Burn Down The Night (36 page)

Somewhat confused by drugs, the arguments are
either about claiming they are better than each other or listening to their own record and trying
to remember the name of the group that recorded it. Most of them can barely remember their own
names.

"This is some party," says Morrison. Somebody
puts his fist through the wall, demonstrating karate. He breaks his hand and I laugh. It's that
kind of party.

"Enthusiasm it has," says Dawn. "It reminds me
of the San Francisco Earthquake. Or maybe the Chicago Fire."

"And I am Mrs. O'Leary's cow. Anybody got a
lantern for me to kick over?" I ask.

"This is Sodom. When you leave, don't look
back," says Morrison. "You don't want to turn into a... into a..." He can't think of
anything.

"Can I quote you on that?" says Dawn.

"I can't even quote me on that," says Morrison.
Dawn comes up beside me, touches my arm. My whole body shudders at the touch of her. I smell her
hair, like something sweet that stars could get stuck in. "You want to dance?"

"Me?"

Morrison frowns. I look at him, thinking I
should say no. But I don't.

We drift away, her hand holding my arm, leading
me across the room to where the other dancers are. Her touch sends warm rushes up and down my
spine.

We plug into the music, just dancing. And she
puts me away. Me who got taught dancing by black musicians who had worked for James Brown. She
takes my breath away.

She could dance. She could do it all. Better
than me. With more grace. Hers is a body free to move in all directions.

I try all my moves and she's with me and passes
me and at some point, with the beat of the music driving us into the heat of the night, I begin
pursuing her, Tamara forgotten.

I know when I look into her dark eyes that I
want her as much as I want anything. She
is
the girl of summer.

Morrison disappears into the cold, uncaring
heart of the party. And I forget him too. I forget everything but Dawn. I don't even see the
party anymore. There are only two people in my world at that moment, me and her.

Somebody forgets to put another record on and
there's some space that goes by without music and I find myself sitting down in a corner, with
Dawn leaning against my knees, talking about all the things in the world we can pretend are worth
talking about.

My hands keep getting tangled up, keep reaching
to touch her. My lips ache to get to hers. My whole body wants her. And now, so does my
mind.

And I can feel it down deep, burning in her too.
Her body wants my body and all promises are only promises, bound to get broken.

The music starts again, intruding on us. Rolling
across the room like a summer thunderstorm, screaming guitars and high-voltage injections of
desire and electric fire. It pumps through our bodies, and our blood races, driving on into the
death of sex, the complete make-believe fire of aural climax.

"Do you like
make-believe love?" asks Dawn. "Do you like making love when you aren't in love yet but you might
be? When it's only to find out if you are go­ing to find out if you're going to fall in
love?"

"I like
make-believe love. I like make-believe fire," I say. "I like make-believe everything. I don't
under­stand anything else."

"I think I want
you," she says.

And I go swimming
out toward her. I pull her against me and try the taste of her lips. Tamara forgotten, promises
forgotten. Dead girls who look like my little sister, who have Tamara's face. Forgotten. Love and
hope and looks of betrayal. All forgotten.

The body says take her. The sweet touch, taste
of her. Take her and hold on to summer.

We get up, arms around each other, looking for
someplace to go. Our bodies know why.

The battle to get to the bedroom is a million
miles across a deserted beach piled high with the bodies of beachcombers who were cast adrift by
the uncaring heart of Saturday Night.

Each delay just raises the temperature. Takes us
into the tropics. Into the torrid zones.

I push into the bedroom, my arms around her,
kick the door shut behind us, and we are alone with the thing we are building between us. This
conspiracy of youth and summer. This is the most erotic dream, the most beautiful girl. This is
the one.

She takes my breath away.

The old world goes away. The one with the
promises in it.

The new world is skin on skin, dark eyes that
tell you to come do the dance, you won't know anything until you get inside. Then, too, there is
an electric edge to me, a loosening of inhibition from the drugs. The sheets are hot, tropical
white zones. Our bodies are mine fields that explode against each other.

Arms around backs, bodies tightly held, lips
burning, wrapping ourselves in a cooling cocoon of perspiration.

The voyage of discovery that finds everything in
the world tasting better than it ever possibly could. And all into it, a million miles deep, all
promises gone, there's no sense of ending, ever. This is the endless summer.

This is the endless summer.

I hear a door slam and someone screams. I look
up, turning my head, startled, the dream jarred.

Tamara stands in the doorway. A look of hurt and
loss and shock on her face. The ultimate cruelty. To take a girl in our own bed.

The moment lasts forever. There's a chemical
fire inside me and the world isn't real anymore. My body hates the sensation of stopping, the
withering of the erotic dream. I want to shout "Get out of here!" I don't want Tamara to exist. I
don't want to see her.

I don't want to see myself either.

Morrison comes through the open door at her
back. To rescue me from what I cannot be rescued from.

He takes a couple of steps into the room, too
drugged to really see much, for the way it is to register clearly in his mind. When it does, he
smiles. Mysteriously.

And he turns and leaves. Moving quick with the
strangest look on his face, turned into a total stranger in front of my astonished eyes. I watch
him go. It's too hard to look at Tamara.

Dawn moves beneath me, struggling, the moment
almost gone, the dance threatening to end. I won't roll over on my side, won't let her get free.
My body, transformed by drugs into one big sensation, doesn't want the dance to end. Doesn't want
the magic to go away.

Tamara looks like a child is dying inside her.
You can't describe the look of betrayal on her face. No words are big enough.

My body owns me. I can't see her face in my
mind. The words come. And sound as cruel as they are. "Get out of here! Leave me
alone!"

I let the acid in me make Tamara unreal, a
phantom I can pretend away. And I make believe against her as I make believe against all of
life.

One little moment of guilt. One little moment of
remorse.

"I..." There's nothing to say or too much, and
it doesn't get said. First you break a window and then you become one. Nothing else exists.
Nothing else can touch you. I live my own lies like I mean them.

Tamara turns and runs out of the room. Slamming
the door behind her. I get my wish of long ago. Just once she sees me for what I really
am.

I see that look on her face. And try to hide
from it. Bury my head against soft skin.

Dawn moves under me, a sensual shudder, like a
summer witch, stirring the cold ashes to keep the cauldron fire lit. Her body moves against mine,
teasing, imploring, keeping the fire burning.

And I get pulled back inside, as if I never
left. Two erotic animals out of control, trapped in the sensation.

Her fingernails dig into my back, as she climbs
another climax. Her lips tear at my throat and the heat rises off of her. She drags me deep
inside her. She cannot be denied.

She is every girl I will have in the summer of
my life. It's that crazy thing about wanting every beautiful girl you see and thinking for a
little while, just for a moment, you can really have them.

We drive on into the night as if there is no
morning. But the untrue heart of Saturday Night cannot last forever.

The party goes on without us. Doesn't notice us
when we go back to it.

If there's remorse, it comes now, as soon as the
body lets go. If there's guilt, it comes now, as the drugs that smothered inhibitions
fade.

I look for Tamara. Suddenly terribly afraid for
her.

I can't find her anywhere.

Morrison's got a hot-looking blonde up against
the wall in the kitchen, running his hand over her breasts, kissing her on the neck
passionately.

He sees me come in and lets go of her body.
"Hey, man!" He makes a V-for-victory sign with one hand, nodding at me.

I have the sensation I have never seen him
before in my life, not in this light.

He lets go of the girl altogether, disengaging,
comes over to me. The girl, drugged into partial oblivion, stares blankly at his departing back.
If the wall wasn't behind her, she'd fall down.

"Where's Dawn?"

She had been hanging on to me when we rejoined
the party but I had pushed her away then, seized up by a look on a face I couldn't find
anywhere.

"Where's Dawn?" asks Morrison, thinking I
haven't heard his question.

I shrug, not interested. "Have you seen
Tamara?"

"Who?" He doesn't know her. Doesn't know
anything about her.

"I got to find her!" I feel empty inside, as if
I have torn a part of me out of myself.

"What did you do with Dawn? Where is she now?
You lucky asshole! You're one of us, ya know! A frigging lord!" Morrison stands in front of me,
ripped out of his mind. "I'll get her yet. I'll enslave her in my mesh."

I look around the room, eyes darting everywhere,
seeking her face in the crowd. Maybe she's gone. Maybe she's fled. It's possible, but there's no
place for her to go. Somewhere deep inside I know I was the last place she had left to go
to.

"That's it!" says Morrison. "Enslavement! I will
trap the world in my vision. I shall take the young women of summer, the strange girls from the
island!"

Morrison's all wound up, an electric crusader,
standing in his own temple, blind to his own religion.

I can't get away from him. His voice freezes me
in place. Words tumble out of him.

"That's the only power in the world!" His voice
rises like a gathering storm. He sounds like a shaman who knows all the words in the world. "To
enslave others. To trap others in our hopes and dreams and desires! My make-believe can do
anything!"

"I don't know what you're talking
about."

"Don't lie to me," says Morrison, suddenly
angry, pushing on my shoulder. "I am the prince of liars and in my presence all the lies should
be mine! You know what I'm talking about!"

The crowd shows me no face I want to see. I
start for the next room, to make another hopeless circuit of the place, and Morrison follows,
moving quick, ending up leading me as if I were his own personal Roman legion.

"My strange device. The power of disguise," says
Morrison. "I cannot be seen because my exits and entrances are all lies."

"I'm tired of lies," I say, suddenly angry, at
me, at him at the world.

"You mean you're just ready for some new ones,"
says Morrison, looking like a prophet.

I don't say anything. Because I am afraid he's
right.

The party is still going full force. The place
is a wreck. Furniture smashed, broken glass, naked bodies, conscious and unconscious. Discarded
clothes and spilled drinks and cigarette bums. Zonked bodies ev­erywhere and the stereo blaring
above it all, a scratched record repeating itself hideously, over and over, and nobody in any
shape to even notice, or noticing without the energy to deal with it. There's a thin little chick
passed out in Tamara's favorite chair, a hypodermic needle sticking out of her skinny aim, blood
dripping from a cut on her face. Maybe she's thirteen years old.

A roadie I know comes up to me, taps me on the
shoulder. "You looking for your lady?" says Russ.

I turn, startled. "Yeah! Where is she?" I sqund
frantic.

"Locked herself in the bathroom," he says.
"People been trying to get in but she won't open up. Thought you should know." He moves
off.

Morrison's blonde peels herself off the wall and
grabs him from behind, whispers something in his ear.

Morrison nods, puts his arm around her. "I'm
splitting." He hugs the girl against his body. "We're gonna go get it on and get it
off!"

We are strangers who met in the heat of a
streaming summer.

Morrison touches me on the shoulder. Our eyes
meet. There is something final about this, as if this is the last time we will ever meet, ever
run together.

"Go tell them wicked lies," says Morrison and
then he's gone.