Burn Down The Night (9 page)

We get her in the
middle of the bed, which sags a lot. This is one girl who does not defy gravity, she agrees with
it.

"Well," I say,
beginning to edge away, "I just remembered they're having a surprise autopsy in my neighborhood
and I'm invited. I'll see you around."

I start for the
door.

"Cool it," says
Morrison. He waves me back to the bed. "The scene is set, man. Do you not dig the theatrics of it
all? This is Grand Guignol! It is an escaped Rorschach blot with a bad case of the
get-it-ons!"

"Me, I don't want
to get involved."

"Me neither. I
ain't crazy!" says Morrison with a laugh. He goes over and begins unscrewing the light bulb in
the lamp near the bed. "But don't you think the blimp would be a good gang-bang gift from me and
you to the rest of the party?"

I look at the
hippo moaning "Horny" on the bed, think about it for a couple of seconds and the enormity of it
all hits me. This Morrison cat's got style! He's got the power! He's even crazier than I am. And
I am pret­ty friggin' crazy!

"Man oh man! I
like your act!" Got to admire this guy. Terrific stunt. I pull a chair out, stand on it and start
unscrewing the overhead light bulb.

"To see it," says
Morrison, throwing a hot light bulb under the bed, "is to refuse to believe it."

"Let us hope the
dark is dark enough. Ouch!" Burn my fingers on the hot bulb. Bulb comes loose, scorch­ing my
palm. Drop the bulb and it breaks with a pop on the floor beneath my chair.

"Clumsy," says
Morrison.

Room is now pitch
black. I step off the chair, miscalculate the distance to the floor and fall forward on my face.
Crash over the top of a wicker chair and crush an aluminum wastebasket into lopsided
flatness.

"I'm not clumsy,"
I tell him, dragging myself up off the floor. I can feel blood on my face. Feels like I broke it.
"I'm just athletically inclined toward pain."

From the bed, Gail
yells, "Hoooorny!"

I stumble around
in the dark, feeling around for the door. Trying to aim in the opposite direction from the
moaning sounds coming from the bed. Get a little freaked out, stumbling round in the dark. Can't
find the door, can't even find a wall.

Morrison catches
me by the shoulders and suddenly the door is open and we go through it.

Life is like that.
You're struggling in the dark with elephants who are out to do you in, and then suddenly the door
is open and you're going through it.

Outside the
bedroom the party is going full stroke. Everybody's getting drunk, train wrecked and dizzy on the
end that blows bubbles. Also enough coke going up noses to fly a small country to
Cuba.

This is one of
those all-types, all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing parties. A little bit of everybody is
there. Geese and the goosers. Macrobiotic munchkins eating bread, wine and cheese and
shoot-'em-up drug abusers. All the tried and true not-so-beautiful losers. Every­body is
everybody.

There's also a lot
of very straight looking types wandering around. People with suits even. Rich people with bad
bodies and great clothes to cover them up.

"Wow!" I say,
staring at the human wreckage. "Who looks like a likely candidate?"

Morrison nods
toward an Ivy League type leaning against a wall. An escapee from a college frat house and
obviously embalmed in beer.

This guy's got one
arm around a lamp and a glazed expression that looks like someone has buttered his
eyes.

"We gonna let it
all hang out," says Morrison as we zero in on our target.

"Hey, man!"
Morrison slaps him on the shoulder, almost flooring him. "Long time no see! How's it
hang­ing?"

"Woooowee, man!
I'm druuuuuunnnnkkk!" says the mental midget in the Sears and Roebuck suit.

"Getting any
poontang?" asks Morrison.

Our new friend
shakes his head vehemently, smashing one cheek into the wall. He lifts his head away from the
wall, surprised that he is that close to it. Stares at the wall suspiciously.

Morrison comes
around him and lifts him up, one arm around his shoulders.

"Hey, old buddy!
How'd you like some poontang?"

"I... uh... no
thanks. I don't... don't do no drugs." An enormous belch, about four point five on the Richter
scale, splits our friend's face almost in half.

"'Scuse me. Just
drink... boy, do I drink!"

Morrison shakes
his head. "Idiot! Poontang is pussy! Smoke muffins!"

"You mean girls?"
asks Squirrel-eyes. "Oh, that's different." He nods his head, painfully thinking it
over.

"Yes... girls is
different. Much."

"You wanna get
laid?" asks Morrison conspiratorially.

"Me?" He seems
astounded. "Who? When?"

Morrison turns him
around and aims his head toward the bedroom door. In front of it a tall blond girl stands talking
to a couple of guys. She's a hot looker. Long wicked legs trying to burst a hot little miniskirt
that just barely covers the central goodie. Two high breasts like baby ducks pushing against a
thin tie-dyed T-shirt. She's got to be all of six foot tall and sharp the way only California
girls can get.

"See that girl
over there?"

Our friend nods
idiotically.

"Well, she's
horny," says Morrison. "She wants you."

Our newfound
friend giggles. "You're putting me on," protests Booze Boy. "She wouldn't want... "

Morrison smiles
like Satan witnessing the signature on a contract. "Hey, listen. I used to date her. Man, earlier
this evening she was telling me she didn't like the looks of the studs in this room. Till she saw
you, that is. I don't know what you got but she's been watching you out of the corner of her eye
all night, man!"

"No shit!
Jeeeeeeeesuuuuuus!" He licks his lips in anticipation, straightens up his shoulders and sticks
out his chest. He looks as masculine as a deflowered Burma Shave sign.

You sure... sure
she's... that she was talking about me? Jeesuus!"

I want to join the
chorus, want to add some corroboration, but am too busy sinking into fits of internalized
hysteria. I am swallowing laughs like fraternity goldfish. Trying to hold them in, I am wheezing
like an uphill somnambulist with asthma.

Morrison starts
marching him across the room. "Lis­ten, prick, she wanted me to come over and get acquainted with
you so she could find out who you were, find out if you're connected up with anybody! Know what I
mean? This chick wants to get down with you."

"Screwing? You
mean screwing?"

"A rose by any
other name," agrees Morrison.

"Huh?" Confuses
his five-watt brain.

Morrison waves his
hands in the air, ready to scream. "Yes, goddamn it!
Screwing. I mean
screwing!"

A couple of people
stare at us. Morrison moves past them with a phony smile on his face.

"No shit?" Booze
Boy has all his lights lit up like a pinball machine dispensing free games. He's seeing heaven on
two legs. "She really wants me?"

Morrison sighs.
"How many frigging times I gotta tell you! She's ready to rape you on the spot!"

Our friend giggles
again. An irritating snigger.

Morrison looks
like he'd really like to smash this guy in the face. God, what a simp Booze Boy is!

"What should I
do?"

I'm following
them. The girl's talking to a couple of surfer types, all blond and blank between the ears. As
our entourage gets near her, she excuses herself and begins going off somewhere.

I follow her with
my eyes like probably fifty other guys are doing. She's got a body that won't quit and doesn't
even have to try.

Morrison turns our
friend around and we push out after her.

I'm getting
confused. Thought we were going to send our candidate in to bang away at our own personal
elephant.

Morrison stops
abruptly, bringing all of us up short. He puts his arm around our victim's neck. "Hey, listen!
You don't want something like that!"

"Yes I do! Yes I
do!" Our friend is positive. Jesus is he positive! Beginning to drool and everything.

"You can do better
than that."

Panic in his eyes.
"No! No! I can't!
She's okay by me! Jesus!"

"What kind. of
friend would I be if I let you jump something like... like that!" Morrison shakes his
head.

Almost in tears.
"My best friend! Honest! I like her fine! I don't want any..."

Morrison begins
turning him around.

He resists.
"Please! Really! Hey, I wanna—"

Morrison holds up
a hand. "Be cool. Man, my part­ner and I are watching out for you. We don't want you catching
hold of some second-rate poontang."

"Yeah," I say.
"Nothing but the best for our friends."

Our friend looks
like the end of the world.

Over his shoulder
he watches the girl of his unreachable dreams heading in another direction.

This is a cruel
trip we are on.

"But... but I..."
Heartbroken.

"Be cool."
Morrison smiles at me. "Think we should tell him?" he says to me.

He's turned
around, still trying to see the golden one that got away. "Tell me what?" he asks dully, still in
mourning for what might have been.

I nod. "Tell
him."

Morrison smiles at
him like a cat with bird feathers on his breath. "Well, this chick has a sister. An older
sister."

Booze Boy swivels
around, staring at us.

"And this sister
of hers makes this chick look like something so dead that the dog would refuse to bring it in,"
says Morrison.

"Huh?"

"She's
good-looking, asshole! She's good-looking!" This guy is pretty frigging dense.

"Pretty?" asks the
fool, as Morrison begins pushing him toward the bedroom and his date with obese
desti­ny.

"She was a foldout
in
Playboy
magazine. She's got such a terrific body they had to use five staples to cover
up her snappy," says Morrison, hurrying him along.

"And guess
what?"

"What? What?"
Jesus, is he eager!

"She's here and
she's even hotter for your body than her sister was!" says Morrison.

"Jeeeeeeeesuuuuuuuussss!" He looks all around, trying to spy heaven with two legs, the
older version of it.

"She's so hot for
you that she's already in the bedroom. She's got her clothes off, just waiting for you to come
and get her. She told me, 'Eddy Pusswrecks' (that's my name), 'you go over and tell that handsome
stud I'm in here waiting for him and I'm hot to trot.'

His eyes are wide
open, mouth dropped down to his navel, and he's sweating like the Boston Marathon.

"Waiting for me?
Jeeeeessuuuuuuuuus!"

We get him up to
the bedroom door. Morrison opens the door. Beer Brain looks into the darkened room, can't see
anything at all. There's a moaning sound coming from inside, sounds like a buzz saw in
heat.

"Go in and get one
for God," says Morrison, slapping him on the back.

Our boy is in his
own forest fire. Panting, eyes glazed with amplified lust, fingers jumping around at the ends of
his quivering hands. Hovering in the doorway, pulsing with high energy of low degree.

Morrison gives him
a push. Our boy staggers into the room and we slam the door shut behind him.

We listen at the
door.

"Hooooooorny!"
Sounds like an elk whispering the "Star-Spangled Banner."

"I'm coming,
baby!" That's our boy. Sound of clothes being ripped off, shoes coming off and thump­ing against
the floor. Patter of feet as he runs toward the bed.

Thump, squeak of
protesting bed springs, a squeal of delight. Then sounds too frightening to think
about.

A mountain making
a molehill.

Morrison looks at
me victoriously. He licks the tip of one finger and makes an invisible number one in the air on
an invisible tally sheet.

"That's one," says
Morrison, with that wicked laugh of his. "Only forty more to go."

Well the dark was
big

Where your cars
went through

What you
thought

You thought you
knew

And there was a
clock

Attached to
birds

That explained you
and me

Without any
words.

"Don't step on no
snakes," Morrison says and then disappears into the wreckage of the party. Me, I wander around
dazed, bouncing off people, walls, things like that.

I'm all banged up
on the outside like a human fender bender. I feel like the loser in a demolition derby. Some
brown-haired girl with sympathetic eyes leads me into a bathroom and washes my neck.