Chapter 7: You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me    (print this)

HE HELD HIS HEAD in his hands and knew that if he looked up the world would be moving. He felt it, the world moving. He felt the light streaming past the mask of his fingers and he didn't want to move. But he did move. He lifted his head and saw the streaming, the colors against the backdrop of night. He was not driving, but when he turned to look at who was driving he saw only himself.

"Where are we going?"

"We're going to the party."

And then they were moving through a rectangle of light into the party. He couldn't see the party at first, or the house, but he could see beyond it, into the dark maw of the golf course, the hissing of sprinklers, the sharp slapping sound as jets of water hit the trees.

Somebody handed him a drink. It was a cocktail party, and people were chatting, loudly, on the edge of drunkenness, and somewhere behind the crowd spilling on the white shag carpet (and oh, it was hideous white shag, he looked down and noted, the kind that some hostess somewhere was screaming over, locked in the basement in a straightjacket as elbows bumped and sloshed drinks over its whiteness), somewhere two people were arguing about what music to play, and a few notes drifted up and then there was a scratch.

He cringed at the sound. Someone, a blonde in a black dress, handed him a drink. He tasted it, but it was too sweet and familiar, like a gin and tonic during college, and for moment he thought he was in college.

"Drink up, Henry," said a red faced man in a sharkskin jacket, his tie askew.

"Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can't drink anymore," said an old man next to him. Henry laughed, and others laughed, and he wondered for a moment why he was laughing. Then he saw Patricia Newell, oh god the lovely and distant Patricia Newell in a purple metallic cocktail dress and she was gliding and smiling and she had Jill on her arm and Jill was smiling, but Jill looked so much older, and gray, the gray of executive suits and hours in the shadows just to the right of colors, her voice diffused by the numb breathing of the projector.

"Is that Patricia Newell?" Henry asked the woman on his right.

The woman, who was brunette and whose face was vague and unfocused but for her teeth brayed with laughter. "DAH-ling, you know, 'rhythm control' doesn't mean you make it with every trio that plays the Blackhawk!"

More laughter, and someone talking about ice squeezed by on their way to the kitchen, another rectangle of light, and Henry moved away through the crowd, looking for Patricia and his wife, wondering where they were going, picturing dark bedrooms with piles of coats and the darker grass on the other side of the pool (surely there must be a pool), and he squeezed past his brother's stupid friend Tim, and thought about the comic books he ripped off from him again and was briefly angry and then realized that Tim was dead from cancer and so he would never, ever see those comic books again, that rare complete set of Steve Ditko's run on Dr. Strange, and the thought made Henry so sad, and he stood for a moment on a platform of green light and stared over at Dread Dormammu with his flaming face, and then Dormammu spoke with Jack Samson's voice.

"By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth, Hank, your nerves are smashed. You'll never be able to operate again."

"Jack," said Henry. "Jack, did you see where Patricia and Jill went?"

And Jack must have known, because then Henry was outside, looking over the pool, and of course there was a pool, it was that kind of house on that kind of golf course, and Henry looked back inside and the party was even more crowded, and he could tell the hosts' house, whoever they were, had really, really, really bad taste, the kind bad taste that only a great deal of money could buy, but out here it was cool and the light was coming up from the bottom of the pool like star sapphires, and it was like a Hockney without a splash, and then of course there was a Hockney splash hovering above the water in the dark and the light, a splash where the dark and light met.

There was no one out there. The noise of the party was gone too, but Henry didn't look behind him. He looked out into the golf course, covered in a thick black velvet, dense and black except for the stars. Except they weren't really stars. Henry peered at them, walking around the pool to the edge where the lawn stopped and began again. They were twinkling like stars, and seemed to draw closer, and Henry perceived that they were mouths, female mouths, floating, lipsticked in the dark, disembodied mouths, and they were speaking, and he could not catch the words, and he was staring at them and straining as if to make out what they were saying. It was babble, and he felt frightened as words and phrases began to congeal:

"…not for nothing I did this not for nothing…" "…at last he came, at last…"
"…well what did you expect did you expect great expectations did you expect…" "…painted like this, held like this, in the paint…" "…and kissed and it was cold and wept cold, weeping cold…" "…three we were three…"
"…I want to say, I can't say, I must say, I can't say, I want to say…" "…hope forever, hope forever, hopeless forever…" "…my sisters won't allow it, they will kill it, they will gaze…" "…stay with me, stay, oh please, oh stay…"

Henry blinked. He thought he heard Patricia and Jill, and stared hard, like trying to see fireflies against a setting sun, and then he noticed a man standing next to him, a tall, thin man with a face like a hawk and light glinting off his spectacles.

"It's ahl wrang," the man said in a thick accent, waving his hand at the babble. "They're doing it ahl wrang…"

"Help them," said Henry, suddenly moved, and the man just stared at him, not unkindly, and then he looked down and said "Aren't you going to answer you phone?"

Henry looked down. A dwarf in a butler's outfit was holding Dali's lobster telephone on a silver platter, and it was ringing. Oh fuck, thought Henry, a dwarf with a lobster phone. He reached down and picked up the receiver.

"Hello," he said. "This is a dream, isn't it?"

A chuckle from the other end, a voice he couldn't quite place. "It's all a dream for you, isn't it, Mr. Bethel? It's never been real to you at all, has it?"

Henry looked back toward the house. The party was cacophonous now, but everyone inside beyond the sliding glass door looked gray, an ocean of gray, a horrible mass of gray, like stone, like angels abandoned in a tombstone cutter's workshop. Henry walked where the pool had been, straight toward the open door, almost running, he could see Jack Samson's shiny shaved head weaving amidst the tombstone angels, and when he reached the open door he walked right into the glass, and it shattered, and there was a rushing and darkness and the sound of a record being scratched…

HENRY CAME awake, his legs tangled in his sheets. He shook himself free from the dream and slowly sat up, shaking his head and softly slapping his legs to make himself fully conscious. Christ, what an odd dream, he said to himself. He looked around the room, and realized by the light shooting through the blinds that it must be mid-afternoon. What a horrible night, he thought. No wonder.

He stood up, stretched and stumbled into his robe, turning the fragments over in his mind. I haven't thought about Tim Boronsky and his swindle in years, he thought. And the appearance of Patricia Newell, the artist that he and Jill had briefly and ill-advisedly become entangled with, unsettled him deeply.

"Well," he said aloud, shuffling into the kitchen, "it's been an unsettling 24 hours." He was already beginning to regret being sucked into seeing Maude S—'s show, and he most certainly regretted the nearly maudlin romp through Win Stevenson's museum site. If not for Claude, he thought, and cringed slightly as he put a kettle on for tea. What a mess, he said to himself. One night out in his old life and he was wallowing in bitterness. Christ. Decent of Claude to sober me up and bring me home…

Henry stopped in mid-motion, his mug hanging from his frozen hand. Wait a minute. How had he gotten home? He didn't remember Claude bringing him home. Henry snapped the blinds up and looked out his kitchen window. His Karmen Ghia was parked where it should be. I don't remember driving home, he realized. He hadn't been so drunk as to black out… was he?

"What the hell…" said, Henry trailing off. And then he thought of Don Ix's lackey, Madison Monroe, for no clear reason, and his stomach went a little cold…

The phone rang. Henry snatched it off the wall without thinking.

"Hello?" he barked, trying to clear the fog.

"Mr. Bethel? This is Stephanie No. Maude S— will see you now."