She turned to me finally and suddenly, her eyes sharp as the tip of her cigarette. “You–” she started in a voice so rough my whole body chilled, down to the cold earth I was sitting on. Then she sighed and shrugged her shoulders, took another drag like a pro. Where did she even learn to smoke?
“It’s fine,” she said, dully. She looked at me and smiled a little. “I guess–I guess it’s sort of a rough time.”
“Are your parents giving you a rough time?” I asked.
She blinked. “What?”
“Your parents?” I said, and bit my lip. Suddenly I was saying the wrong thing again. “You know, the party?”
Her eyes widened and widened, and the ash of her cigarette sat there, unflicked. “What?” she said.
“Hey,” Lily said and we both jumped. She was standing up next to us with her cello case next to her like a bodyguard and her notebooks against her breasts. Douglas was behind her, smiling thinly and holding–has everyone been brainwashed?–a lit cigarette.
“Hey,” V__ said, and burst out sobbing. Her shoulders shook and her cigarette fell to the log she was sitting on, where it nibbled at the damp bark. Douglas crushed it out with his shoe and sat next to her, holding her stiffly in his arms. Lily sat on her other side and stared into space miserably, her cello case leaning against her. Everybody was on the log except me, sitting on the ground. I was not only mystified, I was passé. V__ sobbed and sobbed, in loud raw gulps of sound.
“Cut that shit out right away,” Natasha said casually, strolling out from somewhere with Kate and Gabriel. She was smoking too, her dark lipstick staining the filter. Kate was glaring at V__ like a drill sergeant.
“Natasha–” Douglas said, whirling around to her.
“She’s right,” Kate said, sitting on the ground. She leaned back on the log and opened her backpack, took out a notebook and pen. “We don’t have time, we can’t afford–V__, stop it right now.”
“She can’t just stop it,” Douglas said. “She’s–”
“NO!” Gabriel said, pointing at them. “No! Just stop!”
I decided not to say anything, sitting on my hands. My body felt so cold. V__ bit her lip and choked back a sob. She was stopping, just like that.
“Thank you,” Kate said, with a thin smile. She looked stone-serious but somehow–eager.
Gabriel sat down beside me and put a hand on my shoulder, formally. “How are you?” he said, looking at me.
“I’m OK,” I said, but he was already looking elsewhere. Natasha passed her flask to V__, who took it gratefully and tipped it to her mouth, the faux silver catching the sun. “How about you?” I said to Gabriel.
“We’ll talk on the way home,” he said.
“Please,” Douglas said. “Whatever anyone has to say, they might as well say it to everybody. It can’t possibly matter.”
“I’m going to throw up,” Lily said suddenly. Her face peered over her notebooks, still clutched close, her face still greenish and her eyes tense with certainty.
“Well, do it somewhere else,” Natasha said. She was leaning against a tree in this burgundy jumper I’d never seen on her before.
“Yes, please,” Kate said, folding back her notebook to a blank lined page. I couldn’t imagine what we were going to discuss. Lily got up, walked about ten paces to a clump of weeds and heaved into it.
“Can’t this all wait?” I said. Gabriel shook his head at me and Kate stared me down like I was out of uniform.
“What?” she said.
“Well, Lily’s sick,” I said. “V__’s upset–”
“We’re all upset,” Douglas said. “What do you–”
“That’s what I mean,” I said. “It’s a bad time to have a meeting, Kate. Let’s put it off until–”
She dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “Don’t be ridiculous, Flan. I wish Jenn would hurry up.”
“And Flora!” Lily called from the weeds. “Everybody.”
“Well, I wish they’d both hurry up,” Kate continued. “I don’t have much time.”
“You have as long as it takes,” Natasha said firmly, with a fake sweet icing. “We’d do the same for you, dear.”
“Shut up,” Kate said.
“What?” Natasha threw her cigarette in the grass.
“Please,” Gabriel said, as Douglas stood up and crushed it out. “As Flan says, we’re all upset here, let’s just–”
“We’re all upset?!?” V__ sputtered. “We? Are all? Upset?”
“Please,” Gabriel pleaded again. “Let’s just talk about what we need to do.”
“Not until Jenn and Flora are here.”
“We’re here,” Jenn said, in a corpse-numb voice. Jennifer Rose Milton and Flora Habstat were standing stiffly as though at attention, their coats dragging on the ground like queens’ trains. Flora didn’t say anything, and from the look on her face I could tell that was pretty much the plan for the rest of her life. Wrong.
Kate took the cap off the pen and wrote a heading on the paper I couldn’t see. Underlining it primly, she looked up and gestured rather formally for Jennifer Rose Milton and quiet little Flora Habstat to sit down. To me Flora’s presence indicated that–what do I mean–adjunct members of the Basic Eight could come, and I wondered where Adam was. I hadn’t seem him for a couple of days, in fact–he wasn’t in choir today, and he didn’t stay over after the party, I don’t think. Everything’s such a gurgly blur, fading in and out, dark, light.
“All right,” Kate started. “If anyone asks, we’re planning a party at the Sculpture Garden Friday night. That’s why we’re meeting today, all right?”
A Sculpture Garden party? I couldn’t believe it. “And it can’t wait?” I said. “Lily’s sick, Kate.”
“SHUT UP!” V__ screamed.
“All right?” Kate continued smoothly, like V__ was some protester being led from the lecture hall. “Friday, eight o’clock, there, we’ve had our meeting. Now, I guess we just need to hear from some people, so everybody knows what’s up. V__, your car?”
“Has been stolen,” V__ finished. “I told my dad this morning. Luckily there’s been a rash of carjackings in the neighborhood, so he was kicking himself he hadn’t installed an alarm system.”
“I don’t think it’s carjacking,” Lily said, coming over and wiping her mouth on her sleeve, “if it’s just stolen. I think carjacking means somebody forces their way into–”
“Whatever!” V__ said. Her lip was trembling.
“It doesn’t matter,” Kate agreed, settling it. Glancing down she crossed a t. What I would give to see what she was writing down. By now it’s undoubtedly stored forever in federal files. “It doesn’t matter,” she said again. “All right? It doesn’t matter. The point is that the car is gone, and everything with it.”
“It’s in a bad neighborhood,” V__ said.
“A bad neighborhood?” Natasha snorted. “It’ll remain invisible there, for sure. That gorgeous car in a bad–”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Douglas said. “The idea is that the cops think it was stolen by, well, car thieves. The idea is that he came upon the thieves while they were in the act and they panicked–”
“We were the ones who panicked,” V__ said. “I don’t know what we were thinking yesterday–”
“If we were thinking,” Lily muttered.
“It doesn’t matter,” Kate said. “All right? It doesn’t matter. We work with what we’ve got. We had to do something so we did it.”
“You sound like Mr. Baker,” Gabriel said. Natasha looked at me and winked.
“So the car’s in a bad neighborhood,” Kate said. “That’ll work.”
“They’ll find it,” Douglas said darkly. “It’s not like we pushed it off a cliff.”
“What in the world,” I asked, “are we talking about?”
For a second it looked like Douglas was going to hit me, Douglas, right across the face, but then he looked down and his face slackened. “Jesus, Flan,” he said in hushed tones
like he was in church, or awe. “What do you think we’re talking about?”
“I don’t know,” I said miserably.
“Flannery,” V__ said, “this is very tedious. We all know–”
“I’m serious,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on. Since that party I’ve been such a mess. I drank so much of that scorpion punch, and everybody was fighting–”
“Scorpion punch?” Gabriel asked.
“It stang to drink it,” I explained.
“I think that’s stung,” Kate said. “Scorpion punch is a good name for it, though. We’ll have to remember that for next time.”
“Next time?” V__ asked. “Next time?”
“Shhh,” Jennifer Rose Milton said. “Calm do–”
“There’s not going to be a next time,” V__ shouted. “For any of us. Not after everything Flan–”
“After everything I what?” I asked. Beneath my skin my memory was playing charades–I knew there had been a party and I knew how many syllables it had, but after that I couldn’t make head or tail of that blurry evening, pantomimed in front of me in vague, inscrutable gestures. “Look, everybody,” I said. “I’m not being cute here. I can’t remember the whole garden party, practically. People were mad at me. I was mad at people. I think I even hit what’s-his-name, toward the end, as he was leaving. I know I was fighting with him on the croquet field. But after that it’s all–scorpionesque.” Now they were looking at me like I was the struggling mime. “Please. I’m ready to apologize or explain or whatever, but somebody has to tell me what’s going on. Why are we cutting Millie’s class just to talk about a Sculpture Garden party and worry about V__’s car? Plenty of us have cars. If we need to get to the Sculpture Garden, we can take–what?”
Lily had thrown up again, on the lawn in front of her. Green on green.
“Forget it,” Gabriel said. “Just try to calm down–everyone.”
“I can’t!” Douglas said. Both he and Jennifer Rose Milton were covering their ears and looking at me like I was a horror movie they were far too young for. For which they were far too young.
“You have to,” Kate said. “We all have to. Now calm down, Douglas. You don’t see me jumping up and yelling.”
“You didn’t stuff the body of a friend of yours into the trunk of a car, did you?” Douglas said quietly, and sat down. I stopped breathing, I know I did. I could remember staring into the recess of V__’s trunk, that day she looked for her scarf. Like superimposed slides I was fitting a corpse into it–I could see, dimly, some sputtering red face crushed like an aluminum can, remembered from some movie or something on TV.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this!” Lily wailed. There was still vomit on her chin and her nose was running wildly, stringing down like mozzarella cheese. “I can’t believe–”
“We don’t have a choice,” Kate said, looking up from her notebook. “All right? There’s nothing we can do. We already decided. The question is, can we get a grip on ourselves and get through this? I say we can. We got through Flan and the fruit flies, and Jim Carr–”
“This isn’t the same thing,” Douglas said. “This is–”
“Why don’t you go then?” Natasha said. “Why don’t you go, go call the police or your mommy or your fucking Principal Mokie, OK? Tell them that V__’s car isn’t stolen, that it’s sitting in some bad neighborhood and inside the trunk is a former big man on campus, and that we were all at the party and helped put him there? Why don’t you do that? Be sure and put it on your goddamn college applications. You know, that question about what else you have to contribute to the college environs? You could just put stuff corpses in trunk!”
“Stop!” Lily said.
“You little faggot,” Natasha snarled. Douglas swallowed. His eyes widened. He put his hand to his neck–the spot I had helped him cover with makeup, each morning.
“We can do this,” Kate said quietly. Her eyes were lit up, like they were that night in the Sculpture Garden when she was all quiet triumph and organization. She had been waiting for this moment since she’d met us. “This is a real test for us, I think,” she said. “If we can get through this, we’ll be–”
“Much stronger for it?” V__ asked, raising her eyebrows. “Come on, Kate.”
“Stop, stop,” Kate said. “OK, Natasha, the dress–”
“What dress?” Natasha said, looking sharply at Kate.
Kate nodded. “OK. So I take it the dress is–”
“What dress?” Natasha said. “I have no idea what dress you’re talking about, and nobody else does either.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Gabriel said.
“But where is the dress?” Jenn asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” V__ said. “Don’t you see? We don’t know. We shouldn’t know. Just in case–”
“That case,” Natasha said, “is not going to happen.”
“I can’t do it,” Lily said, shaking her head.
“We’d do it for you,” Natasha said.
“Not anymore,” Douglas said.
Flora didn’t say anything. I didn’t either–no one was mad at Flora, so I figured it was the best move.
“Well, there’s good news,” V__ said, “I guess. My parents wanted to punish me, you know, for the party.”
“Did that rack fall?” I realized it was me who’d asked.
“What rack?”
“You know,” I said, sensing that this too was the wrong thing to say. “The rack in the kitchen. With all the pots. It looked like it was going to fall.”
“What’s the matter with her?” Kate asked Natasha.
“No,” V__ said. Her eyes were closed. “The rack didn’t fall, Flan.”
“But what’s the good news?” Gabriel asked.
“As punishment,” V__ said, suddenly smiling bitterly, “my folks had me mow the lawn. First thing this morning. Early.”
Everybody breathed some sigh of relief. Kate grinned, even. “And where does the, whatever it is, the lawn bag go?”
“Right into the garbage,” V__ said. “So everything’s OK on that front.”
“Was it bad?” Douglas asked.
“We don’t have to hear this,” Jenn begged.
V__ sighed. “It was, well, OK I guess. I mean, considering. It’s very lucky, that’s all. I don’t know how much attention the gardener pays when he mows the lawn, but if you find a tooth–”
Lily threw up.
“Guh!” Douglas said, standing up. It had splashed on him a little. “Can we leave now, Kate? Is that all there is to this little Friday party meeting? Because I’m supposed to tell you all–I was supposed to tell you in Millie’s class–Ron wants to see us all after school for a cast and crew meeting, and I think it’s almost after school right now.”
“What? Why didn’t you say so?” said the courtesan, standing up.
“It seemed like there were more important things,” Douglas said dryly.
“Like a Sculpture Garden party?” I asked.
“What’s happened to her?” V__ wailed. “What’s happened to her?”
“She’s just throwing up,” I told her, because Lily had doubled over again. She heaved and heaved but came up with nothing, like me.
We were late for the cast and crew meeting. The stage crew sat on folding chairs and the cast sat on the cold floor of the stage because if the cast was going to waltz in late the cast could get their own damn chairs, the crew isn’t their slaves, only nobody but the stage crew is allowed in the storage closet because it’s dangerous and only trained professionals like Frank Whitelaw and his new girlfriend Cheryl could enter the room safely and grab some fucking chairs. To the disappointment of the crew most of the major members of the cast seemed too distracted to enter into the anticipated fight and just scowled and sat down. Lily Chandly, although technically on the makeup crew, sat down on the stage in solidarity with the cast; Steve Nervo took her chair. Ron stood up and clapped his hands for our attention.
“As you will all hear t
omorrow officially,” Ron said, “Adam State is missing. He’s been missing since your party”–here he glared at us–“almost two days now. Obviously, the play is put on hold, at least until we know what’s going on. Keep up on your lines, because I’m sure that Adam is OK, but until he’s back at school we won’t be rehearsing. But that’s not why I called this meeting.
“I called you all here because I think that a person or persons here know where Adam is. If any of your heads have cleared since the party, you’ll remember that I briefly attended your, um, social gathering Sunday night. Emotions seemed to be running pretty high and I know there was a lot of drinking. That’s why I didn’t want to contact the police until I talked to you, because I know that you guys don’t want your parents knowing all about that party. But Adam’s parents are worried. They’re frantic. If you can’t or won’t give me any information, I’ll have to drag you guys into it. Is that clear?”
It was dead quiet. Ron scanned us slowly like he was watching a horse race. I looked up and saw all those ropes they need to raise and lower flat wooden backgrounds, thin frayed lines climbing up and up into the darkness, wondering how high they went and if I dared climb them. Then the back door of the auditorium slammed shut and we all jumped and stared into the blackness where the audience sat. I held my breath, half expecting Adam to walk down the center aisle and claim his ticket. “Cymbeline!” Do you realize that was only September 14th?
“I know you’re worried,” he said. “Everyone is worried. But I’m trying to arrange things so that nobody gets in trouble, OK? OK. Now, can anyone tell me what happened at the party, with Adam? The last time I saw him was on my way home Sunday night, when he was standing at the bus stop on the corner of California and Styx. He looked upset. Can anyone tell me what happened?”
Nothing emerged from the shadows. The slam! must have been the work of a poltergeist or janitor.
The Basic Eight Page 31
