"Yeah, sort of reset the whole tape. Good idea."
"But not right this minute, because I've got to find somebody."
Luther nodded, indicating no further explanation was needed. "Whoever he or she is, he or she ain't in there." He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the door through which he had exited. "What's in there is an it. I think I'll go rinse off my face, splash some disinfectant on my dick."
Luther lumbered around the crook of the hallway, and Art stifled the urge to ask him to look for aspirin in the bathroom.
***
Door Number Three was the one from which Price had appeared. That meant Bryan the Bry-Guy was probably in there, convalescing. Thrashing through a nightmare of guilt, more like. The room seemed silent; the crack beneath the jamb was dark.
Did this Lady-or-Tiger obstacle course keep getting more phantasmagoric as it progressed? When Art knocked on the final door in the corridor, would he find Zeus, Allah, and the Christian Satan in a cross-legged circle jerk, kidding one another about bringing back dinosaurs, or perhaps the plague, just for a hoot?
He rounded the turn and briefly looked down into the circular main room just as a nail-splitting catfight erupted between two women. One was blocky, with a brush cut, wearing a bolero vest and pants with conchos and thongs; her nemesis had a sterile Aryan look, blond over blue, dressed in black trousers and a billowing white dress shirt. Conchita tossed a cocktail in Hamlet's face, obviously thinking this an imperious rejoinder. Hamlet punched Conchita right in the kisser, ejecting a tooth, and as soon as they tussled, other people were yanking them apart. They swung and yammered; Hamlet had a good six inches of reach over Conchita, and managed to bash her one more time.
Art did not applaud. He turned his back on the show and continued down the upstairs hall, toward the bathroom. Luther passed him headed in the opposite direction, still contrite. "Later, Art." He danced easily down the stairs without touching the rail.
The fourth room of live seemed the largest. In Art's home, it would have been an office. Yellow light streamed from a separate bathroom, forming hot trapezoids of reflection on a big window that normally boasted a sea view, but now was a wash of pelting rain flying from a roiling gray limbo. At the deep end of the room was a large showy bed, possibly circular, apparently strewn with clothing and coats. When Art squinted he could make out an inestimable number of people sprawled there as well. Fewer than ten. Nobody moved. The air was thick and atonic with the odor of powdered latex and pheromones, water-based lubricants, alcohol, and perspiration. It was a sedentary, hanging miasma that reminded Art of peepshow booths, not that he had devoted much time to Tenderloin field trips. Somebody groaned, and the whole dog pile rearranged itself like a many-tentacled space creature in midslither. Art thought of the way Blitz's paws twitched, in the realm of canine dreams. He felt no need to gently disturb a crowd.
A woman's voice answered the moment he tapped on the fifth door.
"Go away."
It was embarrassing, the way Art's body automatically moved to do what it was told. He persisted. "Suzanne?"
"She's not here. Just leave."
He cracked the door. Five minutes ago he'd had a gun in his face; how much more stressful could this be? The music from downstairs hummed up through the floor, having changed gears to bass-mechanic hip-hop.
"Oh, fuck, doesn't anybody listen?"
"Sorry. I don't want to bother you. But I need to find Suzanne, if you know where she is.''
His eyes adjusted to the light and tracked a glowing cigarette coal, near the bed, rising, flaring, descending. The single occupant sat, legs hugged to chest, outlined against a white stack of pillows. Art saw the glint of dark eyes wet with grief, luminous enough to catch the poor lamplight from the opposite nightstand. He pushed the door quietly shut behind him.
"You want Suzanne, Price took her. Away. And I can't fuck you, whoever you are, so please leave." The cigarette killed itself in an ashtray, scattering orange embers. A plastic butane lighter flicked to ignite another, and in that moment Art saw the long legs clad in leather pants-barefoot, now-the amethyst choker, the sharp jewelry.
"You're Dina, Suzanne's friend," he said. "The one who brought her here."
"No, I'm nobody, and I don't have any fucking friends." She puffed too fast and caught a cough. "I can't believe Price picked her. He walked right in here, right in front of me, and picked her."
"Price is downstairs. I saw him in the hall just a second ago."
"No, Price has got Suzanne's heels against the fucking ceiling and he's ramming her just to make me feel like shit." She blew her nose. A roll of toilet paper sat near the ashtray, and she dropped her sodden wad on the floor. "I thought she was my fucking friend, how could somebody who says they're your friend pull crap like that?"
"She is your friend, as far as I know. She spoke very highly of you." Art had been permitted to come deeper into the room; at least Dina hadn't started screaming or throwing things.
"Yeah, well, that's all probably bullshit, too. I mean, look at Suzanne-she's dumpy, her hair's washed out, big pillowy mammaries. Look at me-I'm tall, goddammit, I've got great bones, I've been in goddamn magazines. Yeah, if I was Price, I'd pick her, because all guys care about is hooters."
"That's not true." Art was trying to pass for native on a planet where the language was a mystery; once again he was treading a negotiative tightrope on the verge of unraveling. One look at Dina told him that her relationship with Suzanne was one of those classic hot-dog-and-hamburger combos. Dina was long, thin, and angular, like a French model. Her jawline and cheekbones bespoke pedigree and her jet-black hair (no dye job, there) was machined into a perfect Louise Brooks bob. Her waistline was twenty-two inches, tops, while Art estimated her inseam at a stunning thirty-six, or better. The expensive shoes discarded on the floor had four-inch heels. She and Suzanne would make the perfect party pair; between them they possessed most of the attributes needed to allow them to pick and choose. What didn't work for one was compensated for by the other, and the buried resentment that conditioned such a dynamic had to be potent and toxic.
Dina was used to acquiring any partner she wanted. Apparently she wanted Price, who was beyond acquisition.
Art angled toward a love seat near the window. When he sat down-slowly, easily-he felt like a mountain climber gaining a critical foothold. "Besides, isn't Price with Michelle?"
"That cunt," said Dina. "I'm better than her. She's his fucking arm doily. He's blowing her off so he can stick his root into Suzanne, right now, I bet. Fucking bitch betrayed me; you can't trust anybody." She sniffed and dabbed at her face. She would not want anyone to see her without prep or makeup. "You didn't bring anything to drink, did you? You another one of Price's toys?"
"Let me get you something."
Another sniffle. Art was aware of leading her onto familiar turf, the puppet show where men brought any damned thing Dina might think of to request. He was not obligated, nor trapped, but suffused with endless curiosity, not only about her, right now, but about all the people he was encountering in this uncharted landscape. Dina's eyes were light brown, shot through with spikes of green and amber, which made them slightly chatoyant; the kind of eyes you could easily lose yourself in. Too easily.
"A glass of water would be nice,'' she admitted. "A double Black Jack on the rocks, and make sure that faggot Kyle doesn't put any fruit in it."
"I can do that." He rose carefully. Sometimes cornered animals might still attack for no reason at all.
"Hey, who are you supposed to be, anyway?"
"Call me Art."
Her jaw stalled. "Not the Art?"
"I don't understand."
She freed a plume of gray smoke. "Oh, holy shit, this toilet's backing up for sure. You're Art? Suzanne says you raped her. You that Art?"
"I didn't rape anybody." His heartbeat kicked into triple time.
"Suzanne says she went to your house to ask to use the phone to call me, and you fucking raped her. Last night. Said you came on to her, all sleazy-take all of your clothes, use my dryer, here, sleep in my bed-and you were all over her."
"That's not what happened." Art felt his bowels plunge. This was his payback for sex that came too easily, the punchline that made him a mark, a sucker to be fleeced, another gob of meat for the grinder. Where had his caution been last night? Had he reinvented his memory to the point where yesterday's glorious, cleansing liberation was just white noise, a story he had cooked up to mask the foul truth?
Was this the check he now had to pick up for cheating on Lorelle, if only in principle?
A brand-new headache sank in and nested, half hangover, half migraine. He struggled with the hindbrain urge to bolt. "Dina, listen to me. We spent some time together, but it wasn't like that."
"Man, that's fucking cold," she said, already brewing up invective for the sort of man she knew he really was. "That's like saying Charlie Manson 'spent some time with celebrities.'"
"Suzanne was upset last night-"
"Not half as upset as when I saw her half an hour ago," Dina said, in a tone that implied she disliked interruption or disagreement. "When she was telling me about calling the cops on you for fucking a minor."
Another railroad spike of pain split Art's head. On top of that, an illogical irritation, because Art knew from his reading that Manson had never actually killed anybody, so Dina's simile was for shit. He tried to breathe in some patience while his eyes were throbbing.
"I didn't rape anybody, goddammit!"
Her gaze brightened. "Wow, I was wondering what it'd take to get a rise out of you." At least she wasn't crying, now. "Like I care, if she's going to cut in on Price. She fucking raped me by doing that shit. So I don't care." She said it again, she didn't care, as if rehearsing, or feeling out the line for watertightness.
Art was already backing away. Those faint of heart, or who might be appalled by the inmates of the asylum, feel free to run screaming out the exit door… if you can find it. "I'll just stop bothering you now," he said, hoping she was bright enough to catch his corrosive tone, stinging her as good as she gave.
"Wait."
"No, Dina, you wait, on whatever psychosis is bubbling away in your brain right now. I've hit my limit."
"Please."
Art wanted to start flinging wild blows. Was she still trying to manipulate him? He kept his distance. ''What?''
Dina stood up, and my god, was she tall and gorgeous, even raccooned in smeared mascara. A tear hung pendant from the point of her chin. "Am I pretty?"
Art looked around to see if she was addressing someone else in the room, some new intruder, some rapist. "What?"
"Stop saying what. It's an easy question. Do you think I'm pretty?'' She hung her index finger in the loop of her choker. Posing.
He did not have to look her up and down, but did anyway. "Yes, Dina, you're pretty," he tried to say firmly. "You're probably too goddamned pretty, which I'm sure is the source of most of your problems, and the reason you're crying your face off, up here, alone in the dark, when at any other party you'd play queen bee."
She dabbed at her face with another spiral of tissue.
"I have no idea what your current stress is. I just delivered Suzanne back here the way she asked me to. From what I can see, nearly everybody at this so-called party is having a miserable, schizophrenic time, that is, whenever they're not banging total strangers or otherwise proving how radical they are by bathing in each other's flesh."
"Everybody's fucked up anyway," she said.
"Regardless, you don't need me to reassure you how attractive you are, and I know you know that."
"I'm ugly," she said, her voice small and recalcitrant. "I feel so ugly."
"It'll pass." He sounded more frigid than he'd intended. He was supposed to protest, and feed her some more, which was how people like Dina battened on the souls they consumed. He owed her nothing, and resented the obligation being forced on him. He was expected to ply her, to aspire to her pampered beauty, the DNA leash around his cock and balls said so… but he just felt angry and put-upon,
yeah, because you just got laid, and can afford to be this nasty, now
.
"I could still use that drink,'' she said. Still playing him.
"I'm sure Kyle would be happy to be of service. I think I'm leaving." He left it at that, without appending more of the barbs lining up in his head, without offering her more material to leverage. She was in midsentence as he shut the door behind him, thinking,
Jee-sus
.
***
The upstairs bathroom was a wonderland of spotless hexagonal tile, the kind New Yorkers found comforting. A claw-foot bathtub that could effortlessly seat four occupied most of the space, enameled white on the inside, black without, to match the tile. An oval mirror cut across the western wall like a huge dinosaur eye, making Art think of the tattoo on the back of Derek's hand. He idly wondered if there was a camera hidden behind it; if Price was clandestinely taping all that transpired on his upper floors for some yet-unguessed psychological gameplay.
There was an unflushed cigarette butt in the john, and hair on the floor. Art looked down and saw he was standing in a drift of human hair, a whole head's worth, apparently shaved off and left where it dropped. Medium-length black hair with a few threads of gray; genderless, wavy, upsetting because it appeared to have simply disconnected, and fallen, and nobody had bothered to clean it up. With his foot he scooted it into a little pile, wondering why he was afraid to touch it.