The Bachman Books

The Godfather played on the soundtrack. All in luxurious Technicolor that you could fall into, bathe in like a bubble bath.

'Crrrrrrystal,' he said under his breath, and grinned. It seemed that he had been sitting here and going over one thing and another for a very long time, but no ash had grown on his cigarette at all. He was astounded. He had another puff.

'Bart?'

He looked up. It was Mary, and she had a canape for him. He smiled at her. 'Sit down. Is that for me?'

'Yes.' She gave it to him. It was a small triangular sandwich with pink stuff in the middle. It suddenly occurred to him that Mary would be frightened, horrified, if she knew he was on a trip. She might call an emergency squad, the police, God knew who else. He had to act normally. But the thought of acting normal made him feel stranger than ever.

'I'll eat it later,' he said, and put the sandwich in his shirt pocket.

'Bart, are you drunk?'

'Just a little,' he said. He could see the pores on her face. He could not recall ever having seen them so clearly before. All those little holes, as if God was a cook and she was a pie crust. He giggled and her deepening frown made him say: 'Listen, don't tell. '

'Tell?' She offered a puzzled frown.

'About the Product four.'

'Bart, what in the name of God are you-'

'I've got to go to the bathroom,' he said. 'I'll be back.' He left without looking at her, but he could feel her frown radiating out from her face in waves like heat from a microwave oven. Yet if he didn't look back at her, it was possible she would not guess. In this, the best of all possible worlds, anything was possible, even crnystal staircases. He smiled fondly. The word had become an old friend.

The trip to the bathroom somehow became an odyssey, a safari. The party noise seemed to have picked up a cyclical beat, IT SEEMED TO fade in and FADE OUT in syllables OF THREE AND even the STEREO faded IN and OUT. He mumbled to people he thought he knew but refused to take up a single thrown conversational gambit; he only pointed to his crotch, smiled, and walked on. He left puzzled faces in his wake. Why is there never a party full of strangers when you need one? he scolded himself.

The bathroom was occupied. He waited outside for what seemed like hours and when he finally got in he couldn't urinate although he seemed to want to. He looked at the wall above the toilet tank and the wall was bulging in and out in a cyclical, three-beat rhythm. He flushed even though he hadn't gone, in case someone outside might be listening, and watched the water swirl out of the bowl. It had a sinister pink color, as if the last user had passed blood. Unsettling.

He left the bathroom and the party smote him again. Faces came and went like floating balloons. The music was nice, though. Elvis was on. Good old Elvis. Rock on, Elvis, rock on.

Mary's face appeared in front of him and hovered, looking concerned. 'Bart, what's wrong with you?'

'Wrong? Nothing wrong.' He was astounded, amazed. His words had come out in a visual series of musical notes. 'I'm hallucinating.' He said it aloud, but it was spoken only for himself.

'Bart, what have you taken?' She looked frightened now.

'Mescaline,' he said.

'Oh God, Bart. Drugs? Why?'

'Why not?' he responded, not to be flip, but because it was the only response he could think of quickly. The words came out in notes again, and this time some of them had flags.

'Do you want me to take you to a doctor?'

He looked at her, surprised, and went ponderously over her question in his mind to see if it had any hidden connotations; Freudian echoes of the funny farm. He giggled again, and the giggles streamed musically out of his mouth and in front of his eyes, crrrrystal notes on lines and spaces, broken by bars and rests.

'Why would I want a doctor?' he said, choosing each word. The question mark was a high quarter-note. 'It's just like she said. Not that good, not that bad. But interesting. '

'Who?' she demanded. 'Who told you? Where did you get it?' Her face was changing, seeming to become hooded and reptilian. Mary as cheap mystery-movie police detective, shining the light in the suspect's eyes- Come on, McGonigal, whichever way you want it, hard or soft-and then worse still she began to remind him uneasily of the H. P. Lovecraft stories he had read as a boy, the Cthulu Mythos stories, where perfectly normal human beings changed into fishy, crawling things at the urgings of the Elder Ones. Mary's face began to look scaly, vaguely eellike.

'Never mind,' he said, frightened. 'Why can't you leave me alone? Stop fucking me up. I'm not bothering you.'

Her face recoiled, became Mary's again, Mary's hurt, mistrustful face, and he was sorry. The party beat and swirled around them. 'All right, Bart,' she said quietly. 'You hurt yourself just any way you like. But please don't embarrass me. Can I ask you that much?'

'Of course you c-'

But she had not waited for his answer. She left him, going quickly into the kitchen without looking back. He felt sorry, but he also felt relieved. But suppose someone else tried to talk with him? They would know too. He couldn't talk to people normally, not like this. Apparently he couldn't even fool people into thinking he was drunk.

'Rrrrreet,' he said, ruffling the r's lightly off the roof of his mouth. This time the notes came out in a straight line, all of them hurrying notes with flags. He could make notes all night and be perfectly happy, he didn't mind. But not here, where anybody could come along and accost him. Someplace private, where he could hear himself think. The party made him feel as if he were standing behind a large waterfall. Hard to think against the sound of all that. Better to find some quiet backwater. With perhaps a radio to listen to. He felt that listening to music would aid his thinking, and there was a lot to thing about. Reams of things.