was on. Good old Elvis. Rock on, Elvis, rock on.
Mary’s face appeared in front of him and hovered, looking concerned. “Bart, what’s wrong with you?”
“Wrong? Nothing wrong.” He was astounded, amazed. His words had come out in a visual series of musical notes. “I’m hallucinating.” He said it aloud, but it was spoken only for himself.
“Bart, what have you taken?” She looked frightened now.
“Mescaline,” he said.
“Oh God, Bart. Drugs? Why?”
“Why not?” he responded, not to be flip, but because it was the only response he could think of quickly. The words came out in notes again, and this time some of them had flags.
“Do you want me to take you to a doctor?”
He looked at her, surprised, and went ponderously over her question in his mind to see if it had any hidden connotations; Freudian echoes of the funny farm. He giggled again, and the giggles streamed musically out of his mouth and in front of his eyes, crrrystal notes of lines and spaces, broken by bars and rests.
“Why would I want a doctor?” he said, choosing each word. The question mark was a high quarter-note. “It’s just like she said. Not that good, not that bad. But interesting.”
“Who?” she demanded. “Who told you? Where did you get it?” Her face was changing, seeming to become hooded and reptilian. Mary as cheap mystery-movie police detective, shining the light in the suspect’s eyes—Come on, McGonigal, whichever way you want it, hard or soft—and then worse still she began to remind him uneasily of the H. P. Lovecraft stories he had read as a boy, the Cthulu Mythos stories, where perfectly normal human beings changed into fishy, crawling things at the urgings of the Elder Ones. Mary’s face began to look scaly, vaguely eel-like.
“Never mind,” he said, frightened. “Why can’t you leave me alone? Stop fucking me up. I’m not bothering you.”
Her face recoiled, became Mary’s again, Mary’s hurt, mistrustful face, and he was sorry. The party beat and swirled around them. “All right, Bart,” she said quietly. “You hurt yourself just any way you like. But please don’t embarrass me. Can I ask you that much?”
“Of course you c—”
But she had not waited for his answer. She left him, going quickly into the kitchen without looking back. He felt sorry, but he also felt relieved. But suppose someone else tried to talk with him? They would know too. He couldn’t talk to people normally, not like this. Apparently he couldn’t even fool people into thinking he was drunk.
“Rrrrreet,” he said, ruffling the r’s lightl
y off the roof of his mouth. This time the notes came out in a straight line, all of them hurrying notes with flags. He could make notes all night and be perfectly happy, he didn’t mind. But not here, where anybody could come along and accost him. Someplace private, where he could hear himself think. The party made him feel as if he were standing behind a large waterfall. Hard to think against the sound of all that. Better to find some quiet backwater. With perhaps a radio to listen to. He felt that listening to music would aid his thinking, and there was a lot of think about. Reams of things.
Also, he was quite sure that people had began to glance over at him. Mary must have spread the word. I’m worried. Bart’s on mescaline. It would move from group to group. They would go on pretending to dance, pretending to drink and have their conversations, but they would really be observing him from behind their hands, whispering about him. He could tell. It was all crrrystal clear.
A man walked past him, carrying a very tall drink and weaving slightly. He twitched the man’s sport jacket and whispered hoarsely: “What are they saying about me?”
The man gave him a disconnected smile and blew a warm breath of scotch in his face. “I’ll write that down,” he said, and walked on.
He finally got into Walter Hamner’s den (he could not have said how much later) and when he closed the door behind him, the sounds of the party became blessedly muted. He was getting scared. The stuff he had taken hadn’t topped out yet; it just kept coming on stronger and stronger. He seemed to have crossed from one side of the living room to the other in the course of one blink; through the darkened bedroom where coats had been stored in another blink; down the hall in a third. The chain of normal, waking existence had come unclipped, spilling reality beads every which way. Continuity had broken down. His time sense was el destructo. Suppose he never came down? Suppose he was like this forever? It came to him to curl up and sleep it off, but he didn’t know if he could. And if he did, God knew what dreams would come. The light, spur-of-the-moment way he had taken the pill now appalled him. This wasn’t like being drunk; there was no small kernel of sobriety winking and blinking down deep in the center of him, that part that never got drunk. He was wacky all the way through.
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