100
John’s at a different kind of party.
What would come to be known as the Great Laguna Blizzard of 1976.
It snowed like hell inside Doc’s house that night.
Cocaine everywhere, and most of the Association boys nose-deep in it. Cocaine on mirrors, cocaine on tabletops, cocaine on magazine covers-Doc hosting like some kind of surfer-dude Mad Hatter at the tea party.
John sits back and watches the circus.
He doesn’t do coke.
Well, he did when they brought it up from Mexico. John took a couple of snorts the way a winemaker might take a couple of sips, pronounced it “okay,” and then forgot about it.
Coke is too crazy for him.
People get too jacked up.
But this is a coming-out party for coke, in Laguna at least, a sort of motivational seminar for the sales force You can only sell what you love. Is everybody excited?!
— so John could give a shit. He smokes a j, sips a little Scotch, and lets it snow, snow, snow.
And scopes the women.
Shit, Doc has really stocked the pond on this one. Sleek, long-legged women are everywhere, and they’re digging the coke. He doesn’t even have to get up from the couch and-bingo, bango-an incredibly gorgeous auburn- haired chick in a miniskirt comes up and sits down next to him.
“I’m Taylor,” she says.
“John.”
The white smudge under her nose looks cute, but John leans over and wipes it off.
“Don’t waste that,” she says. She holds his wrist and licks the coke off his fingers, then says, “Taste of what’s to come.”
Except he hears
“ You slept with my wife.”
John looks up and Stan is standing over him, looking stupid in his denim jacket and jeans, stupider with this look of rage on his face.
“You slept with my wife,” he repeats.
Taylor giggles.
John tries to go the chivalric route. “Stan, I don’t know what you’re-”
“She told me.”
John says, “Okay, I slept with your wife.”
Like, now what?
Stan doesn’t know.
He stands there looking confused and uncertain and stupid and John just wishes he would go away so that he can get back to Taylor and things to come and is about to tell him so when
Stan pulls a pistol from his pocket.
101
Kim is a triumph at the cocktail party.
Think Cinderella (if you haven’t already), think Sabrina (see above); point is, she kills.
Even the Orange County bitches, who normally would have sliced her up like a gang of Benzedrine-crazed chefs at Benihana, can’t touch her. It’s not a matter of kindness, God knows, but of cowardice. Not one of them is brave enough to be the first shark to draw blood and start the feeding frenzy, and by the time they work themselves into a sufficiently collective indignation at this parvenu to socially gang-rape her, it’s too late because one of the Young Men recognizes himself as a cultural trope and obediently plays
Prince Charming.
Brad Donnelly is a scion of OC nobility. Twenty-five, UCLA alum, doing great things in Dad’s real estate business, looks to match.
“I’m Brad,” he says. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“I’m Kim,” she says.
It’s working just the way she imagined it a million times just the way she planned it.
He smiles and walks her onto the broad deck, with its stunning view of the beach and the ocean, the sun setting like it knows it’s in her movie.
“Who are you?” Brad asks. “Why haven’t I seen you before?”
“I guess you haven’t been looking.”
“I’m looking now.”
“So I see.”
He juts his chin back toward the party inside. “They’re all talking about us, you know.”
“I know. Do you mind?”
“I don’t care,” Brad answers. They make inconsequential chitchat for a few minutes, then Brad asks, “You want to get out of here and go to a really cool party?”
“I would love to.”
102
Here’s how fucked-up coke is This is funny
Guy pulls a gun and points it in somebody’s face and most of the partygoers think it’s a hoot. It’s even funnier if you know Stan, because it’s so totally un-Stan-like.
Winnie-the-Pooh packing heat.
Pretty much John’s reaction He doesn’t say Stan, don’t.
Or
Please, don’t kill me. He says, “Stan, where did you get that?”
“Never mind,” Stan says, realizing it sounds dumb. “I should kill you.”
The “should” is the giveaway.
He “should”; he’s not going to.
John says, “I didn’t rape her, Stan.”
Doc, ever the good host, comes over and says, “Come on, put that away, Stan. It’s a party. ”
“He had sex with Diane,” Stan says.
Doc ponders this for a moment, and then delivers a response that becomes Laguna legend.
“Well,” Doc says, “so have you. ”
Cocaine logic.
Irrefutable.
“Come on, man,” Doc says, putting his arm around Stan’s shoulder, “join the party, do a few lines.”
Stan sets the pistol down on the coffee table and starts to cry.
“My man,” Doc says.
103
