Page 242 - Some Dance to Remember

212 Jack Fritscher

hips, not hard, but tentatively, into Ryan’s.
“I’m tense,” Thom whispered. “I’m so fucking tensed out. They’re all
driving me crazy.”
Later that night, something happened. The triplets had settled down
and Sandy had gone to bed after her long drive.
“If you want drugs,” she had said, not at all in apology, “you tell me
a better place than a school playground.”
I had wanted, despite the storm and flooding, to head back to San
Francisco. This family was better off without witnesses. Facing the raw
elements seemed easier than facing our raw hosts. Ryan would not hear of
it. “You must stay,” he said.
“Must?”
“I hid the car keys.” He handed me his first-edition hardback of Nor-
man Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and set me down in what they called
the “Family Room” on the couch opposite the television. He handed me
a bottle of Christian Brothers Brandy and a large snifter. “Read,” he said.
“Stick around for the jokes.”
“Fuck you and the high horse you rode in on,” I said. I settled back,
watching him, around the covers of Mailer’s epic, walk dead ahead in a
straight sight line from me, through the small kitchen, into the living
room to his brother.
The storm howled around the ranch house the way storms always
show up as special effects in horror movies underscoring the dramatic
human moments with nature’s chill. Slightly pissed at being held cap-
tive, I poured two fingers of Brandy, swirled the amber, took a warming
sip, and, lowering the curved snifter to my eye, studied how the rich
liquor toned the view through the glass distortions. I could spy into the
living room most discreetly, a fact, not lost on me, that Ryan, ever the
exhibitionist, had removed me from the orchestra to the balcony. He was
shameless, setting me up, setting Thom up, but no more shameless than
I who opened the shameless-macho Mailer somewhere in the middle, not
for reading, but for shield, held at nose level, watching the two brothers
flickering like an old-time movie in the firelight. Clever Ryan! He had
situated me far enough away that Thom, in his sobbing jag, forgot about
me who could see and hear everything. What a bastard!
“What’s the longest you’ve ever had sex?” Thom asked.
“What?”
“You heard me.” Thom actually laughed a small laugh.
“Sometimes Kick and I go eight or nine hours at a time.”
“On drugs?”

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