"This place looks like it was built by two different designers… who really hated each other."
That brought forth her sumptuous laugh again. "Don't worry about offending us; it's just a lease."
"Yeah, how do I say this? This place isn't you."
"Is it Price?"
"Him, neither. Tell me, Michelle, what does he do? For that matter, what do you do?"
She pursed her lips. "Come on." She practically dragged him to the bar. "Kyle, honey, vodka rocks, use the distilled ice, one-quarter lime exactly, and fresh-cut it. And whatever Mr. Latimer wants." She looked Kyle in the eyes as though sobriety-testing him. "Rough night?"
"No, ma'am," said Kyle. "Trouble sleeping, is all."
Her eyes went big and motherly. "Aww."
"No worries." He made the drink smoothly, barely looking at the glass or ingredients.
"I hope that's not your two-word book report on last night. And Kyle, a favor? Don't call me ma'am; it makes me feel forty."
"Certainly, miss."
She cocked a thumb at Art. "And call him sir if you know what's good for you."
Kyle turned to Art. "Sir?"
"Don't call me sir," said Art. "It makes me feel the way I feel when I'm pulled over by a cop younger than me-you know, the sort of guy you would have bitch-slapped in high school."
"We would have pantsed him, painted his ass with whitewash, and made him run naked through the girls' locker room," said Kyle, with a knowing grin-overly knowing. His expressions changed like slides in a projector, clunk, next.
"I'll just have a club soda." To Michelle, he added, "How did you know my last name?"
"Oh, that's easy-it's on your business card."
About then the deck doors seemed to burst inward, bringing rain and cold and razor-blade wind. At the head of this minor-league tornado was a bedraggled, bowlegged man wearing a wet suit, a nylon windbreaker with a hood, and whisper-thin rubber water-sport slippers. His gear was a riot of brand names in Day-Glo colors, and he dropped his hood and shook water off himself like a dog. "Whooooo, damn, it's cold outside, brothers and sisters!"
"That's Solomon," said Michelle.
Solomon possessed the pan-blackened suntan and bleached-out hair and eyes of a beach rat, the square-headed type whose chin and forehead seemed eternally to be reaching for each other. So much of his life was spent in the water that the sea had begun to reshape him to its needs; his bowlegged stance made him appear froggy. He was obviously a party animal and spent a bit of time playing to his instant audience, stomping around and getting people wet.
"Solomon wants the waves to get up to hurricane strength so he can try surfing them,'' she said. "He does push-ups and burns incense and waits like a monk. He figures tonight or tomorrow will be the only moment he's alive.''
"You didn't answer my question," Art said, testing her limits… and wondering how Michelle had seen his business card.
"Oh, the boring shit; what-do-YOU-do.'' She pulled half the vodka at a swallow with no grimacing or drinker's theatrics. "Well, Price is determined to stay a mystery, so the most I'll tell you is that he's a sort of freelancer. Troubleshooter. Consultant type. We met in Rome, where I was busy being a model. Not trying; being. Now we're superheroes, and we fly around fighting crime and defending the helpless." Her eyes were all champagne and seduction.
"You were a model?"
"How do you think we got all these amazingly attractive women here?" She dared him to doubt her superpowers.
"Yeah, I did notice there were precious few plain-looking people around. I'm afraid I stand out in the wrong way."
"Nonsense." She made a point of pretending to look him over, scalp to soles. "I'd say you were within five years of Price. You don't wear contacts and I haven't seen you put on glasses. I'd guess you keep your hair that way because most men your age have lost theirs."
"That way?" Art could not help feeling self-conscious under her scrutiny. The last time he'd bothered with a haircut had been over a year ago.
"Shaggy. It's makes you look rumpled, but it's kind of sexy and natural." She knew how to stroke his vanity. She probably never turned her charm full off.
"At least I shaved," he said, adding a smile to defang whatever caveats she might have in store for him. Michelle's inviting manner was another brand of weapon, and if Art asked prickly questions, she would use it to deflect them. For now, he played along, wondering where she really wanted to take him.
"Used a dab of cologne, too-about a drop. So on some level you knew you were going to be socializing today."
Guilty, Art thought.
What did he look like to these people? Good days, or bad, were usually determined by what he saw in his own mirror. But what did Price see? What did Michelle see? A contemporary, perhaps, on the cusp of middle age, good eyesight, full head of hair. Five-nine, clean-shaven, reasonably fit, well nourished. Brown-gray eyes, wide set and expressive, what one old girlfriend had once called "St. Bernard eyes." Dark brown hair (frequently mistaken for black) with slivers of silver. Brows thick but not hirsute. He'd always thought he had a weak jaw and a bit too much forehead, but nobody had ever stated this to him outright in his lifetime. Average body, average hands, a big moby overdose of average. All this added up to… what? Ephemera. Statistics. Lorelle had argued that statistics never meant anything, because they could be interpreted to support any side of an argument.
"My, that's an introspective look," said Michelle.
"Sorry."
"Listen, you fit in as well as any of the other deviates here. Indulge me, and I'll tell you what I see, and you tell me how far off I am."
Art blushed. She was reading him as though his doubts were scrawled on his forehead in block letters.
"You've been married once or twice but aren't now. Definitely a college graduate, probably with more than one degree. You've tasted most recreational drugs but now you stick to the legal ones, excepting the occasional rare dabble. You're an ex-smoker. You're a professional. You're comfortably well off, but rarely extravagant."
Art felt his skin was on inside out. "Whoa, this is starting to sound like a horoscope."
"Don't interrupt. You have a dog-that's an easy one. I already know you're an architect, but you pursue it more like a painter. You're smarter than most of the people you deal with on a day-to-day, and that's frustrating; it's caused you to withdraw. You're not quite a misanthrope yet, but one or two more major tragedies ought to do it."
"Well, this is getting uncomfortable," he tried to joke, maintaining eye contact almost defensively, thinking of X-ray Spex, the kind that advertised the ability to see people naked. "A century ago, they'd've burned you at the stake for this."
"Nope, my obligation as hostess is to see to your comfort. You keep asking about this party, and I'm trying to frame an explanation for you. People are rarely the same as the image they project-just look at all the people here. We see surfaces; all Price wants to do is peel those envelopes back a bit. Hang around and you might find it educational."
"Price wanted that big guy in the bathroom to dissolve into a puddle of tears?"
"Not specifically. That's just how another side of Bryan 's personality happened to express itself today. You saw Price; he didn't abuse that guy."
"No, he treated him like an altar boy, then fed him dope."
"See, you're not comfortable with the idea, yet." Michelle was beginning to sound proselytic. "Watch and learn. Circulate."
He was already thinking about leaving. "I've got to find Suzanne, or Dina, before I do anything else."
"Everyone awaits." She indicated the living room. "Stairs are over there; turn left, and climb. I'll see you in a bit, yes?"
He nodded, finished his soft drink, and angled his way toward the stairs in that odd way that would resemble an interpretive dance, were he not packed among other bodies. A bearded roughneck, his hands laden with skull rings, was abusing an unplugged Fender Strat more or less in time to the guitarless music. A tight knot of admi
rers egged on his silent solo. A red-eyed dude with a buzz cut like tire tread held his palms against the cold window glass and vibrated, making Art think of a tweaker on too much speed. If Art spotted a barefoot chick doing a stoned Grateful Dead veil dance, he knew he'd bolt.
As he ascended the stairs he looked directly up the skirt of a woman leaning from the balcony to survey the atrium of the turret. There was no underwear to be seen. She lifted her glass in a mocking little toast that told him she could see his thoughts just as clearly.
The upper corridor was a gauntlet of closed doors. There was a large guest bathroom at the far north end, and Art decided to work his way toward it from the opposite terminus. He tapped on the first door, not nearly declarative enough, or so he thought until a lugubrious voice answered him from within.
"Yay-esss?"
"Uh-excuse me, is either Dina or Suzanne in there?"
"Couldn't say," said the voice, airing out the syllables. "Come on in."
Art opened the door to a smallish, nine-by-nine room with barely enough leeway for the queen-size bed it contained. A scarf on a lamp diffused the light to a sodium-colored batik pattern on the wall. Three people were on the bed. The two men were naked. The woman between them was on her hands and knees, with her dress rucked onto her back as she engorged them from both directions. The men were facing each other, as if over an end table, their hands clasped, vising her, thrusting toward each other. Art recognized the woman as Estelle-Leigh, late of the floor show atop Price's big speaker.
"Are you Phil?" said the man stuck on the half that eats.
"No."
''Well, there's one more hole here you can fill, if you want, because neither Joey nor me like pussy very much."
"Will you two fags shut up and fuck me?" snarled Estelle-Leigh.
"Sorry," said Art, quickly closing the door. He heard them all laughing.
Great. A quick one-eighty toward the nearest exit was probably a grand idea, rather than Xeroxing his humiliation at Door Number Two, or Three, or beyond. Maybe there was aspirin to be found in the bathroom at the end of this puzzle maze. Maybe Suzanne was behind the next door.
No such luck. The door opened before he could touch it, and a very angry black man raged out, sweat-speckled, bare-chested except for his shoulder holster.
"Outta the way, bitch," he said, not even looking at Art. The sclera of his eyes were jaundiced, and he had the sickly skin pop of a man cresting on too much blow. Art spotted the earring dangling from his left ear, the Eye of Ra.
"Hey, slow down, Luther. It's Luther, right?"
The man's whole body stiffened, and he turned back slowly, like a gun turret sighting and calibrating, then struck so fast that he defied normal time-space. He grabbed Art's Adam's apple in a textbook finger pinch, to cut off his wind, lifting and bulldogging him into the wall. Art knew his own feet were off the floor, and he could feel a gun muzzle kissing his ribs, rooting up into his chest cavity.
"Who the fuck told you that! I don't fuckin know you!"
Art couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, was starting to see violet spheres colliding in the air.
"Luther.'' Somewhere down the hall another door closed. "Knock that shit off. This is my guest." It was Price's voice, never raised in anger, or threat, or any of the fiery, reactionary conceits. It did, however, firm up: "Luther. Abuse my guests and I'll abuse you."
Art saw Luther's eyes track over, then back. He was slowly lowered. Gently. Luther was hyperventilating. Through clenched teeth, he said, "Sorry, I thought you was maybe somebody else."
Price stood dominating the hallway, arms crossed, his interest up, but his face maintaining the same clinical flatness Art had noticed before, the manner of a virologist checking rats for tumors, one by one. "Now hand over your gun, Luther."
Art was still trying to catch up on his breathing. Luther had a hell of a crab-claw grip.
"Say what?"
Price smiled, looked down, rubbed his nose with the tip of his linger. The deferential host. "Oh, god, I'm sorry-I probably slurred my words or something; hell, even I couldn't understand me." He laughed, and Luther nervously laughed along. "Please let me repeat: Hand. Over. Your gun. Now."
Luther's jollity curdled instantaneously, and Art could see the war for capitulation wage in his eyes. He licked his lips, swallowed hard and audibly, and extended the pistol to Price, butt first, upside down, so Price could see he was only holding the barrel.
"Not to me, stupid." Price's eyes indicated Art.
The weight of the blue-steeled automatic settled into Art's hand.
"That's great," said Price. "You don't get to eat shit that often, do you, Luther, my man?"
Luther stepped back a pace, unsure of whether to watch the gun, or Price. "Sure don't."
"Okay, now, Art? You okay?"
Art massaged his throat, keeping the muzzle of the gun angled away from any available human targets. "Just a misunderstanding. No worries."
"Glad to hear it. Go ahead and shoot Luther in the chest. That is, I mean, if you feel like it. If you want to."
Luther's jaw unhinged. "What the fuck-?" He had already started to move, but Price's voice froze him in midstride.
"Luther, put your ass on hold right where it is."
Art saw, in his own hand, an AMT Hardballer. From its weight he guessed it was packing a full magazine, seven fat.45-caliber slugs, plus one in the pipe. Any one of these cartridges could blow an arm off at the shoulder. The thumb safety was off and the hammer at full cock. He popped the clip, snapped back the slide to jack the spare round, and returned the gun to Luther, decocked and with the safety on.
"Don't carry a monster like this cocked if it's not locked," he said, as though they were two buddies swapping lore.
Luther blinked very fast, several times, and sniffed as though drawing clean oxygen. "Yeah." He shook his head. Silly, wasn't it? "Sorry. That was majorly dumb." He reinstalled the magazine and slotted the gun into his shoulder rig as Art retrieved the stray cartridge from the floor.
"That's a Shark, isn't it?" said Art, meaning the holster.
"Huh? Oh, yeah. It's adjustable for the slide."
"I've got a couple, myself."
"See?" said Price, walking forward and grabbing their shoulders like a priest reassuring two members of his flock. "I knew you two would like each other right away. Art-knock first, okay? And Luther-you really don't need that firepower in my house, at my party, so do what Art says and leave the fucking safety on. Please?" Price obviously knew better than to ask Luther to disarm.
"Yeah, right. Price, listen, I'm sorry about-''
"Will you stop apologizing to everybody, because I know you, and when you say I'm sorry it means tuck you."
Luther reined it back. "Whatever." To Art he added: "I owe you one, what's your name… Art?"
"That's more like it. Be sure you do Art a favor that matters, because you do owe him. He could've blasted your ass out the window and the storm would've picked you up and blown you away, and nobody would give a shit, and nobody would come looking. I would've said, 'Luther? I don't know any Luther.' Remember it. I'm downstairs." Price moved past them and down toward the living room.
Luther offered Art his hand. "That was nuts. I'm a little jumpy today." He was clearly impressed with how Art had handled the weapon.
"Just remember me as 'Art, the guy you're not supposed to shoot,' and I'll be happy." They shook on it.
Luther shook his head. "Well, okay, that's not the weirdest thing that's happened to me tonight. I don't know what it is, man, I been wired ever since I walked into this place. I'm having weird thoughts, like stuff I've known since I was tiny, but it all never bugged me so much before; it's like I got itching powder on my brain." He seemed honestly perplexed.
"I know how you feel," said Art. "Listen, let's start this over again. We'll have a drink or something downstairs and talk about our mutual passions."
"Yeah, sort of reset the whole tape. Good idea."
"But not ri
ght this minute, because I've got to find somebody."
Luther nodded, indicating no further explanation was needed. "Whoever he or she is, he or she ain't in there." He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the door through which he had exited. "What's in there is an it. I think I'll go rinse off my face, splash some disinfectant on my dick."
Luther lumbered around the crook of the hallway, and Art stifled the urge to ask him to look for aspirin in the bathroom.
***
Door Number Three was the one from which Price had appeared. That meant Bryan the Bry-Guy was probably in there, convalescing. Thrashing through a nightmare of guilt, more like. The room seemed silent; the crack beneath the jamb was dark.
Did this Lady-or-Tiger obstacle course keep getting more phantasmagoric as it progressed? When Art knocked on the final door in the corridor, would he find Zeus, Allah, and the Christian Satan in a cross-legged circle jerk, kidding one another about bringing back dinosaurs, or perhaps the plague, just for a hoot?
He rounded the turn and briefly looked down into the circular main room just as a nail-splitting catfight erupted between two women. One was blocky, with a brush cut, wearing a bolero vest and pants with conchos and thongs; her nemesis had a sterile Aryan look, blond over blue, dressed in black trousers and a billowing white dress shirt. Conchita tossed a cocktail in Hamlet's face, obviously thinking this an imperious rejoinder. Hamlet punched Conchita right in the kisser, ejecting a tooth, and as soon as they tussled, other people were yanking them apart. They swung and yammered; Hamlet had a good six inches of reach over Conchita, and managed to bash her one more time.
Art did not applaud. He turned his back on the show and continued down the upstairs hall, toward the bathroom. Luther passed him headed in the opposite direction, still contrite. "Later, Art." He danced easily down the stairs without touching the rail.
The fourth room of live seemed the largest. In Art's home, it would have been an office. Yellow light streamed from a separate bathroom, forming hot trapezoids of reflection on a big window that normally boasted a sea view, but now was a wash of pelting rain flying from a roiling gray limbo. At the deep end of the room was a large showy bed, possibly circular, apparently strewn with clothing and coats. When Art squinted he could make out an inestimable number of people sprawled there as well. Fewer than ten. Nobody moved. The air was thick and atonic with the odor of powdered latex and pheromones, water-based lubricants, alcohol, and perspiration. It was a sedentary, hanging miasma that reminded Art of peepshow booths, not that he had devoted much time to Tenderloin field trips. Somebody groaned, and the whole dog pile rearranged itself like a many-tentacled space creature in midslither. Art thought of the way Blitz's paws twitched, in the realm of canine dreams. He felt no need to gently disturb a crowd.
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