Black Light (32 page)

“Boy, you really are Captain Bringdown, aren’t you? Here—”

He reached beneath the piano bench and withdrew the bottle of Tanqueray. A scant two inches remained. He took a long swallow and handed it to me. I hesitated, finally took it and knocked back what was left.

“There! That’s better. Drunk Dunc and lit Lit.” He took the empty bottle and let it crash to the floor. “What should we sing now?”

I got woozily to my feet. “I think I’m gonna try to find Hillary. Have you seen him?”

“Not for a while. He and Jamie Casson were talking about going down to the city—”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah. There was some show at the Mercer Arts Center, the Dolls and someone else, I dunno. They blew that off, but I guess something’s going on afterward down on the Bowery, Jamie says he knows the band and he wants to get some people together and head down for it.”

“What about Ali?”

Duncan wrinkled his nose. “Man, she’s out of it. I tell you, I think Jamie Casson is bad news. He’s got her shooting smack or some such shit—” He shook his head. “I just don’t get it. All this pot and booze and great acid floating around, what’s she doing messing with her head like that?”

“Chacun à son goût.”
As I started to walk away Duncan called after me plaintively.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s French for ‘Mind your own beeswax.’”

I sauntered off. The Tanqueray made me feel indestructible once more, but when I caught a glimpse of myself in an ormulu mirror in the hall I decided I’d better clean up. I found a bathroom, a cedar-paneled cubicle occupying what had once been a linen closet. That night it had obviously seen a lot of traffic despite its size. There was a pair of women’s red silk underwear wrapped around the light and a pile of shoes alongside the toilet. A joint was still smoldering on the sink, the porcelain beneath it amber with resin. Across the mirror, someone had scrawled
TERRY TAKES IT UP THE ASS
in hot-pink lipstick. I found a sock and cleaned off the mirror, smoked the rest of the joint, and did my best to make myself more presentable.

It was tough. I kicked among the shoes on the floor, searching for a comb or hairbrush, but found only a baggie that held a fine sifting of cannabis seeds and stems along with a pair of manicure scissors. I decided to save this, then tried to do something about my hair. All I could manage was dragging my fingers through the tangled copper mass.

“Ouch—”

I gave up. My dress was a lost cause as well. I plucked off as many twigs as I could, and scraped clumps of mud from the hem. One sleeve was hanging loosely. I tore it off, but then I had to tear off the other one, too. My bare arms were covered with scratches and insect bites. I examined them carefully, thinking of Ali and wondering if Dunc was right, if she actually had mainlined heroin. If so, is this what trackmarks looked like? My finger touched a small gash in the crook of my elbow. I winced, and glanced into the mirror above the sink. A mad girl stared back at me, ragged hair flaming around her mud-stained face, orange peasant dress in tatters, lips bitten and bloody-looking, pupils huge and very, very obviously stoned.

“Well, it’s a look,” I said.

I began to wash up. A few minutes later my face and arms were relatively clean and the sink was clogged with dirt and floating leaves. I was trying to get the drain to work when the door behind me flew open.

“Oh, hey man, sorry, I didn’t know anyone was—”

I turned too fast, and bumped into Jamie Casson.

“Jamie!”

“Huh?
Hey—
ow! what the—”

He drew up, staring at me. “Lit? Is that you?”

“Afraid so.”

He took in my ruined dress and hair, the mess on the bathroom floor. “Huh. I guess I must’ve missed something.”

“I guess you did.”

I made room as he edged inside, closing the door behind him. He looked tired and unhappy, shirt untucked and trousers hanging loosely from his hips. “I gotta get out of this fucking monkey suit,” he said. He held up a jumble of clothes. “You mind if I get changed?”

“Uh-uh.”

Immediately he started to undress. I wasn’t going to be so uncool as to leave, or deliberately look away. I busied myself again at the mirror, dabbing my face with water and doing my best not to spy on Jamie.

But it was impossible not to see him. In the mirror his thin pale form moved like a wraith, shrugging off the white shirt, trousers sliding from his legs so that I had a glimpse of his underwear and the silver-blonde hair on his thighs. Then he was pulling on black jeans and a T-shirt that said
RAW POWER,
and fumbling with the laces of his black high-tops.

“Hey, thanks.” He straightened, shoving a wisp of hair from his eyes, and balled up the clothes he’d just removed. “Guess I can just dump these here, huh? Boy, you really look bad, Lit.”

I flushed, glancing at the wadded clothes in his hand. “Hey”— I looked back at Jamie. —“are those your clothes? I mean, would you mind if I wore them?”

He shrugged. “Hell no. They’re not mine anyway— Kern gave ’em to me to wear tonight. He has, like, a whole closet full of these things, extras that he keeps around for
the help.
He wanted me in a fucking uniform, man, can you believe it? Like a fucking waiter. Here—” He tossed them at me. I grinned, and he shot a tired grin back. “—you’ll look better in ’em than I did, anyway.”

I took off my Frye boots and pulled the trousers on under my dress, then tucked the pants into the boots; made a half-assed attempt at modesty by turning sideways and tugging the dress over my head, and finally put on the white dress shirt. Jamie was insultingly indifferent, yawning and lighting a cigarette and leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. The trousers fit perfectly, soft wool and smelling of mothballs. I grabbed the baggie with the pot seeds and manicure scissors and stuck it in a pocket, along with a pack of matches. The shirt was much too big. I tucked it in, catching a breath of Jamie’s sweat and a smell like burnt sugar, the harsh odor of car exhaust.

“Ta da,” I said. I started rolling up the sleeves.

“Looks good,” said Jamie. “A
lot
better than it did on me.”

I tossed the dress into a corner and inspected my reflection in the mirror. It was a definite improvement on the madwoman who’d stared out at me before, even with the patina of grime that clung to the shirt, not to mention several cigarette holes. I still couldn’t do anything about my hair, though. I ran a hand through it, sighing, and turned back to Jamie.

“Well, thanks. Are Ali and Hillary still upstairs?”

“She passed out. And Hillary took off—”

“He left the party?”

“I don’t know. No, I don’t think so—I think he was going to find you first. I’m taking off—going down to the Pit. You want to come?”

“The Pit?”

“Yeah, man. These guys I know are playing, a fucking great guitarist, it’ll blow your mind.” He began swaying, eyes half-closed, cigarette weaving figure eights in the air. “This amazing scene…”

Abruptly he leaned forward. His turquoise eyes were huge, their expression so intense it was like rage. “You hate it here, too, don’t you. I know you do, Lit. And I know why. I know what goes on…”

“Wh-what—”

“This place—” He waved his cigarette, let it fall to the floor. “This fucking madhouse—”

The little room was filling with smoke, but as Jamie moved his hand the smoke directly in front of him disappeared. Not as though dispersed by the motion, but forming in a pattern. The reddish wood of the bathroom walls suddenly seeming to glow through the haze. He spread his fingers, turning them in a deliberate way that was both odd and oddly familiar. As I watched him, my own hands clenched. In the air between us the pattern grew darker, more apparent. The smoke took on a harsh metallic color, like the singed blade of a steel knife. There was a soft crackling sound of leaves burning, the acrid smell of incense. Another moment and a face hung in the air before me.

I gasped. It was not a face, but the image of a mask, one of those gaping terra-cotta masks that adorned the houses of Kamensic in the autumn. Its eyes were oblique, the mouth wide, upturned in a malicious smile; the high cheekbones two slanted bars of steely light. It was a cruel visage; and unmistakably that of Axel Kern.

“No!” I jabbed at the air. It felt as though I’d plunged my hand into a freezer. But the image was already gone. There was only a roiling cloud of cigarette smoke, and someone banging on the bathroom door.

“Hey, man, give someone else a turn, whaddya say?”

Jamie stuck out his foot and nudged the door open. In the hall stood Page Franchini. He gave us both a disgusted look.

“Oh, Christ, what are we doin’ now, sneaking a ciggie? Fucking kids. Let me in, I got to piss.”

He shoved past me. “Good morning, little schoolgirl. Comb your hair and put on some lipstick, I’ll make you a star.”

“Fuck you.”

I stomped out. I was shaking so hard I was afraid to stop moving, afraid that if I paused to take a breath I’d shatter like one of those masks. I could hardly see the corridor around me, hardly see anything but that lewdly grinning face staring out of the smoke.

“Lit—damn it, wait—”

I stopped but refused to look at him. Jamie hurried to catch up, taking my arm. “Where did you go before? Were you with my father? Tell me, Lit, you have to tell me—”

I lifted my head, fury scalding me like acid, and stared at him, his sullen mouth and great bruised eyes. Not a god dying to be reborn, not a transsexual Amazon; not a redhaired girl gazing back at me across a Eurasian steppe four thousand years ago. Not any of these but a boy my own age who I’d met the day before sitting on a jukebox, a boy who’d just given me his clothes.

A boy who could make masks in the air.

Jamie was looking at me the same way he had in Hillary’s car, when I thought I could confide in him about Kamensic. After a minute he nodded. I took a deep breath, nodded back; and socked him in the mouth.

“Awwwowww…!”

“You,” I said, my knuckles aching. Jamie reeled and crashed against the wall. “You
bastard.
You knew, what did you know, tell me
what the fuck is going on
!”

“Ow—don’t, don’t! I swear, I just—”

He panted, one hand cupping his jaw. His lip was dark and swollen, but not bleeding. He looked a hell of a lot more awake than he had a few minutes ago. “Christ, Hillary was right—”

“Hillary?” I shouted. “What the hell did
Hillary
say?”

“In the bar—Deer Park—he said not to mess with you or you’d clock me—”

“Yeah? Well, you better tell me what the fuck you’re doing here or I’ll clock you
again
—”

“I told you! We just moved here—my father was supposed to do sets for some asshole project that Axel Kern is working on—”

“Wait—start there. How do you know Axel?”

“I don’t—stop! don’t look at me like that, it’s the truth! I never met him before two days ago—he wanted me to park cars for the party. Then I saw him tonight when he paid me and gave me—”

“How did you do that?”

Jamie shook his head. “What? The cars?”

“No, you idiot—that thing in the air. The thing that looked like a mask—
how did you do it
?”

He rubbed his lip, looked anxiously up and down the hall. The bathroom door creaked open and Page Franchini emerged, zipping his fly. He glanced at us and bared his teeth in a derisive smile.

“It’s three
A.M.,
children,” he called as he sauntered off. “Do you know where your parents are?”

“Asshole,” Jamie muttered. “Look, let’s at least go somewhere a little more private, okay? C’mon—”

He grabbed my arm and pulled me after him. We found an empty room, a small study with a pair of oversized armchairs in front of a fireplace where graying embers gave off a fitful warmth. There was a row of candles on the mantelpiece, and a half-dozen votive candles on the floor. Jamie dragged the two armchairs together. He settled in one. I slid into the other, still glaring.

“This better be good, Jamie. This better be fucking
great
.”

“My father,” he said. “That’s how I learned. But you must’ve already figured that.”

I had a flash of Ralph Casson drawing a pattern in the air, a circle of fire blazing up around us. “Your father—”

“He doesn’t know that I know,” Jamie added. “Not that he’s ever been what you could call discreet. But I’ve watched him, at home when he’d go off by himself and practice…

“He’s always done stuff like that. We were always moving, trying to find some place that would give him tenure, or even hire him for more than a year. But nobody ever did. He’d start pulling this crazy shit, talking about cults, the doors of perception swinging open so you walk right through them—I mean, he was
teaching
this crap, it wasn’t like he was just talking to my mom and me. He’d go down to the rec room to eat mushrooms and stare at himself in a mirror for four hours. And he never made it a secret, what he was doing at the schools. Same thing later, when he got bounced from Berkeley and all he could do was build sets for all those shitty monster movies. Because eventually somebody would always complain, about the wacked-out witchcraft crap, or the drugs, or the girls—”

“Girls?”

“Sure. That crazy stuff he was talking about in the kitchen—you know, ‘go only with teenage poontang, for thus lies the way of truth’—you think he made that up? No way! Every time I’d bring someone home, that’s how it would end up—my fuckin’ father shagging her. That’s how come my mother left—”

I made a small sound. I couldn’t help it. I thought of Ralph holding me, the way he’d stroked my arm and tried to kiss me; then thought of him doing it to innumerable others like myself. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, fighting an absurd stab of jealousy. “Oh. I—I thought your mom joined a commune?”

“She did. First she became a lesbian, then she became a Jesus freak, then she joined a commune. And you know what? I don’t even blame her. I wish now I’d gone
with
her.”

He stopped, his voice ragged, and I looked away. He was close to tears. He punched the arm of his chair, leaving a dent in the worn leather, then lifted his head defiantly. “I’m splitting. Tonight. Ali says there’s a train at 4:35—if the trains still
run
out of this place. I’m taking off. This is it.”