half-gallon bottles of vodka and saucers of bright capsules. I could see reds and yellows and blues from where I was. There were plastic glasses in a stack and a large bag of ice tipped over and partially melted in a big puddle near the vodka. There was jug wine and some bourbon and a freezer-size baggy of grass open and some spilling. The lights around the edges of the room were bright and, reflecting off the beige walls, lit the living room like a movie set. On the wall to the right of the bar a large-screen TV was showing in color a video-tape in which two naked women and one naked man in a shower stall were involved in active foreplay while the shower head fanned a steady spray of water down on them. The actors appeared to be speaking lines, but they were soundless in the face of the music and the laughter.
'We better move down among them,' I said to Susan and Hawk. 'We're too out of place up here looking down.' They nodded and, Hawk first, we went down the three steps and into the maw of the beast. T. J. Eckleberg, where are you when I need you?
I said, 'Pay attention to those movies, Suze. Pick up your technique a little.'
'Anything anyone in this room or on that screen is doing,' Susan said quietly, 'I never wish to do with you ever.'
'Oh,' I said. 'Close your eyes, then, and hang on to me.'
The men in the room were generally middle-aged, the women generally children. Most of the people were sprawled on the floor, and while there seemed to be a good deal of fondling going on, I saw no actual intercourse. Nothing declassi here. We skirted a couple on the floor near the big-screen television. He had short gray hair and a clipped gray mustache and a white broadcloth shirt and a red bow tie. She was wearing only a camisole. He had one hand under the camisole as she giggled and tipped a glass of what appeared to be straight vodka against his lower lip for him to drink. Her fingernails were painted blue and so were her toenails. She appeared to be maybe fifteen. A tall angular man with gold-rimmed glasses was trying to dance to the shattering music. His partner was a tall still-faced blond girl with a long single braid down her back. She wore high-heeled shoes and tight designer jeans and no shirt. The strap of her black bra made a thin line across her white back. They were having trouble dancing because they were both drunk and because the man was trying to waltz to the music, holding the girl close against him. He bumped into me as we circled the room and said, ''Scush me,' and stumbled away. As we moved on he tried to dip with his partner and they fell down, she on top of him. They stayed there.
Susan said in my ear, 'That's Foster Carmichael. He's an associate commissioner of education.'
'What dedication,' I said. 'Devotes even his weekends to kids.'
A black-haired kid with a freckled Irish face was standing on the coffee table against the far wall doing a slow strip-tease to music that must have come from a different drummer. She moved slowly, her face fixed in adolescent imitation of a sultry smile as she struggled with her clothes. She was too zonked to figure it out, but it was hard to strip in real clothes. It was hard to scrunch out of your designer jeans and look like Gypsy Rose lee at the same time.
We didn't see April in the room, or Amy, or Poitras. Susan saw two other people she recognized, and I spotted a state rep that I knew. As we wedged back toward the stairs a man on the floor ran his hand up
Susan's calf. I stepped on his stomach and he took his hand away.
'A real compliment,' I said in her ear. 'Thinks you're a high school kid.'
'And he thinks you're a bully,' she said.
'He's correct.'
We made it back to the stairs. The sweat was soaking through my shirt, my collar felt as limp as an old dandelion. I realized I was holding Susan's hand. Hawk's face was shiny with sweat as he joined us on the steps.
'Sure do know how to have a good time, don't they?' Hawk said.
The man whose stomach I had stepped on was throwing up on the floor. Nobody paid him any attention.
'Trendy,' I said.
The hall that had seemed oppressive when we came in now seemed cool and open after the living room. I led the way upstairs, still holding Susan's hand, with Hawk behind her. When we got to the second floor there were three December-May couples in the hallway, sitting on the floor in a circle passing a bong around. They paid no attention to us as we went past them and looked into the master bedroom. In the bed was a man and three young girls. All were without clothes. They were busy. None of the girls was April so I closed the door. There were people busy in Poitra's office also, using his swivel chair -which was tricky.
'In a swivel chair?' Susan said.
'To seek, to strive, and not to yield,' I said. There was more activity in the guest room, and even something energetic happening in the bathroom. None of it involved Poitras or the two girls. They were on the third floor.
Chapter 30
When we opened the door to the photo shop, Poitras was sitting in a canvas-backed director's chair, spilling out on both sides of it. Amy stood on one side of him holding a tray of canap6s from which Poitras was eating as we entered. April stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders, massaging the base of his neck quietly. Sitting opposite was a middle-sized fiftyish man with a round face and an unhealthy-looking flush to his skin. He was wearing a gray pinstriped double-breasted suit and a conservative soft hat with a narrow brim. He looked like an unsuccessful diplomat. Behind the diplomat, leaning against the wall looking bored, with his arms folded, was an overweight slugger wearing a suede trench coat. The diplomat was reading a large sheet of lined paper. A half-drunk glass of something with a lime wedge in it was on the floor beside him. When we walked in they all turned and looked at us. Not startled, just annoyed. I looked at Hawk and then toward the slugger. Hawk nodded.
Poitras said, 'I'm sorry, this is private up here… and then recognized me and Susan.
I said, 'Say, Mitchell, you know how to throw some swell party.'
Without looking up from his lined paper the diplomat said, 'Didn't Mickey tell you the third floor was off limits? Get the fuck out of here.'
The overweight slugger was still leaning against the wall, but he had uncrossed his arms and he didn't look bored.
