I removed the sombrero and looked at myself in the multitude of mirrors in Jayne’s bathroom (we each had our own), checking my hair from various angles. I’d had it colored the day before to cover the gray on the sides but was afraid I was slowly losing it, like my father had, even though Joelle, my hairdresser, kept stressing that hair loss was represented by the mother’s side of the family. For some reason, “the golden autumnal night” was a phrase that kept repeating itself in my mind as I looked at my hair, and I liked it so much that I decided to incorporate it into my new novel once I sat down the next day to go over the outline. Behind me was a walk-in steam shower with multiple showerheads and a huge tub made from Italian marble that I stared at admiringly whenever I was in Jayne’s bathroom; its extravagance touched something in me, defined in some way who I was now, what I had become even as it was also evolving into a symbol of my precariousness in this world. Hair inspection completed, I left the bathroom and ran my hands across the Frette sheets that hugged our massive bed before turning off the lights.
As I made my way down the grand, curving staircase the cell phone in my back pocket rang. After glancing at my Tank watch I checked the incoming number. It was Kentucky Pete, my dealer, and when I answered the phone he said he was en route.
Note to reader: Yes, I was no longer technically clean. I had mildly relapsed. It hadn’t taken long. A student party on campus during the third week of September, to be somewhat exact. A geek from the graduate program offered me a line—and then another—in a dingy dormitory bathroom, and then I guzzled twenty beers tapped from a keg while students huddled around me as I regaled them with stories about my former successes. Jayne was hardly oblivious but there were certain waves of information she could not bring herself to ride. If her faith in me had been vaguely faltering since the beginning of October—a sense that taking me back was turning into a mistake—it had not yet hit a crisis point. Though I could tell she was fearful, it was contained and hadn’t bloomed out of control. I felt I had time to redeem myself. But not on Halloween.
Because everything was set. The house had been redecorated by the catering company to resemble a huge haunted castle complete with cobwebs dripping everywhere and plastic skeletons and oversized vampire bats dangling from the ceilings and purple lights dousing each wall and a strobe in the foyer. A friend, the artist Tom Sachs, had designed the shipping crate that sat in the middle of the living room and shook and growled at anyone who came near it. From speakers placed outside came the sounds of chains clanking along with various authentic groans and the laughter of the dead. Ghosts made from white crepe paper were floating in the trees and intricately carved jack-o’-lanterns, burning brightly, dotted the stone path leading up to the house. And though this was most decidedly an adult party there was nothing too frightening going down at 307 Elsinore Lane—just something playful and innocent to amuse the guests. As a precaution against crashers we had hired two security guards (one made up as Frankenstein, the other wearing a Dick Cheney mask) and stationed them at the front door behind a velvet rope, each equipped with a blood-spattered guest list and a walkie-talkie. The party would be camcorded by one of my students.
I walked by the kitchen, where Jayne was conferring about canapés with women from the catering company who were dressed suggestively as sexy witches or very alluring cats. Behind them, through the sliding glass doors leading to the backyard, dry ice was being poured into the bubbling Jacuzzi, where the underwater light had been replaced by a dark red bulb for an eerie, cauldronlike effect. And beyond that the crowning touch: the entire nine acres that led from the backyard to a dark bank of trees had been transformed into a giant mock cemetery with crooked gravestones scattered throughout the field, and propped up against the nearest headstone was a plastic ghoul gnawing on a rubber femur.
In the living room a DJ was setting up an elaborate sound system in front of the Andy Warhol silk screen of me holding a pen, and after I introduced myself we went over the song list: “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding,” “The Ghost in You,” “Thriller,” “Witchy Woman,” “Evil Woman,” “Rhiannon,” “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Werewolves of London,” “Spooky Girlfriend,” “The Monster Mash,” etc., etc. The DJ assured me there were enough “scary” songs to last the duration of the party. Across the room was a full bar presided over by a werewolf who was preparing the evening’s specialty drink: a mandarin-flavored margarita punch, with floating lime rinds shaped like tiny green spiders, which would be served from a huge skull-shaped bowl (I would be holding a nonalcoholic beer can filled with that mandarin-flavored margarita punch). I noticed a row of severed hands lining the bar.
The kids were upstairs. Robby and a friend were locked in a Play-Station 2 frenzy (the zombies with Howitzers, the charging minotaur, the deadly extraterrestrials, the forces of hell, the games that commanded “Let me eat you”) while Marta watched over Sarah, who was gazing at her hundredth viewing of Chico, the Misunderstood Coyote. Since they were taken care of for the night, it was time to do something about the dog. I noticed Victor sniffing disinterestedly at one of the dozens of stuffed black cats the decorators had placed around the house, and I called for Jayne to put the dog in the garage. Victor and I had a staring contest for two minutes until Jayne came out of the kitchen and simply said his name without looking at me. He loped over to her, grinning, wagging his tail, and as she led him away, the dog turned its head and glared at me. I let it go. The dog had its world—its reasons—and I had mine.
My cell phone rang again. Kentucky Pete was outside and having trouble getting past Frankenstein, who then buzzed me on the intercom and said that someone—not on the list and dressed as the corpse of Slim Pickens—was waiting impatiently by the velvet ropes. Walking toward the front door I told Pete, “Hang on, I’ll be right there, dude,” and then offered a drawn-out, ghoulish chuckle.
Kentucky Pete was a resilient dinosaur from the seventies that one of my students had hooked me up with. Overweight, with long gray hair and snakeskin boots and a tattoo of an unthreatening scorpion (it was smiling and held a Corona in its pincer) on a forearm covered with sores from the repeated use of nonsterile needles, he was the total opposite of the drug runners I had scored from in Manhattan: trim, sober, good-looking young guys who wore three-button Paul Smith suits and wanted an “in” to the movie business. To make up for his lack of sleekness Kentucky Pete had a more varied selection—he sold everything from lime green Super Vicodin caplets to two-milligram Xanax sent in from Europe to crack dipped in PCP to joints sprayed with embalming fluid to pretty pure coke, which was all I really wanted from him tonight (along with a couple of the two-milligram Xanax to get to sleep, of course). I told Jayne that he was one of my students when she caught him here the first week of October, lounging with me in the media room while we were watching a DVD of American Psycho. When she dragged me into the kitchen and just stared in disbelief, I stressed, “Graduate student, honey. Graduate student.” (When Jayne and I dated in the eighties she basically had an ice cream habit—sometimes she’d indulge, but more often than not she wouldn’t.) Not wanting Jayne to see him here tonight, I needed to take care of business fast—even though the house was now doused in so much deep purple light she could easily mistake him for someone in costume. If Jayne ran into him I would just tell her that he was a student dressed as “the grizzled prospector.”
I let Kentucky Pete in and, after hesitantly granting him a margarita, quickly led him to my office, where I locked the door and pulled out my wallet. He was in a hurry anyway; he needed to get to the college by eight to sell a large amount of dope to an affluent group of juniors. When he asked if I had a pipe he could borrow, I opened my safe. He downed the punch and heaved a huge, satisfied sigh, humming along to the Zombies singing “Time of the Season.”
(What’s your name? Who’s your daddy? Is he rich? Is he rich like me?)
“What’s in there?” he asked, craning his neck, and then, “Dig the sombrero.”
??
?This is where I keep my cash and guns.” I reached into the safe and gave him a crystal pipe that under no circumstances did I want returned after its use. I needed two eight balls of the pure stuff and a couple of the heavily cut grams for drunken guests who were going to bum off me and be too wasted to notice the difference. After the transaction was finalized and a discount given in exchange for the pipe, I pocketed the tightly wrapped multicolored packages and led Kentucky Pete outside, walking him across the pumpkin-scattered lawn as he admiringly stared back at the elaborately decorated house.
“Whoa—this place has been turned into one spooky shack, man,” he murmured appreciatively.
“It’s a spooky world, dude,” I said hurriedly, checking my watch.
“Ghoulish, man, ghoulish.”
“The spirits will be moaning tonight, my man,” I said, maneuvering him toward the motorcycle parked lopsidedly at the curb. “I know all about the darkness, dude. I am primed to party and ready for anything.”
Even though it was the end of October an Indian summer had lingered and I shivered at the incongruity of this decidedly nonautumnal weather while Kentucky Pete explained the origins of the holiday: Halloween was based on the Celtic day of Samhain—this was the last day of their calendar and the one time of the year when the dead came back and “grabbed you, dude.” And if you went out you had to wear a costume that made you look like one of the dead so they’d be fooled and leave you alone. I kept nodding and saying, “The dead, yeah, the dead.” We could hear “Time of the Season” playing from inside the house.
“Adios, amigo,” he said, revving up.
“Always a pleasure,” I said, patting him on the back. Then, wiping my hands on my jeans, I scurried up to the house and locked myself in my office, where I snorted two massive lines, and exhaling with relief I rushed to the bar with my empty nonalcoholic beer can and had the werewolf fill it with punch. I was now ready for the night to begin.
The guests started arriving. Costumes were fairly predictable: vampires, a leper, Jack the Ripper, a monstrous-looking clown, two ax murderers, someone who seemed to be just hiding under a large white sheet, a bedraggled mummy, a few devil worshippers, and there were a number of fashion models and a plague-ridden peasant, and, as expected, all of my students were zombies. Someone I didn’t recognize came as Patrick Bateman, which I didn’t find funny and had a problem with; watching this tall, handsome guy in the bloodstained (and dated) Armani suit lurk around the corners of the party, inspecting the guests as if they were prey, freaked me out and somewhat diminished my high, but another trip to the office reclaimed it. Cliques began forming. I was forced into meeting a few of the parents of Robby’s and Sarah’s friends, discussing another national tragedy before the conversation turned to topics about as interesting as last week’s weather: the daughter who didn’t get into the desired preschool, unfair soccer leagues, and a book club someone had just started—and when I suggested that they begin with one of my books I was met with what could only be described as “uneasy laughter.” Jayne was hiding her anger exquisitely by playing the charming hostess while I waited impatiently for Mr. McInerney, who was giving a reading in town and had called earlier asking for our address again. Sometime during all this Jayne insisted I strap the guitar I kept in my office (a leftover souvenir from my Camden days when I was in bands and thought I was going to be the next Paul Westerberg) over my shoulder to hide the marijuana leaf, after she noticed the concerned looks from a few of the parents, and so I was soon spinning around the party greeting guests while strumming the guitar—which was also a clever way of disarming my students from wanting to talk about their stories (always one of my least favorite topics of conversation—and tonight I did not want to be asked, “Mr. Ellis, have you read ‘What I Was Thinking When I Gave Him Head’ yet?”). And I didn’t really focus on anything in particular until Aimee Light appeared.
Aimee Light was in the graduate department at the college and, though not a student of mine, was doing her thesis on my work, despite the consternation of her advisor, who had tried unsuccessfully to talk her out of it. We met at that same party I relapsed at. She was enamored of me but coolly, objectively, and this distance made her far more alluring than the usual round of sycophants I was accustomed to. I played my own role distractedly, which I could tell subtly frustrated her. Yes, it was back to the youthful game playing I experienced as a college student and I felt younger because of it. Aimee Light was lithe and agile and had the perfect body of a big-breasted, small-boned teenager even though she was nearing twenty-four. Blond hair with hard blue eyes and a steely attitude—she was exactly my type and I had been trying to get her into bed for about a month now, but so far had managed only a few makeout sessions in my office at school and one in her off-campus apartment. She kept pretending that her purpose was obscure. As with so many things in my life she just appeared from nowhere.
She was standing with a friend by the bar and chatting up the werewolf while the Eagles’ “One of These Nights” blasted out and I started to dance across the room toward her. Seeing my approach she quickly whispered something to her companion—a girlish gesture that betrayed her innocence—just as I appeared directly in front of her, flushed and beaming in the purple light, lip-synching the song, gyrating my hips, strumming the guitar. It was a risk inviting her, but she took a bigger risk by actually showing up. I winked at her discreetly.
After Aimee introduced us—“This is Melissa—she’s a harridan,” and pretty hot as well—I looked around the packed living room and saw Jayne taking David Duchovny outside to show him the fake graveyard.
“Was that wink your idea of an icebreaker?” Aimee asked.
“Wanna play Pass the Pumpkin?” I asked back.
“I like the shirt,” she said, lifting the guitar up.
“I like the whole package,” I said, looking her over. “What are you going as?”
“Sylvia Plath’s divorce attorney.”
I took her hand and asked the harridan, “Will you excuse us?”
“Bret—” Aimee warned, but her grip on my hand didn’t loosen.
“Hey, we need to talk about your thesis.”
She turned back to her friend and made a pleading face.
Still dancing to the Eagles I dragged her through the maze of the party until we reached a bathroom that I made sure was empty before dancing us both inside and locking the door. It was so hushed in there that we might have been the only two people in the house. She leaned against a wall—casual, sly, not really there. I took a long pull from my beer can and then spit out a small lime green spider.
“I thought you weren’t going to come,” I said accusingly.
“Well, neither did I . . .” She paused. “But, sigh, I wanted to see you.”
I took out a gram and asked, “Wanna bump?”
She stared at me, amused, her arms folded across her chest. “Bret, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“What are these reluctance issues you have?” I asked, annoyed. “Where do they come from—that uptight little town in Connecticut you escaped?” I busied myself with the gram and poured a small pile onto the counter by the sink. “I’m just offering you a line. How difficult a decision is that?” Then, in a bachelor’s voice: “Who’s your hot friend?”
She ignored my tactic. “It’s not the line.”
“Well, good, then I’ll do yours.”
“It’s your wife.”
“My wife? Hey, I’ve only been married three months. Give me a break. We’re still testing the waters—”