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The party was in the McDermish Room, which the hall's founder, 54-year-old Moezeddin "Moe" Sayeed, had named after Cody McDermish, the fictitious sender of a "natural penis enhancment [sic]" junk e-mail Mr. Sayeed had gotten. Framed, handmade cotton-polyester blend kilts imported from El Salvador hung on the walls. A vinyl banner reading SCOTLAND RULES! in Helvetica Bold computer font hung over the cash bar.
Mr. Summers arrived alone at 8:10 PM. He threaded his way across the dance floor and stopped at the long gray metal folding table where the party's disk jockey, 48-year-old Timmy Kay, sat. A friend since high school and a fixture at the development zone's corporate gatherings, Mr. Kay contributed to the party's Asgard Viper-related Eighties nostalgia theme by playing CDs of 1960s Motown songs popular during the mid-Eighties Sixties revival. Of the 106 people there, he was the only African-American; his brother, 51-year-old Father Wendell Kay, was the first African-American president of Gates College.
"Hey Tim," Mr. Summers said. "You gonna play the Macarena?"
"You gonna sell my toolshed, heh heh?"
"Heh heh heh." Mr. Summers glanced to his left. "See ya later." He walked to his left, toward the cash bar, where Mr. Holden stood sipping from a plastic cup.
"Hey Rip," Mr. Summers said as he approached him.
"Hey."
"Are Dale, Jon, and Peter here?"
"Sure, they came with me in the limo. They're here somewhere."
"Good. I thought we should get together and practice at least once before our reunion concert."
"Screw it. I like a raw, unpredictable sound."
"Since when?"
"Chill out, dude."
"Well, at least do you know what songs we're gonna perform?"
"Let's wing it when the time comes."
"Wing it? This is only one of our most important concerts ever, you know. It's being recorded."
"Yeah, yeah." Mr. Holden sipped from his cup. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to return to more pressing matters, like my cunt hunt�.What?"
"I can't believe you still use that sweet, romantic term."
"Well excuse me, Little Miss Christian. Maybe you should loosen up, grab your pith helmet and join me on my hunt. Get a little snatch of a different color for a change. Doesn't it get tiresome eating Mexican every night?"
"Sure. That's why I went into realty. Low-interest thirty-year mortgages make the ladies wet."
"That's the spirit, young sir." Mr. Holden clapped him on the shoulder and walked away. Mr. Summers watched him walked away.
"That'll teach you to disturb a man's cunt hunt," Ms. Browning said to the back of Mr. Summers's head. He turned around to look at her. "Fortunately, I have more than negative four percent body fat, so he has no interest in me."
"Glad to hear that."
"Glad to hear you're glad. Anyway, Shane, I don't know if you know who I am." She held out her hand. "I'm Everette Browning, from Nexworth? Senior vice-president for advertising?�I hung that HANG IN THERE, BABY poster on the office bulletin board?"
"Oh, that Everette Browning." He shook her hand. "I have heard of you. You came up with the idea for reuniting the band."
"Yeah. I thought the world should experience your musical stylings one more time, before the ozone layer disappears and we all turn into beef jerky. And speaking of beef, too bad you missed the dinner we had earlier. Quite an epicurean delight. We actually had stuffed peppers filled with buffalo meat."
"Buffalo meat? Why, couldn't they find any baby seal?"
"Sure they could, but this is a classy joint. What do you think the toilet paper's made of here?"
"Toilet paper?" a middle-aged man passing by asked.
"Oh shit," Ms. Browning muttered.
"Shit? Shit?" He walked onto the dance floor. "Laaaadies and gentlemen!" he shouted. "King Keister has arrived!" Several of the other dinner/dancers clapped and cheered as he lifted up the back of his suit jacket and started waving his rear back and forth.
"That's Chris Culver. Senior assistant vice-president for broadband development. Every year, he gets drunk on two drinks and does some dance he invented called the Ass Dance."
"My ass has class!" he shouted.
"His ass has class. And we'll see how much class his ass has in a minute or two, when he does his annual holiday striptease."
"Any nudity involved?" Mr. Summers asked.
"No. He just strips down to his tighty-whities, which is bad enough�more skidmarks than the Indy 500. But then for the grand finale he does that Jim Carrey talking butt routine, with one main difference: Culver's butt raps."
"Think I'll drink some Dr?no now."
"Then he goes around the room and asks women to rub his ass."
"Liquid Plumbr. I could use a tall cool glass of Liquid Plumbr right now too."
"I don't blame you. The other jerks here really shouldn't encourage him." She motioned toward the dance floor, toward a young man filming Mr. Culver with a digital video camera. The young man wore a bleached-blonde goatee with pink highlights. "Darrell Prine. Each year he films the proceedings here and posts them on his website, and each year Culver's fan club grows larger. Darrell doesn't even work here; he always comes to this party as Culver's guest. I think Darrell's the one who gets Culver drunk. I'd have 'em both banned from these parties, but then I'd probably get fired for depriving my fellow corporate drones of their yearly spectacle of public embarrassment. Our company's equivalent of the fat Christmas bonus."
Mr. Culver started moving his rear in lopsided vertical circles. The crowd started chanting "Go Culver! Go Culver!"
"You wanna get out of here?" Ms. Browning asked.
Less than a minute later, Ms. Browning and Mr. Summers were in her 2004 Cadillac Escalade, in the reception hall's parking lot. The SUV was metallic gray, had dark tinted windows, and sported a rear-window sticker of Calvin, the spiky-haired boy from the defunct American comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, urinating upon the words EVERYTHING YOU LIKE--a sticker unauthorized by the strip's creator Bill Watterson and his syndicate United Press Syndicate. Ms. Browning sat behind the wheel. Mr. Summers sat next to her.
"I bought your book," Ms. Browning said.
"Really?" Mr. Summers asked.
"Yeah. Bought it last month at the 99-cent store."
"How much did you pay�98 cents?"
"No, the cashier paid me 98 cents, ba dom bomp. Thanks, I'll be here all week....No, I really did buy your book."
"Wow. Someone actually bought my book. Wow, man. Excuse me while I tremble with joy." Mr. Summers sat motionless for a few seconds. "Okay, done trembling. So did you read my masterwork?"
"Yeah. And�you're pretty funny for a Christian, no offense, and you must have led a wild life. So why was your book as boring as, well, hell?"
"Blame my publisher. Soul-winning is a serious business, don'tcha know. That meant no jokes, no puns, no witty asides. Plus Nimbus House is a family publisher, which meant no adult content, nothing vulgar or obscene, which meant no explicit depictions of hair-metal debauchery. I couldn't even mention the sixty-two blue incident. I couldn't dish dirt on anyone, in fact; the publisher couldn't afford any libel suits, despite the free publicity they would bring."
"Couldn't you conceal the identities of the dirt-dishees?"
"I asked, and Nimbus House said no. It didn't publish gossip rags, it said. So I ended up removing everything the fine folks at Nimbus House deemed unacceptable, maybe twenty or thirty pages total. It was a little like being forced to castrate my own son."
"Interesting comparison."
"You think so, Dr. Freud?"
"Hey, I'm probably nuttier than you. I've never had the urge to slaughter my coworkers, after all�.So have you thought about releasing an uncensored version of your book, or posting the cut material on-line?"
"Nah. I'd rather put my days of rock-'n'-roll sin behind me. Anyway, I really can't complain about how the book turned out, I guess. 28 publishers had already rejected it, and I was grateful someone other than Kinko's had decided to print it. Plus I really needed the money."
"I understand. Call me a philistine, but sometimes artistic integrity has to take a backseat to frivolous stuff like adequate nourishment."
"You got that right. But sometimes the frivolous stuff isn't so frivolous. Just before I quit the band, I told Rip I was bored with doing songs about partying and cheap sex and childish rebellion. I asked him why we couldn't do songs that tackled more serious subjects, like politics or religion. You know what he said?"
"'Diffin yadda yadda poop'?"
"Close. He said 'Serious subjects don't pay your coke bill, Dirtay Dog.' I have to admit, he did have a point. How much artistic integrity do you expect when you're an addict, when you'll do anything for the funds to feed your nose?"
"Did Rip use drugs?"
"Nah. Everyone else in the group did, but he didn't. Well, I never saw him use any. He just stuck to his old friend alcohol. I had a drink or twelve now and then, but Rip, he drank almost nonstop. Which reminds me of the last time I saw Rip, not counting today. I saw him once between leaving the group and today, didja know that?"
"No, the invisible purple toothbrush that controls my every move must have neglected to tell me that."
"Yeah, well�it was 1998, and I was visiting some relatives of mine in Bakersfield. I looked in the paper to see if any good bands were playing that night. I saw a tiny notice that this band called Rip Holden and the Ripoffs was opening for this band called Saddle Sore at a bar outside town. I thought, what the heck. Might as well go see him, bury the hatchet. The Christian thing to do.
"So I went alone. The place was your typical redneck bar�dead animal heads on the wall, that SECURITY BY SMITH & WESSON sign. The place was a dump, and a small dump at that. I've vomited in toilet stalls that were larger and smelled better. There were maybe eight people in the audience, including me. I sat in the back, in the dark, half-hoping he wouldn't notice me. I'd started having doubts about this whole mission of forgiveness thing. Rip and I despised each other before the breakup. Well, him more than me. I heard he'd vowed to use my testicles for skeet-shooting practice if he ever saw me again.
"So Rip and his band come on, and I get a bad feeling. When I was in Asgard Viper, he could drink all day and all of the night [sung in a rough approximation of the Kinks song] and never show even the slightest sign of drunkenness. But now he's obviously drunk, so drunk he can hardly walk. He's also lost maybe twenty pounds, and he was already a beanpole to begin with. He's wearing his usual black leather pants, but he's so thin they're hitched up around his eyebrows like some porn-star grandpa. And he's wearing one of those giant foam cowboy hats, the kind you buy at amusement parks. His band's composed of younger guys: lead guitar, bass guitar, drums. No keyboards. 'Hellooo Bakersfield!' he says to the audience. He's slurring his words like a cartoon drunk. 'We'd like to start things out with a little number you might have heard of, a Lynyrd Skynyrd classic called "Free Bird"!' The band then plays something loud, tuneless, and rambling that doesn't sound at all like 'Free Bird.' It sounds like they're making fun of country-rock, something I wouldn't do in a redneck bar. Rip sings in some phony hick accent about 'gettin' stoned' and 'lickin' your crotch' and 'reamin' you good.' Every so often he throws in a series of f-words. If the audience is mad, it's not showing it. They drink and talk throughout the performance. They don't even seem to care. I feel really sorry for him.
"After about five or six minutes, he stops singing in the middle of an f-word. He motions to the band to quit playing. They do. He walks up to the very edge of the stage, clutching his cordless mike in front of his mouth with both hands. He stares down at his mike. He stares at the audience. He doesn't say or do anything for maybe ten seconds. Then he starts singing�.'Every night in my dreams / I see you, I feeeel you�'"
"Oh, no. 'My Heart Will Go On'?!"
"Of course."
"The horror�the horror�"
"Not really. I like Celine Dion, in a guilty pleasure kind of way. I like the cheesy bombast of her songs, especially that one. No cheesy bombast in Rip's version, though. He sings the whole song a cappella, a little shaky at first, then with more and more confidence. He's not slurring his words anymore or using that hick accent. It doesn't sound like he's singing this as a joke, either. He's singing with more sincerity, more feeling that I've ever seen him display on stage. His band looks surprised; apparently he hadn't planned to do this. When he gets to that final chorus�'Near�far�wherehhhver you are�'� he starts crying, and my heart leaps in my chest. No, seriously. By the end of the song he's crying so hard he can barely finish. He does finish, and stares at the audience. Some scattered applause. Suddenly he looks in my direction and shouts 'I love you, Shane! I wanna marry you!' "
"Huh."
"Then he collapses onstage, dead drunk. A few of the rednecks turn to look at me. I get up as nonchalantly as I can and leave. While I still can. As I walk out the door, I turn around and see no one has made any effort to carry Rip offstage. Everyone's just staring at him.
"Later I heard that his entire band quit that night. They'd gotten sick of his erratic behavior; that wasn't the first time he'd ruined a performance, ruined in their opinion. I heard that he quit music himself after that, that he became a limo driver and is still one.
"I didn't see Rip again until today at the theater, before filming that commercial. He looked buff. He looked sober�well, not visibly drunk at least. I asked him what he did for a living now, and he said 'Oh...I have a few nefarious moneymaking schemes in the works' He didn't mention a thing about seeing me six years ago. Maybe he doesn't remember or doesn't want to remember. Maybe he really was just joking around when he sang that Celine Dion song."
Mr. Summers quit talking.
"Well," Ms. Browning said. "I don't know how I can top that story."
She quickly unbuttoned his pants, quickly unzipped them, and carefully pulled out his penis. She dropped down to the floor on her knees and carefully placed his penis inside her mouth.
To be continued. In the meantime, go to Fiction or go Home.
� 2005 David V. Matthews