You won’t know who is who, or why any of this is happening; and the formatting is a bit off, and I haven’t italicized where appropriate…but there’s gratuitous sex and drugs.  So read it if you want to…

      Three shots, maybe four, and then . . . what? All Jake knows is that he’s outside now, walking through the near-empty commons, past a boisterous snarl of shabbily-dressed, fatly-dredded teens—trying to focus, concentrating on the pavement . . . and then, reaching York Road, he’s turning right, crossing the street in front of Eastern Mountain Sports—a blinking outline of green light surrounding the shop’s sign serving as a compass—with Matt beside him on his left, swaying lightly.  “So?” Matt is asking. “I mean, Christ, I’m married, right?”

      Jake tries to remember what they’ve been talking about, but all he can come up with when he thinks back over the last few minutes is a litany of names: Samantha, Michelle, Kennedy . . . Jake.  “A lot of people are married,” he ventures, reaching a hand out to grab a cement section of wall.

      “Well, it’s flattering, anyway,” Matt says.

      Jake grabs Matt’s arm, focuses.  “Samantha,” he says firmly, “is a fucking idiot.  A fucking idiot and a Shinto.  You don’t want to get into anything with a Shinto, Matt, trust me.  Shintos are under no pressure to act within the parameters of Judeo-Christian ethics—parameters, I should add, that we westerners have spent years carving out to protect ourselves from the fucking barbarians.” He hesitates, thinking.  “Michelle seems okay, though.” He lets go of Matt’s arm, feeling surprisingly steady now.  “I mean, if you can get past the sound effects.”

      Matt shrugs.  “They both seem okay to me.”

      “Sure.  But your standards are all skewed.  Marriage does that to you, you know—robs you of your ability to gauge your own commodity value. Speaking of which,” Jake pokes Matt’s chest, “What did you say to Rachel?  When you called?” It occurs to him he hadn’t yet asked this, and he’s suddenly curious. 

      “What do you mean?  I told her I’d be home later.”

      Jake smiles.  “Uh-huh.”

      “Seriously.”

      “And she didn’t ask why you’d be home later?” He tries to seem incredulous.  “So how does that work, exactly?  She asks, ‘where will you be, Matt?’ and you tell her, ‘Oh, I don’t know, drinking and doing drugs with Jake and some really fucked-up girls—but don’t worry honey, because I only love you‘?”

      “Except in my version the girls also happen to be nuns,” he says.

      Jake looks around, tries to get his bearings.  “What are we doing out here, anyway?”

      Matt taps his shirt pocket.  “Smokes.”

      “Right.”

      “Sky seems really nice,” he says matter-of-factly.  “Pretty girl.”

      Jake winks.  “Not a fucking Shinto, either”—

      —And then they’re walking again, briskly now, Jake shoving his hands into the pockets of his khakis, Matt whistling the tune to some commercial that Jake can’t quite place—until after a few moments (“my nipples ache,” Jake finds himself saying) they’re standing in front of Angel’s Grotto, a small, lacquer-wood pub tucked between a lingerie shop and the Indian take-out place which flavors the air with curry and saffron.  Matt is standing inside the doorway—a short, ramped hall at the top of which sits the cigarette machine—fumbling through his wallet.

      “All I have is a twenty,” he frowns, holding the bill out to show Jake.

      “Give it,” Jake says, snatching it and moving toward the bar—a long high rectangle fronted with thick-cushioned stools, a copper foot rail.  He leans in, putting the twenty on the counter.  “Charlie,” he calls—a little too loudly, maybe.  “Bring your happy-go-lucky self over here, why don’t ya’.”

      Charlie pats his tie and begins a slow trudge toward them. “Jake,” he nods, leaning against the rail and eyeing Jake skeptically. “You look stunning.”

      “‘S because I’m in the bloom of my manhood, Charlie,” Jake tells him.

      But Charlie is looking at Matt.  “You do this to him?”—a nod toward Jake.

      “Self-inflicted wounds,” Matt assures him.

      “Um-hm.”

      “Fuggoff, the both of you,” Jake says, waving his hand.  “Two Lite draughts and change for the cigarette machine please, Charles.” He picks up the twenty and slides it over to Charlie, who rolls his eyes conspicuously.  He plucks two glasses from a stack on top of one of the coolers and turns, shaking his head. “I’m the one who needs a drink, you know,” he calls over his shoulder.

      When they’d finished their beers (“G’night, ladies”—a Charlie signature salutation following them out the door) Jake’d left a couple of bucks on the bar, rocked to his feet, found himself all at once standing on the sidewalk, his shoulders hunched, squinting at the sickly yellow glow of a six foot Subway Sandwich sign.  Matt follows him out a moment later, stuffing a couple packs of Camel lights into his pockets.  Jake tries frowning, thinks this might be the thing to do, but his mouth wants only to hang slack. “No more tequila,” he says, shivering. He scrutinizes Matt’s face, which seems bony in this light.

      “You’re call,” Matt says.  “You’re buying, remember?”

      But Jake is barely listening. He has a strange urge to hear his own voice, to emit sound, to fill this cold night air with a part of himself he can actually see.  “You know,” he says, putting his arm around Matt’s shoulder. “You can tune a piano, but you can’t tune-a-fish.”       His words bump against the chill air, steam into being, and then, seconds later, disappear behind what’s left of Matt’s tired, Cheshire smile.

*****

      By the time they get back to Paolo’s, somebody has managed to snatch another two tables and add them to the already crooked block at odd, troublesome angles, leaving a few small gaps along the surface of what has become a kind of long, crude conference table. The crowd in the bar has thinned a bit, but the people Jake recognizes—a fluid collection of heads, loose shoulders, white flashes of hand and neck in nappy wools, cream silks, starched and creased cottons edged under plastic light in a diffuse, yellow glow—have become too indistinct to make sense of all at once. Damien is sipping a martini in the corner; Summer is yapping away to Avery and Sky.  No Ogie, he doesn’t think.  Stuart and Angela, maybe?  Molly? 

      “Jacob!  Matthew!  Where have you guys been?” This in a sort of piercing whine which slurs delicately at its tail.  Samantha, naturally, is the first to spot them, her eyes a pair of rough black smears.  She waves them over with a wildly flapping hand, which Jake vaguely imagines snapping off at the wrist, landing in somebody’s Irish Coffee, bobbing stupidly in the whipped cream like some exotic Asian garnish.  “Come, sit.”

      Somehow they both end up in the center of the long stretch of table. Matt, who sits between Samantha and Sky, leans across the berth of glasses, hands Jake a pack of cigarettes. Jake has settled in between Kennedy (“Bloom! I thought you went home to change your shirt!”) and Dargie—who is chewing bits of ice she’s sprinkled with sugar from a soggy white packet. 

      They seem to have stumbled into a fairly heated conversation, and a few moments go by before Jake asks, quietly, “Anybody seen my lighter?” Kennedy is rocking forward now, gesturing to somebody with an accusatory wag of his finger.  “That’s not a philosophy either.  It’s a dogma.  And,” he pauses, picks up his martini, “and, it’s completely prescriptive anyway.”

      “You’re nitpicking,” someone says, rapping the table. It comes from Jake’s left, but he doesn’t look over.  Trey, maybe, but he can’t be sure.

      Without making eye contact, Sky passes Jake the Zippo, begins stabbing at the air with a lit cigarette.  “Okay,” she says, fixing her eyes on Kennedy and shifting her weight forward in the chair.  “Here’s an example.  Say I believe purely in theory, that to be happy means—for me—following every conceivable impulse—”

      “No, dear,” Con says quickly, “because as soon as you say, ‘for me,’ you’re limiting the scope of inquiry to personal choice—”

      “So what?” Avery demands.  “What, a philosophy can’t be purely personal all of a sudden?  What’s yoga, then?”

      “Exactly,” Clarence—sitting to Samantha’s left——is nodding, his lids heavy and purplish.

      Samantha looks at him suspiciously.  “Wait a second, wait a second,” she says, turning back to Sky.  Matt leans back out of the way, blinking.  “I thought we said a philosophy has to be like, a general plan of action.” She looks worried.  “Or am I missing something?”

      “A tan, maybe,” Con yawns.  “And breasts, of course.”

      But Sky is nodding anxiously, begins talking over him, her brows bunched into what looks to Jake like a thin mustache above her eyes, framing them a fierce and deep brown.  “Right,” she says, waving the cigarette like a lit baton at Samantha.  “That’s what I’m saying, though.  If you reduce a general plan of action down to its smallest, I don’t know . . . kernel, it’s always personal in practice.” She glances at Con.  “D’you see what I mean? And stop being such a prick.”

      Con shrugs, unmoved.

      “But Sky,” Kennedy says, smiling, patient.  “What you do is what you do—I agree—but what you do, I’d have to argue, is always only an action. And action alone is not philosophy, it’s performance. What I’m suggesting is that actions precede philosophies, that philosophies, in fact, are invented for the purposes of justifying action.” He leans back, shrugs.  “Of course, all this could just be the olives talking, so take if for what it’s worth.”

      “What about something like Christianity,” Matt asks, looking around hopefully.  Jake sits up, surprised at Matt’s boldness, and half-alert blows out a thin trail of smoke.  He tries to concentrate, but all he keeps thinking is, why aren’t these people completely shitfaced?  His head is beginning to throb.  “I mean,” Matt is holding out both palms, Buddha-like, “I can see your point about satisfying an impulse, right?——the need for first causes, something like that, that’s what you mean by performance, correct?” He shrugs.  “Still, that doesn’t account for the particulars of the belief, I don’t think?  I mean, no one is born knowing who Jesus is, for instance. Which means that the practice maybe is prescriptive and dogmatic, but the principles themselves make up the actual ideology—”

      “Why Jesus, though?” Dargie asks, slurring this through a mouthful of ice.

      “—It doesn’t have to be Jesus necessarily,” Matt leans forward.  “Could be a cow, or a crayon, for all I care. What I’m saying is, the impulse that generated the belief is not the same as the belief in this case” (he turns to Kennedy) “but something more abstract, like a set of propositions, say, that at one point at least needed to be carefully and systematically constructed.  I mean Christ, it’s pretty elaborate stuff, right? And I think you’re right in one respect—to most people it is purely prescriptive and dogmatic—but I’d argue that as incidental.  The point is, it started off as a philosophy.  A theological one, sure, but the philosophy preceded the action. . . I don’t know.” He shakes his head, pulls out a cigarette.

      “And,” Sky says, punching him lightly on the arm. “it’s supposed to be personal in practice.  Every thing else is incidental, exactly.” She smiles.  “Somebody buy the poet a Bellini.”

      “What a tremendous load of shit,” Jake hears himself say.  “Crayons?  Is that what I heard him say?  Crayons?”

      Silence.  Sky looks at him carefully, exhales.

      “And don’t forget cows,” Matt reminds him after a moment, tapping a cigarette on the table.

      “You’re all drunk,” Con says, scanning the length of the table. “But don’t despair.  Just means that the world is now your oyster.” He scratches a hefty chin.  “Shuck it.”

      “I don’t know about y’all, but I’m feeling good.” Clarence, leaning back, is cradling his hands together behind his neck. Then—”Where’d Desdemona get to?” This he asks . . . Jake can’t say for sure.  The ceiling, maybe.

      Kennedy shrugs, picks up a half-empty martini glass.  “I don’t think you can say that Christianity is a pure philosophy,” he tells Matt. “I still think the action—belief, in this case, or maybe a desire to believe——precedes and justifies the principles.  In fact, I happen to think real philosophy ends where metaphysics begins.”

      “Truly edifying,” Damien snorts.  “But I didn’t come out tonight to hear about Jesus. Or cows, either—unless you cut one up and stick it on the end of my fork.”

      “Yeah, can we change the subject?” Summer says, tilting her head.  “It’s too cerebral for a Thursday.  I just want to relax tonight.”

      Trey is standing. “We’re gonna head out now, get some things ready,” he says, yawning. To this Dargie, hoisting herself out of her chair, adds, “Listen.  If anybody urinates on the carpet I swear I’ll find out who did it and I’ll be forced to, you know, hurt that person.  Very badly.” She rubs Jake’s shoulder.  “Make sure everybody pees before they leave here, would you?  For me?”

      Jake raises a thumb slowly.

      “Maybe we can watch MTV later, Summer,” Avery rolls her eyes.

      Summer fakes a laugh, stiffens. “Why Avery,” she tries to sound dignified. “Perhaps you should lick me.”

      “Summer’s right,” Kennedy decides.  “Shallow, maybe, but essentially on the money for once.  Time for me to fly, as the song goes”——he points to Damien—

“—REO Speedwagon,” Damien says quickly, “year, uh . . . fuck.  Year indeterminable.”

      “You’re slipping,” Kennedy says.  He smiles over at Matt.  “Philosophy, though.  To be continued.” He stands, stretches, arches his back.  “You all head over, and I’ll meet up with you after I deal with Kip,” he says, peering up toward the bar.  He slides out behind Clarence, who Jake believes might actually be sniffing a piece of bread.

      “We’re going to do a couple of shooters first, I think”—Summer looks hopefully over to Damien, who holds up his martini—”so we can catch up with you guys.  But we’ll be there in, what? half an hour?  Maybe sooner?”

      “Matt can get a ride with me,” Samantha says, hooking her pale elbow around his arm.

      Con moans. “Oh Christ, Mandi.  Leave the poor guy alone, would you please?  He’s married. Between you and Michelle there you’re liable to totally soil him.” He thrusts his chin up at Dargie and Trey, who wave from the door.

      “Fuggoff,” Michelle sings, flipping her purse over her shoulder.

      Matt seems distracted, Jake thinks, but Samantha either doesn’t notice this or doesn’t care.  “I’m giving him a ride, Conrad.  Not a blow job.”

      Sky is on her feet now, too, stabbing the nub of her cigarette into a chewed lemon wedge. 

      “I’ve got Sky for a little while, Jake,” Avery climbs to her feet, sticks her tongue out at him.  “You go with Con and Clarence.”

      Jake looks at Sky, who just shrugs.

*****

      The house sits nestled between a small lot of willow trees and a second house that looks remarkably similar to Dargie and Trey’s.  The yard itself is cordoned off by a small wooden fence covered with ivy, loose knotty-green shrubs, a layer or two of old weatherproofing stain the color of burnt clay.  A porch light burns orange-yellow, and Jake can make out a handful of citronella candles flickering sidewise whenever a breeze, cold at this hour, sweeps in under the overhang—a tin, corrugated slant of pale blue showing flecks of maturing rust around the brackets and along the lip of the gutter.

      Con has parked his Saab a few houses up, stands waiting now with his fists jammed against his hips, tapping his foot rhythmically as he watches Clarence struggle to drag his bulk out of the low-slung front seat.  “You ought to think about maybe broiling your chicken,” he says. 

      Clarence stands up, stretches, then reaches down to fix a cuff, which has slipped up over a thick brown boot. “Tell you what, Colonel. How ‘bout I broil that big pink ass of yours, stuff it between some bread,” he says. “Slather on some mayonnaise, some Tabasco”– he looks to Jake. “You know how us niggers love that spicy shit.”

      But Jake has already moved toward the house, shuffling almost, wondering how the hell he got here.  He looks around for some cars he might recognize, then it occurs to him that he wouldn’t recognize any of them anyway—and besides, the street itself is poorly lit, a thin twist of suburban blacktop lined sporadically with snub-nosed sedans and a few boxy SUVs, though he can’t make out the models, and certainly not the colors.  He turns back, decides to wait for Con and Clarence, passes the time by biting at the inside of his lip.  Somebody should put another streetlight here, he’s thinking, or at least some stronger bulbs.

      “Candles,” Con notes, rubbing his head with a fleshy palm.  “Dargie uses them like breadcrumbs.” He pushes Clarence gently from behind.

      “Don’t start up with that fairytale bullshit,” Clarence says.  “People of color are always getting’ fucked up in those stories.”

      “There are no people of color in fairytales, you spook. That’s the point.  Some frogs, maybe. The occasional lion or donkey.  But other than that everybody’s as white as a queen’s ass–”

      “The Gingerbread Man,” Clarence reminds him, “was a man of color.  And you remember what happened to that little brown brother, don’t you?”

      “Whatever,” Con is moving forward.  “To the witches’ house.  And hey”–he wags a long finger at Jake–“If the oven is open, whatever you do, don’t peak in.”

      Inside, which they’ve entered through an open screen door off the patio, Jake feels wobbly, a little top-heavy, even.  A thin slit of white light burns the bottom outline of a bathroom door, but the rest of the house is a disarming flicker of deep oranges and pale, scented yellows.  They’ve entered into the kitchen, the recess of which is near black, but Jake can make out the bright green glow of a digital clock, maybe from a microwave, though he can’t read the time.  Fake Tiki lamps glow at regular intervals on the side walls, which seem textured, dappled with shadow—though not stucco, no; something less abrasive, sanded in spots, the look of pulverized rock peppered with small chunks of rough stone. 

      Con walks through the hallway quickly, the sure stride of muscle memory propelling him through clearings between end tables, around sofas bumped against walls, and over a rope of cord and the beveled metal lip of a carpet’s edging. Clarence follows easily enough, though he appears a bit unsteady, his hip brushing lightly against the sharp corner of a TV set.  Behind them, Jake is taking it slow, trying to adjust to tricks of the light, avoiding swooping shadows with the same care he takes avoiding the bulk of wooden furniture.  He can see a staircase now, leading down, more Tiki lamps sloping at a strong angle, throwing shadows against the ceiling which look to Jake like the cooler tendrils of a long, slow-burning flame.  Con is moving fluidly down the stairs, Clarence right behind him, and Jake can make out a stir of voices, then Samantha’s wild chuckle, which somehow fleshes out this maze and allows him, finally, to exhale . . .

      They’d stopped at a 7-11 on the way here, Clarence insisting he needed a hank of beef jerky and a Big Gulp.  Jake is trying to guess who had beaten them here, but he can’t seem to remember who left the bar with whom—or even who remained by the time they’d all split up, for that matter.  He reaches the stairs, presses a hand against one of the walls (papered) and starts down, his weight carrying him forward rapidly until he forces himself to slow down, concentrate, rattle off a list in his head, Sky, Kennedy, Samantha, Michelle, Avery . . . Matt.

      Con peeks his head around the corner of the stairs, squints up at Jake.  “Picnic basket’s here,” he says, thrusting out an arm.  “What do you like, chicken, peanut butter, what?”

      Jake half-stumbles down the next few steps.  “Mom always packed two plums,” he says, smoothing down his shirt.  “And one of those juices that comes in a box.”

      Sliding into the room, Jake finds a space on the couch, a rose-red velveteen L that butts up against a low, polished oak table holding a Chianti bottle with a candle jabbed crookedly into its mouth.  He looks around, mutters a few staccato hellos, then sinks his head back, rests it against the wall for a moment.  Samantha lopes over, drops next to him, rests a heavy head on his shoulder.  “Take me away from all this, Jacob,” she sighs.

      Jake closes his eyes, tries patting her knee, finds a lank thigh, instead.  “Mandi, dear,” he tells her, “You are all this.”

      “I know, I know.” She gives him a peck on the neck and sits up.  “It’s tragic, isn’t it?”

      “Pathetic, I think you mean.  Technically speaking, you don’t have the pedigree for tragedy, Samantha.” He opens his eyes, fixes them on her face.  “Unless of course you’re royalty.”

      “As a matter of fact I am royalty, Jake. Tonight I’m a princess. And you are supposed to leave a girl her fantasies.” Her smile widens, but she’s no longer looking at him.  “Okay?”

      “Sure,” he closes his eyes again.  “Sorry.  Be a fucking queen, if you want to.”

      –“Oh, what’s the difference,” Con is saying.  “Just pour it into something.  And break out those caps already, would you?  I’m starting to see the pores in your face.”

      In a few moments Jake can feel Samantha move off the couch, can hear the music rise and fall, can sense people sit, shift, stand.  He is thinking about the first time he did shrooms, with Molly and a kid named . . . Edgar?  Wait. Does he even know an Edgar? Evan, maybe?  Molly insisted the marker drawings she was scratching out on the blank back of a large homecoming banner were actually talking to her (“I don’t hear them, Mol.  Seriously, I’d tell you if I did.”), but he hadn’t felt anything, really—just noticed a slight hiccup in his vision from time to time, a crinkle flashing across one of the walls, a deep orange glaze settling over everything.  Mostly, though, he sat on the couch and drank beers from wet, aluminum cans, watched some talk show with the sound turned down. He hadn’t done mushrooms since then, he doesn’t think, but to be honest he’s having trouble remembering anything right now; his head feels like it’s filled with some kind of cream soup—asparagus, maybe. 

      “Two caps,” somebody says.  Jake realizes his eyes are closed, opens them, confused.  “Two caps,” he hears again.  But when he looks up, a hand—wait, a hand?—is whispering this to him, and Jake is thinking, well this can’t be right. He shakes his head, tries to smile, doesn’t know if he’s brought it off.  He looks up again, this time settling his eyes on a tall lank silhouette poking long-necked out of a loose, cotton T-shirt, the head atop it a bowl of thick unkempt curls, possibly brown.  “Hold out your hand.”

      Jake obeys, and Kip drops two meaty mushroom caps into his palm.  “Kip,” the silhouette offers.  “You can’t tell right now, but I swear I’m smiling in a friendly, pleased-to-meet-you kind of way.”

      “Jacob Bloom,” Jake tells him.  He looks down into his hand, blinks twice.  “Thanks.  But I think I ordered the pepperoni.”

      “Psychedelic pork, huh?” Kip rubs his head.  “No promises, but I’ll see what I can do”–and then he glides away.

      In a moment, Avery slides in next to Jake, pressing her thigh against his leg, and pulls his fingers open.  “Nice,” she says, looking at the feathery spread of the caps. “Look at these puny pieces of shit.” She holds out her hand, frowning. “I don’t think Kip likes me all that much.”

      “We can trade if you want,” Jake says.  But he’s thinking, I wonder what she smells like, I mean really smells like–her scent, her musk . . . He imagines his head buried in her lap.  But then–

      “Keep ‘em,” she says, shaking her head. “Luck of the draw, right?”

      “S’pose so.” He shrugs.

      She stands up suddenly, stretches.  “It’s okay, anyway,” she says, her eyes closed.  “There’s a rumor floating around about dessert. Amsterdam spice cakes.” Rubbing her stomach, “Must save room.”

      “Whatever,” Jake puts his head back.  “If you see Sky, tell her I’m here. Though I’m not so sure I can prove it at this point.”

      Avery takes a deep breath, looks over the room, which Jake can sense is taking on an energy he’s unaccustomed to, alive, yet jaded somehow—a kind of electrical yawn.  “You know what Kennedy says?” she asks, dropping her eyes on him.

      “Something profound, I’m sure.”

      “He says the best way to find Sky is to keep your eyes turned up.”

      “Would make a nice bumper sticker,” Jake says, fighting to keep his eyes open.

      She shrugs.  “Yeah.  It sounds corny, I know, but when you get really high, everything seems deep.”

      “Here,” Clarence appears, shoving a white plastic cup in Avery’s hand.  He looks down at Jake, scrutinizes him.  “You don’t keep it going you’re gonna hit the wall soon,” he tells him.  He hands Jake a cup, which Jake pulls to his nose, sniffs.

      “Umm.  Licorice.  My favorite.”

      “‘Buca.  A liquor with a kicker.”

      Jake tries to smile, looks at Avery, who’s already drained her cup and is now wincing, blinking wildly. To Clarence he says, “Liquor?  I hardly know her.”

      Clarence’s mouth slides open into a thick smile.  “Now you’re speaking truth, boy.” He motions with his cup to Jake.  “Ain’t nothing to it but to do it.”

      “Remind me to ask you later about this habit you have of rhyming all the time,” Jake says.  He takes a final look at his cup, peers inside, watches cross-eyed the thick liquid gathering into a cloudy point as it glides toward the lip of the cup, before—bingo! There it is.  The liquid cruises down his gullet like iced oil.  “To the Valdez,” he holds up the empty cup with difficulty.

      Clarence looks thoughtful, “Alright, then.  Why not.”

      He hears Sky’s voice, zeroes in on the direction, but between the dim light, the play of shadow, and his own slippery perception all he can make out is motion, traces of bodies which seem to appear, disappear, and then reappear suddenly in different positions, giving the whole room the feel of some elaborate puppet show.  Michelle passes through a clear zone in his vision looking wan, addled—her blond hair stringy and hanging forward over most of her face.  Summer passes in and out of his line of sight, stopping to blow him a kiss, pulling Clarence—who’s been frozen on Jake’s left—by the arm.  “ . . . the cow goes Moooooooooo . . . “ she tells him as they glide bumpily away.

      Jake remembers something, looks down into his palm, blinks at the two large caps.  “Is there, like, an etiquette to this?” he calls out.

      A hand rubs his shoulder.  “Self service,” Damien tells him, getting to his feet. He appears to Jake almost as if he’s standing sideways.  “But if you wait a minute I’ll get us something to wash those down with—”

      “—No need,” Jake says.  He stuffs the first cap into his mouth, begins chewing through a firm, mealy skin, scrapes the sog over his tongue with his front teeth, hoping somehow to shred this into a bland paste.  But the taste is bitter, earthy with mold, and in a second he gives up, decides to swallow the rest only partially chewed. 

      “Hardly civil, Bloom,” Damien mutters.  He lurches forward until he regains his equilibrium, is then upright just enough to point himself toward the center of the room, which he stumbles toward.

      Where is everybody? Jake is thinking.  He leans back grimacing, eyes the second cap, the jaundicebrown edges of which are curled moist from being crammed in his palm.  “How ‘bout finding me a Diet Dr. Pepper or something?” he calls out to no one in particular.  His tongue feels thick—Christ, it even tastes thick—but the desire to remain put, the safety he feels as a result of being snuggled so perfectly, so seamlessly, into the deep cushions of this remarkably ugly couch, keeps him from wandering over to where no doubt drinks are being sloshed around, vulgar toasts are being made, conversations are beginning to overlap, intertwine, veer off onto their own trajectories only to sputter, cough, return shaking, end up assimilated in a web of loosely connected party blather. 

      He tilts his head painfully forward, gobbles the second cap, this one more pungent than the first, a meaty yoke almost—and chews it slowly, methodically, rolling it over his tongue, his gums.  A hand emerges from his right——could be anybody’s at this point, he doesn’t bother to look up—thrusting a wineglass toward him, which he takes and in one gulp, drains.  Not wine, that’s for sure, but cold, fruity.  A voice from somewhere says, “Specialty of the house, Bloom, you like?” but he doesn’t have the energy for wit, so he just nods without looking over, feels the glass being removed from his loose grip.

      Sometime later Dargie is asking him, “Do you believe in anything non-secular, Jake?”

      He opens his eyes, realizes a small group has formed on the floor near his feet—he can see them sprawled into a makeshift circle, Summer flicking a lighter along the bottom of a sleek green bong which catches and holds a line of orange light along its shaft—and says, “huh?”

      “Non-secular,” Dargie says again, peering at him.

      Jake’s head feels like it’s wrapped in bandages. He runs his hand along the side of his face, feels nothing but the tingle of skin on skin.  “I don’t know what that means,” he tells her. 

      Summer stifles a cough, passes the tube to her right, to Trey, who in one motion expertly lights, draws in, releases. 

      “Like, I don’t know—mystical things,” Dargie is saying now.

      “A study by the University of Chicago medical school,” Kennedy’s voice glides in, “proved that at the moment of death we all lose a similar amount of weight, regardless of our body size.”

      “Air forced out of the lungs?” Matt suggests.

      “No,” Kennedy says. “Beyond that.  A loss of weight the researchers couldn’t account for medically.”

      “So, like, the soul leaving the body, then,” Trey says.

      “Could be,” Kennedy says.

      Jake closes his eyes again, hears the gurgle of water in the bong——someone forcing out a prolonged exhale—says, “Does anybody else find this kind of cliché?  I mean, sitting here stoned, talking about this kind of shit?”

      “Not cliché, Bloom,” Kennedy seems to be mulling this over.  “Though I’ll give you conventional . . . “

      “I saw a ghost once, you know,” Jake tells them.  “Came right into my bedroom and asked me if I’d seen Doctor Zhivago. I hadn’t.  Damn fine movie, as it turns out.  The sad part is”–he lowers his voice–“the real tragedy, I mean, is that I never even got to thank him.”

      Kennedy claps his hands.  “Your lack of belief is impressive, Jake. Really.  It practically dazzles.”

      But Jake ignores this, instead tunes in to Matt, a disembodied voice in the darkness, whom he hears saying to someone, “That may be.  But I don’t think you can begin to touch the soul of American art until you explore the theme of redemption…”

***

      Later, a hand brushes over his cheek and Jake looks up, sees Sky leaning over him now, her face half-lit, expressionless.  “Hey,” she whispers.  “How do you feel?”

      He can hear a conversation going on somewhere, can make out a few voices— “…if the opportunity presented itself, maybe, who knows?” Damien is saying. Then Con—”You wouldn’t know what to do with something that size . . . “

      —and he tries narrowing his eyes, focusing on Sky.  “What time is it?” he asks, moving to sit up.

      “Nighttime,” she tells him.  “You okay?”

      Jake thinks about this.  “Anything around to drink?” he asks. He decides it’s far easier to lean back, does so.

      Kip moves alongside Sky, peers down at him, begins to nod his shaggy head like some freakishly upright sheepdog.  “Cool,” he smiles, turning his eyes on Sky.  “Looks like my work there is done.” He puts his arm around her waist, whispers something into her ear, then, when she nods, he moves off, disappears in the direction of Summer’s coarse laugh.

      Jake forces a smile, though he can’t imagine why.  “Hey.  What kind of name is Calista, anyway?  Is it Dutch?”

      “Rest if you want to,” Sky says after a moment.  “Dream of poppy fields.” She flicks his chin lightly with her thumb.

      “You doing okay?” Jake asks her.

      She shrugs.  “Same old, same old.”

      “And that’s good?” he closes his eyes again

      “It’s what I’m used to,” he hears her say.  “Total, unabashed decadence . . . “

      “Hmmm,” he says.  He tries to lift his arm, give her the old thumbs-up, you know, but he can’t, he’s drifting now, gaining some sort of chemical momentum, a slick slide inward that’s beginning to quicken under its own weight, swirling, red and soft . . . And then, well…then the last thing he remembers thinking is this:  Okay, here you are, sir.  Just what you ordered.  A womb with a view.”

*****

      When he wakes, the first thing he thinks is, what is that noise? or rather, what are those noises? ‘sounds like infants being forced to gargle, then a long, flat wailing . . .what is it?  Jake tries forcing open his eyes, concentrates on this task for several minutes—seems an easy enough thing to do, this, under normal circumstances, of course—but these clearly are not normal circumstances at all, his lids weighty, a thick scalloped meat hanging halved over his eyes—shit those are my eyelashes, I’m seeing my own eyelashes, who does that?  The room blurs, or rather it blinks momentarily into focus. . . and the shadows seem actually . . .what’s the word? Corporeal? Liquid? No, nothing wet about these things . . . ethereal, maybe?  But wait, this is not. . . right at all, at all . ..  Can’t be. And—holy Jesus on a big blue bicycle, what is that noise?

      He looks out into the room, sees oranges and reds dance across fluid forms, limbs bent tucked twisted relaxed . . .but some remain still as stone, driftwood smooth save the occasional ripple traced here and there by invisible fingers, the touch from which leave hanging in the smoky air shadow lines smeared and pressed matte black. Tricky, this. Jake tries to move his head but he can’t, it’s heavy, swollen. His eyes drift deep into the jumpy darkness—the flicker of candles still alive in halo-ed corners—sees illuminated snatches of some wall or another flare up, dissipate, die out raging against a tacky encroaching curtain of pitch. Bodies move blackly within this marbled light, visible in photo-negative—highlights, these are highlights, Jake suddenly understands, begins to look for the outlines, loosed peels of light clinging morbidly to the ghosts of their fruits but not fooling him, nossir, underneath are forms, must be, laws of physics, you know, this is how it works, a body need a body and all that. . . Jake manages to dip his head forward but can find no ledge of equilibrium, and so his head slumps doll-like this time (his chin pokes him in his chest like a dulled stone), and he slowly decides, with effort, to reverse, reverse. Still, his eyes seem gradually to be getting the hang of this, learning what’s what now, as they used to say, calling chemical bluffs, dropping gauntlets of metaphor at the outraged feet of dull wax light—focus, you can do this Jake, grab-this-fucking-dappled-bull-by-its-horns and tame it, hitch your yoke to it . . . candles, a dance of candlelight is all it is, and the sound, those sounds, come on, try me, bring it on . . .

      Voices jumble in a dazzle of throttled hisses and humssss (with Jake trying uselessly again to lean forward)—blue-violet voices as he hears them, voices wedded to an emptiness, or rather to movable dark spaces sharing cottage with outrageously livid brush strokes, a paint of stardusty neon tracing outlines in air, all of this too much, he thinks, ain’t right, so he tries shaking his head—but (ho-boy!) there they go again, spreading like a buttery sweat over thick artist’s lines in deep pastel strokes, and he imagines flesh crying, paint me, fill me in. . . .

      Or rather, they’re singing now, all of these erstwhile bodies, and it’s one of those improbable impromptu numbers that always piss him off in the musicals, too–the kind where everybody—even the extras, for Chrissakes—suddenly know all the tunes, the melodies, the lyrics, the fucking harmonies . . .  And they’re all singing:  this, this, this is where it’s at myman, a chorus which repeats three or four times over some strangely muffled percussion, and then, humdiggggeddy—draw it out, milk it, why don’t you go on and live, brother.  But this’s all just bullshit (a voice in his head reminds him) you’re merely, whady’callit? projecting—but then this voice is followed quickly by another, and a more convincing one too, all things considered, which says, c’mon, now, you can’t deny this, Jakeypoooo, this h’yeah is bone-on-bone real. Look at it, smell it.  List-en to it.

      Somehow he manages to find the proper balance now, to keep his head straight—bodily persistence pays off, not thinking about it can do that, he tells himself, the ultimate in physical cons, throw off the switch, poof, and no more self-consciousness, no more worry. “You breathe by instinct,” someone told him once, ‘cause he was high then, too, needed the advice——and this is how it all works, by instinct. The mind has built-in checks, emergency cutoffs, to keep a body from ever really discovering itself—or wait, that’s not it exactly—from discovering that it can’t discover itself?. . . as if the mind and the body weren’t all scumbled together in a sloppy tangle of glistening tendrilssssss, a webwork of code knotted bunched, coiled even, by the cleverness of replication, by a sparkling and moistened protein wisdom. But wait, this is wayyyy off track, and not worth the speculation, besides—at the very least, he thinks, none of this is what you’d call expedient . . .

      C’mon Jake—moist breath in his ear, and he can hear this, hear Sky—she’s soft, blue-black, a viscous salve of honey and warm sweet air curling into his nostrils . . . C’mon . . . You’re alright don’t you know? You’re alright-just-try-and-relax, good, good, better, that’s right . . . breathe . . . And then he can feel her, too, first as a sculpted charge of smooth color——a blue static contained, or . . . wait.  What is that called? lightning in a bottle? . . . sure——and her hand is a curve of some metal he can’t identify, but it’s there, nevertheless, and beneath it his hand, an annex, a memory of muscle and tendon, bless it, that can, that will . . . and so it does, it does—squeeeeeeze. And he hears, attaboy, Jake, attaboy, and his eyes can blink, oh yes, but mostly all he sees is rough black sparked with short bursts of red.  But . . . (and here’s a good sign) it all seems gradually to be sifting, settling into discernable layers, a visible sedimentation of time. . .

      Mmmmmhmmmm.  This he hears to his right.  A bow in his legs, no rub to his knees, ankles numb, but his eyes try again to call out the cavalry, rally the old rods and cones, stippled light to be mastered with a deliberate plan, the idea being to blur. And . . . and I’ll be damned if it isn’t working, too—here’s something—real—fact, no doubt about it:  flesh and bone and sinew straining, swaying, pink, rote . . . and then another sound, not quite so prolonged:  umhmm.  And–That’s it, kiddo, that’s it—bring it on in now, show ‘em all who’s in control, here . . . And then Sky again, blue in his ear, sings, See? didn’t I tell you? while her nails pierce his palm, her thumb wrapping his in a jealous coil, like a . . . a frail, bone smile.  So here he is!—this with the melodrama of sudden revelation forcing itself into words—and he can see beside him, to the right of him, where he points his gummy eyes for convenience . . . but it takes a second before his mind is able to snap the pieces together, and yet it’s getting there, sure is, boy, and . . . yep, here’s what all this fuss is about—a swoop of breast, heavy and curved, and right by his fucking ear, practically—up it goes, down, up, the nipple a blue-brown swell of rubber gumdrop but moist, glistening, tasted, and an arm, an elbow, a hand slides down from the sweep of hair Avery’s been holding back off her face—he watches it emerge like a pale snake from the ropes of loose curl, the whole bit choreographed, a little showy, perhaps, but then. . . hey, these ain’t professionals, you know.  Jake tries squinting, finds his eyes momentarily shutting down, but here’s the secret:  don’t panic, just breathe, and then boom—back on line (snap!), just like that.  And with a more refined clarity, now, too——the shoulder next to him powder blue, the hands moving in slow arcs across the slopes of a pendulous swing of tits . . .  and as she pinches the fat tough brown of her nipples, bucks, Jake can see she’s concentrating, concentrating . . . and this (it seems only right, you have to admit) rocks her into a more audible range, her lips parted to expose a tiny red tip of tongue, and ummmmmm, the tongue darts, disappears in a rasp of inhale, teeth flashing white over her bottom lip in a gleaming overbite as her shoulders strain, strain . . . and–

      Well, naturally she sees him:  Head cocked, slack-jawed, unblinking as a fish.  So she turns up the corner of her mouth—as a kind of challenge, he guesses—to his own low-lidded gaze, and then she bucks harder, breathes harder, her head back now, his eyes aren’t going anywhere, you can bet the farm on that, and so there he sits, hooked, his own delicate gills flapping and desperate for a liquid of some sort, a pond, a marsh to slink back into, but godohgodyesfuckme . . umhum, umhum . . . good, good (she’s directing this, patient), and . . . Oh. Move, move, mooooove . . .

      Until suddenly it dawns on him:  It’s those whale CDs he’s been hearing, a maritime backdrop to all this flashy wetness—a new age-y slosh of sonorous burps and sudden, piercing squeals, glugglugglugging, intended to smooth a knot of anxieties, no doubt, but Christ, is it ever not working.  Avery’s hand is touching Jake’s face now, stroking it with pearl-wet fingertips, a smooth soft tickle gliding thickly along his jaw line, working to knead the skin at the neck juncture . . . and her eyes freeze him, a deer in the headlights, boy, that’s what he is—held prisoner by a flicker of confident emerald green.

      She breathes deeply toward him, rotating her torso to the right, but all he’s thinking is Sky, Sky—and he’s confused, temporally disoriented, his lids growing heavier again—and so he closes his eyes, just drops them shut, tries to find Sky where he knew she’d been last——a thick warm voice breathing instructions into his nightmare.  Just look up if you wanna find Skyyyyy.  But she’s not there, no, his lap is empty, this he can sense, a numbness filled with a heavy space.  And he can feel the rhythm beside him now, a rumble moving into his ass and down through his legs, can hear Kip’s breathing quicken into short bursts, can hear him smack his puffy lips, and Avery, Avery, ummmmm. So wait a second.  Just who is, you know, fucking who here?

      A hand drops heavily into his lap, crawls around there for a moment, loosens buttons, slips with a slap onto his thigh skin, fingers brushing across cotton, causing him to stir, and so he’s thinking oh why not just go ahead and do it?—then with a pang: wait, don’t do it, wait, do it, wait, don’t do it—a metronome of indecision crying out for a gifted pianist to come along and settle the issue, just climb up on the stool and play the fucking instrument. . . Under the elastic lip he feels flesh on flesh, breathes deep, opens his eyes in time to see her pull him out from beneath his shorts, stretch his length out in the palm of her hand, slide warm fingers along his shaft and then——No.  He hears himself saying this, though hardly with any real conviction.  So he tries again, tries mustering a degree of certitude, more successful this time.  No.  Avery runs her thumb along his stiff prick, passes it once over the swollen tip, shakes her head with a dull smile, lets it go, though it’s still standing there ridiculously . . . And . . . I’m…sorry, he finds himself mumbling.  I’m sorry.  He’s not sure why he says this, of course, and yet, well . . . well, there you have it.

      Avery leans back, then jerks suddenly forward into Kip’s oily groan, and in a few seconds, just like that, she climbs squeaking off of him, pushing herself up by pressing a hand, palm-up, against his chest.  Kip drops his head back against the couch and immediately closes his eyes . . . On her feet, Jake notices, Avery is a collection of smooth shadow framed in pale, shimmering orange, and he can see her swing her head down, can see she’s scanning the floor, until finally she reaches for . . . jeans, socks, a sweater.  Behind her, he can make out curves, shapes—limbs pale and strained dancing through shadow—and he hears Samantha’s voice far off whispering itself into what seems to him a carefully calibrated moan.  But all this has been just a temporary clarity, swift, merciless.  Because somewhere Sky is saying, it’s alright, relax, don’t worry about it, just breathe, Jake, breathe—and he obeys, closes his eyes, leans his head back again.  The room hums with soft voices, moanings, whispered snatches of determined instruction, and Jake tries to block it all out, to find Sky somewhere in the middle of all this dark noise . . . And then he remembers.  He remembers!——and he squeezes his fingers, feels the return call of pressure, the weight of a hand pressed into his.  Sky, he tries to say, not sure if he’s made a sound.  And then—Sky.

      A stir, I’m here Jake, she whispers, here I am, see?—and he rolls his head heavily toward her voice, to his left, finds a slope of shoulder, the soft fan of hair. 

      I love you Sky, he says.  I do, he says, and her head is dipping slightly, rising again, dipping slightly, and she is whispering, I know you do, don’t you think I know . . . ?

      He lifts his lids, so heavy, slab-like, can see her chin, her cheek, muscles moving around a soft grind of teeth . . . and then her mouth carefully parts, her tongue reaches out, slowly, brushes the top lip with its tip sweetly curled.  Her eyes are closed but Jake can feel her shoulders rock a bit, can feel her hand clench tighter around his, and he sags, hangs heavily against her, brushes her neck with slow, thick lashes.  But . . .  out of the corner of his eye he senses movement, rolls his eyes painfully, follows the bend of her elbow to a length of smooth forearm and finally to her hand, which rests near her lap, or rather above her lap, really—and her dress seems to be stirring beneath the spread of her fingers, the hand swaying above a swell as if it’s conducting a quiet requiem. But of course this can’t be right, can’t be, and he strains his eyes further, can make out a set of shoulders now, a pair of sharp boomerang blades jerking between her legs, and then (as if on cue) her fingers reach out for hems of fabric, gather handfuls, bunching cotton into small fists, pulling it slowly toward her until she raises the dress to the tops of her thighs, and. . . and Jake can see him now—can see a crown of head dipping ravenously into her lap, rocking her lower torso, her hips rising in rhythm to meet the mouth, the prod of tongue, and he can’t move, can’t speak, can only watch through a dim horrible glow.  Sky’s chest heaves as she shifts her weight gracelessly forward, her hand moving as if by memory into the tangle of Matt’s hair, gripping, pulling at it with pale, sleek fingers to guide the weight of his head, the stretch of his neck, and——ummmm, and again, ummmmmm . . .  Jake tries to lift his own hand, but he can’t, doesn’t even feel connected to him anymore, and so he struggles to keep his eyes open, struggles to make some sort of sound.  Matt’s fingers squeeze her thigh roughly, his thumb pressing the flesh, rubbing a small black arc into it the fat of her thigh—and for a second he glances up, catches Jake’s eye, hurriedly averts his glass gaze, instead moves quicker now, thrusts his head forward again, pushes, lifts, drinks, no use stopping at this point . . .

      I love you Sky, Jake hears himself whisper.  A sudden weight settles over him—no point in fighting it, too strong, too fucking dark—and so he goes with it, shuts his eyes, breathes in wetly, deeply . . .

      And then, between short gasps, quiet——as if in answer to some prayer—he can hear Sky’s voice break loose, can hear her words gather, hesitate, and then smoothly, rhythmically, come—”That’s right.  Relax. I love you.  I do.”