Clown in the Moonlight

4

At the party, they're all talking about Gary Lowers. Nobody liked him much. They're glad he's dead. Some of them think it's funny. Some of them are properly awed that he lasted as long as he did. Many of them have already seen the body. They describe his face, what's left of it. Somebody supposedly brought along gardening shears and took his pecker as a souvenir. A girl mocks him. "I wuv my mommy. I wuv her so much." The rest crack up.

It seems like Ricky Kelso's led every other kid here up through Aztakea Woods. Or they've led each other, the way Linda led me. She's over in the corner drinking a slow screw against the wall with Gwen and Gwen's boyfriend, a cat named Prill.

Wherever I go, there's Gwen. She's a looker all right. Cheerleader beauty, raven hair, pursing her lips, snarling, laughing, all the right curves, her dark eyes on me. She cuts me off whenever I try to cross the room. She stands close enough that her large tits crush against me. Kids dance around us. She acts like they keep pushing her into me. They're not. Once her lips brush mine. I taste cherry lipstick. She smiles and gives a throaty laugh. My groin stirs. She spots my half-erection. She laughs harder and eases away into the throng.

I shake my head, knowing how some of tonight will play out and wondering about the rest. Prill follows Gwen at a distance and glowers at me, his blue eyes blazing. He's a fullback on the school team and tried to crush my hand when he shook it earlier. At first he was startled when he couldn't, and then he was impressed, and finally the fear set in. For any of us, for all of us, the smallest, strangest minor disruption can petrify us.

But apparently not corpses of classmates. Someone puts a mixed tape in and everybody starts to dance. They're wild and passionate in their movements. They grind and rub against one another, every twist and bend sexual and full of need. It's a show in itself. I smell weed burning and I spot a few kids taking hits of acid, popping pills. Bottles of hard liquor are standing everywhere, the keg in the corner has a ring of punks around it doing keg-stands. I'm in the corner slugging a glass of orange juice, pretending it's a screwdriver, keeping a clear head, but even that's getting harder and harder to do. I keep an eye out for Ricky.

I haven't seen my father in five days but I hear his voice hissing in my ear, like he's hovering right behind me. It makes me want to turn around, but I don't know what I'd do if I actually ever found him there. Kill him, or go insane.

Linda is dancing with Prill in the living room to a warbly muted pop-punk song cranking from four speakers tilted forward. She's trying to make me jealous. She wants me to beat the hell out of Prill here in front of everyone. She's got nothing against him. In fact, I'm sure she wants him, wants to steal him from Gwen. She catches my eye and makes certain I see her cupping Prill's ass and pulling him tighter and tighter to her.

Gwen keeps the boys on edge like rival dogs about to leap on a skittering animal. The night's got to end in more blood. It's on everybody's mind. They saw the effect of murder but missed out on the bleeding. It leaves them wanting. The lust is bright in their faces. They need to see the fresh red pumping. It's affecting their fantasies and dreams. It's all they're thinking about, all they want now.

The small talk is puerile and insipid. I drink my juice and act the ex-con. My eyes are narrowed. I check hands for shivs. I don't chase away anyone who approaches me, but I don't respond, I don't participate. I'm an outsider, maybe like Lowers himself. They've got me dead in the woods already with a thousand ice pick holes pumping liver bile and brainpan fluid and little arcing founts of blood.

There's a tap at the dark window behind me. I look. I see nothing, but I imagine it's a night bird that's followed me back from Aztakea. I picture the black trees bowing and scratching for my attention.

Gwen finds me in the crowd. She's a little miffed that I'm not making a play for her. Having a football hero boyfriend isn't enough. Having fifty other guys foaming over her isn't enough. She needs us all.

She points her tits at me in accusation and says, "So are you a shy guy, a wallflower? You seem like such a shy guy. Come dance with me." She tugs the glass of juice from my hand and draws me forward into the center of the living room. I resist, but my resistance draws even more attention, kids looking our way, Prill practically snarling. Gwen's hair hangs in her eyes, and she stares at me with heat and hate and want. She lures me across the floor, where we grind into each other and bang around with the rest of them.

I wonder who the other members of the Knights of the Black Circle might be. I wonder if they're brushing against me now, marking me with death symbols, scrawling names of power casually against my back. I imagine the Angel of Death arching high against the silver clouds, swooping down, alighting on a nearby roof, waiting for me to leave.

I'm a good dancer too, in an old-school sort of way. My mother taught me when I was a child. She'd turn the record player up and really cut loose. Music somehow soothed my childhood fevers. We'd clasp hands and she'd swing me around on the freshly waxed kitchen floor, the soles of my feet charged in cotton socks, as I slid and learned how to shake my hips. She'd gyrate and groove. When my father got home from work, he'd find the two of us laughing and sweating. He'd stomp inside hard enough to make the 78s skip and ask, "What have you two been doing? Fucking?"

It's an exercise in self-control that Linda manages to hold back for nearly five minutes before she beelines for me and Gwen, dragging Prill along with her. He can barely sway his slow, bulky body. They dance beside us and she's in his arms, riding against him hard while he does a box step, barely lifting his feet. She glares at Gwen and they show each other their perfect teeth. This has nothing to do with me or Prill or anyone else, except maybe Ricky.

Linda looks like she's having fun but I see the real her rising to the surface, covetous, craving. Her nails are like catclaw barbs. She raises one hand to scratch at Gwen's face but I catch her wrist and draw her off. I give Prill a little shove towards his girl. Linda heaves a deep breath, about to let loose with a scream or a slur, but I smooth my lips over hers and swallow her rage. In a few seconds she twists and twines in my arms and rubs her groin on mine. She's not wearing panties tonight either. It's not because of me. Or Lowers's corpse. I know she's got her heart set on fucking Ricky Kelso tonight.

The kids who are tripping wander around staring at their hands or the lights, laughing wildly, talking gibberish or crying because they see ghosts. Nobody else notices them much. Someone switches the tape and a heavy beat bangs on the walls and the mood of the house shifts. The party gets a little angrier.

The liquor dwindles. Mescaline, mushrooms, and acid pass from hand to hand. Ten pizzas show up and the delivery guy at the door gets stiffed. The garbage pies slide into the crowd and everybody starts eating. He drifts around bitching, trying to collect money. Someone yanks his hat off and flings it across the room. He makes an effort to collect the boxes and pull slices from greasy hands. Cheese and sauce hit the carpet. He's considered a drag. A couple of mutts punch him, lightly. A couple of girls kiss him, sloppily. The pizza boy begins to dance, clumsily. Punks doing keg-stands topple into the wall. Framed prints of Van Gogh's Starry Night and Self-Portrait In Straw Hat shatter.

They laugh. The talk grows louder. Lowers's name goes around the room again, passed from one to the next like a virus. Everybody's getting sick.

One girl nearly drops into my arms, tripping, trembling as if suffering from chills brought on by pneumonia. I hold her for a second before she shakes out of my hands. Gwen brings her a shot of tequila and they giggle and French kiss.

At my shoulder Linda says, "Do you want her?"

"Which one?"

"Gwen, of course."

There's no right answer. She doesn't care anyway. Maybe she's just pawning me off. I don't really mind. I was expecting it even before our poisonous clench in front of Lowers's body. We can't hold onto each other because we can't hold on to ourselves.

The breeze is stiff and the house groans. Windows rattle. It's raining again. I need some air and slip through the throng to the back door and out into the wet yard.

It's everything my father would kill for. For a bitter, ex-con, Neanderthal prick he's got a highly romanticized notion of what a happy home life should be.

This is his dream. A four-bedroom house in an upper middle-class neighborhood on a full acre with a perfectly trimmed lawn and some mature landscaping. He talks in his sleep. He covets with a fury. He hates the well-to-do, college-educated man. He hides in dark alleys. He keys cars. He lurks behind garbage cans. He waits in the bushes. He watches the rich through their well-lit bay windows and jacks it to adolescent girls climbing out of the shower. He destroys tiny tokens of a better life. He takes a bat to fancy mailboxes. He stamps on those little micro-lamps that border stone walkways. He cuts Christmas lights. He scatters lime around rose gardens. He pisses in ponds and kills koi.

My old man, I listen to him confess in his stupors and I deny him the absolution he doesn't want anyway. He hated being married but wanted a wife. He hates me but wanted a son. He jabbers on drunkenly night after night. I imagine how his cellmate must've stuffed sock or cock in his mouth to shut him up.

I lean back against the stoop railing and smoke a cigarette. The hot night is full of the smell of sex and sea and sap. The sky is the color of a blacksmith's hearth. Wind plies the trees and they sway and stoop. Black birds are thick in the branches, leering intently. Pellets of rain scratch at my face. Torrents overburden the gutters. The storm is back. I imagine Gary Lowers, faceless, turning over and drawing up his blanket of dead leaves, and shuddering in loneliness beneath them.