The scarf-woman nodded. “She fell in love with the Other. Do you want me to tell you what I think about Lack?”
“Well—”
“You’ll like this,” said Anglefangle to Soft in a stage whisper. As she leaned in she left more blond strands stuck to his chest.
“Lack is the Other,” said the scarf-woman. Her nostrils flared to capitalize the O. “Just like Alice is the Other to you. It’s natural to love the Other. By that I mean the mysterious, the silent, the withdrawn and enigmatic. The deep. It’s a significant development, I think. The discovery of a lovable Other in Lack. A third gender. You ought to be more understanding.”
“You’re saying Alice is a pioneer,” I suggested.
“She’ll be remembered.”
“She’s a success.”
“Well, yes.”
“Let’s find her,” I said. “Let’s find her and tell her. I think it’s beautiful, what you said. We should tell her we understand.”
I meant it. At that moment it seemed right and profound.
Soft gaped. I don’t think he’d set out to create a third gender. A slush of drool and eggnog shone on his tongue. I fought the urge to whisper swallow in his ear.
“She doesn’t want to hear it from you,” said the scarf-woman, shaking her head. “You have to understand. It would be nothing but an imposition for you or me or anyone else to define Alice’s experience according to some external standard. The more we intrude the more we risk closing off this entirely original experience she’s had. When she’s ready to use language she’ll create her own vocabulary. She may speak in a tongue we don’t recognize. But it’s not up to us to decide.”
“You’re right, of course,” I said, knowing it was my only chance. Anyway, I agreed with her now.
“I’m glad we got this time to talk.”
“Yes.”
We all smiled. Our packet of heads was happy now, normalized, made like the others around it, the tittering bunches. The women nodded and smiled. They would permit us to crawl away. I signaled to Soft, who grinned and raised his drink, lifting it into the bridge of hair that connected him to Ms. Abracadabra. As he backed away, stripping the hair from his sweater, several strands slid across his arm and through the drink, falling back into place beaded with eggnog.
I grunted my way back to the bar, Soft at my heel. We found a spot there, an empty pocket, and lodged ourselves.
“That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” I said. I handed our cups to my student for refilling.
“Things went wrong?” said Soft.
“A little wrong, yes.”
He wrinkled his brow. “I don’t know if I agree one hundred percent with what she was saying. About Alice and Lack.”
I handed him his cup. “I didn’t believe a word of it,” I said.
“Good. Because, really.”
“Exactly. We’re in complete agreement.”
“Good, good.”
“But she was very forceful,” I said. “Very, uh, compelling.”
“Yes,” said Soft. He lowered his eyes, looking glum and intense. Overhead a gong sounded, and a horrific voice said, “Open, sesame!” Soft and I both drank furiously. We were alienated from each other, our plan to tip the party on its ear in tatters. My other plans loomed, dangerously close.
“Philip?”
“Yes?”
“Is it true what you said? That you and Alice have been separated for months? That it’s ancient history?”
“Yes and no.”
Soft nodded. Even drunk he was too polite to ask more. We stood in silence. I felt the alcohol numbing the flesh of my face, making my tongue fat and cloddish, blurring my vision. The music pounded through me from the floor. If I gritted my teeth I could feel the beat in my jaw. Possibly the music was eroding my teeth. I slackened my jaw to protect them.
“So,” I said, changing the subject, sort of. “No more Lack.”
“That’s right.” I’d reminded Soft of his happiness. He grinned.
“So you’re rid of us now. The Lack people.”
Soft frowned. “I didn’t say that, Philip.”
“No, it’s true. We’re always throwing ourselves at him. We’re an embarrassment.”
Soft crinkled up his face. He leaned in to whisper, but his voice warbled. And we swayed, our heads dipping together like a doo-wop group, the Satins or Royales. “To tell you the truth, Philip, I tried it myself. I don’t know why. I guess I thought that since I created him I should be the one. He should take me. But it didn’t work.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Soon it’ll all be a bad dream.”
“Braxia tried too,” I said. I silently tried to count the table jumpers. “He told me. And De Tooth. I caught him at it.”
Soft raised his eyebrows. Giggled. “I guess everybody’s tried it.”
“Yes.”
This was quite funny, and we laughed for a good long time. Then Soft got hushed and conspiratorial again.
“Did you try?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” I lied.
We laughed a bit more, slapping at parts of our own and each other’s bodies.
“Let’s go find some more women,” I said.
Soft’s face reenacted Terran evolution, from early carbon stages up through Nobel Prize–winning physicists. “Okay,” he said when he was finished. “But I just realized just now that I have to use the bathroom very badly. Very suddenly. I’m very sorry.”
“No problem,” I said. “Do what you do. Have to.”
“Are you coming?”
“No, I’ll here. Stay.”
He handed me his drink and fled. I hoped he could find the bathroom in time. The way the room was bucking it wouldn’t be easy. I had trouble even standing in one place, with only two legs for support. How flimsy they were. I recalled that mountain climbers never lifted more than one of four limbs from the earth. Always kept three planted. I wondered why this rule didn’t apply generally. It was so reasonable. But I was hemmed in by people I didn’t recognize. No one to hand a drink to, no way to free a third limb and apply this sensible, obvious rule.
I had no choice. I finished the smaller of the two drinks I held, slid the full cup into the empty one, then knelt to plant my free hand on the floor.
Much better. The floor was the way to go. It was cooler and quieter there, in the well of bodies. A whole new world. Dark and clever and strange. Nobody seemed to miss me, up above. Or if they did they were too polite to mention it.
How easy it was to disappear. Nothing to be afraid of.
Drink seekers swarmed around me, jostling me away from the bar, toward the undifferentiated middle of the party. I shuffled with them in a crouch, my knees bobbing in front of my chin, my drink held aloft like a flag, marking my column of space, my other hand on the floor, a rudder. The costumed waitress passed over me, her tray darkening my patch of sky. I saw now that she wore a fluffy tail. I followed her, scooting in my crouch, fixing her calves in my sights like a driver behind a distinctive truck on a dull highway. Then she dropped the empty tray to her side, nearly dashing it against my forehead, and slipped away. I was stranded. “The point about my dream,” said a man above me, “is that every woman who kissed me and died went straight to heaven. Immortal life. The happy hunting ground.”
I scooted off to an empty spot and drank the last of the eggnog. I wanted to stand again. I had things to do up there, an agenda. The party was supposed to be my farewell to the human realm. The floor was too marginal. I put the cup aside and rubbed my hands together, mixing dust and eggnog. The moment was right. I stood up. Or tried to. My knees unfolded horizontally, and I lurched onto my hands and knees, my face pressed into fishnet thighs. Female thighs, naked behind fishnet.
“Hello,” someone said.
I’d catapulted myself into the midst of a group of tall, attractive women, judging by the legs. The newly formed emasculation department, possibly. I was on my hands and knees in what I could only call their midst.