Worse Than Myself

by Adam Golaski

  Richard was in the yard, beer in hand, talking with someone I didn’t know. Just behind him was the hot tub. The woman who’d answered the door was in the tub with a couple of guys. Before Richard spotted me, the woman said, “You should come in, it’s perfect, cold outside, warm in here.” She giggled. One of the guys leaned over and whispered to her. She pushed him away.

  “David, you made it,” Richard said.

  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Well I’m glad, you know.”

  He introduced me to his friend, and to the guys in the tub. He didn’t know the woman’s name and she didn’t supply it. “Come on and sit,” he said to me.

  I sat on a cooler. Richard and his friend were talking about Boston, where Richard was moving. I’d never been to Boston, I told them, though I’d heard it was like San Francisco. We talked about San Francisco, Seattle, Portland.

  The woman in the hot tub interrupted us and asked me to get her a beer. I got up to get a beer from the cooler. She stood. She was very thin, no hips, but gifted with significant breasts. She leaned forward—bent at the waist without bending her knees—and brought her bosom to my face. Freckles swirled into the dark line of her cleavage. “Thank you so much,” she said, and took the beer. The guys in the tub were happily gazing up at her tiny bottom—those men were nothing to her, made to carry her bags and perform rudimentary tasks while she gazed off in other, more interesting directions. I’d met women like her many times before. “My name’s Prudence,” she said.

  “Of course it is,” I said.

  “You really ought to join.”

  “You know I’m not going to.”

  She did know, too, and smiled a wide, long smile.

  “But I’ll be here all night,” I said.

  She settled back into her pool.

  I lit a cigarette; for a moment, a flame cupped in my hand; I drew my hand away, and looked up to the peak. A man, briefly illuminated by moonlight before the clouds closed up, appeared at the top, moved toward the house. I said to Richard, “Does someone live up there?” Richard told me he didn’t think so. I tried to point out the man—who I could still see, as a dark shape on a dark background—but Richard couldn’t find him. “I’m going to go in, get a real drink,” I said. Richard said he’d be in shortly. I shrugged and walked around to the front of the house—an eye on the man walking down the mountain.

  Most of the people at Richard’s party weren’t attractive. They might be fit and many were dressed in expensive clothes, but most of his friends looked average and, upon getting to know them, were. The exceptions were notable. Michael, a transplant from the coast, a man of style; Kat and Carmilla—just beautiful; Prudence—a manipulator I appreciated; and Sarah. Kat and Carmilla were seated on a small couch in the guest room, surrounded by four or five guys and one unfortunate looking girl (pasty, a large, flat nose and hair forced into a strange shade of red). They were all watching a movie—Kat spotted me in the doorway, shifted on the couch, shoved at one of the guys, and gestured for me to sit beside her. They were watching The Man Who Fell To Earth, that beautiful David Bowie film—

  I let myself get drawn into the movie. Kat ran her hand in a circle on my back. When the unfortunate girl sneezed, breaking my mood, I excused myself and walked down the hall to the bar. I passed the front door just as there was a knock; the door was answered and I heard, “What, you need a formal invitation? Sure, come on in, you are welcome to come in.” Sarah joined me at the bar and took my arm. We collected drinks and Michael and I went out onto the back patio. Mercifully, the three of us were there alone.

  Sarah stole a cigarette and complained about Richard’s friends—“Present company excluded.”

  Michael then brought up the subject Sarah and I had danced around once already: “What’s in Boston for you? I mean, I know Richard has a great job, but what are you going to do?”

  Sarah looked at the floor for a moment, took a drag and a drink and said, “That’s just the thing, Michael.”

  I was eager to hear her explain to Michael just what that thing was—I thought I knew but I wanted her to say it—but instead she stared past Michael, back into the house. I turned and Michael turned and we all watched a very ugly man walk past the back patio door toward the bar.

  “Who the hell was that?” I asked.

  Sarah said, “I don’t know, but—” then drifted past me into the hall. Michael and I looked at each other, then followed—I dropped my cigarette on the patio floor.

  The ugly man wasn’t at the bar by the time we stepped into the hall—no one was.

  He was in the living room, behind the piano, playing the adagio from the Moonlight Sonata on Richard’s out-of-tune grand—the result was not lulling or melancholic, as the adagio is, but dissonant and eerie.

  No one else seemed to share my evaluation of the music. Everyone—the whole party except Prudence and her men—were gathered around the piano watching the ugly man play, laughing when he made an exaggerated flourish over the keyboard, but rapt, totally caught up—so that they all jumped when he moved into the more upbeat allegretto. I wanted to jump too—each out-of-tune note grated on my nerves.

  I stared at the ugly man as he played. He was bald. His head was long and boney, his eyes lost in shadow. His skin was a dark brown—not like Michael’s, no, he didn’t look African—the ugly man was black all right, but his skin was waxy and all over there was a patina of green—the green of rotten beef. I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to touch his skin—my finger, I was sure, would sink in, as it would in a pool of congealed fat. His ears were large and pointed. His mouth was small—pursed as he played—and his teeth were too large for his tiny mouth. His two front teeth were the worst: jagged, yellow, buck-teeth.

  I was greatly relieved to see that Sarah did not appear to be under his spell. She stood in the corner watching not the ugly man, but the crowd—and Richard, who stood with a stupid open mouthed expression on his face, clapping like a little girl every time the ugly man crossed his hands over the keyboard. I could hear, barely audible, David Bowie’s voice in the guest room.

  The ugly man stopped playing the piano then, and it dawned on me that he must be the man I’d seen coming down from the peak. He waved his hands in the air, and this seemed to release everyone. There was some applause, and people returned to what they had been doing. I watched Kat and Carmilla walk back toward the guest room, Michael made a bee-line for the bar, and Sarah and Richard walked over to me. I noticed the pasty girl with the bad dye-job standing next to the ugly man, looking down at him as he caressed her hand. The perfect couple, I thought. I led Sarah and Richard to the bar and insisted that Michael open the whiskey I’d brought—a far better whiskey than what he’d served me when I’d arrived.

  I asked who the ugly man was.

  Sarah said she didn’t know. Michael and Richard acted as if I hadn’t asked the question. I put my hand on Richard’s arm and asked again, and he said, “Which ugly man?”

  I took Richard’s response to be a joke and gave him a forced, weak chuckle. My whiskey was a relief. I needed a moment alone with Sarah—I wanted her to have a chance to finish what she’d been saying earlier, I wanted her to tell me that there was nothing for her in Boston, that she had no intention of ever joining Richard in Boston and was only pretending so as not to break his heart before his big trip.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. I was certain it was the ugly man’s; I was surprised—relieved—that the hand belonged to Prudence. “I’m out of the tub,” she whispered.

  Sarah and Richard were talking; I asked Prudence what she wanted to drink and she held up a beer. “I’m all set in that department. Did you know they’re watching a movie in the guest room?”

  “Yes,” I said. I followed Prudence down the hall. She’d put on a dress over her wet suit—somehow, with the bands of wet, clingy material around her waist and her chest, she seemed more naked than she had before. I’d catch up with Sarah later, catch her when Richar
d was off chatting up one of his boring friends.

  Prudence and I entered the room—The Man Who Fell to Earth was still on—had Bowie yet revealed his alien identity? Kat and Carmilla were on the couch, and to my satisfaction, Kat shot Prudence a nasty look and beckoned me to a spot beside her. Prudence, first in the guest room, took that spot. Small as her hips were, there was no more room left on the couch. When she saw this, she slid off the couch, onto the floor, and offered me the spot Kat had already offered. Regardless of the outcome of my conversation with Sarah, I knew I would not leave the party alone; I considered, even, the possibility that Prudence and Kat’s attentions would prove useful in gaining Sarah’s attention.

  Kat stroked my hair; Prudence my leg. The other men in the room couldn’t help but glance away from the television to look first at the women, then at me, wishing themselves in my position.

  Just before the movie ended—a sad, pale scene—I’d been lulled by all the petting—the ugly man, the man from the peak, walked past the guest room. I caught a glimpse of him, just as he walked out of sight. Except for Prudence, the people in the guest room left: the guys, Carmilla and Kat. Before I could dwell on this much, Prudence was on the couch beside me, hand on the inside of my thigh, mouth drifting toward my face. I knew that face, drifting sleepily, a drunk woman about to kiss me. I let her kiss me. We kissed. Her tongue darted in and out of my own mouth. Her open hand pressed against my erection. My hand on the damp cloth covering her right breast, my hand on the damp cloth at the small of her back.

  I broke off our kissing. I said, “Let’s get something more to drink.” Though she gave me a petulant look, I knew she would do as I asked and I thought—for a moment—this woman actually knows what I’m doing, understands, would have ended the kiss herself, shortly, if I hadn’t. In that moment I preferred Prudence to Sarah. The moment was fleeting.

  The ugly man had been speaking—addressing the entire party, it seemed. When Prudence and I stepped into the living room, he waved his hand as he’d done before, and the crowd dispersed as it had before. Everyone left the room except for one person, one of the guys who’d been in the hot tub with Prudence—I watched her watch him talk to the ugly man and Prudence said, “I knew he was gay.” I wasn’t sure who she was referring to at first—I didn’t think the ugly man was gay—and then I realized who she meant.

  “Who is that man?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been outside all night.”

  “Didn’t you see him come down from the peak?”

  “From the peak? There’s nothing up there. I’m going to get another drink.”

  She left me. I lit a cigarette and went out onto the patio. Richard and Sarah were out there, though Richard was talking with one of his friends and Sarah was just standing around, looking bored. She brightened when she saw me. I gave her a cigarette.

  “Why don’t we go outside a while,” Sarah said.

  We left the enclosed patio. We heard voices, coming from the direction of the hot tub. We walked out into the dark yard, toward the woods.

  “What was that guy talking about?” I asked.

  “Which guy?”

  “The ugly guy. They guy with the buck teeth.”

  Sarah turned up a confused expression. When she pulled on her cigarette, her face was illuminated. She had, I thought, the most perfect face. Between her eyebrows, just above the bridge of her nose was a circular patch of skin very smooth and brighter white than the rest of her face. I wanted to put my fingertip on that spot. I did. She scrunched her face up and giggled, brushing my finger away.

  “So that’s what that button does,” I said. “So,” I said. “You didn’t finish what you were saying earlier.”

  She didn’t answer me, but pointed, and I forgot what I’d asked when I saw what she was pointing out. The man from the peak walked across the lawn—on a line parallel with our own course, maybe twenty feet away—with the guy he’d been talking to in the living room. They walked toward the edge of the wood, where a woman—the woman with the bad dye-job—lay on the ground.

  “What is going on over there?” Sarah asked.

  I said, “I’m sure we don’t want to know.”

  “Do you think she’s all right?”

  “She looks fine to me,” I said, though there was no way I could actually judge, from where we stood. “We should leave them be,” I said, but I asked, “Who is that guy anyhow? I saw him come down from the peak.”

  “Which guy?” Sarah asked.

  “The bald guy.” Right when I said that, he was out of sight, he’d stepped into a shadow that made him all but invisible. So I said never mind.

  On the patio, we finished our drinks. Sarah took another cigarette. She looked around—there were other guests on the patio, but none we knew more than just in passing. Richard had gone inside. Sarah said, “I’m not putting any pressure on you, David, but I’m not going to Boston.”

  Sarah seemed like herself when she said that, more than she had all night, and I was glad, I’d known it, known she would leave Richard for me if I’d wanted, and I did want that, and I hadn’t been wrong.

  All the voices on the porch seemed to rise in volume—there was a scream—I decided from inside the house—but no one paid any attention.

  Several hours later, I stood in front of Richard’s house, trying to figure out why there were twelve cars, not including my own, in the driveway. The party had started to die about an hour before; people had slipped out one-by-one. I realized, as I stood in front of Richard’s house smoking, sipping a cheap glass of whiskey, that I hadn’t heard a single car go. Even if people had carpooled, had designated a driver, there were still too many cars in the driveway.

  My thoughts weren’t adding up in any significant way. I was in a haze of drunk and sleepiness—not so far gone that I wouldn’t be able to collect Sarah and leave soon, but dull enough that my lines of thought were short.

  I stared for a while at the mountaintop. There were no houses, that I could see, higher than Richard’s. If the man from the peak lived up there, he must have walked from the other side of the peak, and that looked to me like a hell of a walk.

  I coughed, caught a coughing fit, felt a hand on my back.

  “Prudence?” I managed, still bent over.

  “No, not Prudence.”

  The voice was a voice I hadn’t heard once that night, but I knew whose voice it was.

  “Taking in the air?” the man from the peak asked.

  I saw a laugh on his face; he was laughing at me.

  “Smoke?” I asked. “Whiskey?” I held out my drink and my cigarette.

  He held up a hand—his fingers were long, his nails were long.

  “You don’t drink,” I said.

  He just grinned his stupid ugly grin, a set of teeth crooked and misshapen. That his speech wasn’t impeded by his malformed mouth was a wonder—indeed, his voice was the most soothing voice I’d ever heard. “So who are you?” I asked.

  He said, “I’m an invited guest,” and I remembered what I’d overheard earlier that night.

  I said, “I watched you come down from the peak. Are there houses up there?”

  He looked at the peak, followed its upward rise with his head until he’d found the very tip and said, “No, there are no houses.”

  I thought maybe he lived in a tent or a trailer home and was just having fun with me, making me ask my questions just so. Normally, when I think someone’s doing that, some cute girl who thinks she’s coy or some clever boy trying to impress, I walk away without so much as a fuck you and that puts them out, and then they beg me for my attention. Normally, that’s what I’d do. But I said, “But do you live on the peak? In a tent? In a trailer? In a mobile home?” I gave that ugly man from the peak all the options I could because I was desperate to hear his answer. For some reason: I was desperate to know.

  He said, “I live in the peak.”

  I didn’t know what he meant by “in the peak,” but I smiled—I felt tha
t dumb smile spread on my face—I smiled and nodded as if “in the peak” made all the sense in the world.

  I asked, “So what is it you’re doing in the backyard?”

  He gave me a straight answer. An awful answer. And for a moment I could see him exactly as he was; all of a sudden I could see him, see that his clothes—from pant cuff to shirt collar—were drenched in blood and gore. Blood dripped off his shirt sleeves, blood was pooled around his feet, there was blood on the top of his bald head and there was blood all around his mouth. The blood around his mouth was the most horrible, smeared around like finger-paint. Before I became hysterical, I couldn’t see the blood anymore. He looked ugly, but his clothes were clean. His pant cuffs flapped in the breeze. His bright white shirt sleeves were rolled up just below his elbows.

  I wondered, if he could do that, why he didn’t make himself look handsome to me. I think he knew my thought, because he said, “Charisma. You know what I mean.”

  I laughed. He walked back into the house. I stood shaking my head, enjoying for a moment the great joke. Then a wave of nausea passed through me and I vomited—all spit and whiskey—and my head was clear. I rushed into the house—for Sarah, I thought, where is Sarah? The guest room was empty. No one was at the bar. Richard was seated on the piano bench next to the man from the peak, and they were playing “Heart and Soul.” The man from the peak playing the chords, Richard plinking out the simple tune with a single finger, laughing like an idiot.

  I ran into Prudence out on the patio. She was drunk, but when she looked at me I knew she was still in control: I’d known from the moment she brushed past me at the front door that the big breasts and the flirty girl-voice were all for show, plumage that got Prudence what she wanted. I’d known that she was like me in that way, and admired her for it. So instead of just ignoring her for Sarah I stopped and told her that we were all in a lot of trouble.

  “I’d sort of picked up on that,” she said, pointing with her thumb toward the backyard. Her calm was wrong, a part of all that was wrong that night. She said, “I was just leaving. My car’s blocked though. I was trying to find someone—”