The Basic Eight (36 page)

“You know,” Ron said again but I was already halfway out the room. I climbed the stairs two by two, Kate’s face clearly in my mind: looking at Ron, a little scared, staring at Lily in pure gossipy satisfaction. She’d forgotten about me for the moment. I could slip away. My whole body flushed redder and warmer with each step, so that by the time I reached the top of the opulent staircase I was quite literally trembling with desire. That’s the only way to put it. Look back through this book, reader. Hold your place with your finger and shut it; then reopen it and let your fingers fall to rest on the first day, another holiday: Labor Day. All this time I’ve been in labor, and it was all coming to fruition here on Halloween. It wasn’t the right thing to do, but dammit, it was senior year. Soon I’d be off to college and adulthood. I’d never have this kind of freedom again. “I’ll be upstairs,” he’d said, “if you want,” and I did want. “I’ll
do
something, I’ll
do
something,” I kept saying to myself, flinging open the wrong doors: linen closets, a

bare bathroom with mirrored cabinets gaping open. I’ll do something, five stage crew people sitting in a circle smoking pot. I’ll do something, I’ll do something, I’ll do something. This must be the right door. I pulled it open toward me, it banged my hip and the claw-hand nail file poked into my leg again. The room was dark but the door let light in, and for a minute it was some- thing unimaginable, absurd: a sheet flapping in the breeze.
Never in a million years
, I thought,
does Satan string her laundry up in a spare bedroom
, before I realized it was the back of some girl, sliding up and down on top of Adam.

My last mouthful of punch spat out my mouth, jumping onto the carpet and shining there like a baby oyster. The girl turned around, but it was too dark to see. Had there been some other flight of stairs, some back way? Had Kate beaten me to it again? “
Kate
?” I asked, and I heard Adam laugh, drunk and loud. I felt a chill come from under the ground, through the foundation of the house, up through the damp basement where Satan keeps her wine, through the door frame I was leaning on, to my gripping fingertips and with an easy rush through my whole body, stock- cold. I felt like a blue corpse, denied resurrection at the last cruel moment. What did the world want from me? “
Kate
!” I screamed, and then I felt Kate’s hand on my shoulder. She was standing behind me. Our eyes met and I felt high school sisterhood, strong as oak, giving my shaking chilly body some sustenance. She reached past me and pulled the door open farther. In the stripe of light was all the evidence that ever should have been con- sidered in this dire case, in these unfortunate circumstances, in this crime for our times: Adam’s jeans, lying spent like shed skin. Some girl’s shoe, a bra. Adam’s button-down shirt, unbuttoned,

the tie unraveled but still tunneled through

the collar. The torn square of a condom package, blank in the dark like a sugar cube stomped flat. And hurriedly discarded, gory with stretched-out buttonholes and ugly horizontal stripes:
a sweater-vest
. A sweater-vest. I must have made some noise in my throat because Shannon, still astride my victim, turned around like a predator was nearby. I felt my fingernails sink into the baguette, crumbs slipping into my fingernails brittle as balsa.

A long wild wail rose up. It sounded like the calls of mourning animals on public television, when one of their own goes down. When Mrs. State cried on television, the stoic Mr. State putting one quiet arm on her shoulder, the sound was theatrical, self- conscious. This was
real
grief, the real thing. When I turned around Kate’s face was fire-engine red and her throat was way past crying. Her hands were clasped around her ears almost tenderly, sheltering them like orphans from the terrible sound. Shannon took one hand from her breasts and covered her mouth in horror, leaving her chest bare and vulnerable. The geometric beam of the open door into the room made me feel like I had X- ray vision; I swear that I could see her veins, her blood, red and alive, her whole breast cleaved like a melon under my exact medical gaze. I could see where it would hurt her most, little Shannon covering her mouth in horror.

The man under her shifted; Shannon fell mercilessly off him,
plonk
. Her hand uncovered her mouth and I saw that she was covering
laughter
. It wasn’t horror at all, not yet. What more had I guessed wrong? I mean:
incorrectly
?

Adam was standing up, covering himself with a comforter swimming with some polite print. I think this was a guest room. The comforter spread below him like a thick ugly skirt, muttering against the carpet

as he dragged it with him. His face was flushed, and in the sharp light from the corridor I could see drops of sweat on his bare chest, magnetic even now. He was grinning but his eyes were clear and angry as empty bottles. I could see, written all over his face, the straining dissatisfaction of interrupted sex. It’s a look of craftiness, underneath anything they’re saying about respect or fun or hang-ups or whatever else they can devise. Beneath that surface they’re figuring out if the coast is clear so they can stop all this talk and just
get laid
.

Self-righteous indignation wouldn’t have been the path I’d have chosen, but then again I didn’t have a straining damp erec- tion hidden behind clumps of bedding. “Shut the door!” he said, trying to sound merely embarrassed but looking at Kate and me like Federal Protection was our last hope. “Will you
shut the door
?” Obviously a rhetorical question; he was already shutting it him- self. His rumpled head was in front of me for a moment. I raised the baguette–

Surely you didn’t believe
that
, even for a moment. What did I just say: “I guess the Basic Bakery doesn’t design its loaves to withstand battle.” We only had a glimmer of his–what did I write?–rumpled head before the door slammed shut.

I looked at Kate again; her eyes were widening and white milky drool was dribbling down her chin. “
Adam
!” she screamed, and threw herself over me to try to pound on the door. Amazingly, I caught both her arms, one in each hand, and backed her away from the door like some wooden folk dance. “
Adam
!” she screamed again, and I looked back at the unapologetic door. Was he at it again, just thrusting away with all this raw noise outside the bedroom?

Kate sobbed against me all the way down the stairs, and when I reached the bottom I saw Ron Piper, one hand on the front door and watching me closely. I tried to smile weakly at him, so it would look like things were in control, just one of Kate’s tantrums, you know, but when my lips curled up I tasted salt on them and knew I must look almost as bad as her. Ron gave a half-shrug at me and opened the door; cool air gaped out.

“Ron–” I said.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Ron said apologetically. “I mean, you kids can do what you want, I guess. I’ve never been to one of your cast parties, but I never knew it–well, I shouldn’t be here. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything, but I’m not going to stay, either,” he said. He was nervous. “Don’t worry,” he said, smiling razor-thin. Not nervous;
scared
. “I’m leaving.” He could have thrown
everybody
out. He was a teacher. I slumped down and Kate fell to the floor.

The front door shut heavily, in exact sync with the music blaring back on again, only this time it was Darling Mud, “on and on and on.” Kate was still wailing, maybe; it was hard to tell over the lead guitar. Her feet were kicking at the ground erratically and weakly in a halfhearted fit. I closed my eyes and leaned against the door frame of a bathroom, but the sound all went underwater and I couldn’t see anything and I thought I would drown in the blurry roar, gelatinously thick and dark blue as Kate’s stolen sweater. I heard something gurgling behind me. I turned and looked into the bathroom; skinny little Bob was vomiting into the sink. It was dripping everywhere, and Bob’s throat was making horrible sounds; he reached out a hand to steady himself and smeared vomit on the bookshelf wallpaper. I followed some leaping cosmetics to Lily, leaning against the bathtub with a bathroom drawer

she had obviously torn out from under the sink. She was swearing at Bob and throwing the contents of the drawer at his head, never hitting him. A shampoo bottle broke against the toilet, and my stomach reeled at the sight of the slow slither of the golden gel, down the porcelain to Lily’s bleeding knee.

I lurched back into the kitchen, with the rack still swinging from the ceiling like a drunken ape. Rachel State was passed out in the corner, and her two drunk cohorts were trying to stand her up, one grabbing each arm. For no reason I whacked one of them on the back of the leg with the baguette; her knees buckled and Rachel’s arm went down. Pain for the whole fucking family, I don’t care. The whole liquor table was moving slowly like a fetid pond; everything,
everything
had spilled. The roar of water was competing with the music; I looked back at the brimming sink and saw that the faucet was on, the water puddling into all the fallen pots. Soon it would overflow.

Another bathroom, another vomiter; I walked by just listening to the straining stomach, the desperate throat, the limp mouth. In the living room the table had been uprighted but there was still food all over chairs and sofas and
walls
. There were still maybe thirty people in the living room and it wasn’t even whatever-the-hell time it was; in one stained and soaking love seat Jennifer Rose Milton was dark with scorn, yelling at Gabriel who looked small and scared. “Ugh!” Jenn spat, a little roar of frustration. She was telling him something he wouldn’t believe. Gabriel saw me and lit up like Christmas except I’m Jewish and don’t celebrate Christmas. To me it’s just somebody’s birthday. I muttered something at him, and he reached out his arm for me for reassurance. Jenn slapped his arm down and he glared at

her and lifted it back up.

“I love you–” he said, and when I opened my eyes all his hands were reaching toward me, blurring like a school of squid, a cala- mari embrace. I covered my mouth in horror and found that I was laughing. “Flan–” he called, but I couldn’t hear him because somebody had turned the music up, on and on and on. Across the room two people I didn’t know were getting into another fight and I felt the whole house rising up in desperation, like a bubble straining to pop, to break away from that little plastic wand you blow them out of.
Out of which you blow them
, I corrected myself, as one of them slapped the other one in a blast of white light. Flora Habstat was on the floor, taking pictures of the fight from below and cackling shrilly, cracking my ears open. The room was hot and loud. Jenn was yelling at Gabriel again. “Douglas,” somebody said, but it was Douglas and he was looking at me. “Kate’s looking for you.
Natasha
.”

“What?” I said, stepping up to him. “What?” His eyes goggled; his head bobbed. “
What
? Kate’s looking for me? Natasha’s looking for me? Kate’s looking for–
I’m
looking for Natasha? What?”

“Gabriel’s mad at you,” he said, and then fell immediately to his knees like he was proposing. A streak of something was on his forehead. “Did Ron leave?” he asked, and I looked at his face, a large question mark. He was trying to think of the right thing to say, straining for it like it was up on a cupboard, out of reach. Put there for his protection, like poison for a child who
wanted
poison nonetheless. He was crying. “Flan–” he said, and the music was turned up one more notch, loud enough so that people could scream above it and never be heard.

Outside it was so dark I stepped into the blackness out of sheer faith and promptly stumbled over V , sitting on the stairs. The air was stark cold, like, I’m

running out of metaphors, ice. I sat down next to her, the air rustling my dress. V was crying.

“Natasha,” she said, “he wasn’t
invited
. He wasn’t
invited
.” She looked up and then covered her mouth in what had better have been horror. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re
Flannery
.”

It was an insult; it was
true
, but it sounded like an insult, like V never would have told me these things, only the person who really wore the dress. “
What
?” I said. It was an accusation. “Oh, Flan,” she said. She looked at me and wiped her eyes so hard I thought they’d come off, or at least be a different color when they emerged. “What’s happened?” It was too dark to tell. “What’s happening to
all of us
?” She swallowed and found a thin layer of control. “Wow,” she said. “I sure am drunk, aren’t I?” She tried smiling–classic overconfidence. The ice broke and, crying, she fell in. I patted her absently, but my whole body had been lead- ening since I’d sat down. I needed to lean against something, so I scooted along the stair, away from V , until I was at the end and able to lean against a wrought-iron banister, with prickly shrub arms poking at me like the nail file, still clawing away in my pocket. Safe in shrub shade, I was invisible and cold but had a perfect view of the glass door, now sliding open as V sobbed. As it opened I could hear Jenn yelling, Flora laughing and Kate’s raw wail starting up again, but it was Adam who emerged from the crazy house. His shirt was half tucked in and half tucked out. Somebody behind him was reaching their bare white arm out like something trying to sneak across the highway.

“
Adam
!” the arm cried, and I saw it was Shannon, still without the sweater-vest which was probably still crumpled at the scene of the crime. At the side of her

face, presented to me in the glaring leak of living-room light, was a small scab, open and bleeding thinly down her face. From a fingernail, maybe.

Adam didn’t see me. He bounded unsteadily down the stairs to V and put a hand on her shoulder both to rouse her and to steady himself. She woke up. “I’m leaving,” he said pleasantly. “I wanted you to know, and thank you for a–thank you for the party.”

Incredibly, V found her hostess persona, stumbling around her blasted mind. “Thank you for coming,” she said, wiping her hands on her legs. “I’m glad you had a nice time. Let me show you out.”