Both the red and the white wines were too cheap for Junior's taste' so he drank Dos Equis beer and got two kinds of high by inhaling enough secondhand pot smoke to cure the state of Virginia's entire annual production of hams. Among the two or three hundred partyers, some were tripping on some exhibited the particular excitability and talkativeness typical of cokeheads, but Junior succumbed to none of these temptations. Self-improvement and self control mattered to him; he didn't approve of this degree of self indulgence.
Besides, he'd 'noticed a tendency among dopers to get maudlin, whereupon they sank into a confessional mood, seeking peace through rambling self-analysis and self-revelation. Junior was too private a person to behave in such a fashion. Furthermore, if drugs ever put him in a confessional mood, the consequence might be electrocution or poison gas, or lethal injection, depending on the jurisdiction and the year in which he fell into an unbosoming frame of mind.
Speaking of bosoms, everywhere in the loft were braless girls in sweaters and miniskirts, braless girls in T- shirts and miniskirts, braless girls in silk-lined rawhide vests and jeans, braless girls in tie-dyed sash tops, with bared midriffs, and calypso pants. Lots of guys moved through the crowd, too, but Junior barely noticed them.
The sole male guest in whom he took an interest-a big interest was Sklent, the one-name painter whose three canvases were the only art on the walls of Junior's apartment.
The artist, six feet four and two hundred fifty pounds, looked markedly more dangerous in person than in his scary publicity photo. Still in his twenties, he had white hair that fell limp and straight to his shoulders. Dead-white skin. His deep-set eyes, as silver-gray as rain with an albino-pink undertone, had a predatory glint as chilling as that in the eyes of a panther. Terrible scars slashed his face, and red hash marks covered his big hands, as though he'd frequently defended himself barehanded against men armed with swords.
At the farthest end of the loft from the stereo speakers, voices nevertheless had to be raised in even the most intimate exchanges. The artist who had created In the Baby 's Brain Lies the Parasite of Doom, Version 6, however, possessed a voice as deep, sharp-edged, and penetrating as his talent.
Sklent proved to be angry, suspicious, volatile, but also a man of tremendous intellectual power. A profound and dazzling conversationalist, he rattled off breathtaking insights into the human condition, astonishing yet unarguable opinions about art, and revolutionary philosophical concepts. Later, except in the matter of ghosts, Junior would not be able to remember a single word of what Sklent had said, only that it had all been brilliant and really cool.
Ghosts. Sklent was an atheist, and yet he believed in spirits. Here's how that works: Heaven, Hell, and God do not exist, but human beings are as much energy as flesh, and when the flesh gives out, the energy goes on. 'We're the most stubborn, selfish, greedy, grubbing, vicious, psychotic, evil species in the universe,' Sklent explained, 'and some of us just refuse to die, we're too hardass to die. The spirit is a prickly bur of energy that sometimes clings to places and people that were once important to us, so then you get haunted houses, poor bastards still tormented by their dead wives, and crap like that. And sometimes, the bur attaches itself to the embryo in some slut who's just been knocked up, so you get reincarnation. You don't need a god for all this. It's just the way things are. Life and the afterlife are the same place, right here, right now, and we're all just a bunch of filthy, scabby monkeys tumbling through an endless damn series of barrels.'
For two years, since finding the quarter in his cheeseburger, Junior had been searching for a metaphysics that he could embrace, that squared with all the truths that he had learned from Zedd, and that didn't require him to acknowledge any power higher than himself Here it was. Unexpected. Complete. He didn't fully understand the bit about monkeys and barrels, but he got the rest of it, and peace of a sort descended upon him.
Junior would have liked to pursue spiritual matters with Sklent, but numerous other partyers wanted their time with the great man. In parting, sure that he would give the artist a laugh, Junior withdrew the brochure for 'This Momentous Day' from his jacket and coyly asked for an opinion of Celestina White's paintings.
Based on the evidence, perhaps Sklent never laughed, regardless of how clever the joke. He scowled fiercely at the paintings in the brochure, returned it to Junior, and snarled, 'Shoot the bitch.'
Assuming this criticism was amusing hyperbole, Junior laughed, but Sklent squinted those virtually colorless eyes, and Junior's laugh withered in his throat. 'Well, maybe that's how it'll work out,' he said, wanting to be on Sklent's good side, but he was at once sorry he'd spoken those words in front of witnesses.
Using the brochure as an ice-breaker, Junior circulated through the throng, seeking anyone who'd attended the Academy of Art College and might have met Celestina White. The critiques of her paintings were uniformly negative, frequently hilarious, but never as succinct and violent as Sklent's.
Eventually, a braless blonde in shiny white plastic boots, a white miniskirt, and a hot-pink T-shirt featuring the silk-screened face of Albert Einstein, said, 'Sure, I know her. Had some classes with her. She's nice enough, but she's kind of nerdy, especially for an Afro-American. I mean, they're never nerdy-am I right?'
'You're right, except maybe for Buckwheat.'
'Who?' she shouted, though they were perched side by side on a black-leather love seat.
Junior raised his voice even further: 'In those old movies, the Little Rascals.'
'Me, I don't like anything old. This White chick's got a weird thing for old people, old buildings, old stuff in general. Like she doesn't realize she's young. You want to grab her, shake her, and say, 'Hey, let's move on,' you know?'
'The past is past.'
'It's what?' she shouted.
'Past!'
'So true.'
'But my late wife used to like those Little Rascals movies.'
'You're married?'
'She died.'
'So young?'
'Cancer,' he said, because that was more tragic and far less suspicious than a fall from a fire tower.
In commiseration, she put a hand on his thigh.
'It's been a tough few years,' he said. 'Losing her? and then getting out of Nam alive.'
The blonde's eyes widened. 'You were over there?'
He found it difficult to make a painful personal revelation sound sincere when delivered in a shout, but he managed well enough to bring a shine of tears to her eyes: 'Part of my left foot was shot off in this upcountry sweep we did.'
'Oh, bummer. That sucks. Man, I hate this war.'
The blonde was coming on to him, just as a score of other women had done since his arrival, so Junior tried to balance seduction with information gathering. Putting his hand over the hand with which she was gently massaging his thigh, he said, 'I knew her brother in Nam. Then I got wounded, shipped out, lost touch. Like to find him.'
Bewildered, the blonde said, 'Whose brother?'
'Celestina White's.'
'She have a brother?'
'Great guy. Do you have an address for her, a way maybe I could get in touch about her brother?'
'I didn't know her well. She didn't hang out or party much-especially after the baby.'
'so she's married,' Junior said, figuring that maybe Celestina wasn't his heart mate, after all.
'Could be. I haven't seen her in a while.'
'No, I mean, you said 'baby.'' 'Oh. No, her sister. But then the sister died.'
'Yeah, I know. But-'
'So Celestina took it.'
'It?'
'The kid-thing, the baby.'
Junior forgot all about seduction. 'And she-what? — She adopted her sister's baby?'
'Weird, huh?'
'Little boy named Bartholomew?' he asked.
'I never saw it.'
'But his name was Bartholomew?'
'For all I know, it was Piss-ant.'
