The Violet Hour (29 page)

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Authors: Richard Montanari

BOOK: The Violet Hour
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‘But, after twenty years, though?’ Taffy asked.
‘Hey,’ Nicky said. ‘The heart has no statute of limitations.’
Then the phone rang. Taffy answered.
Nicky took the opportunity to look around the small apartment – junk-store lamps with gauzy scarves draped over them, apple-crate end tables, hard-rock posters on the walls. At least I’ve got some real furniture, he thought, although it supplied only a morsel of solace.
‘Hi,’ Taffy said. ‘Uh-huh, yeah. What time tonight?’
Then Nicky realized something was moving in the room. Flailing, like a pink pennant in the breeze. Then a bright blue fuzzy slipper hit him in the head.
He looked at Taffy. She was desperately trying to get his attention. She pointed to the phone and mouthed the words ‘
It’s . . . him
!’
‘Okay . . . okay . . .’ Taffy continued, a little unsteadily. ‘Okay. I’ll be there. Should I wear a costume or anything?’
Nicky stood up, crossed the room, sat on the edge of the small dinette table.
‘Okay, then. Okay. ’Bye.’ She clicked off the phone and dropped it as if it were riddled with disease. ‘Sorry, Nicky. I can’t do this. Too fucking weird,’ she said as she began to pace. ‘Too fucking weird. Sorry. No. Uh-uh.’
She sat down, lit a cigarette, stood up, sat back down, drew hard, blew the smoke out in a thin, seething ribbon. She began to shake.
‘What’s going on, Taffy?’
‘He said he’s having a Halloween party tonight. He wants me to come.’
‘At the—’
‘Yeah. At the warehouse. He told me not to bother with a costume. Said he’d have one for me.’
He picked up the phone, handed it to Taffy. ‘Call Willie T,’ he said. ‘Tell him what I told you.’
Taffy took the phone, clicked it back on, listened for a dial tone. ‘And what else?’
Nicky looked at his watch. ‘Tell him to meet me at the warehouse at nine.’
47
 
Doughnuts. There had been chocolate-iced doughnuts, covered with orange and black sprinkles, at the party. There had also been, of course, every drug and alcoholic beverage known to humankind there as well. Reefer, cocaine, pills, hashish, bourbon, scotch, gin, vodka. Even mushrooms. Someone made a cocktail of magic mushrooms and Japanese tea: frothy green madness in a primitive earthen bowl.
He had been in charge of the doughnuts that night, so this night he dutifully pulled into the Amy Joy’s at Richmond and Mayfield Roads and parked in a dark corner, in a space farthest from the bright fluorescence of the doughnut shop.
He got out, checked all the doors, crossed the parking lot.
There were two uniformed police officers in the doughnut shop, both in their early thirties. Suburban, veteran cops on a Halloween night. He nodded to them, they returned the greeting, the knowing nod of worldly men, men who knew the score, the dirty realities of modern life. He pitied them, feared them, of course. Probable cause was an ever-widening thoroughfare these days.
He bought two dozen assorted Halloween-themed doughnuts and quickly left the shop, not making any further eye contact with the officers. He had come so far, and although the notion of all of this drawing to an end, a sudden
violent
end, was a distinct possibility, it would be criminal to have it end before the party. A wrong, furtive glance in a doughnut shop. A stop sign not totally obeyed.
He got in, started the van, pulled back onto Mayfield Road, and, obeying all traffic laws, headed east.
Julia.
She would not, of course, be at the party tonight. Not this one. Not any one, ever. The love of his life would not be in attendance because she had been hypnotized somehow into taking part in a sick, twisted orgy twenty years ago, twenty years to the day, an orgy of hard sex and hard drugs and the night had taken her away from him.
The pirate had taken her away from him.
The pharmaceuticals and booze had been consumed at a frivolous, furious rate. They had smoked and drank and popped and snorted like savages, all in the name of collegiate freedom, all in the name of youthful, academic excess, the hubris of the physically strong, the mentally acute.
He had gotten stoned a few times with the general group – having been brought into the intellectual fold by Julia, who shared a poetry class with John Angelino – but he did not know them well. It was only because of Julia that they tolerated him. He always felt unclever around them, constantly challenged, as if he were required to be witty all the time, to get every single literary reference, no matter how obscure.
But if they tolerated him for Julia, he tolerated them for the same reason. He had to be where she was, to breathe the same air, to feel the same rain on his face, to smell the same smells.
The party began to degenerate at around eleven-thirty, with couples moving drunkenly off to their respective dorm rooms to party one on one. By midnight the only people left were the core of the AdVerse Society and the usual gang of misfits, hangers-on. The still frame of that moment was burned into his mind, a dark acid etching that had formed the backdrop to his every thought for two decades.
He turned onto Edgefield Road, closed his eyes, saw it again: Julia was on the floor at the foot of the bed when Jenny turned off the table lamps and lit the candles. Geoffrey had flipped through the box of albums, finally picking out the U2’s
Joshua Tree
. A standard frat party scene, but something was wrong. As he sat there, on the floor, unable to move, the edges of his vision vibrated and waved. Formerly straight lines doing a cartoon hula dance in front of him. And he knew why. An hour earlier, The Saint had given him the two pink pills, and now they were kicking in. ‘What are these?’ he had asked.
‘Ups,’ The Saint had said. ‘Amphetamines. You don’t want to miss the witching hour, do you?’
‘No. Wouldn’t want to do that,’ he’d replied, once again seeing the need to best the man with some sort of
bon mot
, but once again failing.
‘The shank of the evening, my good man,’ The Saint had added, dropping the pills into his hand. ‘The shank of the evening.’
The Saint always said things like
my good man
and
precisely
. As if he were Michael Caine or someone, which he clearly was not.
But why hadn’t he refused the pills? How high was high enough? Why hadn’t he simply said that, while he was happy to smoke pot with them, to speak pretentiously about dead poets, to drink cocktails that even their parents considered ancient, he was not about to pop a pair of insufficiently identified pink pills into his mouth at the behest of this self-anointed guru of the AdVerse Society.
But he’d taken them anyway.
And they were not amphetamines.
He found this out at around eleven-thirty, the moment his legs ceased to hold his weight and he found himself on the floor, propped against the large speaker under the window. Right across from Julia, who sat at the foot of the bed, a book of T.S. Eliot on her lap, a joint held clumsily in her small, delicate hand.
But now, in his frosted vision, she was a Degas painting: lithe, beautiful, sheathed in liquid light.
As the drug pinned him to the floor, time welded itself, people came and went, faces and bodies drifted into his tunnel. The echo of the music at times was deafening, but he couldn’t even bring his hands to his ears. He saw Dr Keller of all people lean in, smile, ask if he was okay. He tried to answer, couldn’t.
Moments of clarity came, lingered briefly, dissipated. At one point he saw someone he didn’t recognize leave the room, then return with a pile of clothing. It looked like costume material, with sequins and satin and feathers poking out. Geoffrey looked through them. Benny Crane, too. Much laughter, loud music. Prince was playing now.
Benny had sobered up somewhat and seemed to be taking charge of the party, holding up various costumes to various people, dictating who should wear what. There was a pirate costume, a vampire’s cape, a set of GI fatigues, a flapper’s dress and boa. Lots of masks.
But none of that mattered to him because he couldn’t move, couldn’t select a costume if he wanted to. And when he saw Julia having a grand, theatrical time with her new friends, he wanted to.
Losing her to these people, these phonies, was his ultimate nightmare, a cancerous fear that had eaten at him all semester. And now it seemed to be happening right in front of him.
Julia looked over at him and smiled.
Don’t, he thought, weakly.
Don’t, Julia . . .
48
 
By six-thirty the streets of Lyndhurst, Ohio, were overrun with ghosts, goblins, and superheroes of every conceivable pedigree. From the porch at 1728 Edgefield Road she could see Superman, Spiderman, the Terminator, Batman. The sky was clear and black, dotted with stars; the breeze held the promise of cider, cinnamon, caramel apples.
It was every Halloween of her youth.
She tried the knob on the front door, found it locked. A rarity when she was expected at her parents’ house. She looked up and down the street, at the cars parked along the curb. She didn’t see Paige’s red Mazda. Paige had said that if she could get away from the store by six, she’d go trick-or-treating with them.
But Paige hadn’t opened the store today.
Amelia had tried calling three times, kept getting the store’s machine. And Paige’s leather coat was still hanging over the back of the kitchen stool. Paige had a key. She’d said she would stop by in the morning to get her coat, but there it hung. And now Amelia was a little worried.
She rang the bell just as a handful of kids across the street chanted, ‘Trigger-treeeeeee!’ in unison. The dog next door started barking. After a moment, the door swung wide and Amelia and Maddie were confronted with a tall, swashbuckling pirate, complete with eye patch, scimitar, black boots, and golden earring.
‘Ahoy, ye two beauties!’ the pirate said.
‘Ahoy!’ Maddie exclaimed.
‘And who might ye be?’
‘I’m Pocahontas,’ Maddie said.
The pirate then looked at Amelia. ‘And ye?’
‘Ye?’ Amelia replied, raising a solitary eyebrow. ‘I’m Mrs Hontas. Her mother.’
The pirate laughed. ‘And what brings ye out on such a night as this?’
Maddie looked at her mother – who smiled and shrugged her shoulders – then back at the pirate. ‘Candy?’
‘Yes! Booty! Treasure! Swag!’ the pirate said, stepping to the side. ‘Ye may now come aboard the brigantine Randolph!’
Amelia, after getting over the initial shock of seeing someone other than her mother or father open the door to her parents’ house, shook a finger at her older brother and ushered her daughter inside.
‘Roger here?’
‘Not yet,’ Garth said. ‘He called from the airport. Half hour ago, maybe. Should be here any minute.’
‘How is he getting here?’
‘What?’ Garth replied, that tiny vein making its appearance on the left side of his forehead, the way it always did when he stalled for time. Amelia had read that vein for more than thirty years.
‘Did I stutter or something? I asked how Roger was getting here from the airport.’
‘Oh,’ Garth began, pouring himself some cider, stretching it. ‘I guess he’s cabbing it. Or maybe somebody from the Clinic was meeting him. I didn’t ask.’ Then Garth’s face registered understanding. ‘Oh, please, Meelie. It’s not the bimbo. I thought you said that he said it’s over.’
‘He also told me he’d never do it in the first place, remember?’
Garth smiled, defeated. ‘He’s taking a cab. I’m sure of it. In fact, that’s what he said, and I just forgot it.’
Amelia looked at him skeptically for a few moments, then let him off the hook. ‘If I ever find out you’re keeping something from me . . .’
Garth drew his plastic sword, smiled. ‘Then I would have to do the right thing and hoist myself on my own petard,’ he said. ‘Or something along those lines.’
Amelia let it go for the moment. ‘What about Paige?’ she asked. ‘Has she called?’
‘No. Why? Was she supposed to?’
‘She said she might go with us tonight, but I haven’t been able to get hold of her.’
‘Well, this morning she said she—’
‘Wait,’ Amelia said. ‘You saw her this morning?’
‘Yeah. We had coffee.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She didn’t say anything. Said she was going to stop by your house and get her coat, but that’s about it,’ Garth replied. ‘But I’ll tell you, when she walked in, I almost did a double take.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean it could’ve been you. She cut her hair, dyed it. Seriously. Could’ve been you.’
‘I knew she colored it,’ Amelia said, feeling a slight shiver. ‘I didn’t know—’
‘Except for, you know . . .’ Garth grinned, raised his hands, indicating breasts.

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