6.

At Ichor there were orchids, organdy, champagne—Liza pulled him into the main room, where a whole disassembled grove of birch trees appeared, leaning over the tables their silvery skin, skeins of green flags fluttering faintly. From across the way Matt recognized Carl and Brett sitting with a troupe of model sorts—six-footers, to use Carl’s term—all combed hair and vapid smiles; he tipped a flute toward their table: courteously returned. “Ah, thank God,” murmured Liza, removing her white sweater to reveal a backless, sleeveless black thing, more sash than shirt, incredibly bare in fact, kind of cancan dancer/dominatrix with suggestive straps. Had she been tanning? Or was it makeup? The molded shoulders and lithe ridges at the collarbone looked touched with gold radiance, brushed by strays from the upswept mane: she was someone’s mistress at St. Tropez, discerning, young, pampered; bought. “I don’t want to be hung-over for tomorrow, but, ah!” Lifting a brazen arm to sip cheerily at her champagne, the square diamond on its middle finger winking liquid lights. “Isn’t this going to be so much fun?”

Yes, one would think so. Matt finished his glass, filled it from the bottle in the bucket beside. It will be. Only—why should that evil bitch have spoiled it? She merely agreed with you anyway, Dwight’s a tool, Who Is He—well, but who are you, missy? Just because you have gobs of money? Your parents’ money, stacked in some bank depository, in the dream storehouse, where malicious, acquisitive, you count up your coins? “Who’s that girl Dahlia?” Matt blurted out, slurry.

“Dahlia?! She’s—I knew her at Spence.” Liza fixed her attention on her beaded purse, drawing out her new slim silver cigarette case. “Here,” she urged, practically pushing one in his lips.

“But who is she?”

“Why, do you like her?” Unsmiling as she lit his and hers.

“No! Hardly. Rather, I dislike her.” He reached for the bottle.

“She’s pretty…” mused Liza, shrugging one globe of a shoulder.

Matt snorted. “The girl looks like a Muppet.” Did he say that? Ouch.

But “Heu heu heu,” Liza chortled. “Good.” She reached out a cold hand to his forearm. “You scared me there a second.”

“Really? Why?”

“Ohhh, no reason.” She lolled farther, dropping an arm behind the chair’s back. Her smoking fingers neared and departed from her lips; smirking guiltily, she raised one hay-colored eyebrow. “No reason at all.” Setting her chin on a palm, she flicked her cig shyly at the ashtray. The table was shaking: she was kicking a restless boot. “Or—maybe I’ll tell you later, if you really can’t guess. Anyway, let’s forget about Dahlia, and Peter, and—oh my God! David Breck.” A spectral blue beam had shot up from the table. “He’s calling me. Right now.”

“Don’t you want to get that?!”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, might be important. Jeez, Liza, get it already, he’ll hang up.”

She looked over at him queerly, then fussed over the keypad and delivered her customary morose, “Hello?”

Matt examined Carl and Brett at their table across the way: but stop, stop staring. He investigated the birch branch hanging beside and over his head, lifted an itchy finger to peel at its papery scales. No, she was saying, no way. That’s really weird. I’ll ask him. “Matt?” she said, holding her hand over the phone. “Dwight’s feeling really weird, they don’t know what’s wrong with him, he—”

So. Here we go. “Tell him to throw up,” Matt advised, mouth numb with cold champagne tucked under his tongue. “Can happen to anyone, bad reaction to dopamine, it has to do with your enzymes and your serotonin, how the transmitters…” blah blah blah, the stuff Jonathan had tried on Jason. No point in being sorry now. He’s going to throw up a lung, be fine in the morning. “Happens all the time. Too bad. I’m sorry.”

“O-kay,” she murmured, defensive. Brows knit. Hesitating an instant, as if to say more before uncovering the mouthpiece, bending in to give out this diagnosis.

What’s the big deal, really. So he’ll toss his dinner.

—But: Dwight in his stupid boat shoes, his mediocre Gap jeans! Why didn’t we see he’s not in their league? Plain, in plain sight, yet never spotted it till now: so caught up in our own brainish fantasies, making him out to be a captain of the planet! To think of poor Dwight—earnest, a naïf from nowhere, when you really thought of it—oh, all of his dogged confidence exposed to their scorn, to that Dahlia-girl’s pointing finger, hideous laughing. And they roped you in, complicit in making fun of him too. There by the bar effectively you mocked right along, with a more extreme cadre of snobs: when Dwight might even have believed we were on good terms now. And you on your high horse, dealing a blow for all loserkind? Look in the mirror, pal. Ugh, that horrible mirror-kiss! You make me sick.

“That’s weird,” concluded Liza, pressing the hangup button. “Isn’t it?”

“Not really. Trust Dwight.” Matt shrugged, impassive, keeping his gaze locked to the back of a brunette at Carl and Brett’s table. She had just turned eagerly to a man bowed over her. The guy, topped by a fringe of blond poodle curls, was staring down on her, bemused, one muscled arm extended to grip the back of her chair as if to impress her with his health, youth—ugh, just check yourself in to some foul motel. Just fuck and get it over with. Fuck porno-style, leave lipstick stains all over the pillow, and forget each other’s names in the morning: that’s all you want, right? “Some guys shouldn’t do drugs,” he sighed, not checking to see if he’d ashed in the tray.

“But why just Dwight. I mean, all these times of doing Ecstasy, I’ve never even heard of someone at Cinema…”

He turned to fix her with a vicious glare. “Happens all the time. Happened to Jason a few weeks ago, actually. And Marco.”

“Really?” Now her cat’s eyes narrowed. “Mm. I didn’t hear that. But they don’t, don’t have a problem taking Ecstasy.”

And could she have heard about the Doves from Marco? Through Jeremy? Please tell me there hasn’t been some thaw in their Cold War. “Maybe it was a bad hit,” he backpedaled. “That happens too, you know. Jonathan’s getting sloppy. Did I tell you he’s thinking of leaving? Did I tell you he’s Canadian? Have you ever noticed how much he says eh? It’s really crazy.”

She laughed. “All right, Matt. Have it your way.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she purred, drawing close and taking his face in both cold hands, lavishing it with a gaze that was tenderly solicitous to his lips, his brow, the side of his cheek, “don’t you think I know you by now? Enough to tell when something’s up?” Suddenly she looked him right in the eyes and burst out into a sunset-at-the-end-of-a-highway smile. “All right?”

She was lovely. Her eyes liquid, searching. Radiant—it was the look from that first night at her place, the look that ravished him, offering herself, open, in a chalice…“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he got out, in the crushed, salivary voice of drunk-boy, his jaws mallow-soft.

“Have it your way!” she jeered, twining bare arms across her breasts. “Here,” she shot out, refilling their glasses with a careless hand, plonking the bottle scornfully back in the silver bucket. Now she rested her flute against the flushed lips. “Not like I even know how, exactly. Whatever. But I wish you would trust”—she cocked her head, peering down at him out of doe-lashed eyes—“I’m on your side.” Her whole face again turned instantly, impossibly dazzling as she bounced slightly on the chair and brought her smooth brow toward his. “Okay?” Now her hand mapped over his right knee, squeezed…wheeeee. Her hand on his knee was a jellyfish.

“Okay.”

She fired up a new smoke, slinking down ever so slightly and curving it into her chest. Lit, she blew, while looking around the room: then whirled upon him with a shrewd smile. “Does Sophie know about this?”

He coughed. “N-no, and you can’t, can’t, absolutely, tell—”

She razed the ceiling with a triumphant glare. “I’m not going to tell her, Matt. Besides, uhhh…I don’t think she likes me very much. Oh!” She laid bronze fingers over the insubordinate lips already curled in a smile, stagey, as if the matter she’d slipped were an irresistible in-joke of theirs. “Um. That’s not what I meant. Oh, Matt.” Suddenly, urgently, she enclosed him in a delirious hug: one perfect round breast pressed between them like Eve’s gold apple. She lifted her mouth to whisper, “It’ll be our secret.”

It went through him like a wire, convulsing him tight. Secret, in her husky breath, secret, by his neck…could she just perhaps say it again? He wanted to catch the gas of her words in a bottle, lift it to his nose and sniff at whim. Our secret.

“But what Sophie maybe doesn’t understand,” one hand was rubbing in a scoop of his back, “which I do, is that sometimes—it’s natural. There are things we have to do, and they’re Not Al-ways Good.” Tapping a finger on his shoulder. “You and I—listen. I know you. And I know me. Mm. Can I tell you a secret? Since you’ve told me yours?”

“Tell away,” he managed to say, lips accidentally brushing the skin at her nape. Oh my God. “S-sorry.” But so smooth, and the sound of his voice—low and intimate, so man-and-woman, here in the little space between her flesh hugging his.

“It’s okay,” she gasped, nestling deeper in his neck. “So—oh, I can’t,” she insisted, burying her brow into his chest. “No, I have to. I’ve been wanting to say—and now I’ve got you all excited. Okay. What I was going to tell you before. My reason. About: being scared. When you were asking me about Dahlia. Can I tell you?”

Might have nodded, might have shuddered—

“Because it seemed like maybe you liked her. But the thing is: I want you for myself. Right now, I want to take you back to my place and do very, very bad things to you.” The lobe of his left ear: cinched in the tines of her teeth, quick. “And by bad, ah, Matt, I mean good. You have no idea.”

No idea. No sense—no thought to catch at: a door ruptured open on a black hole, an impossible world where, perverse, everything turned opposite-day, inside-out. And something in him had burst: tears surged up to his eyes, there was a flooding in his windpipe. “You don’t mean that, Liza.” It came out like a sob from the broken trapdoor of his mouth.

“Why not?” she mused, one hand creeping up his pants leg toward the plane of his penis, which had lifted, stiff…“I’ve always wanted you. Aha.” Her slender hand had closed over him. “I can see you want me too.”

He shut his eyes—the room was an ocean of voices and tinkling, and above must be the birch leaves, yes, still quivering, in benediction of, what? spring? the Rite of Spring! The clash and cymbals of it, this room, this city wherever anyone, anyone was not sleeping, in a bar, a bedroom, all arrows pointed here, to this paragon of hot, premier, top-shelf; everything wanted him to take her back to Mercer, throw her down on the bed in her loft. What else was it all for? What man, Carl, Brett, the guy with poodle curls, would not do that? But how had he tricked her, how could she possibly think—⁵⁷

“Sssh. It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. We don’t have to say a word, all night.”

All night. Well. All right. Okay. All night. Thinking ahead. Nice touch. That’s good. Holy mother of—

“Come on,” she whispered by his ear—then brusquely, standing, grabbing his hand on the table, turned all business as she nipped up her purse and sweater, commanded, “Let’s get out of here.” Hoarse. Not even looking at him, as she placed her silver case into her small purse and zipped it.

He was on his feet, shaky, his heart whirring wild, a mechanical bird spurred out of control. The doorman nodded; Matt forced on a mask of grim sobriety, nodded back. Ciao, he graze-kissed the girl at the ropes. All the time trying to keep up with Liza, on her high boots speeding forward, she knew exactly where she was going—

“Let’s get a cab,” she said, breathless. Dear Lord, of all the luck, the girl can stop a cab in the Arctic. He slid in after her. She called out her address, added “sir,” the sort of surly “sir” that doesn’t mean “sir” at all.

The car shot into the avenue and tore off, throbbing beneath him.

She was staring at him, biting her lip, her rosy, cherubic lip. Jesus, was anyone ever so alive, burst open as a ripe fruit, brimming—aaah! Her hand was tucked over his. Think quickly. Think quickly. Is this what you want? Is this really what you want? But she liked him! She chose him! To leap into that saddle—intended for others, for kids like Scott Belfast?

God, no: she had his fingers to her lips and blew on them, and blew a tiny hurricane; he like a house was rising up, all its terrified windows alight…. Now she kissed, each press planting mines, each press infecting him. He squeezed shut his eyes. Over, it’s done, you’ve made up your mind. Haven’t you wanted this all this time? Or won’t you always wonder: a woman like her? You’re going to be grizzled in your invalid bed and remember such incomparable flesh; toothless, you’ll be laughing, clapping your wrinkled hands. Bed. I bet she’s very very good there; wild-woman—You have no idea.

“Matt,” she moaned. He flashed open his eyes: in the taxi, shuttling headlong beneath streetlights, the space was silver-edged black, a celluloid filmstrip coming undone into black-and-white frames hurtling across a screen at breakneck pace. Her white face, her hair full of light above the high-necked black coat, kept lunging closer at him whenever, strobish, the car flared bright. “Matt” now she had swallowed the space between them and was at him, arms clasped around his back, fingers stiff as basket weave up along his nape. And now she dipped, dipped; evidently her rose lips found something here, in his open neck, at the upraised ridge of his collarbone, enough to their liking that they wanted a sip—

He threw his head into the vinyl seat, while the car, like a wire, pulled him deeper away. High through the rear window, a round full moon hovered over those grainy streets of Alphabet City. So pure, casting wavy oceans of milk into the relentless black sky! It was a wise face, a face infinitely patient, trained down right on him, seeing.

And now as they hurtled east they were heading toward someone else too: Sophie, sleeping, no doubt, mouth open in that adorable fishy way of hers as she breathed her clear breath all over the pillow…. He hurled his head forward and gasped. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I know. It’s just—Sophie—”⁵⁸

“Oh, Matt,” she began. “Listen—just listen to me—”

But there was nothing to listen to. Nothing forthcoming from her mouth but fulgurant peacock flashes, emerald-and-sapphire-dusted brushes along his neck, in the hollow below his ear—nothing but the nixieish lure of watery sinkings; now his lobe had descended, ah, now even half the span of his index finger went, sucked in without warning. And in the place of words, as at the beginning of the world, before the humans detached themselves from the beasts and rutted in a fusty cave, another kind of logic was supplied as, dumb-show, silent like mimes, she drew his hand toward her and laid it beneath silk straps on a mound of succulent and melting snow. Would anything he’d touch in his life resemble this precious treasure-door breast again? God, smooth and so cool, a drink of water beneath his burning palm.

The lights were bright outside her building at Mercer. Brilliant in the lobby where from behind his marble-topped desk the doorman nodded at them, incurious—and what would there have been to suspect here unless perhaps the man had caught the tinkle of her laugh, the flash of her white hand as she grabbed Matt’s to skip up the last couple of steps, whisk him round the corner? Onto the luxurious Persian carpet running the length of a corridor studded on both sides with mysterious doors. “Oh, Matt,” she repeated once more, as if those were the only words left to say in this world. Snatches of her tawny hair—when had she taken it down?—splayed over his neck, reaching into the open collar of his shirt as she pressed hot mouth to the side of his head, with both hands wrenched his ass so he fell against the enchanted delta of her pelvis…a fabulous delta, lush greenery, jewel-eyed tigers peering at him out of awesome, palm-shaded depths.

“Are you okay?” she wanted to know when she had sat him on the leather couch, laid her long, jeaned legs crosswise over his trembling lap. “Does this feel…okay?” Perhaps it did? Or was it more like red-hot lashes against the side of his neck? “Don’t be nervous,” she felt the need to command him, as her fingers worked at the silver square that appeared to be his belt buckle, “it’s going to be just fine. Mm, I take that back,” she decided, lowering her head shyly by his ear.

“You do?” At last reaching his hands up to meet around her sinuous—God, yes, it was backless, this shirt; warm skin pressed against his palms.

“It’s going to be much. Much. Better than that.”