to leave.
I'm a good dancer too, in an old-school sort of way. My mother taught me when I was a child. She'd turn the record player up and really cut loose. Music somehow soothed my childhood fevers. We'd clasp hands and she'd swing me around on the freshly waxed kitchen floor, the soles of my feet charged in cotton socks, as I slid and learned how to shake my hips. She'd gyrate and groove. When my father got home from work, he'd find the two of us laughing and sweating. He'd stomp inside hard enough to make the 78s skip and ask, 'What have you two been doing? Fucking?'
It's an exercise in self-control that Linda manages to hold back for nearly five minutes before she beelines for me and Gwen, dragging Prill along with her. He can barely sway his slow, bulky body. They dance beside us and she's in his arms, riding against him hard while he does a box step, barely lifting his feet. She glares at Gwen and they show each other their perfect teeth. This has nothing to do with me or Prill or anyone else, except maybe Ricky.
Linda looks like she's having fun but I see the real her rising to the surface, covetous, craving. Her nails are like catclaw barbs. She raises one hand to scratch at Gwen's face but I catch her wrist and draw her off. I give Prill a little shove towards his girl. Linda heaves a deep breath, about to let loose with a scream or a slur, but I smooth my lips over hers and swallow her rage. In a few seconds she twists and twines in my arms and rubs her groin on mine. She's not wearing panties tonight either. It's not because of me. Or Lowers's corpse. I know she's got her heart set on fucking Ricky Kelso tonight.
The kids who are tripping wander around staring at their hands or the lights, laughing wildly, talking gibberish or crying because they see ghosts. Nobody else notices them much. Someone switches the tape and a heavy beat bangs on the walls and the mood of the house shifts. The party gets a little angrier.
The liquor dwindles. Mescaline, mushrooms, and acid pass from hand to hand. Ten pizzas show up and the delivery guy at the door gets stiffed. The garbage pies slide into the crowd and everybody starts eating. He drifts around bitching, trying to collect money. Someone yanks his hat off and flings it across the room. He makes an effort to collect the boxes and pull slices from greasy hands. Cheese and sauce hit the carpet. He's considered a drag. A couple of mutts punch him, lightly. A couple of girls kiss him, sloppily. The pizza boy begins to dance, clumsily. Punks doing keg-stands topple into the wall. Framed prints of Van Gogh's
They laugh. The talk grows louder. Lowers's name goes around the room again, passed from one to the next like a virus. Everybody's getting sick.
One girl nearly drops into my arms, tripping, trembling as if suffering from chills brought on by pneumonia. I hold her for a second before she shakes out of my hands. Gwen brings her a shot of tequila and they giggle and French kiss.
At my shoulder Linda says, 'Do you want her?'
'Which one?'
'Gwen, of course.'
There's no right answer. She doesn't care anyway. Maybe she's just pawning me off. I don't really mind. I was expecting it even before our poisonous clench in front of Lowers's body. We can't hold onto each other because we can't hold on to ourselves.
The breeze is stiff and the house groans. Windows rattle. It's raining again. I need some air and slip through the throng to the back door and out into the wet yard.
It's everything my father would kill for. For a bitter, ex-con, Neanderthal prick he's got a highly romanticized notion of what a happy home life should be.
This is his dream. A four-bedroom house in an upper middle-class neighborhood on a full acre with a perfectly trimmed lawn and some mature landscaping. He talks in his sleep. He covets with a fury. He hates the well-to-do, college-educated man. He hides in dark alleys. He keys cars. He lurks behind garbage cans. He waits in the bushes. He watches the rich through their well-lit bay windows and jacks it to adolescent girls climbing out of the shower. He destroys tiny tokens of a better life. He takes a bat to fancy mailboxes. He stamps on those little micro-lamps that border stone walkways. He cuts Christmas lights. He scatters lime around rose gardens. He pisses in ponds and kills koi.
My old man, I listen to him confess in his stupors and I deny him the absolution he doesn't want anyway. He hated being married but wanted a wife. He hates me but wanted a son. He jabbers on drunkenly night after night. I imagine how his cellmate must've stuffed sock or cock in his mouth to shut him up.
I lean back against the stoop railing and smoke a cigarette. The hot night is full of the smell of sex and sea and sap. The sky is the color of a blacksmith's hearth. Wind plies the trees and they sway and stoop. Black birds are thick in the branches, leering intently. Pellets of rain scratch at my face. Torrents overburden the gutters. The storm is back. I imagine Gary Lowers, faceless, turning over and drawing up his blanket of dead leaves, and shuddering in loneliness beneath them.
5
I finish my cigarette and peer in through the screen door. Ricky Kelso walks into the living room and a hail goes up. I know him the second I see him, even before they call out his name. He basks in his minor glory, his dirty wild hair hanging in his dirty wild eyes. He's tripping so hard on something he can barely stay on his feet. Or maybe he's just high on his celebrity turn at murder.
I step inside. I notice he's carrying Anton LaVey's
From Ricky's jacket pocket hang a few bags of PCP. I can see why Lowers reached out and snatched the drugs. It's bait. It's what Ricky wants you to do.
Gwen gives him a loving hug. So does Prill. So does the pizza guy. So does Linda. There's real emotion in her clench. She's never grabbed me like that. For a second I'm envious. My mother used to hold me like that while my fever spiked and I raved.
My mom, she'd press her lips to my brow and say, 'You won't always be sick.'
But I have been, and so's Ricky. His frenzied gaze roves the room. His expression shifts depending on who he sees. Lust, hate, greed, jealousy, resentment, even some true loving sentiment. He has true friends here among his former classmates. There's trust, laughter, long histories, shared fate.
When his eyes fall to me his face goes slack. For an instant he looks like a child, innocent and full of wonder. He tilts his head in surprise. He frowns in puzzlement. I'm probably doing the same thing.
He begins to move to me before he remembers who he is.
Who he is, what he's done, what his plans are, and exactly how he's going to wind up. I start towards him. The throng gets in the way. That's their only purpose, to hold the two of us apart.
In Ricky's honor, the music shifts. They put on heavy metal. The lyrics are as inane as their conversation. Hair band front men in eyeliner and headbands scream about Lucifer, Abomination, Leviathan, Pandemonium, the arch-dukes of the inferno. Guys around me mimic their heroes, make the sign of the horns, hold up their lighters, and sing along. More weed comes out. More acid, hash, mescaline. Somebody's made a liquor run. My mouth waters for whiskey. The house fills with the sweet stink of burning mary jane, and my head lightens a touch.
Linda is very stoned. We make out in the corner for a few minutes. Then she takes me by the wrist and leads me down the hall to Gwen's bedroom. Gwen is already there, taking sips from a bottle of tequila, smoking a joint, naked in bed.
6
It's what I expect. They fight over me in a silly, endless, half-hearted, territorial war of attrition. They treat
