"So that's what that button does," I said. "So," I said. "You didn't finish what you were saying earlier."
She didn't answer me, but pointed, and I forgot what I'd asked when I saw what she was pointing out. The man from the peak walked across the lawn-on a line parallel with our own course, maybe twenty feet away-with the guy he'd been talking to in the living room. They walked toward the edge of the wood, where a woman-the woman with the bad dye-job-lay on the ground.
"What is going on over there?" Sarah asked.
I said, "I'm sure we don't want to know."
"Do you think she's all right?"
"She looks fine to me," I said, though there was no way I could actually judge, from where we stood. "We should leave them be," I said, but I asked, "Who is that guy anyhow? I saw him come down from the peak."
"Which guy?" Sarah asked.
"The bald guy." Right when I said that, he was out of sight, he'd stepped into a shadow that made him all but invisible. So I said never mind.
On the patio, we finished our drinks. Sarah took another cigarette. She looked around-there were other guests on the patio, but none we knew more than just in passing. Richard had gone inside. Sarah said, "I'm not putting any pressure on you, David, but I'm not going to Boston."
Sarah seemed like herself when she said that, more than she had all night, and I was glad, I'd known it, known she would leave Richard for me if I'd wanted, and I did want that, and I hadn't been wrong.
All the voices on the porch seemed to rise in volume-there was a scream-I decided from inside the house-but no one paid any attention.
Several hours later, I stood in front of Richard's house, trying to figure out why there were twelve cars, not including my own, in the driveway. The party had started to die about an hour before; people had slipped out one-by-one. I realized, as I stood in front of Richard's house smoking, sipping a cheap glass of whisky, that I hadn't heard a single car go. Even if people had carpooled, had designated a driver, there were still too many cars in the driveway.
My thoughts weren't adding up in any significant way. I was in a haze of drunk and sleepiness-not so far gone that I wouldn't be able to collect Sarah and leave soon, but dull enough that my lines of thought were short.
I stared for a while at the mountaintop. There were no houses, that I could see, higher than Richard's. If the man from the peak lived up there, he must have walked from the other side of the peak, and that looked to me like a hell of a walk.
I coughed, caught a coughing fit, felt a hand on my back.
"Prudence?" I managed, still bent over.
"No, not Prudence."
The voice was a voice I hadn't heard once that night, but I knew whose voice it was.
"Taking in the air?" the man from the peak asked.
I saw a laugh on his face; he was laughing at me.
"Smoke?" I asked. "Whisky?" I held out my drink and my cigarette.
He held up a hand-his fingers were long, his nails were long.
"You don't drink," I said.
He just grinned his stupid ugly grin, a set of teeth crooked and misshapen. That his speech wasn't impeded by his malformed mouth was a wonder-indeed, his voice was the most soothing voice I'd ever heard. "So who are you?" I asked.
He said, "I'm an invited guest," and I remembered what I'd overheard earlier that night.
I said, "I watched you come down from the peak. Are there houses up there?"
He looked at the peak, followed its upward rise with his head until he'd found the very tip and said, "No, there are no houses."
I thought maybe he lived in a tent or a trailer home and was just having fun with me, making me ask my questions just so. Normally, when I think someone's doing that, some cute girl who thinks she's coy or some clever boy trying to impress, I walk away without so much as a fuck you and that puts them out, and then they beg me for my attention. Normally, that's what I'd do. But I said, "But do you live on the peak? In a tent? In a trailer? In a mobile home?" I gave that ugly man from the peak all the options I could because I was desperate to hear his answer. For some reason: I was desperate to know.
He said, "I live in the peak."
I didn't know what he meant by "in the peak," but I smiled-I felt that dumb smile spread on my face-I smiled and nodded as if "in the peak" made all the sense in the world.
I asked, "So what is it you're doing in the backyard?"
He gave me a straight answer. An awful answer. And for a moment I could see him exactly as he was; all of a sudden I could see him, see that his clothes-from pant cuff to shirt collar-were drenched in blood and gore. Blood dripped off his shirt sleeves, blood was pooled around his feet, there was blood on the top of his bald head and there was blood all around his mouth. The blood around his mouth was the most horrible, smeared around like finger-paint. Before I became hysterical, I couldn't see the blood anymore. He looked ugly, but his clothes were clean. His pant cuffs flapped in the breeze. His bright white shirt sleeves were rolled up just below his elbows.
I wondered, if he could do that, why he didn't make himself look handsome to me. I think he knew my thought, because he said, "Charisma. You know what I mean."
I laughed. He walked back into the house. I stood shaking my head, enjoying for a moment the great joke. Then a wave of nausea passed through me and I vomited-all spit and whisky-and my head was clear. I rushed into the house-for Sarah, I thought, where is Sarah? The guest room was empty. No one was at the bar. Richard was seated on the piano bench next to the man from the peak, and they were playing "Heart and Soul." The man from the peak playing the chords, Richard plinking out the simple tune with a single finger, laughing like an idiot.
I ran into Prudence out on the patio. She was drunk, but when she looked at me I knew she was still in controclass="underline" I'd known from the moment she brushed past me at the front door that the big breasts and the flirty girl-voice were all for show, plumage that got Prudence what she wanted. I'd known that she was like me in that way, and admired her for it. So instead of just ignoring her for Sarah I stopped and told her that we were all in a lot of trouble.
"I'd sort of picked up on that," she said, pointing with her thumb toward the backyard. Her calm was wrong, a part of all that was wrong that night. She said, "I was just leaving. My car's blocked though. I was trying to find someone-"
"So go out to my car-it's silver, it's the last one in the driveway. Go out to my car and wait for me. I'm going to get Sarah."
She said, "Sarah? Fuck Sarah. What do you need Sarah for?" I sensed her control was limited, or running low, and so she obeyed me, started toward the driveway. Better to do as I said, than to do what the man from the peak asked her to do. I went through the near-empty rooms, finally went into the backyard, where I knew everyone must be.
I tried not to understand too much of what I saw. Since there was no moonlight, no stars, I couldn't make out the exact details anyhow. But the yard was lined with bodies. Many stripped of their clothes, all flat on their back. The bodies, piled like sandbags, formed a wall along the edge of the woods. They were neatly stacked but for a few strays-I saw Michael's body, not five feet from where I stood.
And then I saw Sarah, on her feet, wandering in a daze. I became aware that "Heart and Soul" had stopped. I could hear Sarah's feet brush through the grass.
I couldn't speak-had no impulse to. I ran to Sarah, put my arm around her and guided her toward the side of the house, away from the patio door which was opening, away from Richard, who staggered out into the yard, singing, "Heart and Soul." He fell in love, he sang, "madly."