And just in case we were somehow able to withstand all this, the creature that opened the door and let us in was Laszlo Scott.
“Well, well, well,” he ad-libbed, “Chester the Great and Michael the Cross-Eyed Bear. You might as well come in; it can’t make any difference now.”
We wedged our way in, escaping Laszlo in the crowd, and moved by a process much like osmosis through the steamy loft, hunting for Harriet so we could pay our counterfeit respects and split. Perfect and preferably strangers, most likely female, shrieked, “Darling!” brutally through my tender ears. Anybody stepped on my feet all the time. Something tried to remove my clothes, I hope. My well-known joi de vivre signaled TILT.
(Sativa — that unprintable lady Machiavelli — wasn’t with us, nor was Sean. They stayed home to take advantage of our absence, and I still don’t know how she engineered it. Under my breath, and sometimes above it, I invented gorgeous ancient curses for her head.)
We reached the back of the loft without encountering Harriet, which was odd, she being a lot too large to miss. We’d not found Gary either, but in that environment this single lonely blessing went unnoticed. We had, however, mysteriously acquired tall glasses full of a swampy bluish liquid that, remarkably, didn’t taste at all bad, considering. We emptied our glasses, tossed them out the nearest window, and started back toward the front of the loft.
Just as we were sneaking past that felonious rock pile again, it blew an untuned fanfare that plastered us against the wall. When this was over, silence or studio deafness fell upon the gladly smitten horde.
“Cats and chicks,” a regrettable voice boomed from the rock group’s biggest amplifier. That explained where Gary the Frog was lurking. “Cats,” it regibbered, “and chicks: welcome to our little party.”
“Yes,” came Harriet’s equally amplified baritone, “we’re so glad you could make it tonight,” which might mean a number of things but probably didn’t.
We were trapped, Mike and I, trapped and doomed. Even when no one was talking, the air pressure from that six-foot amplifier’s humming kept us pinned against the wall. We couldn’t get away, and the wall had splinters.
“Farewell, Michael,” I sighed at the top of my lungs. “I will sleep now.”
“Courage, mon brave,” he bellowed nobly. “We are not yet dead.”
“That’s half the problem,” I explained.
Then, “Cats and chicks,” the talking frog attacked again, “on account of this is our anniversity, me and Harriet’ve fixed up something superspecial for all our buddies here tonight. Right, Harry?”
“Right, Gary!”
“You bet. An’ here to tell you all about it is a local Village celebrity who needs no introduction, a cat who we all know an’ dig the most, a great artiste that his accomplishments are all the talk of MacDougal Street and environs, none other than your old buddy, Mis-ter Lasz-lo Scott!”
“Michael,” I said in what currently passed for a whisper.
“Yes?”
“I think I’ll start worrying now.”
“I’ll help you.”
Amid sporadic cheers and weak applause, Laszlo climbed over the bass drum and grabbed the microphone.
“Friends!” he lied. “Nah, let me call you colleagues.”
I was too weak to resist.
“Doubtless you have all heard about my Reality Pills, no doubt. Some of you have dropped ’em for yourself already, and even if you haven’t, you seen what they can do, right?”
Once more, “Michael,” I whispered, so to speak.
“Speak.”
“I think it’s too late to worry now.”
“Check.”
The only bright spot of the evening so far was that Laszlo kept making full stops for applause, but no one was applauding. Guessing this might be the only bright spot, I treasured it carefully.
“Now, everybody knows,” Laszlo hinted, “that I’m the only connection for my famous Reality Pills. Nobody can’t score ’em offa nobody else, you dig: just me, Laszlo Scott. An’ everybody knows how I been a Good Guy an’ just give ’em all away, mostly: just layin’ my famous Reality Pills on everyone I see, right? ’Cause that’s the kind of cat I am. I just can’t help it. If ol’ Laszlo’s got it, baby, it’s yours. Just ask me.”
I was growing ill, for any one or more of a number of reasons, take your pick. Two from Column A and one from Column B, but no one was applauding. Pass the mop.
Laszlo fumbled on. “An’ that’s just what I’m gonna do for each and every one of you people here tonight. In fact, dig it, I already done it. There’s been a great big dose of Laszlo Scott’s famous Reality Pill in Liquid Form in everything you people drank tonight. So all you people just go have yourselves a ball, an’ remember good ol’ Laszlo Scott’s the cat who turned you on.
“An’ now I want to close up with a brand-new poem I have wrote for this occasion.”
“Michael!” I was fighting like a netted panther, but Laszlo, the bastard, the inhuman friend et cetera, turned the volume up for his epic and I couldn’t even move my arms.
Laszlo made a great show of searching his pockets for the manuscript (though a rumor, made up by myself, that he could neither read nor write was generally accepted). Finally he gave up.
“Shucks,” he promised. “I must’ve left it home.” Tantalizing pause. “But I think I can remember how it goes.”
I doubted I’d be lucky enough to die.
Laszlo threw his cape back in a silent movie gesture that knocked Gary the Frog and the bass drum to the floor, struck a plaster of Paris pose, and began: “Love Song in a Summer Loft, by Laszlo Allen Scott the Fourth.
All the lights went out. The amplifiers quit. Mike and I fell to the floor in bruised and splinter-ridden heaps. Laszlo became blessedly inaudible.
“There is a God!” I yelled.
“Where are the fuses?” some idiot asked.
“Don’t tell him,” ordered Mike.
Lots of people screamed, but after what we’d just been through, the peace, though merely relative, was wonderful.
“Let’s get out of here,” I suggested.
“Great. How?”
“Crawl.”
“Which direction, pray?”
“Any direction. If we can’t find the door, I’m willing to make do with the windows by now.”
“Seven stories?”
“You’d rather stay here?”
“Lead on.”
I did, keeping my right shoulder against the wall for a guide and crawling staunchly toward what I was almost certain was the door.
“Keep in touch,” I whispered back to Mike.
“Roger.”
“That word again.”
“Right.” He grabbed my left heel and held on.
“Toot! Toot!” I stated in my best steam locomotive accent. This was fun! In fact, the whole party had been fun, come to think of it, but this was clearly the best part. I felt great.