He laughed bitterly. “Well, you’d turn right around and go on home to momma.”
“Oh, yeah? Then what are you doing here?”
“Me? I’m part of the floor show, sweetheart. I couldn’t leave if I wanted to. He’d kill me.” He reached out, took my chin between two fingers and looked straight into my face. I stared defiantly back at him. “But maybe you’re different.”
He gazed at me, then laughed. “Maybe you’re really a tough cookie, huh? ‘Voûtes êtes vraiment une déguelasse.’”
“What does that mean?”
“Forget it.” He hefted the box of film and cocked a thumb at the back of the chapel. “That your boyfriend?”
I turned to see Hillary standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets and looking hangdog. When he saw me his face lit up.
“Lit!”
I walked over to him. “Hey, where’d you go?”
“Me? You were the one who—”
“Later, kiddies,” said Page Franchini as he edged past with the film carton on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry.” Hillary sighed and put his arm around me. “Look, you want to go home? This is all kind of bringing me down. I’ll drive you back—”
“No. I—I’m supposed to go home with my parents,” I lied.
“Really?” As we went into the corridor Hillary shook his head. “But they already left. I mean, I think they left, it looked like your car. That’s why I was so bummed, I thought you’d gone without me…”
“Oh.” There was an awful hollow feeling in my stomach, and I stammered, “Are—are you sure it was my parents?”
“Well, no, I’m not positive. But—yeah, it looked like Unk. Why?”
“Nothing. I just—well, they didn’t tell me, that’s all.”
“So come on, then. I’ll drive you back.”
I pulled away from him. “No. I don’t want to go. I’m just surprised.”
“Probably they couldn’t find you.” Hillary grinned, pushing the long hair from his face. “I know I couldn’t. Well, okay, if you’re staying, I will, too. Listen, Ali and that guy Jamie said they were going upstairs to find Dunc, he had some hash or something—”
He pointed and I looked down the hallway, frowning. “This isn’t how I came in.”
“Yeah, well, this is how we’re going out. This way…”
He took my hand and we walked down the passage, more brightly lit than the corridor where I’d seen Ralph Casson and Balthazar Warnick. A few people floated by us, giggling blondes and middle-aged couples in formal wear, a very drunken Margot Steiner. When we passed a tall, narrow window I stopped and looked out.
Below stretched the downward slope of Muscanth Mountain, and the black reflection of the lake. Rain gave everything a creepy, urban sheen; made the bare trees look sleek and metallic and the overgrown lawn brittle, as though encased in ice. I could just make out the road snaking down to the village, the rows of parked cars like overlapping scales on a butterfly’s wing.
“Is Jamie done parking?” I asked.
“I think so. He was only supposed to do it till nine or nine thirty.”
“What time is it now?”
“Not that late,” shrugged Hillary. “After midnight.”
“Midnight! It can’t be after midnight—”
“Time flies when you’re having fun. Come on, Cinderella…”
We slipped into a stairwell, climbed until we came out onto a wide landing where a chandelier made of deer antlers hung from the ceiling, a hideous thing webbed with dust and dead moths. Only one of the bulbs was working; it made our shadows look shrunken, and did little to dispel my unease when something scuttled across the uneven wood floor.
“Ugh! What was that?”
Hillary laughed. “Wait’ll you see what Kern gave Jamie as a tip. It’s in here, with the rest of the zoo—”
I followed him across the landing. This part of Bolerium looked as though it had gone a very long time without visitors. Dead leaves covered the floor, and acorns. A single window had cracked panes taped over with cardboard, and beneath it a window seat was covered with wet, moldering newspapers. Music pounded from behind a closed door, a reassuring wail of guitars and feedback. Hillary pushed the door open and we entered.
“Greetings, my children,” he announced. “It’s showtime.”
We were in a large room, lit only by an ultraviolet bulb screwed into an ornate fixture in the center of the ceiling, a plaster medallion shaped like a flower. There was a mattress on the floor, covered with pillows and an India-print spread, and a circle of small rocks that glowed with spectral brilliance in the black light: acid green, cyanic blue, sickly chartreuse. A stereo was shoved into one corner, a cheap Kenmore lift’n’play model with a bunch of albums queued above the turntable.
“Hey…” someone said thickly.
One of the pillows moved: Ali. Next to her Jamie Casson sat cross-legged, still in his uniform of tuxedo pants and vest. The sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled, the shirt unbuttoned so I could see his pale chest, hairless, his skin tinted ghastly blue by the light. His head was tilted back and his eyes closed; his features disquieting, almost disturbing, in repose. There was something poisonous about him: if you cut him his blood would burn you. More acorns and dead leaves were strewn across the floor, drifting atop album covers and soiled clothing.
“Oh, very nice,” said Hillary. He kicked his way through a heap of flannel shirts and bent to retrieve a small envelope folded from a magazine page. He smoothed it open, licked it tentatively, and scowled.
“God damn it.” He looked at Jamie, then tossed the empty packet aside. The floor was covered with them, like spent matchbooks among the acorns. I stooped to examine one of the envelopes, and saw then that they weren’t acorns at all. They were the seed-heads of poppies. Scores of them; hundreds. Not the little dried husks nodding in Kamensic’s gardens, but pods the size of small plums, their skin smooth and slightly moist. I held one up, squinting in the weird blue light, and scored the rounded surface with my fingernail. Thick liquid oozed out.
“Fuckin’ A,” whispered Hillary. He looked at me and shook his head helplessly. “They’re gone.”
I hurried to the mattress, bent until my face was inches from Ali’s. Her breath touched my cheek, cool, scented with lactose and wintergreen. The blue light gave her skin a niveous gleam, as though it had been thickly powdered. Sweat pearled in indigo beads upon her upper lip.
“Ali,” I whispered, fighting panic. “Ali, can you hear me?”
Without warning her hand shot up, closed around my jaw and pulled me down. She kissed me, her mouth cold and her tongue tasting of sugar; but when her eyes opened they were bright and feverishly excited.
“Lit,” she said hoarsely, and grinned. “Where’d you go?”
“Christ! You scared me! I was downstairs, remember? Where’d you go?”
“Here.” She sat up groggily, reached to tug at Jamie’s short hair. “Jame. Company.”
“Leave him.” Hillary sank onto the blanket. “Listen to me, Ali—”
Ali smiled. “Fuck off, Hillary. Chipping, I was just popping—”
She tapped the inside of his elbow. Hillary slapped her hand away.
“God damn it. God damn it, Ali—”
“Look who’s talking.” She swept one arm lazily across the floor, brought up a handful of dried petals and tossed them into his face. “Pussy.”