5.

In the daytime the Dwight plan was definite. It was the plane on which Matt walked, darkly glittering as asphalt over water. In the nights it was more cloudlike, a fever’s haze. Sometimes he grew sick from the idea, nauseated off the toxic fumes of this venom roiling in his belly, or suddenly afraid of detection. Then he might almost have been convinced to relinquish it, knocked down by the feather of some minor argument. Who knows? If Jason had bothered to palpate his flimsy excuse (trying to do that Stefan guy a favor, since Jonathan didn’t sell H at Paradise: hardly the soundest of stories) or mentioned it to Sophie, and Sophie so much as looked at him hard with her sane dark eyes—who knows.

But classes began and ended at their appointed hours, nights took their habitual roller-coaster course, and as for the Paradise of March 29: well, it was as if some god of good-time had blown the room full of happy-dust, gold and swirling, infectious; even Matt could hear how Future didn’t mix one wrong beat, seemed to be conjuring an unbroken soundtrack to total joy out of the elements of beats and notes, and diva moans. Jonathan didn’t blink when Matt turned over the brick of David Breck’s cash in the staff bathroom, and though the tin of Smiley-Face-stamped Ecstasy rattled disconcertingly in Matt’s jacket, Sophie had long ago left the club for the night and all those who swept him into an intoxicated embrace that evening seemed not to notice how he flinched, angled away. What anyway could they have guessed about what for all the world looked like a case of breath mints? So for nine whole days, nothing blocked his way. The signposts led squarely to this precipice.

April 4!

Matt arrived at Peter’s early, after leaving Sophie holed up on a long-distance telephone date with her best childhood friend from Kyoto. In the main room, two girls in tucked-in silk button-down blouses chattered urgently, sneaking glances in the direction of a couch where three guys wearing neat dress shirts, navy blazers, and khakis sat trading comments in low voices beneath the prints of hunting scenes; otherwise, only from down the hall toward the bedrooms could the buzz of talk be heard. Matt visited the coatroom, then obtained a scotch and drew over to a window in the wall opposite the front door. Through the pane: a patio, a walkway bordered by side lanterns leading to a kind of Belle Époque iron-and-glass cabana lit by what appeared to be flickering candles.

“There you are, baby,” murmured Liza, striding right up. “I need a drink, God.” She grabbed his scotch off the sill and nuzzled it. “I can’t believe you’re doing this,” she teased, a vaguely malicious fire in her eyes.

For an instant—jeez, and would it be like that all night? all life?—a bubble of fear rose from his stomach to burst in his gullet: how did she…? But then: of course not, just doing this favor, she means. “Keep that. I’ll, ah, get us fresh ones. And then—a smoke?”

“Why not,” she growled into the glass, nipping at the side with her fine teeth.

As she drilled her bitten, black-polished nails on the bar counter and tapped one wayward boot against the parquet, Matt tried to keep his gaze sutured to tongs and ice, the crystal decanter he was manipulating. One trusted her, though. Even if she could afterward put it together: what allegiance did she feel toward Dwight Smeethman? Or anyway: who cared? Who needed her, or anyone else here who might suspect? Just so long as no one told the police. But they wouldn’t do that—would have to admit they’d bought drugs, these princelings. No, the plan was cut on all sides like a crown jewel. Yet his breath still caught, raspy, in his chest. Ten o’clock it must be now: two more hours.

“I’d rather be,” she began, leaning her elbow down on the counter, très intime, “with you at Ichor.” She snatched up a purple grape from a bowl, lobbed it into her mouth. “You know it’s some kind of Rite of Spring party there tonight?”

“It’ll still be going on when we leave,” he sniffed, passing one of the tumblers.

“You think so?” Fluttering her lashes at him like a true ingenue. “So we’ll go?”

“Of course we’ll go, we’ll go.” Blathering on about a future in which nothing would matter anymore. “Now, how about that smoke?”

Out on the patio, they sat on a stair above the slate walkway and smoked, gazing at the glass cabana animated only by tapering candle flames and the bright white haze in the sky that was all the lights in New York. Well, he had thought it through. For, sure, there had been stirrings of remorse, when, incredulous at having even thought such an evil up, he had nearly laughed it off: a joke, merely a hypothetical fantasizing, didn’t anyone get I was only messing? Because, let’s face it, he talked a big game, justice and fate and nemesis. But never once—hardly creditable, but true!—never once had he premeditatively set out to hurt a soul. Which was what had always amazed him in high school and before—how sometimes they’d planned for days, maybe even weeks in advance, the exact instant and manner by which to rush him all at once in the locker room with duct tape, or for hours the precise corner where they would meet to beat him so he walked on bawling and stinging and half broken (but not broken!) home. And how did you carry that much evil around, while drifting toward the land of Nod, while accepting your brown-bag lunch and a forehead kiss from your faithful mother? How could you live with yourself all that while—with a rope in your bag or a camera to take the humiliating picture, with a spring in your step as you passed that spot where two streets cross, the scene of an as-yet-uncommitted crime, or visited the locker room, unblinkingly, as if it were not the stage of imminent horror? And yet wasn’t that exactly what he was doing with this heroin and Dwight?

Really? But just for once? And in justice? Not picking on an innocent but one whose insolent ribbing, and let us not forget the knife-behind-our-back to Dirk, surely merited this. Who said we must always be the martyr? The meek shall suffer, that’s all that’s sure in their future. Why else should fate have arranged things so perfectly as this, as though delaying a revenge till this juncture? Perhaps naive, precollege-he would have lacked heart or stomach or enough experience of the world for this deed—I mean, can you picture someone like Mary Fawzi from Third North all Lady Macbeth–like rising to the role? Ah, that poor weeper would crumble at the mere thought of such a scheme. It’s up to you to deal a blow here for all loserkind.

“Earth to Matt.” Liza was waving her hand. “Aren’t you done yet? Here.” And she held out her empty glass for Matt’s butt.

“So,” Matt tossed back the last watery contents of his scotch, “let’s do the grand tour, shall we?”

Back in the main room, the crowd had grown measurably: guys in neat shirts and loafers, girls in matronly leather belts, the pearls pressed into the fat purses of their earlobes hideous as teeth. A whole host of WASPs ruddy with money and privilege, rows of aristocratic noses, sporty and perfect shoulders, here a conservative silk tie or scarf brandished like an affront, like tribal colors worn both to assert credentials and punish the excluded at once. He sucked in his breath as he shoehorned his way around: was it the mere closeness of the room? Or could so many NYU kids still not know who he was? They noticed Liza, yet no one glanced at him with anything like interest. Imperturbable, they let him pass by, calmly stationed in a serenity of order as neutral as the laws of heraldry. Dahlia Warner, the short girl with lasery blue eyes, stood by the bar, ranting toward David Breck’s chest—he was in a black suit with a rainbow-colored button-down, looking rather with-it, actually. On the near side, sunk into an armchair, wearing the same unfestive dark-green sweater as last time, sat Peter Kent, but now so surrounded he could only raise a glass, shoot Matt a sympathetic eyebrow lift.

“Oh, look, he’s not white!” Matt sniggered, faux-excited as he nudged Liza toward an Indian guy some paces behind.

“Noooo…” Liza groaned. “That’s just Ashok Something. I can’t remember his last name. Like the richest family in India. He has more money than God.”

They really found them, didn’t they. As if they put out some signal, a huge dollar sign in the sky, like the Bat symbol. You could only see it if you were loaded.

“I’d like to go powder my nose. You?”

“I’ll come,” he assented, “but—might make me kind of jittery. I’ll just smoke.”

Clinging to Liza’s heels, he rambled restlessly and, yes, sick of himself, with this dire act unhatched in his breast…and when at last they pushed into Annabel’s room: empty, inhabited only by white gauze curtains streaming irregularly from the open windows. “Fabulous,” Liza sneered, dropping to the window seat, showily lighting a cig.

I’m going to stay in this room forever, Matt thought, falling on the white brocaded bed. Or, no, better: I’m going to tie these sheets into ropes and, Rapunzel-like, shimmy down from the penthouse. Then I’ll run across the street into Central Park where no one can find me, not with their lanterns, not with their hunting horses and beautiful dogs, their rifles shooting plumes of smoke. Come on, now: after all the world has done to bring this about? You’ll flinch back from the brink, I’m sorry, I wasn’t ready, I can’t, wah-wah, sobbie-sob, an incurable milquetoast? Now will you choose forever to be Doormat Boy?

And maybe that was part of why it’d happened in the first place: they had scented wimp on him—kindergarten, first grade, like a pacifist in a prison yard among hardened criminals, who’d get the shit kicked from him to Samoa. No, guys, stop, I mean it, come on, give me back my book…my bag…my life…

No. Not me: no more. This is the end, my friend. This is the last of that road.

“What time is it?” he mumbled, sitting up.

Liza turned her wrist to peer at her ridiculous gilt watch, which with the diamond ring were the sole accessories that showed: still Daddy’s Little Girl. “It’s midnight. Time, right?”

But David Breck found them first. Out at the end of the corridor he was stamping and rubbing his hands together. “Hello, hello!” He threw his arms low about Liza, kissed her cheek. “Having a nice time?” he asked Matt, still holding her back while she giggled awkwardly, squirming, straightening her tresses.

“Absolutely.” Matt waved his glass between them, not trusting himself to say more.

“Excellent!” David looked giddy as a little kid. “So, are you ready, man?”

Somebody was paddling wildly inside him as he followed David’s stretchy form through the patio door and out into the night. The door of the cabana was ajar; now he peered into the candle glow—they had arranged cushions about an Oriental rug, were sitting on the floor. Dimwit David must have thought it “groovy,” appropriate for a “mind-altering experience.” The music, too, was trippy in a pseudopsychedelic style; over the cheese of ersatz Gregorian chants and saccharine synth scratched the excited chatter of girls and guys dying to lose themselves for a few hours. Matt circled the space distributing nods, pep-up remarks, and pills from a cache in his right pants pocket.

Dwight was ready for him, cushioned on the marble, one leg extended as if in the midst of an athletic stretch, an expression of compassionate understanding on his face. And everything else in the room went low, snuffed out. Their voices, the music, even the sense of space blurred into one black brushstroke, irrelevant at the periphery. Matt shook his head, feigning perplexity. “Oh—hello! Dwight!”

“Hey,” Dwight said, husky, mano a mano, Sensitive New Age Macho, reaching up for a hand clasp, “how—how are you?”

“Fabulous.” Funny how one freezes up in such a situation; he ached to get away.

“How’s—how are…things?”

Please! What could be better? I’ve won! Admit it, you phony! Why won’t you ever admit it? “‘Things’ are pretty fabulous too,” he replied. “And you?” Bending down low.

Dwight sighed deeply, as if the world’s sufferings hurt him personally but he bore on nevertheless. Insultingly healthy, the leader of some Mt. Everest trek who tries to console one fallen by the wayside: you understand, the team’s got to go on. “Listen, Matt,” Dwight’s voice cracked—nice touch, “I wanted to tell you…I’m sorry about the way things happened. Just wanted you to know…I feel for you, man.” Dwight clapped his arm athletically to Matt’s inclined shoulder.

“Don’t sweat it, ‘man,’ don’t give it another, any second thought. You did what you had to do—that’s as it should be.” Matt grinned broad and touched Dwight’s upper body with something that might pass for earnestness.

“Great.” Dwight squeezed and released his shoulder. “That’s really awesome. Wow, I’m so glad we got to talk. I guess—that’s what this drug is good for, right? Brings people together.” Dwight laughed. “You would know.”

“Ekstasis,” Matt explained the Greek, “‘out of oneself.’”

“Community,” paraphrased Dwight. “That’s so awesome.”

Matt nodded blandly. The sap. Got to talk: what a grand tête-à-tête, all of five seconds. And as if one widget of Ecstasy were working in him right now. “Well, don’t get ahead of yourself! You’re going to be feeling…ahm, even more that way in about a half hour.” And he slipped out the Dove from his left pocket.

“Of course.” Dwight opened his hands wide as if to grant Matt free movement in the little glassed-in world he owned. Now his palm closed over the pill. “Thanks for this, man,” he vowed, and gave a last wink.

So it was official. History melted down to this instant; it pinholed to a point, blotted out to dark. Matt slunk back up the walkway, through the rooms, sated. And he was proud! He wanted to pass out cigars and share! Sprinting forward, he pushed his way to the bathroom and locked the door. Flushed rouge in the mirror! Hello, genius! You devil! You did it! Beaming, grinning, the lips nearly puckering as if on the point of kiss. Shall I tell you a secret? He leaned over the sink and kissed the figure in the mirror, closing his lips on that metallic cold—before abruptly exiting, letting the door slam behind.

Because there was no Liza towering about the main room, because, Jesus Christ, a drink, was ever a man so in need of a nip of whiskey, he hightailed it over to the bar, mixed him a little mischief. Standing just three paces off was Dahlia, the one whom he had interrogated on his last visit about her dream of a chintzy ten-mil bequest. “Oh, come off it,” she was saying in her gravelly voice. “Just come off it. I’m calling him a dud because that’s what he is, he’s a total tool. And it’s one thing if you want to be nice to Allison by inviting him, like as a guest, okay, but to, like, bring him in as a member? I mean, I ask you, what’s the point of being in this club if guys like that can get in? I mean: who is he? That’s all I have to say.”

“He’s a nice guy,” some kid in a white sweater and cufflinks protested.

A bold snort was her first retort. “Who Is He?” She stamped on the parquet with each monosyllable. “I mean, you know! He’s from, like, Missouri.”

“Dahlia,” reproved the guy. “You’re such a snob.”

“I am not a snob! Okay, so maybe I am.” Guttural rupture of carte blanche laughter. “But let me ask you: what did you think when you found out that tool was getting in?”

The kid said something closer to Dahlia’s ear that caused them both to peal.

“See what I mean? And you’re trying to make me out like I’m some kind of, kind of monster. Hey, you.” A snapping of fingers in Matt’s direction. “You. Liza’s friend.”

Matt merely let the scotch purl about his gums to acquit him of eavesdropping.

Dahlia’s ghost-white face pushed before his, Muppet-like, head back; the cave of her mouth brutish, red. “You’re Matt, right? Magic Matt?”

“Hm-mm?” Matt coughed, blinked laboriously slow.

“You used to live with him, right?”

“Who?” Matt chewed ice, causing him unfortunately to drool.

“Dwight Smeethman!” She stamped again and tossed her black hair.

“Mm-hm?”

“Explain to him, explain to my friend,” and here her hand clutched at a white-sweatered arm; she drew the guy, reluctantly laughing, over to the bar, “what’s wrong with Dwight Smeethman.”

Matt rolled his eyes. Please go away, little girl. You’re hurting me. Please just back away, slowly.

“Let me ask you this,” she continued, lapdog-style, not letting go of a bone on which it scents flesh. “Would you let him into this club?”

There were all sorts of possible ripostes to this. Matt was reaching for that line, wouldn’t want to be a part of any club that—that what? Something about me for a member. But as nothing came to mind, he simply took a meek sip. “No.”

Yet evidently comedy is all in the timing. For Dahlia and even the politic guy discovered something singularly hilarious in this damning with faint blame.

“See! Thank you.” Dahlia leaned back against the wall where the two had first been. “I’m coming to your party tomorrow night, by the way. For Liza’s.”

Speak of the devil: she pulled up alongside. “What’s that, lady?” Liza droned.

“I said I’m coming to your party tomorrow night.” But the way Dahlia barked it and raised an eyebrow, the statement was less tribute than warning. It better be fun.

“Let’s go,” Matt commanded, banging his glass down on the tiled counter. “Babe. We’re going to be late.”