Leaving Wonderland (Preview)

January 4th, 2009

Leav­ing Won­der­land is my first novel. The 4th draft is com­plete at around 250 pages. While I’m fig­ur­ing out the bizarre world of pub­lish­ing and mak­ing some final revi­sions, you can read the first few pages here.

~ Nick ~

“Can I tell you a story?” she asks.

It’s her only intro­duc­tion as she sits down beside me on the floor, arms clasped around her legs, chin rest­ing on her knees. She looks at me, lost in thought, mulling over whether what­ever she wants to say should be said or not.

“I don’t even know how to start, really.” She laughs and flashes me a shy glance. And then, from out of nowhere, comes: “Hey, do you ever think about what it’s going to be like when you die?”

The air feels heav­ier, and I notice that I’m hav­ing trou­ble breathing.

“You’re going to have to think about it at some point, right? I mean it’s not like it’s not going to happen.”

I will my lungs to inhale, but noth­ing hap­pens. My heart beats faster, and all these ques­tions flash through my mind: What makes me think it couldn’t hap­pen right now? Am I ready for it? When it comes for me, will I be brave?

“You don’t really want to hear any of this do you? Want me to leave? I can leave. I’m sorry.” She starts to get up, and damn it, I have to keep it together.

“No!” I say quickly. “I can han­dle it.” And I’m breath­ing just fine. Every­thing is just fine.

“Okay,” she says slowly, rais­ing an eye­brow. There’s a painful minute of silence before she begins to speak again. “Alright, here goes… You sure?” I nod my head. “Well, my grand­mother had this idea about why we close peo­ples’ eyes when they die…”

I look around, and we’re in the land of the dead.

“…In fact, she didn’t believe that any­one really dies. She said we only call them dead because we don’t see any signs of life as we know it.” Silence again. She laughs to her­self and turns to me. “I never even asked your name!”

“Nick,” I say, very con­scious of this strange label I’m using to describe the per­son sit­ting beside her. “I’m Nick.”

What does that mean, exactly? Does she really know any more about me now that she has a name?

“Hi Nick, I’m Marianne!”

Some­how it does make a dif­fer­ence. My arti­fi­cial smile turns into a gen­uine one, and for the first time since this party started, I don’t feel that anx­ious need to keep mov­ing. “Nice to meet you, Marianne.”

“Like­wise!” she says, smil­ing and drilling into me with her bright, shin­ing eyes. I don’t want to do any­thing but explore the uni­verse in those eyes, to become reflected in them. She notices and becomes self-conscious for a moment, los­ing her train of thought.

“So, you were talk­ing about…”

“Some­how, we’ve con­vinced our­selves that the soul leaves the body at death. But why? What if there’s some­thing still there? All this time, we’ve been wor­ried about the end, but what if the end is just a fairy tale? Maybe there is no escape. Maybe our body becomes a prison.”

She pauses, tak­ing a deep breath and lis­ten­ing intently to the music in the back­ground. “I love this song.” Mar­i­anne and I lis­ten until the the track morphs into a com­pletely dif­fer­ent track, the actual tran­si­tion lost some­where in the middle.

“That was a great switch!” I say. “Did you notice it?”

Mar­i­anne shakes her head. “I remem­ber her explain­ing all of this to me, and I remem­ber see­ing my dad stand­ing just off the entry­way to the liv­ing room, lis­ten­ing to the whole thing. She didn’t see him and he didn’t notice me look­ing — and I never told either of them.”

I notice that our breath­ing has become syn­chro­nized. Did she fall into my rhythm or did I fall into hers?

“That moment’s like a snap­shot, and it really both­ers me some­times. It was a turn­ing point. Every­thing still seemed okay, but it was about to get really, really bad — and I sort of felt it. I think we all felt it. Even grandma. She started to get real hushed, like peo­ple nat­u­rally get when the lights go out and there’s a sud­den darkness.”

The beat crashes back into our real­ity for a time, and I allow myself to drift into it while my new friend drifts inside her past. “Sorry,” she says. “That was just a bit intense. I mean, whoah! I was there again, man. Right there.” She takes a deep breath, and then she con­tin­ues. “I remem­ber this awful, ugly look on his face…”

“Did he say any­thing about it?”

“No, he kept it to him­self. But I could tell that he was brood­ing about it. I think he hated my grandma for say­ing what she said.”

Mar­i­anne stares off again into the scene in front of her face. The liv­ing room is packed with peo­ple, talk­ing over the music play­ing in the back­ground, the source of it bounc­ing back and forth between a cou­ple of turnta­bles, man­i­fest­ing in the air in front of a pair of 800 Watt JBL speakers.

“She died a week later.”

“I’m sorry to…”

“I think he killed her.”

Things are sud­denly very tense. It’s like the entire world goes fuzzy and then con­nects again onto a com­pletely new fre­quency. I’m not so sure I like this one. “What makes you think that?” I say.

“Some­times some­one just hates an idea so much.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think it all means?”

“I think she meant that as long as we iden­tify our­selves with our body, we’re trapped there. The liv­ing close our eyes to make sure that we don’t have to see what goes on next – so we don’t have to see our­selves get­ting buried, get­ting filled with worms, decom­pos­ing – you know all that stuff that would just give you the shivers.”

I get the shiv­ers as she says this. My mind races with thoughts of worms and other crawl­ing, creep­ing things. “It’s more for the liv­ing than for the dead, I guess. It would still be hor­ri­ble. But what can you do?”

What can you do?

I’m attacked by this split­ting headache. I close my eyes, and all I can see are worms and dead things. Marianne’s ask­ing what’s wrong and I’m say­ing nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong, but at the same time, some­thing is hor­ri­bly wrong. I want to be any­where but here. I feel like, if I can’t get out of here right now, I’ll go insane.

Blink.

I’m in it. Instant bliss. Instant con­nec­tion. Instant hap­pi­ness. I blink and look on the world again with fresh, child­like eyes. There are lights. Clean, crisp, and hope­ful. There are peo­ple danc­ing. The music flows through them and into me and back out, back through the peo­ple, and it’s one infi­nite cos­mic cycle, pass­ing the energy back and forth. Sort of a big feed­back loop. And as it ping-pongs back and forth from per­son to per­son, the energy actu­ally grows. It’s a big mon­ster of energy now. Noth­ing can stop it. Noth­ing can stop us. Life. Love. Motion.

Can you feel that uni­ver­sal pulse? I mean, can you feel it? It’s right here, so close that you won­der if you put your ear in just the right direc­tion, you’ll hear every secret exposed – all at once.

It sud­denly occurs to me that I should tell Mar­i­anne about this, but when I turn, she isn’t there. And then I real­ize that it isn’t the same party. I met Mar­i­anne once, a month ago, and I haven’t seen her since.

How did that night end, any­way? I don’t even remem­ber what she looked like besides beau­ti­ful. It’s like she just became this con­cept, this ghost. She became an ideal, float­ing through the air and through my mind, tor­tur­ing me with thoughts of a dark and golden world, and god­damn it any­way, because I’m going to drive myself nuts if I keep think­ing like this.

Bam! I snap my fin­gers to nobody in par­tic­u­lar. That’s right. Her friends were leav­ing. She had to go. She said good­bye, kissed me, and then she smiled and ran off to catch up with them.

Everyone’s so god­damned cut off from every­one else and I have to admit, peo­ple like me – they don’t even know how to con­nect any­more when they do have a chance. It’s like a mus­cle that’s gone into atro­phy – so com­plete that the nerves them­selves are dead, and no mat­ter how hard you try, you’re never going to get it work­ing again.

But every so often, a bit of magic hap­pens. The dead nerves fire up again. The impos­si­ble becomes pos­si­ble. Every­one comes back to what it means to be human. They con­nect! In fact, after a while, you sort of expect that kind of magic. After all, it’s kind of what this place is all about.

Look at Mark! Not even danc­ing. Just drift­ing through the crowd like he’s on an evening stroll. There’s a mon­ster grin on his face, and I can’t help but smile too.

“Mark! What’s up?”

“Con­stant motion. It’s all about con­stant motion. Try and stay in one place, and the motion will rip you apart. But if you go with it…” He loses his train of thought and just smiles.

Motion! Jesus, he’s right! It’s… It’s like the whole of real­ity is just con­stant motion. Every so often, the motion set­tles into some­thing semi-predictable and we say that some­thing exists.

Exam­ple: clouds exist, but they’re not actu­ally those fluffy-white things in the sky. They’re mil­lions and mil­lions of water droplets, momen­tar­ily together, giv­ing us fluffy white man­i­fes­ta­tions. Some­times they look like a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure, some­times like a con­ti­nent. For a time, they exist. But that thing that exists… it’s all in our heads.

There’s no actual cloud. That’s just a name and form that our minds gave some­thing that is, in real­ity, con­stantly chang­ing. It’s always becom­ing some­thing else while it destroys what it was before.

We don’t get attached to clouds. We can sit and watch them change from face to face, land­form to land­form, form to form­less for hours on end. If only we could look at every­thing else that way…

Mark’s dig­ging this thought pat­tern. It gives us both a small and pre­cious hope that we’re under­stand­ing the way things truly are.

Hap­pi­ness radi­ates into the future. It’s not hope­less. Life is still mirac­u­lous. It is still worth the struggle.

Celeste floats by, lost in her own move­ment. With every step, I see her touch­ing effort­less per­fec­tion. It’s just her and the music. It drifts through the open air and car­ries her away into sweet oblivion.

I see her wave to a man who’s been watch­ing her from some shad­owy cor­ner. He gets up and walks towards her, and I smile because this has to be the quin­tes­sen­tial Celeste. She fear­lessly makes time for everyone.

I turn away and observe the room. It’s a psy­che­delic bliss. Cos­tumes walk by, a hodge­podge of fan­tasy, pop cul­ture, and pornog­ra­phy. I imag­ine this is the only place in the world where you can see a nurse and a milk­maid talk­ing to Jesus him­self. Even this site is eclipsed by the the giant water­melon danc­ing beside Bat­man and Robin. And then, just when you think you’ve seen it all, Bat­man and Robin lock lips and start going at each other like a cou­ple of col­lege wrestlers. I knew some­thing was up with those two. Ever since that old series with Adam West in it…

“We’re gonna lose our minds one of these days, Nicky.”

It’s CJ, look­ing out on the scene with me. He’s prob­a­bly right. Funny thing about peo­ple who are really, really crazy, though – most of them seem to be hav­ing a hell of a good time.

“Well,” he says in an almost fatherly tone, “It’s not like you can take it with you to the grave, I guess.”

~ Karl ~

Every­one has pass­words – those things that get you past every sin­gle door and into his or her deep­est inner sanc­tum. The ques­tion is: do you want to go there? Do you really? Do you know how you would han­dle real power?

Now, I’m sure almost any­one would start out with the lofty idea of hold­ing him­self to a very high moral stan­dard, and to that, I can only say bravo! Good on ya. But life is very long, my dear friends, and we all bore so easily.

For all the time we spend talk­ing about how we want to get to know our fel­low human beings, we spend a hell of a lot of time try­ing to avoid just that. And there’s a rea­son we do this. It’s a pro­tec­tive mech­a­nism. It keeps the species alive.

Because if you really knew – I mean, if you really, really knew – well then, either you would love us in the most self­less way, so self­less, in fact, that you would be an easy pick from the herd – or you would come to hate human­ity so much that no trea­son you could com­mit against it would seem too high.

I whis­per a pass­word into this one girl’s ear, and she walks over to her friend — and that friend gets angry and runs up to a guy I’d been watch­ing for a while and slaps him.

I snap a card to the front of the deck I’m hold­ing, so fast I almost think I really did just make it appear there.

The guy runs across the room to this other guy who’d been a real shit to me ear­lier in the night and just starts wail­ing on him. One of the orga­niz­ers goes up to them, yelling at them to take it out­side, so they drag him out of the room.

I chuckle, flip­ping another card to the front of the deck, and won­der if he’ll ever make the connection.

~ Celeste ~

Every­thing is so beau­ti­ful. Some­times I won­der how they put it all together in time. It must hurt to take every­thing down, to let this thing turn back into a bor­ing old hall, where equally bor­ing peo­ple hold their bor­ing events.

It almost feels like my body isn’t real. It’s just mov­ing with the beat, never tired, never clumsy. This is freedom.

This guy comes up to me, and I only see his eyes. They’re hyp­notic, and like… I feel like I’m Eve back in the Gar­den of Eden and… he’s the snake, man. They’re snake eyes… wild!

“How’s it going?” I say.

“Good,” he says, and well, duh… who’s not hav­ing a good time tonight? He’s look­ing at me like he’s got some big secret that he wants to tell me and… I’m nor­mally up for these things, but some­thing makes me not want to hear it. The thing is, he just keeps look­ing at me and smil­ing and… fuck, he’s prob­a­bly just try­ing to fig­ure out which line to try on me…

“Okay, just spit it out. But I’m not above slap­ping you if you’re gonna be rude. Just remem­ber that.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to do that.”

“Well, okay then,” I say, and this guy just has me locked into those eyes. I’m start­ing to get a bit creeped out. I blame the Inter­net for this. Sud­denly all these social retards are read­ing equally retarded advice on how to pick up girls, and… well, guys, I hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t work. The thing that causes you to strike out with us is the same thing that makes you want to study the sci­ence of pick­ing us up – you try too hard!

“I was won­der­ing how you would taste.”

Jesus. Bold, but com­pletely uno­rig­i­nal. Please… “My vibra­tor has con­sis­tently proven bet­ter than any man’s tongue, thank you very much.”

“I didn’t mean that,” he says, still smiling.

“Well then, what the fuck do you mean? Lis­ten, I’m sorry… I don’t mean to be a bitch, but this isn’t fun any more.”

“If you let me eat you, your soul will go to paradise.”

Freak. He’s try­ing to mess with me. There’s at least one of these dicks at every party — you know, trolling for the kids who can’t han­dle their acid.

“Okay,” I say, “Let me get this straight. You actu­ally want to eat me. Like, knife and fork style? How good a cook are you? What spices would you use? Bake or roast? Look, I think you’re gonna have to try this shit on some­one a lit­tle less expe­ri­enced… I’m not falling for it, and just so you know… it’s kind of creepy.”

He looks frus­trated. I’ve cracked him. Well sorry, ass­hole, but that’s what you get when you fuck with a pro. “It’s been fun,” I say, and I go back to my dancing.

I haven’t even found my groove yet, and he grabs my arm. “But… you’re the one,” he says, and I notice this twitch that his head does every minute or so. Okay… I won’t lie. I’m start­ing to get a bit scared right now. “It’s the only way,” he stam­mers, and he seems per­plexed, like I’m sup­posed to be under­stand­ing this shit.

And then he’s all con­fi­dent again. “Come with me,” he says, “This place… it’s too noisy… some­where quiet. I’ll tell you… I know many secrets.”

Why am I afraid? I’m in a room full of peo­ple. But as I look around, none of them are really here. Just a moment ago Nick was look­ing right at me, and I almost thought he was going to inter­rupt, but no… he’s lost in his own world just like every­one else.

I close my eyes and try to regain some focus. I’m safe here. As long as I’m here, all he can do is try to fuck with my head. They were pat­ting every­one down at the door. The only peo­ple who’d get a weapon in would be the drug deal­ers, who know the orga­niz­ers, and who always man­age to make sure there are plenty of pills inside for any­one inter­ested. And this guy is no drug dealer. I know the look. So I’m safe. I really am. There’s noth­ing to worry about.

“Pray you never get this far,” he whis­pers in my ear, and I just keep try­ing to ignore him until he goes away.

~ Nick ~

My head is elec­tric with thought. The whole room is elec­tric. You can almost hear that hum of the power jump­ing from per­son to per­son along invis­i­ble super lines. We’re going to change the world. I’ve never been more cer­tain about any­thing in my life. And when you’ve got that – you’re fly­ing. You’re inde­struc­tible. Because that pas­sion, that unshake­able faith – it makes you strong.

I can’t help but feel that absolutely any­thing is pos­si­ble tonight. In fact, there’s so much pos­si­bil­ity that I can’t decide on any­thing spe­cific. I just want to float around and do noth­ing and feel a part of it all, a part of the infi­nite. Some­times when I’m inside these moments, I won­der if I just closed my eyes and snapped my fin­gers, whether I would sud­denly find myself exactly where I wanted to be, whether life from here on in would feel like I had been put under the most beau­ti­ful spell.

And some­times, inside the same moments, I feel like dying. Not because I’m sad, but because of the full­ness of my hap­pi­ness. I feel so pure, so clean, so con­tent, and so cer­tain that life is beau­ti­ful. The part of me that knows these feel­ings will fade whis­pers to me how nice it would be to have this state of mind be the last thing I know as my con­scious­ness dis­ap­pears into the dark­ness from which it came. If only some­one could put a gun to my head right now and pull the trigger…

“Hey, what’s Celeste doing there all by her­self?” CJ says. I look back at Celeste, who’s still stand­ing in the same spot, now on her own.

I fol­low CJ as he walks toward her. “Celeste! What’s up but­ter­cup?” She rushes towards him.

“Holy shit, man!” she whis­pers fiercely. “Am I glad to see you!”

She doesn’t even see me, but that’s alright. I’m sort of hard to notice at times. Besides, you tend to focus in on very spe­cific things here. There’s just too much infor­ma­tion com­ing at you to do more than that. You can see entire galax­ies turn­ing in another per­son if you have the right kind of eyes.

~ Celeste ~

“Wow girl! Don’t know what I did to deserve that, but let’s say you and I find some place a bit qui­eter and you can tell me all about how glad you are to see me.”

I still don’t know why CJ’s always pulling that player shit with me. He knows I don’t take it seri­ously, right? I mean, if he is really play­ing the game, I’m sorry, but he’s doing an awful job of it – way over the top.

But some­times I look at him and I’m pretty sure he knows what he’s doing. If that’s the case, then he’s the most bril­liant per­son I know because he keeps you guess­ing, and just when you think you might be close to get­ting him in a box, he bursts straight out the other side.

“CJ,” I say, rolling my eyes and shak­ing my head, though I guess the grin gives it away that even my dis­ap­proval isn’t genuine.

“What are you giv­ing me that look for, girl? What’s a guy sup­posed to think, you say­ing that to him and then get­ting all cold and shit?” For a small moment, it seems like he’s really stung, and I regret brush­ing him off like that, but then he’s back to the CJ we all know and love, with a set of lines that would win him the 2005 Cheese Award if there was such a thing: “Girl, you know you and I were meant to be. I read it in my horo­scope today. Said true love would dance into my heart tonight, and there you were!”

Then there’s that cocky smile and I can’t help but smile too, and… I’m really thank­ful that he’s here right now because I was really scared and now I’m not. I feel safe again, and I try to tell him this in a way that won’t inflate his ego too much.

“What are you talk­ing about, C?”

“That guy. He was really fucked up, man! You should have heard some of it.”

“What guy?”

So I tell him the story, and my mind flashes back to those eyes. Those eyes… I mean, I half expected a big forked tongue to shoot out from his mouth. It was like he was try­ing to swal­low me with a stare…

“What the fuck? No way the cunt gets away with that shit.” CJ can’t stand still. He’s just shift­ing back and forth on his feet, talk­ing him­self up. From this angle, he even seems to be get­ting big­ger. “Shit C, why didn’t you come find one of us?” He’s look­ing around for any even slightly evil look­ing face now. “Where is he? Tell me what he looks like and I’ll bust the fucker up. He won’t even be able to say his own name after we’re through.”

~ Nick ~

She has real power in her hands right now. Just point CJ in any direc­tion and let him go nuclear. I’m hor­ri­fied. At the same time, the blood­lust buried deep in every one of us comes right up into my throat. There’s a hint of antic­i­pa­tion, the hint of a pri­mal grin. “I’ll pis­tol whip the cunt. Put him in traction…”

“CJ, that’s not right,” she says. He wouldn’t really do that, would he? I mean, no mat­ter how messed up this guy was, it’s not like he did any­thing to hurt her. He just freaked her out. That’s all. Besides, all she seems to remem­ber are the eyes. It’s like she didn’t see any­thing else.

Celeste turns to me. “Nick, do you remem­ber what he looked like?”

~ Celeste ~

“No,” he says, and he looks sort of frus­trated with him­self. He was prob­a­bly perv­ing out or some­thing. I remem­ber see­ing him look in my direc­tion, and there was that glaze in his eyes. He tries to be so per­fect and detached when he knows someone’s look­ing, but when you’re not look­ing, he’s prob­a­bly check­ing out your ass.

I’ve caught him doing that a few times, not that he’d know. He seems to think he’s slyer than every­one else. Maybe I should just call him on it one of these days.

“So, he was just say­ing a bunch of weird shit?” he says, and you can see he’s doing every­thing he can to keep his gaze above the neck.

~ Nick ~

I try to put things into per­spec­tive. “Celeste, if any­one had really known, I’m sure they…”

“Nick,” she says, “It’s okay.”

“Moth­er­fucker!” CJ says to him­self. “Moth­er­fucker! I’ll kill him. I’ll fuck­ing kill him. Where is he, C? Where the fuck is he? Right now! Fuck­ing dead.” And CJ reaches into his pants. A gun? Does he really have a gun? Before I can see, Celeste puts her hand on his, telling him to calm down, that the guy’s long gone, not to get worked up about it. CJ totally shifts gears. He’s talk­ing softly now. “Are you sure you’re alright? I’m sorry, C. I should have been there.” And she’s telling him it’s okay, and she’s smil­ing that sweet smile that she wears so well, and CJ’s just soak­ing it up.

“It’s alright, CJ,” she says. Then she laughs and you can almost see the good spir­its re-enter her body. “Man, he was say­ing the weird­est shit, though. And all along, he seemed to think he was being ter­ri­bly clever. Like… some­thing about ‘short­bread for feet’… what the hell is that sup­posed to mean? Or was that some­one else? I don’t know… I’ve run into a few peo­ple tonight who were really trip­ping hard. I won­der what he was on.”

CJ shakes his head. “Sounds like a perma-fry to me.”

“He seemed like he was hav­ing fun.”

“Right up until he real­izes my feet aren’t made of shortbread.”

Celeste bursts out laugh­ing and hugs CJ. “My hero,” she says, push­ing the drama as she looks at me. CJ looks around ner­vously to see if anyone’s watch­ing him.

As I watch them together, I start to feel a bit of blue creep­ing in, and I know it’s time to get beau­ti­fully lost. I say my good­byes to CJ. He understands.

You have to keep mov­ing at these things. Stay in any one place for too long, and your thoughts will col­lect around you like a swarm of mosquitoes.

I find myself sit­ting down in one of the other rooms, talk­ing to some ran­dom raver. Mark’s tak­ing a break too, starry eyes shift­ing from per­son to person.

There’s this one in par­tic­u­lar, an angel in full angel uni­form, com­plete with wings and glit­ter and strange makeup designs on her face. The only thing miss­ing is the halo. Maybe she lost it some­where. She’s smil­ing at me like there’s some pri­vate joke that she’s wait­ing for me to fig­ure out.

“Do you know who this is?” she says mysteriously.

Every­thing sud­denly reg­is­ters. “Of course I do!” I say. “Why are you back so early?”

“It was time to come back,” she says with such cer­tainty. Beau­ti­ful Annette! She just lis­tens to the world, lets it guide her, and she glides along with this nat­ural grace. Every­thing she touches turns to gold. Hell, even the bleached blond hair and the lip ring are grow­ing on me. How is it that the world hasn’t fig­ured out how to break her down yet? How did she sur­vive all this time? How is she still so sure about everything?

“Well I’m glad you did! Mark. Hey Mark! Look who’s here.”

Mark comes over and gives Annette a big hug. “Long time no see, kid! How was B.C.?”

“My fam­ily sucks, man! I don’t know. They’re all set­tled and I guess they think I should just roll with what they’re doing. They can’t stand me being my own per­son. Yeah.” And she gig­gles. “It was good, you know? I missed them. But now I need to live my own life again, you know? And I missed you guys so much. So, yeah…” Again that shy, weary laughter.

“Well, it’s good to have you back!”

“Thanks,” she beams. Huge grin. “So, any­way,” she says, look­ing back at me, “I’ve got to go and say hello to a few more peo­ple. I’ll be back. We need to sit down and have a good long talk.”

“Sure thing,” I say, beam­ing back.

I see Karl and Sam in the cor­ner. Pre­dictably, they look like they’re plan­ning some­thing. And there’s that deck of cards in Karl’s hands. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him with­out it. He’s always prac­tic­ing his sleight of hand, which, as he’s told me before, is the only way you get good at it.

“Did you know she’s his sis­ter?” Mark asks me, as if he’d been eaves­drop­ping on my thoughts.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s… odd.”

“Isn’t it,” Mark says. He takes a quick glance from side to side and lights up his hash pipe, as if he’s some psy­che­delic ver­sion of Sher­lock Holmes. I guess that would make me Watson.

“Noth­ing is as it seems,” Celeste says, sud­denly stand­ing beside us, with a raised eye­brow. She can only hold it for a few sec­onds before she breaks out in gig­gles. “What are you guys talk­ing about anyway?”

“Never you mind, my dear. Top secret, you know. For your own good.”

Celeste’s eyes nar­row. She scrunches up her face and sighs. “Men!”

“That’s right,” Mark shoots back, and he makes a few grunt­ing noises to set­tle the argu­ment once and for all before he changes the sub­ject. “Hey, did you see Annette?”

“Yeah,” Celeste says, frown­ing momen­tar­ily. “I think I talked to her for about two or three min­utes. You know, long enough for her to say how much she missed me and how glad she was to see me. And then, well… she had to make the rounds, I guess.”

“What’s got you so neg­a­tive?” Mark asks.

“I don’t know,” she says, still so unsure about every­thing. “It’s been a really weird night.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No, not really,” she says, glanc­ing briefly at me. “I think I just need another pill. And then I want to catch up on my dancing.”

“Good music tonight, isn’t it?”

“It’s amaz­ing!”

I turn around, and there’s Karl. I won­der, for a moment, how long he’s been there — and if that quizzi­cal look in his eyes is him know­ing that I had been talk­ing about him, won­der­ing whether I’ll con­fess. I’m almost sure he knows what Mark and I were up to, as inno­cent as it felt at the time, but he doesn’t ask and I silently plead the fifth.

“Hey man! How’s it going? Uh…” I turn back to Celeste and Mark and then shrug. There’s no need for that. Celeste and Mark are already lost in con­ver­sa­tion, com­pletely for­get­ting there’s any­one else in the room.

Mark seems con­cerned for some rea­son. Best not to draw any con­clu­sions, though, because every­thing I’m see­ing right now is ampli­fied. That momen­tary frown, that weary look peo­ple give for a frac­tion of a sec­ond and don’t even really notice – I’m catch­ing all of that tonight. Bam! Freeze frame, like I’m a human cam­era, only pass­ing devel­oped freeze frames on to my brain. Every so often the freeze frame catches some­one off guard. I force myself to throw the pic­ture away.

“You always seem to have a lot on your mind,” Karl notes as we walk into our own exclu­sive world of con­ver­sa­tion. All around me I hear a cacoph­ony of noise. There are voices, there’s pound­ing music, but none of it is deci­pher­able. Karl’s not even try­ing to raise his voice over it all, and still his words trans­mit with dig­i­tal clar­ity. Every­one else might as well be speak­ing Ancient Ara­maic. In fact, I won­der for a flash of a moment, maybe that is what they’re speaking.

No. That wouldn’t make any sense.

“Sorry, what did you say?” I ask a moment later.

“Never mind. I don’t want to inter­rupt the unlock­ing of the mys­ter­ies of the uni­verse. How could I live with myself if I was respon­si­ble for hold­ing back the world’s next messiah?”

“That was so ten min­utes ago. I’ve moved onto con­tem­pla­tion of human­ity and social dynamics.”

“Ah,” smiles Karl. “That’s always my favorite part. If I could skip the whole mean­ing of life phase and just stay in that mel­low con­tem­pla­tive phase, I’d do it. Who wants to know that other shit any­way? I’d much rather know what makes a per­son do the things a per­son does that seem so strange, how much of what we call com­mon sense is really just indoc­tri­na­tion, and god damn! What’s the best way to start up a con­ver­sa­tion with that lit­tle princess?”

I turn to see Karl’s sub­ject, danc­ing with aban­don. Anony­mous, mys­te­ri­ous, and spell­bind­ing in her skintight every­thing. “Ah fuck. Give her a week and she’ll be a meth head. Impos­si­ble to deal with. Not worth it, the grief she’ll give, for those few days of honey. But damned if I don’t want to just pre­tend all that’s not going to happen.”

“How can you be so sure?” I ask.

“She’s a bright bulb, that’s all.”

“A bright bulb?”

“Yeah.” Karl pauses. “Look at her. Doesn’t she just seem to have this incred­i­ble lumi­nos­ity about her? Doesn’t she seem to shine, to be more sat­u­rated with color than every­one else around her?”

“Okay,” I say, squint­ing. “I think I see what you’re talk­ing about.”

“Yeah, well, every­one else sees it too. And if one moth doesn’t go for that light, another one will. She’s going to keep attract­ing them. She can’t help it. Just that, and she might have a chance. Except there’s some­thing else that makes her shine even brighter. Can you tell me what it is?”

I think for a while, start­ing to frown as I come closer and closer to what Karl’s sug­gest­ing. “Yeah, I think I so.”

“Tell me.”

“Inno­cence.”

“You got it. Inno­cence. Take that away and she could sur­vive. Hell, she’d prob­a­bly be in the moun­tain mov­ing busi­ness. But she’s just a bright bulb. And it’s only a mat­ter of time before she gets a lit­tle too much elec­tric­ity going through her.”

“Shit,” I say, the com­pas­sion play­ing but­ter­flies in my stomach.

“Yeah, it’s a bit of a bum­mer, at least for her and any­one who gets attached to her. As for the rest of us… we just find a new bulb. And there are plenty of those.”

“That doesn’t seem to bother you.”

“You’re going to go through a lot of anguish before your time here is done, Nick. It’s… it’s the way you have to look at things. Because that’s what hap­pens, no mat­ter how hard you might try to keep it from hap­pen­ing. And the sooner you learn to accept it, the more fun you’ll have.”

“Maybe you’re right…”

“What about the bright bulb you’ve been star­ing at?”

“What do you mean?” But I know. I know. And Karl knows that I know.

“She’s a dreamer,” he says, with a faint, pained smile. “She’s look­ing for mean­ing. Mean­ing in life. Mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships. Good peo­ple. Peo­ple she can be her­self around and peo­ple she can depend upon. She’s had a great life, but there’s that empti­ness. Maybe they’re here. Well, shit, man! Of course they’re here. Everyone’s got everyone’s back here, right? Everyone’s beau­ti­ful here. We’re dif­fer­ent!” Karl laughs. “She must feel so blessed to have found such a fine group of people.”

“Maybe she’s a dif­fer­ent kind of bulb. Maybe she’ll change us.”

Karl looks at me for a long time, read­ing me. How far down does my belief in what I just said go?

“Be care­ful you don’t shine too bright your­self, Nick.”

Then he smiles, shift­ing gears. No one wants to be a downer. These par­ties are about hav­ing a good time, about leav­ing all that neg­a­tiv­ity at the door. We’ll get back to it soon enough.

“Well… I think the Magi­cian of the River Val­ley needs to make his rounds. Catch the last few fine folks still search­ing for blotter-based enlightenment.”

“Why don’t you just show them a few card tricks?”

“Not as much money in that.”

“Why do you think we’re here, Karl?”

“Where did that come from?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a side effect of the mel­low con­tem­pla­tive phase.”

“Touche.”

“So?”

Karl’s eyes shift left, off into some dis­tant, pri­vate world. He looks back at me with a smirk. “Where else do you know where you can believe that magic is real and with­out consequence?”

There was eter­nity just a minute ago. One end­less, flow­ing moment – like the night was going to go on for­ever. And then some bug­ger hit the fast for­ward but­ton and it’s the last song and only the die-hards are up on the floor. Most have left, and the rest are cud­dled up against the walls, star­ing out tiredly at a sea of dis­carded water bot­tles and glow sticks.

~ Mark ~

It’s 7:30AM on a Sun­day morn­ing, and we’re all in the after­glow – calm and con­tent, but not quite ready for sleep just yet. We walk into the local Denny’s and imme­di­ately draw stares from the staff and the other patrons, most of which are fam­i­lies dressed in their Sun­day best, just catch­ing a quick round of bacon and eggs before they go off to their weekly service.

“I guess we should have taken some of this off before we came in,” Nick says. Every­body looks to see how we’re still cov­ered, head to toe, with dead glow bracelets, neck­laces, and other party wear.

“Just make sure you get it all off before you make your trans­for­ma­tion into Mr. Respon­si­ble on Mon­day morn­ing,” Celeste chides.

“Think I can leave the nail pol­ish on?” he asks.

“Well, unless they put a black light in your cubi­cle, I doubt anyone’s gonna notice.”

“That was some trippy shit, C!” pipes CJ. “I totally for­got about it. Then I go and look down at my hands, and it’s like, what the fuck! Why am I glowing?”

“They don’t call her the dol­lar store diva for noth­ing!” I say.

“Hey, dick!” Celeste shoots back, gen­tly elbow­ing me. “I’ll have you know I paid good money for that stuff!”

We all order our greasy food and we talk back and forth about noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar, laugh­ing and enjoy­ing the scene we’re mak­ing. Some poor kid looks over at CJ and CJ stares the kid down. He’s still wear­ing his sun­glasses and he’s look­ing a bit like Mr. T with all that jew­elry. He really went over the top with his getup for this party. God, what a riot! For­give us, Father, for we have sinned and plan to do so again at the next avail­able oppor­tu­nity, amen!

The kid’s dad sees his pet­ri­fied son, jaw dropped, star­ing at CJ, and he scolds the kid, tells the kid to just fin­ish the meal quick and don’t get dis­tracted, flashes an irri­tated glare at Celeste, Nick, myself, and lets it set­tle for a moment longer on CJ. It’s a piss­ing con­test and good ol’ CJ stands his ground, smil­ing peace­fully from behind his shades.

“How’d you like those Blue Dia­monds, C?” CJ says, turn­ing away from look­ing at the father and back to us. Breakfast’s here now and we’re all shov­el­ing the food in. Dance for ten hours straight and you work up quite an appetite.

“A bit speedy,” Celeste reports, “But a lot bet­ter than those Yel­low Super­men you had last week.”

“Super­man!” the kid screams, catch­ing a piece of the con­ver­sa­tion, and we all nearly choke on our food, let­ting out covert snickers.

“Fin­ish up!” the father says sternly.

He looks at all of us like we were per­son­ally respon­si­ble for every shit deal he’s ever got­ten in life. The con­tempt I see irri­tates me as much as it amuses me.

“Amaz­ing the peo­ple they let in here, huh?” I say to my friends, but I’m really speak­ing to him. I watch as the mus­cles in his face shift ever so slightly. I smile at the sud­den rigid­ity of his move­ments. His wife puts her hand on his and gives him that please don’t make a scene look. She glances at us and then looks back down to her meal.

~ Nick ~

We all pre­tend to con­cen­trate on our food. The fam­ily soon leaves. They try to make it look nat­ural, but it’s all very hushed and frantic.

Celeste picks up some piece of fluff from the table between her fin­gers and starts it hop­ping along the table like a rab­bit as the wait­ress arrives with the bill.

The wait­ress stands there, trans­fixed. We’re all wait­ing for her to say some­thing, but it’s as if time itself had decided to take a smoke break. I worry for a moment that she’s going to rag on us for dis­turb­ing everyone’s church vibe. Then she looks at Celeste and the fluff in her hand and smiles and starts one of the strangest con­ver­sa­tions I’ve ever heard.

“My lit­tle boy died of Leukemia,” the wait­ress says, voice trem­bling slightly.

“I’m so…” Celeste starts, but before she can hit sorry, the wait­ress continues…

“He loved bun­nies.” She bites her lip and we all shift in our seats, hop­ing she doesn’t break down in tears. I’m not say­ing that we’re all heart­less. It’s just that every­one else in here would get the wrong idea. They’d all think it was some­thing we did on pur­pose. I can already feel the stares in our direction.

The silence becomes almost unbear­able before she starts talk­ing again.

“Every time I see some­thing that makes me think of bun­nies, it’s like he’s try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate with me, telling me he’s okay up there in heaven.”

“Sorry to hear that, ma’am,” CJ says solemnly.

Mark looks at me, appro­pri­ately solemn, but also with that Can you fuck­ing believe this? amuse­ment that he always seems to have when some­thing strange happens.

“It’s alright. He’s been gone for a while now, and I know he’s in a good place. I’ll see him again one day, too.”

“That you will, ma’am, that you will,” CJ replies with such shock­ing sin­cer­ity that I begin to won­der if he really didn’t sup­ply at least half of last night’s party peo­ple with their drugs.

The wait­ress is all smiles that this fine young man shares her view of the after­life. Mark rolls his eyes.

“Here,” says Celeste, a dead seri­ous look on her face. She hands the wait­ress the piece of fluff. “For your son.”

Mark and I look on in fas­ci­nated hor­ror as the wait­ress accepts the piece of fluff with cupped hands like it was her son himself.

Oh my! Only sweet Celeste could pull some­thing like that off, and she doesn’t even real­ize how odd the whole exchange was.

But it was so gen­uine that none of us men­tions it as we leave the restau­rant. It was a holy moment, and we all know it, and we’ll all be damned if we’re going to mess with that sort of thing.