The Bend of the World: A Novel (20 page)

26

A bar with champagne. Real champagne. Veuve. People I knew. People I didn’t know. A caterer. Waiters. Derek beside a braided ficus talking to a girl who maybe lived at Lauren Sara’s house. Cocktail tables. All of this in the elevator lobby, before we even got to the door of the apartment. Lauren Sara handing me a flute. Me saying I’m going to need something stronger. The bartender handing me a scotch. A bald man telling a man with a mustache that everything went to shit on the back nine. The possibility of music just audible beneath the sound of voices. Derek saying, Happy birthday, bro, as we walked past. Me asking Lauren Sara, Who’s that girl he’s talking to? That’s Patra. The Greek? Lauren Sara giggling and saying, Shh, she doesn’t know that’s what we call her. A crowded doorway. People pulling cheese and pastries from the dining room table. The kitchen, brightly lit. Mark with a glass of red wine, turning from the two perfect women he was talking to. Was one of them Assia, from Vandevoort? Mark saying, The birthday boy! Someone overhearing and saying, Whose birthday? No one answering. Me shaking Mark’s hand. Me saying, I hope this isn’t all for me. Mark saying, Any excuse to throw a party. Someone asking, Where’s the bathroom? Lauren Sara saying, I’m going to find Tom. Me spotting Julian talking to another banker. Me finishing my drink. Mark handing me a glass of red. The good stuff, he said. Me trying it. Wandering into the living room. Spotting my grandmother on a couch. Saying, Nana? What are you doing here? Nana said, Happy birthday, Junior; you don’t look a day over twenty. Lauren Sara reappearing. Oh, hello Laura, Nana said. Lauren Sara rolling her eyes at me and departing immediately. Some dude telling some other dude something about nonvanilla exercise rights. Why, asked Nana, are people always talking about money? Nana—I laughed—
you
always talk about money. Only, she said, in the abstract; naming sums is déclassé. Fair enough. What’s new with you? I haven’t seen you in months. No, she said, not since the museum. Nothing is new with me, as you put it. Everything is quite comfortably old. I don’t believe that for a minute, I said. A familiar man in a bright tie passing and saying, Hello, Nanette, and you must be Pete. Nana, after we’d exchanged pleasantries, while the man was walking away, saying with her voice pitched just loud enough for him to hear, that she had no idea, no earthly idea, who that was. Me saying, I think he used to work with Dad. Your mother and father were invited to this little soiree, Nana told me, or so they said. I don’t expect they’ll show up. Not their scene, I said. No, indeed, she said. Derek appearing and saying, You’ve got some swinging-dick friends, Peter; do you know I just saw fucking Kantsky in the library? Derek, I said, this is my grandmother; Nana, my friend Derek. Oh shit, he said. Oh, sorry. Do I appear to be quailing and blanching? Nana said, and sighed. Never get old, she said; you acquire other people’s habits of assuming your own infirmity. Nana, I said, no one assumes your infirmity. They ought to, she said; I could go any day now. Turning to Derek. And who is this fucking Kantsky you mention? Jonah Kantsky, Derek said. He’s the mayor’s chief of staff. Ah, the young mayor, said Nana. Yes, I’d heard there was a Svengali pulling his little strings. I think Svengali was a hypnotist, I said. Yes, yes I know that, she said. Do you know that
Trilby
was the first play I ever saw on the West End? Absolutely terrible. I suppose your Cousin William thought it I’d enjoy the gothic element. Of course, I was much too young to see the original with Tree. My cousin William? I said. You mean Bill? No, no, she said, your cousin twice removed, I suppose. He was a good bit older than me. His mother was your grandfather’s aunt, his father’s oldest sister. She married some poor benighted minor aristocrat who needed her money. Poor thing; she didn’t get much. I think your great-grandfather thought her heading back to England was a betrayal of the Revolution. Derek said, That’s some family history you’ve got, Mr. Morrison. You have no idea, I said. Come to think of it, I have no idea.

Later, standing in the kitchen with Mark and some business types. Mark holding forth on something or other. Mark draping an arm over my shoulder and saying this guy is a real killer. Me saying I don’t know if that’s the case. Me saying, Hey, where’s Helen, by the way? Mark saying either powdering her nose or passed out somewhere. The business dudes yuk-yukking. Mark’s hand still on my shoulder, his fingers tap-tapping. Excusing myself. Running into Tom and Julian. Have you guys seen Lauren Sara? No, sorry. How about this apartment? said Julian; your buddy Mark, he said; like, whoa. Really? said Tom. I think it’s awfully gaudy. A tray of wine passing. Grabbing another drink. Drinking it quickly. Walking into the library; nearly running into Kantsky walking out. Feeling him stop, assess me, move on without a word. Alone for the first time that evening. Looking at the bookshelves. The usual mix of big biographies and business shit and popular novels and some Shakespeare and a Bible and some detective fiction and a lot of heavy expensive art books and a small section of German titles and a small section of Spanish and Italian and there among the English paperbacks, catching my eye quite by chance, surprising me, frightening me a little bit,
Fourth River, Fifth Dimension
. Pulling it off the shelf. Opening it randomly. Reading:

the sexually aroused psychic was then lowered into a sensory deprivation chamber full of electrolytic fluids. Once inside, he was able to achieve full-conscious manifesting of his total priapo-orgonic field potential. Thus, the Project achieved a major breakthrough. Although not yet able to physically project ourselves into alternate quantum realities, our psychic operators were able to experience them, although they experienced them as a sort of dream. Their recollection was spotty. We began working on a recording technology that could automatically transform their visions into images on a computer screen.

One unanticipated side effect, however, was the manifestation of silver craft above the testing site. Were they advanced beings? One theory held that they were in fact future versions of the very technology we were working on. They were literally coming back into the past to ensure their own eventuality.

And herein at last the nub of it: suddenly something which had seemed at most, at worst, a hasty sketch now resolving into a more exact copy, and all those weird dreams and portents threatening to start seeming true, and if the party was already making me feel weird, dislocated, out of joint with time, now I felt all the more so. Then hearing someone come into the room and closing the book. Seeing it was Mark and saying, Interesting taste in science fiction, with a grin. Mark saying, Nonfiction. Me laughing. You sound like my friend Johnny, I said. That’s your buddy with the blog? Mark said. Me saying yes but thinking, I don’t think I ever mentioned Johnny’s blog. Mark saying, How’s he doing? Because I’d definitely mentioned his more recent hijinks and the night at the hospital. Mark saying, We tried to invite him, actually, but we never heard back. No surprise, I said. Not well, I said. To be honest, I said, I’m worried about him. He’s an addict, Mark said, and it may have been a question. Sure, I said. I guess. I mean, I don’t know that I believe in addiction, exactly. All deniers are faithful at heart, Mark said. You actually remind me of him sometimes, I said. You two are equally aphoristic. Well, look, he said, having lived with an addict, let me tell you, it’s for real. When did you live with an addict? I said. Seriously? he said.

Looking for Lauren Sara. Bumping into some guy I knew from Global Solutions, whose name I forgot. Promising to talk him up to Mark. Grabbing another scotch. Eating some hors d’oeuvres. Stopping to listen to someone tell a joke. Catching some people doing blow in the guest bedroom. Laughing guiltily. Getting offered a line. Saying no thanks and feeling surprised I’d said no thanks. Seeing Mark maneuvering Assia—it was definitely Assia; I could smell the tobacco across the room—toward a guest bedroom. Following. Standing by the door. Hearing her say, Holy fuck, in her weird accent. Hearing him say, Turn over. Backing away. Hurrying off. Finding Lauren Sara with the Greek in the hallway. Lauren Sara asking, Hey, honey, will you be all right for an hour or so if I take off? Patra needs a ride to the studio and then needs to get over to the South Side. Thinking,
Typical
, then thinking I only thought that because I was drunk, then thinking that didn’t make it any less accurate. Saying, No problem, in a voice precisely calculated to mean the opposite. Annoyed that she ignored it. Fine, ’bye, I said. Back soon, she said. Wandering once more around the party. Seeing Nana to the elevator. You seem to have fallen in with a thoroughly self-satisfied crowd, she said. How are you getting home? I asked. I’m staying at the Renaissance, she said. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning in town. What for? I asked. On Sunday? I said. I’m a good customer, she replied. Then, having sent her down, seeing Jennifer Swerdlow lumbering through the crowd with a bottle of beer and a plateful of meats, I ducked, without thinking, through the nearest door.

27

Well, what went down was that I stumbled into Helen’s studio. It was the size of their whole rambling apartment, but without any walls or dividers except for a few concrete pillars here and there, the skeleton of the building itself. The walls were brick; the windows on the narrower side overlooked the river directly, while the long wall of them looked northeast along the water toward the Thirty-first Street Bridge. I mention this only to orient the room; because it was dark outside, the windows were black and mirrored. The floor was poured concrete. There were little sitting areas with the sort of thrift-store furniture that rich people like to buy, which is to say, probably not from a thrift store at all but only designed to look like it. There were a few rugs. There was a big metal drafting table with a stool and an articulated arm lamp. There was expensive track lighting, and on the two big blank walls without windows, there was the art, obsessively repeated, silvery ovals against a star field—abstracted but, to me, unmistakable. The canvases were very large. The room smelled like a recently smoked cigarette. I could hear the muffled party through the walls. I could hear the murmur of the air-conditioned air venting into the room.

Then I heard Helen say, Where’s your pretty girlfriend? I turned around. She was stretched out on a couch across the room from me, her legs crossed at the ankles, her back and body propped up against some pillows, with a cheap plastic bottle of liquor in her hand. She had on a pair of cutoff jeans and a too-large, paint-stained Pittsburgh Steelers T-shirt. Several strands of her usually neat hair had escaped in the direction of her eyes. When I walked toward her, I saw a little pile—okay, not such a little pile—of powder on the glass table beside her.

She left, I said.

Seems to be a theme, she said. She wasn’t slurring, but she picked her way around the words carefully, as if they were the last solid footing on a narrow ledge.

She’s coming back.

Oh, is she?

She is.

Then I stood there and she sat there and neither of us said anything. It occurred to me that it was the first time I’d been alone with her since the first night we’d met. It occurred to me that I did not, in fact, know this woman. It occurred to me that I was very drunk. It occurred to me that
she
was very drunk, but nevertheless holding on to me with an amused, distant, almost dissipated smile, which reminded me so much of Mark that I imagined she’d subconsciously copied it from him. What’s so funny? I asked.

Circumstances, she said.

Why didn’t you come to my party? I asked.

I’m having my own party, she said. Would you like some?

Okay, I said.

Besides, she said, while I helped myself, who says it’s your party?

It happens to coincide with my birthday, I told her.

Maybe it’s the other way around, she told me.

My birthday predates the party, I said, and I handed her the straw.

That’s one way of looking at it, she said. She pinched her nose.

I said, I like your paintings.

They’re shit, she said.

No, I replied. I don’t think so.

You just recognize the source material, she told me.

We’ve still never talked about that, I said.

She smiled again, but this time a little sadly. About the aliens? she said. No, maybe not.

To be fair, I said, they might not be aliens. They might be from another dimension.

Oh, another dimension?

Is that funny? I said. How about: another reality?

Another reality? That’s funny. There’s no other reality.

You don’t think? I think there might be a lot of them.

I think you’ll find, she said, that they’re all the same reality from a different perspective.

You’ve given it some thought.

Believe me, Helen said, I could use another reality.

Why’s that?

I’m not overly fond of this one.

Maybe you should hitch a ride, I said, and I gestured toward a painting.

Oh no. I’ve had enough of aliens. And other realities.

What do you mean? I asked.

Let me ask you a question, she said.

Okay, I said.

Do you like working for Mark?

I don’t really work for him, technically speaking.

I wasn’t technically speaking.

I don’t know, I said. Sure. I guess.

You should keep an eye out, she said.

Haha, I said. Everyone keeps saying that. My best friend’s grandfather used to say it.

Keep an eye out?

Yeah. He was a cool guy. He was always trying to build a perpetual motion machine in the shed.

Never worked?

No. The perpetual was always the problem.

She took a long drink. She stared past me at the paintings. I used to be so skilled, she said. I was really good.

I really don’t think they’re bad at all, I said. I like them.

You’re sweet, she said. Shit taste, but sweet.

Um, thanks, I said.

You remind me of a boy I used to date, she told me.

That’s funny, I said. You remind me of a girl I used to date.