Survival of the Fittest

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Small, alert eyes. Small, unsmiling mouth.

  He held the door open just wide enough to accommodate his wiry frame. Rough hands, dirty nails. Behind him, the room was dotted with a few colored lights but otherwise dark. I caught a glimpse of faces, moving mouths, but the music pounded, blotting out conversation.

  “Yes?” I saw the word, couldn't hear it.

  “Andrew Desmond. Zena invited me.”

  He held up a finger and closed the door. I stood there for several minutes before Zena came out. She wore a full-length dress, royal blue silk crepe, printed with tangerine-colored orchids. Long-sleeved, low neckline, no waistline, generously cut. I supposed it was a muumuu, probably vintage. On a large woman it might have looked tentlike. But the filmy fabric flowed over her tiny body, heightening a sharp pelvis and somehow lengthening her, making her appear taller.

  Loose and flowing . . . easier access to the precious parts?

  “I was starting to wonder about you,” she said. “Fashionably late?”

  I shrugged, looked down at her feet, again in high-heeled sandals. Pink toenails. Three-inch heels. She was able to kiss me without straining.

  Just a peck. Her lips were supple. Then she took my chin as she had in the restaurant and her tongue impelled itself between my lips. I offered some tooth resistance, then let her in. Her hand dropped, cupped my butt and squeezed. She moved back, taking my hand, twisting the doorknob. “All those who enter, abandon all hope.”

  “Of what?”

  “Boredom.”

  She took my hand. The house was packed, the music well past loud and into painful. As she led me through the crowd, I tried to look the place over without being obvious. Just past the entry were two doors— a bathroom designated LE PISSOIR by a computer-printed sign, and an unmarked one that was probably a closet. An unrailed staircase led downstairs. Like many hillside homes, bedrooms on the lower floor.

  A gray-haired woman in a black dress with a white Peter Pan collar waited edgily near the lav, not looking up as we passed. The jam of bodies was bathed in Stravinsky and barely illuminated. Some people danced, others stood and talked, managing to communicate despite the din. The colored lights were Christmas bulbs strung from the low-beamed ceiling and they did little but blink in opposition to The Rite of Spring. I saw shadows rather than people.

  No other signs or banners, nothing identifying it as a Meta bash. What did I expect?

  Zena dragged me forward. The other partygoers moved aside with varying degrees of cooperation but no one seemed to notice us. The house was smaller than I would have guessed, the entire second floor just one main room, a waist-high counter sectioning off a two-step kitchen to the right. Every inch of counter was filled with plastic soda bottles, bags of ice, beer cans, packages of paper plates, plastic utensils.

  What I could see of the walls was hung with prints in metal frames. Florals, nothing telling. It didn't seem like Zena's style, but who knew how often she reinvented herself?

  One thing was certain, she wasn't into decorating. The few pieces of furniture I saw weren't much better than Andrew's, and the books that filled two walls sat in flimsy-looking shelves nearly identical to his.

  Spooky prescience on Daniel's part. If he ever tired of police work, a career as a matchmaker awaited.

  Zena's hand burned my fingers as she continued to guide me past a long folding table covered with white paper. Behind it were yet more people, eating and drinking.

  Then, the only feature elevating the house above low-rent crackerbox: glass doors onto a balcony, beyond them a symphony of stars.

  Man-made constellations twinkling from houses half a mile across a darkened ravine and the real stuff set into a melanin sky.

  Drop-dead view, a real-estate agent would claim, working mightily to show the place at night.

  As we neared the food, I played passive and managed a rough body count. Sixty, seventy people, enough to congest the modest room.

  I looked for Farley Sanger. Even if he'd been there, I'd have been unlikely to spot him in the darkened crush.

  Sixty, seventy strangers, as average-looking as their cars.

  Men seemed to outnumber women. The age range, thirty to mid-fifties.

  No one particularly ugly, no raving beauties.

  It might have been a casting call for Nondescript.

  But an active bunch. Fast-moving mouths, a mass lip-synch. Lots of gesturing, posturing, shrugs, grins, and grimaces, finger-stabs of emphasis.

  I spotted the thickly bearded man who'd answered the door off in a corner by himself, sitting on a folding chair, holding a can of Pepsi and a paperback book, worrying a fold of his sweatshirt.

  He looked up, saw me, stared, returned to reading with the intensity of a finals-crammer. Nearby, two other men, one in a baggy tan suit and plaid tie, the other wearing an untucked white shirt and khakis, sat at a tiny table playing silent chess and smoking.

  As my eyes accommodated, I noticed other games going, on the edges of the room. Another chess match— a woman and a man— moving pieces quickly and fiercely, a minute-glass filled with rapidly sifting white sand next to the woman's left hand. A few feet away, yet more table warfare. Scrabble. Cards. Backgammon. Go. Something that resembled chess but was played on a cubelike plastic frame by two bespectacled, mustached men wearing black who could have been twins— three-dimensional chess. On the near side of the kitchen partition, two other men did something intense with polished stones and dice and a mahogany chute. How did anyone concentrate with the noise?

  Then again, these were smart people.

  We made it to the drinks. The white paper was a butcher's roll cut unevenly. Soda, beer, bottled water, off-brands of scotch, vodka, bourbon, corn chips and pretzels, salsa and guacamole and shrimp dip still in plastic containers.

  Zena used a chip to excavate the avocado paste, came up with a healthy green blob, ate, scooped again, and aimed the construction at my mouth.

  “Good?” she mouthed.

  “Excellent.”

  Grinning and fluffing her bangs, she blew me a kiss, reached out and took hold of my belt buckle and tilted her head at the glass doors. Her eyes were the brightest thing in the room.

  She led me out to the balcony and closed the doors. “A dull roar. So the neighbors don't shit themselves.”

  It was quieter out here, but we weren't alone. About a dozen people shared the balcony, but no turning heads or vigilant eyes.

  Lots of conversation; I tried to make out words, heard “economy,” “texture,” “bifurcation,” “mode of deconstruction.”

  Zena maneuvered me into the left-hand corner and I felt the railing press into my back. Not much of a railing, thin iron, top and bottom pieces connected by widely spaced diagonal pickets. A large man would have had trouble slipping through, but anyone else would have found it easy.

  Zena pushed up against me and the metal bit deeper. The air was warm, the view stunning.

  Maybe that made it the party's romance zone, because right next to us, another couple made out feverishly. The man was beefy, balding, middle-aged, wore a tweed jacket too small around the shoulders; it rode up over corduroy slacks. His playmate was a few years younger, fair-haired, bespectacled, with a thin face but thick arms that jiggled in a sleeveless white dress as she masturbated her boyfriend's lapel. He said something, her hands flew around his neck, and they kissed again.

  Next to them three men argued heatedly . . . about modems, software, morons on the Internet, how the meaning of cyber had been distorted from Norbert Wiener's original conception . . .

  Zena turned my head and jammed her mouth against mine.

  No one noticed.

  The apathy was comforting. But also disappointing, because what did it say about my conspiracy ruminations?

  A murder club? What I was seeing were some folk who craved sex and chitchat, checkmate, triple-word scores, whatever you aimed for in three-dimensional chess.

  Sixty, seventy people.

  How
many killers?

  If any.

  The lovebirds next to us continued to go at it, even as the debating trio raised the volume, one man nearly shouting.

  Zena's tongue continued to explore my palate.

  My hands were on her shoulders; when had I placed them there?

  Her tongue withdrew, regrouping for another attack, and I pulled away and massaged the back of her neck, such a small, delicate neck, then her shoulder. I could feel the bumps on her collarbone.

  Smiling to camouflage the retreat, I said, “Nice party. Thanks for inviting me.”

  “Thank you for coming, sir.”

  “What, exactly, is the occasion?”

  “Who needs an occasion?”

  “Okay,” I said. “What's the organizing criterion?”

  She laughed merrily, guided my hand downward, across crepe, wedging it between her legs.

  I felt heat, the butter of upper thigh, then a crinkly patch that puckered the silk.

  No panties— no, there was something there, a waistband. But very sheer, very low. Bikini pants— why the hell was I conjecturing?

  She tightened her muscles, capturing my fingers.

  Her eyes were closed. Her mouth had parted and I smelled gin. One pink-nailed hand had gathered the fabric of my sportcoat as the other began moving down. . . .

  Not again. . . . I played a frantic mental slide show: dead faces, bloody shoes, filthy alleys, grieving parents . . . I stayed soft.

  She looked up at me. On her smooth, white face was that same flash of narcissistic rage.

  I removed her hand, took hold of her face, kissed her.

  When we stopped for breath, her confusion was gratifying.

  “All these people,” I said, shaking my head. “I'm not into displays.”

  I glanced at the passionate couple, now edging toward the glass doors.

  Her lower lip twitched. She nodded. “I understand, A.”

  I turned, placed my hands on the railing and pretended to study the view. Lots of black between the house and the twinkles. Anything could be out there.

  She moved next to me, put her head against my arm and I slipped my arm around her and touched her cheek. The necking couple had left but the three-man debate was still raging. Two women came out, holding plastic cups, laughing, and moved to the opposite end of the balcony.

  “I repeat my original question, Z.: What's the occasion? Not simply a collection of friends.”

  I felt her tense up. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because these people don't act like your friends.” I rubbed her neck harder, slower, and she shivered. “No one's paying you any attention, and you're rather hard to ignore. So they must have their own agendas.”

  Her fingers reached under my jacket and kneaded my tailbone.

  “Oh, I don't know about that. Being hard to ignore.”

  “Oh, I do, Z. Any bunch that shines you on is either pathologically self-centered or dead.”

  Lifting her hair, I nuzzled the place where the fine strands met smooth neck flesh.

  “They're acquaintances,” she said. “Think of them as kindred spirits.”

  “Ah,” I said. “The intellectual elite?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “Based upon what criterion?”

  “Valid and reliable measurement, Andrew. Designed by psychologists.”

  “Oh, my. Why am I not convulsing with awe?”

  She laughed. “I think we could be even more selective but it's a start.”

  “A smart club,” I said. “And you provide the house.”

  She stared at me. “Tonight, I am. And that's my sole obligation, leaving me free for my own entertainment.”

  She grabbed my chin again. Nasty habit. Tickled my lower lip with a fingernail.

  “Well,” I said, “I feel privileged to be in such exalted company. Without even passing the test.”

  “You've passed mine.”

  “Thank you, ma'am. I shall apply for a federal grant based upon that.”

  “Such cynicism.” She smiled but there was something tentative— wounded?— in her voice.

  Still caressing her, I turned away and fixed my attention on the houses across the canyon. The air was a strange mixture of pollution and pines.

  “Fun, fun, fun,” I said.

  “You're not an ascetic, are you, Andrew? One of those New Age killjoys?”

  “What does ascetism have to do with cynicism?”

  “According to Milton, quite a bit. He wrote a poem about that—“And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub, Praising the lean and sallow abstinence.' ”

  “Lean and sallow,” I said. “Haven't checked my complexion in the mirror, recently. But believe me, I know very well that abstinence does not make the heart grow fonder.”

  She laughed. “I couldn't agree more— what I'm getting at is you seem so . . . oppositional. I feel a certain resistance.” She pressed closer.

  I kept gazing straight ahead, then turned, looked down at her, and took hold of her shoulders. “The truth is, Z., I've been socially deformed. Too many years of listening to neurotics whine.”

  “I can understand that,” she said.

  “Can you? Then understand that parties bring out the worst in me. I came tonight because I wanted to see you. That makes anyone else two-legged refuse.”

  Her breathing quickened.

  “How say we arrange some quiet time?” I said. “Are you free tomorrow?”

  I tightened my grip on her shoulders. She felt breakable, so easy to hurt. Then I thought about Malcolm Ponsico and had to restrain myself from squeezing tighter.

  “I— what about finding some quiet time right here, Andrew?”

  I cocked my head toward the packed room on the other side of the glass. “You've got to be kidding.”

  “I'm not,” she said. “Downstairs. My bedroom.” She closed her eyes. “Come on, let me show you my stuffed animals.”

  Brilliant, Delaware. Now what?

  She dragged me across the balcony and back through the room. A few heads turned, but still, no real interest.

  Up front, the bathroom door was now ajar, lights left on, and she shut it as we passed, taking me down the stairs. Rickety; the steps quivered under our weight.

  At the bottom was another closet-bath combo and a single bedroom door.

  She reached for the knob. Twisted, frowned. “Fuck.”

  “Looks like someone beat us to it.”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” A tiny fist beat the air. “They're not supposed to do that. I should pound til they— oh fuck it!”

  Cursing, then shaking her head, she ran up the stairs and I followed.

  I said, “I suppose the elite makes its own rules—”

  “Stop ridiculing, already! I'm sopping wet and all you want to do is make fun, you misanthropic bastard!”

  “I'd rather have fun than make fun but it's obvious this is not our night. So consider my original invitation: tomorrow. Or even tonight. After your soiree winds down. Come over to my place and I'll assure you privacy.”

  I touched her hair.

  “God,” she said, punching my chest very softly and looking at my zipper. “God, that sounds good . . . but I can't, dammit.”

  “Who's playing hard to get, now?”

  “It's not that. I've got . . . to clean up, set my houseguests up. By the time they get settled— it's just complicated, A.”

  “Poor baby,” I said, drawing her to me. “All those responsibilities to— what's the name of this club, anyway?”

  “What's the difference?” she said, more weary than cagey.

  “All those responsibilities to the What's the Difference Club.”

  She smiled.

  “All right, then, Z. Tomorrow it is. If you put me off further, I'll know our karma-fate-cosmic-algorithm-whatever is accursed.”

  She put her arms around my waist. Even with the heels, she fit under my chin, breasts poking my stomach.

  “So what's the
answer?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Fuck yes!”

  i told her i'd be using the bathroom and then leaving.

  “So early?” she said.