— Someone’s going over the waterfall in a barrel.
— No, stupid. Her face obscured by a mound of bedding.
— What’s your costume anyhow?
— Florence Nightingale, Polly said. — Or maybe I’m a fresh tampon. Just put on one of these.
— A sheet?
Was it a toga event? A stylized reenactment of ancient Greek civilization? Or a Mayan sacrifice? An impromptu surgery on the first volunteer? Or were these the chasubles of priests, these sheets? The hooded garments of southern prejudice? It wasn’t that anyone was taking off their nondescript corduroys, but they were all beginning to wrap the Fosters’ sheets around them, the doubles, the full-size sheets, the queens from the guest rooms. It was surprising that the kids would look this stupid. You almost never found that among teens. Their objection to being Young Republicans was that Young Republicans dressed badly. Gerry wasn’t sure he could do it, wear a sheet, but his hesitation was interrupted, when Julian Peltz called to him, suddenly, from behind a nearby spruce. He could see one of Peltz’s hands, plump, diminutive, beckoning.
— Be right back, Gerry said to Polly Firestone, who no longer listened. She was complaining to Lynn Skeele about having to read Henry James for English class.
If it was the last good conversation that Gerry Abram-owitz had with Julian Peltz, it was still more troubling than good, as conversations were when friendships sheered apart. Julian led them out toward the winter tee of Old Man Foster’s practice course. Peltz was quiet where he had been prolix; pale where he had been rosy; uncertain where he had been witty and sure-footed. Moonlight had brought some crisis down upon him. Though the front yard had been like a crowd scene from some movie, it was empty now. There were just the two of them, the boys of Darien with the unusual surnames. The groundskeeper had doused the flaming pumpkins, or switched them off. There were just a few exterior spotlights. If, in the backyard, facing the creek, adolescence was arriving at its crescendo, elsewhere in Darien it was business as usual Two boys sat at the edge of a tee. They hadn’t soaped a window, they hadn’t rung a doorbell and fled, they hadn’t beaten a smaller kid, they hadn’t stolen anyone’s candy, they hadn’t smoked pot, they hadn’t seen vampires.
— Time to tally up? Gerry said. He was trying to be good-natured, though the circumstances no longer seemed to merit it.
— Okay. Peltz hesitated.
— Let’s see, I had a longish chat with Dinah Polanski. About some book she was reading.
— Dinah Polanski?
— I know, I know. Maybe it was going to be the best I could do for the evening. How did I know? Anyway, I didn’t go through with it. She wanted to talk about college. I saw Sally Burns asleep on a chaise longue. She looked beautiful. She probably wouldn’t care, since she was asleep, right, but I got all cowardly and couldn’t do anything. Dee Maguire was with her too. I saw the Fosters’ cook in the pantry. She didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Who else? Polly Firestone. I used all my debating skill. Not a chance. She’s sort of nice, though. So it was just a lot of conversations, really.
Julian didn’t say anything. Because there was history between them, Gerry knew intuitively that Julian hadn’t talked to anyone that night, hadn’t said a word to any of the other kids, hadn’t spoken to any girl, hadn’t even attended the party, if attendance meant exchange of human pleasantries. Peltz, when born, had been rubber-stamped Lonely No Matter What, so it seemed, didn’t matter what crowd he was in, what birthday he was celebrating. He was sixteen years old, but he might as well be forty, or sixty-three, or eighty-five. The valleys of his character were carved out and he would dwell in them from now on. Gerry understood what it was like to have a friend with bad prospects, a homely friend. It didn’t mean that you didn’t care for someone, just because they were awkward or had horrible acne or rarely went outside. On the other hand, it was also important to know when a friendship was stale.
You know the reputation that Percocet has, among major pain relievers, for nightmares, for taking the component material of dreams and distorting them? Part of chronic pain, when you are a sufferer thereof, as Gerry Abramowitz was, at the time of this remembering, had to do with terror, simple implacable terror, the atavistic memories like I’m going to be left out on the steppe and fed upon by wolves, because of my disability. If you closed your eyes, on this your present medication, to embark on the family of human experiences known as memories, you’d find that you were automatically inclined toward the most painful of these reveries, as if Percocet, especially when taken in excess of the recommended dosage, could relieve physical discomfort only by creating a mental analogue. So when Gerry embarked on this outline of the Foster’s Halloween party, in recollection, a bleak outcome was assured.
— Want some of this beer? Julian had evidently found a can somewhere on his travels. It foamed liberally. He handed it over to Gerry for a sip. — I’ve been thinking, about the plan, and you know, about whether or not it was a good plan. And I decided that for me, it really wasn’t that good. I had some reservations, about the rules and regulations of it, you know, even at the beginning. And not just because I don’t think I ever, you know, just had a conversation with a girl. Not even once. Well, maybe once or twice, but not very many times. I should have known, but I realized pretty fast, you know, that I couldn’t get anywhere near where you were going to get with all those heiresses, because you’re a natural. You’re a guy, and everybody likes you, and when you walk into a room, everybody’s happy that you’re there, even if they don’t show it, and I thought about how the plan, well, it had a thing about it that wasn’t on the level. You know, there was a part of it that wasn’t entirely honest, and the more I was out here thinking about it, the more I was thinking that maybe I just couldn’t live up to it exactly. Not in the way I thought it. Because I just can’t talk to people the way you can talk to people, I get panicky, then I do something stupid. And so that’s why I went out the window of the bathroom. It was a small window. There were a couple of kids outside who saw me come out, you know, out of the window, but I didn’t want to explain. So I just ran off into the woods. I sat out there in the woods, and my ass got really moist, from sitting on stumps and logs. And that’s how it went.