"So I get there with Dina and it's barely sundown yet and there's like twelve guys all over her, and she only has eyes for Price, and Price is… polite. Almost like she's a kid or something, I mean, not a minor, but a kid, a little kid. She disappears. There's this whole row of rooms on the second floor, and most of them have beds, because at Price's parties… you know." She shrugged.
"A lot of mating going on upstairs?"
"What are parties really for? You meet people, you drink too much, you fool around, and then the next day you talk about what you wouldn't have done if you hadn't been 50000 drunk."
That urged a laugh out of Art. It was true. Between All Hallows toasts and dawn, there'd been a bit of mating going on between his guests at his long-ago soiree, in whatever rooms became available on a rotating basis. Stacey McMullen and Bernard Whitt had booted Blitz out of the dog den so they could hump on top of the dryer.
"So I find Dina in one of these rooms, alone, thank god, except for the cheeseball trying to shove coke up his ass in the bathroom, but he closes the door and we don't see him again for the rest of the night. Dina's crying her face off. Her makeup has run down into her lap. She's crying over Price, and I go, what the fuck is this bullshit, I mean, it's not like you guys had a thing or he's your lover or something."
"Did something happen?"
"That's the whole thing. Nothing happened. And she's acting like she wants to commit suicide all of a sudden. Fucking weird. Too weird. So weird it's kinda scary."
"Was she wasted?"
"Well, everybody was pretty jolly already. Lot of booze, lot of coke, some old-timers still into 'ludes. Price generally doesn't like junkies, so there was only a couple. But the weird thing is Dina, the way she's acting. She's normally tough as nails. She's a city kid, she has pavement smarts, and even though she shows up dressed to kill, she never has any problem keeping the dogs from slobbering on her. Not you. sweetie." She began scratching Blitz's ruff, the one way guaranteed to immobilize canines. She took a long draw off her Dixie Double Hex. "Dina's pretty tall and she's got super-long legs, and great eyes, and she wore these really soft leather pants. All her jewelry is really sharp, and she's got this choker thing with an amethyst in it, and she's even got one of those belt buckles that has a little knife in it? Totally superior hair. And she's just crying and crying, like somebody died."
"Did something happen?" Art was at sea.
Suzanne began scratching Blitz's nose with her index finger, playing dodgem while he tried to catch a sniff. "That's it. Nothing happened. We said hi to Price at the door, and an hour later she's ready to leap off a building. So I hugged her and got her a tissue, and finally she swallows hard a couple of times in a row and asks to be by herself, for just a moment-you know, kind of letting me off the hook.
"So I go back downstairs, and lo and behold, the Asshole is slapping Price on the back like they did Vietnam together or something."
"Which asshole?"
" Bryan. Bryan Simonsen. The Bry-Guy. Used to be my boyfriend. Occupation: total phallus." Suzanne rolled her eyes and Art could see this was not the first time she had recounted this particular life mistake. "He's this rich computer guy, but it's all Daddy's money, y'know? He's got a Porsche and a stock portfolio and no human feelings whatsoever. Testosterone to burn; he's always spoiling for a fight, always ready to hear something the wrong way."
"You mean he's reactive. Which most people call 'intense.' A big, blustery kind of guy? Thinks being turned up too high is some kind of virtue?"
"Sometimes being turned up too high just means you're loud," said Suzanne. "Loud enough, for long enough, gets-''
"Strident?"
"Irritating. And Dina, my bud, is always giving me shit about my asshole boyfriends, but she's always around when they dump me, which is why I got worried about her. But now I've been dismissed, and what do you know, Bry-Guy the Asshole has arrived to party."
"Is he that hostile? I mean, do you definitely not want to be in the room with him?"
"I definitely don't want to share the planet with him. He's like my five worst boyfriends of all time, rolled into one humongous Asshole. He liked to start hitting when he didn't get his way; he broke my nose once." She indicated the imperfection in her profile, offhandedly, almost as though it had been a bargain price for her escape from him. "Any ex-girlfriend of his automatically joins a secret club called Those Bitches. If he lives past thirty, I wouldn't put a murder or two past him. I know he'll start shit the minute he sees me, so I snuck out onto the deck. It's raining and crappy, and I forgot my shoes, but I've had just enough drinks to be mad, and not care. But it's not particularly cold."
That would be the storm front, switching channels every five minutes and playing hob with the barometer. First warm and moist, then chilly; now blowy, now not.
"I get ahold of somebody's umbrella and start walking on the beach, pretty far up because the tide line starts looking nasty in the dark. About the time I get to the haunted house, down there-''
"That's the Spilsbury house. Private property."
"Whatever. About the time I got there, it starts pissing down rain like a motherfucker, and the wind kicks up to like fifty miles an hour, and all I can think is, I am not going back in there. Not yet. It's like being angry was keeping me warm. So I march on and march on, and see this place, and the lights are on, and about then the rain starts blowing off the ocean, like knives or razors with salt on the edges? Ow, ow, ow. The umbrella flips inside out and becomes completely useless. I threw it toward the ocean and it blew back, like twenty feet over my head. What a joke. I realized how far away I was from Price's because I couldn't see it. I didn't even know which direction it was, y'know, like those guys in the Arctic who get lost ten feet away from their door in a blizzard?"
"I can drive you back if you need it."
"Nah, not yet. It's nicer right here. All that techno dance shit Price likes starts to rattle your teeth, and I kinda wanted to give the Asshole time to get really wasted, or get knifed in a fight, or maybe drown. I was thinking maybe I could call Price's, from here, I mean, to make sure Dina's okay… if she hasn't split without me already. That's another reason I went outside; she was my ride, so it wasn't like I could just get in the car and run away.'' She looked around the living room as though it was just coming into focus. "So, do you live here all by yourself?''
"Yeah. For now." Art could not bear the thought of recounting the Lorelle narrative one more time in the same twenty-four-hour span, so he let it go.
"No significant other, no spouse, no kids, no live-in relatives?"
"Just me and that critter over there."
''You're not, like, one of those hermits who makes belts out of human nipples and lamp shades of skin, while sinking ever deeper into his delusional architecture?"
She knew psychological terms, and had even heard of serial killers like Ed Gein. Her use of architecture threw him. He had to laugh. "I'm afraid it's a lot more mundane than that. I just live alone now; my significant other-" he took care to repeat the words she'd just said "-my spouse died a few years ago."
"Were you in love?" It was obviously a goal of hers.
"Yes."
"That sucks," Suzanne said, nodding with what, for her, passed for sympathy. "So many fuckheads are walking around in the world, breathing air, and the people you love die. It's so unfair."
Yes, it was. Art resisted the riptide pull toward his own past history recap, though. "Listen," he said. "If you want to call down to the other house, that's okay, too. I got an invitation to that party, sort of. It was signed by Michelle."
"Yeah, Michelle's like that. I figured I could call for her and she'd take care of the whole situation. But I'm liking this for right now, Art, if you don't mind. I mean, I don't want to use up a lot of time, or-"
"Please," said Art with a deferential wave of his hand.
"You got a nice house and a nice dog-aren't you?-and I promise I'm not a lunatic on crack, and I'm not gonna steal anything." Blitz had already more or less cast his vote in the yes column.
"Tell him he's a
guter Hund
." said Art. She did and Blitz brightened up. "I wasn't worried about you."
"Well, you should be, letting strangers in like that. I would be."
"It's a little different out here in the middle of nowhere."
"That's for sure. Are you some kind of artist?" She was looking at the framed, signed prints hung here and there.
"I'm a specific kind of artist-the kind no one thinks of as an artist, in the way some people think painting is art, but photography isn't." He was aware of trying too hard to be glib. "I'm an architect; I'm sort of holed up here working on a project I don't like very much."
"Did it for the money, huh?"
Art shrugged helplessly, a prisoner of commerce.
"It's a great house." She knew when it was politic to change the subject.
"Hard line's in the kitchen when you want it," he said. "Forget trying to use a cell in this weather."
"I still want to wait a little bit. I mean, do you mind?" She was too comfy where she was, and Art was a safe distance away on the facing couch. He was not circling her, ravenous and predatory, and he sensed she kind of enjoyed that, as though it was rare. "The fire's way too nice. You can just sit and watch it and it calms you down; it's better than TV."
Art decided to jump directly to what he was already thinking, without camouflaging preamble. "Crash here. There's a guest room and you already know where the fridge is."
Of many potential reactions to such a solicitation, which some might consider forward, he never expected her to flash livid and slam both fists uselessly into the cushions, "Oh, goddammit all to fucking hell…!"
That's it,
he thought.
You blew it. She thinks you're coming on to her already, a total stranger, and it's grossing her out
.
"Fuck!" Blitz scrambled to an alert stance at the strident sound of an angry human voice.
Suzanne looked at Art, her eyes now quite white in the dim light, almost as if he had walked into his own living room and caught her relaxing inside his workout clothes, taking advantage of his fireplace, petting his dog, all without permission.
"No, no, you don't understand," she said hastily. "I just realized I probably left my bag at Price's.
God-dammit-dammit!
Do I have my bag? No. Did I stomp out of Price's without it? Yes. Am I a fucking moron? Absolutely.
Shit!
" She blew off a huge wave of frustrated epinephrine, knowing how limited were her options.
Art wanted to talk her down. "Was it important, as in the usual stuff, or as in serious?"
She wiped a hand down her face as if trying to squeeze it into a different expression, something less nakedly emotional. "You must know what it's like to lose your bag; it's like, your identity."
Art considered how often he might have lost a purse, then stayed kind and did not say anything. He did not even make a funny face; oh. these women and their foibles.
"It's just a bag; I don't want the Asshole to trip over it. He'll be looking at my checkbook for my bank balance and then he'll swipe my credit card and sell it to some hacker. He'll take all my numbers. There's a single twenty-dollar bill in my wallet that'll probably wind up in some stripper's crotch up in the Mission. Where did I put it down? I had it when I was talking to Dina, because I got her a Kleenex out of it, because that cocaine cowboy was locked up in the bathroom. If Dina got the bag, it'll be fine. The Asshole never slept with Dina, so he'll treat her decent if he spots her."
"She'd look out for it, for you, wouldn't she?"
"If she doesn't get so plowed that she loses hers and mine. Oh, well… put it down to paying the party toll, I guess." She smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand. "Stupid." Blitz was gawping at her, uncertain how to proceed, and she gathered his coffinshaped head in both hands. "It's okay, sweetie, it's not your fault. It's just another one of life's little shit sandwiches."
Blitz, being a dog, didn't think a shit sandwich was such a bad notion. Those cat turds he sometimes found were pretty tasty.
"Maybe you should just call"-Art had to summon the name from memory-"Michelle, at the house."
"Yeah, before anybody gets any more wasted. Good idea."
"Landline's in the kitchen. You know the number?"
"It's written down in my bag. But it's easy to remember: OK-o-holyman. The numbers make a word. The second O in OK-o is a zero. I probably don't need the area code, right?"
"No, just holyman by himself is good."
She smiled as she disengaged from the sofa-reluctantly. "You're never sure how to do things out here in the sticks."
Art was completely disarmed by his visitor. Part of him figured out that Price's number was 465-9626, while another part was content to watch Suzanne's breasts shift around beneath one of his own sweatshirts. The garment would come away fragrant with her. Even in sweats her waist was pinched; she possessed a classic hourglass shape that had fallen out of fashion in this week's version of youth culture, which was still grimly prejudiced toward models that resembled anorexic jailbait or androgynous junkies who looked like glassy-eyed greyhounds, living heartbeat to heartbeat until discarded or fully consumed. Suzanne did not strike him as callow. She was the difference between "Art" and "normal," which struck him with the distance he had managed to stray from the walking world in general.