“But Carr’s coming back.”
“Oh, no,” she said, mock frightened. “Come
on
, Flan. Have I ever steered you wrong?”
“Don’t start,” I said, and turned to Flora Habstat. “Flora,” I said, oozing sweetness, “could you take over for me for a few minutes? I, um, promised Ron I’d help with stage crew stuff.”
“But I have to
fold
,” she whined. She was wearing an ugly beret.
“Just do it,” Natasha said, and took my arm. We scurried out of the courtyard and out a side entrance where Jennifer Rose Milton and Frank Whitelaw were making up/out. “Excuse me, kids,” Natasha said grandly, and didn’t speak again until we reached the lake and were sitting on a log.
“Here,” she said, and handed me the bag.
“What’s going on?” I said. I opened it; inside was a small reus- able plastic bottle. It looked like one of the many small reusable plastic bottles that are stuffed into my kitchen cupboards at home. “Thanks,” I said. “I can see why you didn’t want anybody else
to see me getting this. They might get jealous.”
“You’re not getting it,” she said. She was looking over at the lake like a victorious general observing a burning city.
I opened the bottle and looked inside. It was empty, but damp; light green droplets glistened here and there. It smelled like something I couldn’t place. Iced tea. No. Brandy. No.
“What–”
“You know,” she said, “that kiwi drink didn’t taste so odd to me.”
“You didn’t,” I said. My stomach fluttered.
“I most certainly did,” she said, drawing herself to her full sit- ting height. “I thought of it last night while you were sleeping. It took me a while to find where you’d put the rest of it.”
“Douglas said that much absinthe could–well, it could–” “Yeah, I know,” she said carelessly. “I mean, I figure Douglas
doesn’t really know shit about it. But so what. Whatever happens, it’s a ride he won’t forget.”
I swallowed. “Natasha–”
“I don’t think you should keep your present,” she said. “I just wanted to show it to you, really.” She took it from me and stood up. She walked right up to the water like she was going to cross it like a messiah. I followed her.
“Good-bye to you.” she said simply, and threw it far. For a minute it just sat there–it was plastic–but then it filled with water and sank like a stone. My stomach sank, too.
“Well?” she said.
“This is–this is the biggest thing that anyone’s ever done for me.” She smiled and gave me a kiss on the cheek. We stared at the spot in the water like a moment in a movie.
We got back just in time. The food was running out and the belly dancers were in full bloom on a makeshift stage. Everybody was cheering and egging them on when the crowd suddenly parted, right in the middle like a bad haircut. Carr. He was waving his arms around, helicopterlike. The canned belly dance music screeched off and the gym teachers stood stock-still with their arms and finger cymbals up in the air. He was yelling something but I couldn’t hear it over the crowd. People were laughing, thinking it was some joke
internationale
until they saw his face. I saw his face too, when he turned around with his hands on his head like he was doing sit-ups. He was flushed bright red and his eyes were bugging out; he had a large bleeding scratch on his face. Maybe he had bumped against something sharp, or maybe he had done it himself. Maybe it was self-inflicted. “Eyes!” he was screaming. “Eyes! Lies! Flies!” He lurched toward the edge of the courtyard and everybody scurried out of the way. Bodin was watching, pale beneath his sombrero, and Mokie kept step- ping forward and back like
that commercial where they make a cat dance by looping the film. “Flies!” he said. “Flies! Flies! Flies!” He was now pretty close to me and Natasha, close enough that I could see his eyes rolling around like small trapped animals and white specks of foam coming out of his mouth. “Flies!” he said, and fell flat on the ground. His legs were kicking. It was probably self-inflicted. Other people were screaming now, and Mokie had broken his paralysis and was at Carr’s side trying to pick him up with one hand. His other hand was clutching a forgotten paper plate of taco salad. “Flies!” Carr said, and then just started raw, loud screaming. His face got redder and redder, like lobsters in boiling water, and then even redder. Mokie looked at the plate, dropped it and put both his arms under Carr’s, but slipped on the taco salad and fell on the ground. “Flies!” Carr was on top of him wiggling like a big spider. Two of the belly dancers jumped down from the stage and were running over and everybody was screaming. It was just awful.
I looked at Natasha; she glanced at the spectacle in front of us like it was a movie she’d already seen, and then looked up at the sun, squinting. “This will be a Festival Internationale we won’t soon forget,” she said, and reached into her bag. She pulled out her sunglasses and put them on.
“Flies!” Carr was screaming again.
“Drosophila,” Natasha said quietly to me, and I smiled and took her hand. Self-inflicted. Almost definitely.
Surprisingly, considering all
that
, it was one of the best dances ever tonight. I know it’s a little anticlimactic to say that, but I do want to record everything of interest. Natasha and I shared an- other New Year’s bottle of champagne back at my house, and she lent me the great international chain mail flag top. I half expected
the dance to be canceled when we showed up at Roewer, but I guess they’d already booked the DJ and everything so they just went ahead with it. The music was great and the weather stayed warm so they had it in the courtyard.
Everybody
was there and there didn’t seem to be any weirdness or anything; we were just all dancing and having a great time. I danced hard, hard, hard, mostly just with Natasha–I just couldn’t get very boy-crazy to- night, I don’t know why. Several times I found myself dancing in the spot where Carr had fallen and tried to move away from it, but you know how it’s hard to really move anywhere on a crowded dance floor so I kept finding myself drifting back to it and eventually I just gave up. They played that “Tonight Tonight Tonight” song and for some reason that united all of us, the Basic Eight. We got in a big circle and sang all the words out.
Loud
. Gabriel and I danced into the middle of the circle and everybody cheered. I kissed him until I got out of breath while everyone whooped around us. I guess I was lying about that boy-crazy thing. The only bad side was, and I didn’t notice it until I got home and flopped on my bed to write this all down, I think one of the metal flags must have rubbed against the scab on my back and reopened it. The scab from my bra clasp. I thought I was just sweating–I wanted to get all this down even before I showered–but it was blood that was running down my back. It bled a lot. When I went to the bathroom and looked at it in the mirror it was spread out like one of those aerial shots of volcanoes. Luckily I was pretty sober by that time otherwise it would have been really scary to look at. I wonder what Carr saw, besides, obviously, flies.
I wiped most of the blood off with tissues and now I’m going to shower and that’ll probably clear the last of it off me. The only thing is, I see some of it dribbled onto the
bedspread. I’m just too tired to deal with it tonight so I’ve prob- ably ruined it. That stuff’s supposed to be impossible to get out.
Saturday October 16th
Ring. Ring.
“Flan, it’s Douglas.”
“Hey, Douglas,” I said. “Enjoy the dance?”
“Not as much as
some people
did,” he said archly.
A bubble of imagery popped at the surface of my head: “With You With You” by Q.E.D. Everybody slow-dancing. Natasha and I swirling amidst the couples doing our best faux-ballet moves. Gabriel sitting on a bench, watching me with a faint, forced smile, and me pretending to be drunker than I was and avoiding his eyes because it’s a slow dance and I should be dancing with my–
write
it, Flan!–boyfriend. Dancing around the couples like Cupid’s little helpers or something: Jennifer Rose Milton and Frank Whitelaw. Rachel State and some boy with a postapoca- lyptic haircut. Kate and Adam, but not really a couple, just dan- cing together; Adam looks drunk. And V and Steve Nervo. V
and
Steve Nervo
. “Wow,” I said.
“Jealous?” he asked. I could hear his grin, even over the gloomy Russian classical music he was playing. “Getting into character already?”
“I’m not playing Iago,” I said.
“But you’re married to him. You’re married to
Adam
,” he teased.
“Stop. I’m over Adam.” “Yeah, right.”
“Douglas, I’m with Gabriel now.”
“Who exactly do you think you’re talking to?” “No, it’s
true
,” I said.
“Look, let’s not even discuss it,” he said. “I stopped being seri- ously interested in your love life as soon as I stopped being a part of it.”
Another bubble hit me. “Speaking of love lives,” I said. “Did I or did I not see you at the dance talking earnestly with some boy all night?”
“Well, not
all
night,” he said. “I danced some. Remember ‘To- night Tonight Tonight’?”
“So, is he your boyfriend now?”
“
Flan
,” he said. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“Oh yes, I forgot you people have a totally different lifestyle.” “
Flan
–”
“No, no, it’s fine. As long as you don’t try to push your agenda on
me
–”
Douglas laughed. “Shut
up
. I just mean, things are still weird with Lily, and this guy–I don’t know–”
“What do you mean, things are still weird with Lily? You guys seem pretty comfortable.”
“For public appearances, yes.” He sounded like a press agent. “But she’s still really upset. I still get the occasional teary midnight phone call.”
“At least she’s still talking to you.” “I think that about everybody.”
“Douglas,” I said sternly. “I can’t take this much self-pity in the morning. Not
other people’s
self-pity, anyway.”
He chuckled. Douglas certainly was in a good mood this morning. Maybe after the dance–out of the gutter, mind! “Well, I’ll change the subject from sex to drugs. Nobody else seemed game, but I’m totally up for an absinthe reprise tonight before the Sculpture Garden if you want.”
“There isn’t any more left.”
“What do you mean? There was plenty after the party.”
“Natasha and I took some last night.” “Without me?”
“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“Well, there must be
some
left. If you’d taken it all, you would have pulled a Jim Carr.”
I swallowed. “Yeah, what was up with that?”
“Millie said it looked like a stroke to her. Although he seemed perfectly healthy. So how about it?”
“What?”
“
Absinthe
, Flan. It’s eating your brain already.”
“Yeah,” I said, seizing an opportunity. “I’d better not do it to- night.”
“Well, can I stop by and get it, then? I think I can convince Kate and–I think I can convince Kate to take some with me. Are you going to be home later?”
“Douglas, there isn’t any left.” “What did you do, sell it?”
“Um–I spilled it. I dropped the bottle down by the lake.” “Really?”
“Yes.”
“What really happened, Flan?”
“I dropped the bottle down by the lake.” “Who exactly do you think you’re talking to?”
You’re beginning to see, I bet, exactly why I didn’t hold up under cross-examination. “Remember when you said that if I took the rest of the absinthe I’d end up pulling a Jim Carr?”
“Yeah.”
I took a breath. “Do you remember how Jim Carr had been treating me?”
Douglas laughed nervously. “Stop freaking me out, Flan. It sounds like–”
“I did.”
A few bars of gloomy Russian classical music–probably Shos- takovich, knowing Douglas. “Flan, I’m just going to say what I’m thinking out loud, just so–I don’t know. Just
because
.”
“OK.”
“You’re telling me that you gave Jim Carr a possibly toxic overdose of absinthe.”
“Well, it wasn’t
me
,” I said. “Well, it sort of was. No.” “But Jim Carr
got
a possibly toxic overdose of absinthe.” “Yes.”
A few more bars. Maybe Tchaikovsky? “Because he was an asshole.” “
Douglas
–”
“I’m just trying to get it straight.” “There’s more to it than that.”
“I should hope so.”
I don’t know why I said it. “Hope springs eternal.” “
What
?”
“Nothing. Douglas, I want to tell you, but–”
“Look,” he said. “Why don’t you talk to
all
of us about it? To- night, at the Sculpture Garden. Would that make you feel better?” “Oh, God, Douglas. The object is for
no one
to know, not for–” “Flan, come on. You
need
us. We can
help
you. I mean, this is
serious shit
, Flan.” “I know.”
“So tonight, OK?”
My stomach sank, sank, sank. “I don’t know.” “
Flan
–”
“All right, all right, all right. Tonight, tonight, tonight.” “You’re singing my favorite song,” he said.
I heard my own shuddering sigh. “
Stop
,” I said. I felt like the camera was pulling up and away, through the roof of the house until I was a tiny speck on a sofa on a screen.
“I love you,” Douglas said, over the telephone.
“Oh,” I said. I sounded like a little mouse. I hung up and took the phone off the hook. I lay there for a while. I took another shower. I wrote this all down. I’m going to lie here for a while now.
LATER
I had to take the
bus
to the Sculpture Garden, because I didn’t want to call Gabriel and Natasha wasn’t going. “I was never planning on going,” she said. “I have a date.”
“But they want to talk to us about Carr.”
“I can’t believe you
told
them, Flan. That’s so
stupid
.” “I didn’t tell anybody. They just sort of guessed.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. We don’t have to answer to them or anybody else.”
“Natasha, they want to help us.”
“We don’t need any help. Flan, I’ll tell you a secret: you and I, we’re better than them. Better than all of them. At least,” she said, and I heard her take another flask sip, “
I
am. And you
will
be, if you stick with
me
and quit running to them for help in things we don’t need any help in. Call me tomorrow.” The phone clattered down. She and I are better than them–that’s like metasnobbery. So in either case I was alone for The Big Talk.