Matthew Wayne Selznick

Previously: Lina Porter thinks it might be time to break up with her cute older boyfriend, since no one likes him. Crystal Dubois has been playing gatekeeper at her boyfriend Preston’s party while he’s off having fun.

“The Party, Part Two”
Seeing Eric crouching by the stereo with Ian and Tammy, Lina realized with jarring clarity that she didn’t want to talk to him. A breath before she could look away, he raised his hand and motioned her to come over.

Lina turned to Carson. Just tell me to go with you, wherever you’re about to go, make a decision to take three steps away from the stereo, drag me with you, c’mon, Car…

Some loadie called to Car from the kitchen and Car turned in his direction. Lina touched his arm lightly.

Car turned; she smiled at him. Before she could grab hold of his sleeve, he gave her an apologetic grin and started to turn for the kitchen.

In the time it took for Car to slip out of reach, Lina decided she was being a little girl. Loadie-doofus was obviously some old buddy of Carson’s, and hell, she had called Eric Wednesday specifically to make sure he’d here so they could straighten things out. Time to make like a grown-up.

She went over to Eric, Ian and Tammy. Ian’s pupils were huge; he was already well on his way tonight. Tammy had a hand on his shoulder and a bored expression on her face. Eric stood up and offered Lina a hug.

She let him, but kept one arm at her side. Eric smelled like pomade, cigarettes and beer. When they broke their hug she put a finger under her nose to stifle a sneeze.

“Are you catching a cold..?”

His sideburns and pompadour somehow made his concerned expression… what? Lina couldn’t find the word. “No… don’t worry about it.”

Creepy?

Tammy stood and helped Ian to his feet. Ian spoke carefully. “We are going outside.”

Eric put his hands on Ian’s shoulders. He smiled and mocked Ian’s attempt to not sound wasted. “All right, Ian. You go outside.”

Ian shook his head, grinning. He looked at Lina as Tammy guided him past. He giggled at her, and it was absolutely more of a laughing-at than laughing-with kind of thing.

What the fuck?

Lina looked back to Eric, who had a beer in each hand. He offered one to her.

She took the bottle; it was already open and still cold. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He clinked their bottles together. “Cheers to ya.” He lifted his bottle to his lips and drank. His eyes stayed open. His eyes stayed on her.

For Lina, this was a little too much like the trailer. Except, thankfully, they were in Preston VanHart’s living room, Carson was a few feet away being assaulted by good will from the doofus, and there were fifteen or twenty other people all over the house.

If she was going to talk to Eric, she needed this drink. She drank. Eric smiled.

“All right,” he said. “So… you promised me you would call.”

“I did call.”

“That was Wednesday.” He wagged his index finger at her. “You told me in the car — you remember, when I came and picked you up after you walked out on me — that you’d call me the next day. Which would have been Tuesday.” He took a swig, swallowed, and grinned, triumphant and… what else? What was she seeing in him tonight she hadn’t seen before?

Oh, right. Eric was a dick.

Claire was right.

Everybody was right.

Lina was a loser, dating a loser.

Fuck.

She grinned right back. “You didn’t seem to care when I called you on Wednesday. Why bring it up now?”

“Hell,” he laughed. “You barely kept me on the phone long enough to bring it up. You just made sure I was coming here, and then you were all excuses to get off the phone.” He shook his head. “Seriously, Lina.”

“I was at Claire’s. It was, like, her phone.”

He laughed, short and ugly, and studied his beer. “Oh, I know. I could hear her in the background, making gagging noises like a ten year old.” He looked at Lina. “Like a bitch.”

Lina didn’t like looking at him. That was weird, because it was new. She took a long pull off the beer to hide it.

“How’s the beer?” Eric asked.

“Fine.”

In fact, it was hitting her hard. “Look, Eric…” She gritted her teeth; her throat felt tight and her equilibrium was going sideways. “Look, we need to talk.”

He nodded, smiling again. “Ah, right. The talk. Sure. C’mon.”

He went across the living room and toward the hallway with long, quick strides. “Hey!” Lina had to follow him. Her feet felt funny. She held on to the beer.

Eric opened the door at the end of the hall. “After you.”

Lina managed to slip past without touching him, but couldn’t avoid bumping hard against the door frame. She should have had more for dinner. She licked her lips, thirsty despite herself. A small sip wouldn’t do that much worse to her. Car was in the next room. House full of people.

She was in the master bedroom; Preston’s mother’s room, probably. She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and grabbed the spread with one hand to keep a wave of dizziness from fucking with her.

“So.” Eric shut the door behind him. They were alone. “Give it to me, Lina.”

“Give you… what..?” Crap, how did she get so drunk? One beer! Her ears roared.

“The talk.” He took a step toward her. “Or did you bring me in here to give me something else?”

She didn’t bring him in here! He made her… she followed..!

Lina opened her mouth, ready to give him hell. Just as soon as she could make her head work. Make her head make the letters make words out of sharp squeaky sticks she couldn’t put together. Here they were…

Words.

Coming together.

Any second now.

Crystal tired of her post at the front door. She spotted potential relief. “Brad!”

Brad Krueger bobbed his head in acknowledgment and crossed the living room to her. “Hey, Crystal.” He was almost a foot and a half taller than Crystal and kept his chin down to talk to her. “Cool hat.”

“Thanks. Look, somebody’s gotta play doorman for a while. Preston doesn’t want those kids across the street to crash the party. I have to pee. And I want a beer. Can you…”

Brad nodded vigorously. “No problem, Crystal! Hey — do I get to wear the hat?”

Crystal took the pork-pie hat off her head and pushed it over Brad’s haphazard ball of curly brown hair. “You get to wear the hat.”

Brad grinned. “Nice.”

“Thanks!” Crystal decided to go for the beer before the bathroom. It would give her a chance to check in with Preston and see if he’d done his acid yet. That could go either way. She didn’t want to have to babysit him all night; she wanted to have fun.

She passed through the kitchen and went into the back yard. A few people were hanging out there; she nodded to Star Bell (girl belonged in a forties movie with a name like that, she thought for the millionth time…) and exchange a hug-and-hello with Dennis Vale. That was fun, if only because it made Dennis’ Barbie-doll majorette fiance Isabel stiffen with jealousy. Bitch.

No one was in the little one-room back house because Preston hadn’t yet turned on the hundreds of purple Christmas lights. That was the deal with a party at the House of Back — the level of fun / inebriation / wastedness needed to rise a little before the back house opened for business and people gravitated to its tight confines. Preston thought he was playing with the crowd; Crystal enjoyed the experiment but knew it wasn’t worth much when, let’s face it, there was no control group among their friends.

The back house was also where she and Preston had stashed a cooler of the good beer earlier this afternoon. Crystal went inside, found the cooler in the dim light and grabbed an Elephant. The bottle was wet from soaking in half-melted ice, which made it easy to scrape off the label. It wouldn’t do for people to wonder where or how she got something better than Corona and Miller Genuine Draft. She popped the cap with the bottle opener on her key chain and half-sneaked back to the main house.

So. No Preston in the living room, back yard, or back house. His room, then. She went down the hall and opened the door. Several expectant faces looked up through a cloying haze, including Ian Pinchley and Jeff Hargis. Jeff waved at her, his smile stiff from holding in the smoke from the toke he’d just inhaled.

Crystal let the sweet-smelling fumes come and go through her lungs, taking advantage of the contact high. “You guys seen Preston?”

Jeff croaked, “Nope,” and exhaled.

“Thanks.” Crystal stepped back into the hallway and closed the door. Might as well go to the bathroom.

She was reaching for the bathroom door when it opened. Crystal automatically took a step back.

Gail nearly bumped into her coming out, anyway. “Oh! Hi!”

Tall Skinny Gail. She wore a black sequined flapper dress that fell off her shoulders like a rectangle, accentuating her long, angular body. Her hair, waist-length and thick and honey-blonde and just about the only thing Crystal was genuinely envious of, was out of sorts. Her make-up was all fucked up.

Gail closed the door behind her.

Crystal sneered at her. “What are you doing here?” For that matter, when had the bitch slipped past her?

“I… oh, you know.” Gail tried to smile sweetly, but it was a soap-opera maneuver; both women hated each other’s guts. “Just hanging out.”

Gail brushed past her toward the living room. “You got nothing there to hang out, Tall Skinny Gail,” Crystal muttered. She reached for the bathroom door knob and stopped.

The light was still on in there.

Gail’s make-up was a mess. Why would she leave the bathroom without fixing herself up?

Her hair was disheveled. You’d have to work pretty hard to put hair that heavy out of place.

Where the fuck was Preston?

All these thoughts passed though Crystal’s mind in a fraction of a second. Furious, she opened the bathroom door.

Preston leaned against the sink. He grinned sheepishly. “Hi.”

The narrow, curling line of smoke rising from a little cone of incense on the sink counter hadn’t overpowered the sticky smell of sex. It was as thick as the pot smoke in Preston’s bedroom. Crystal hung on the door and swayed, momentarily paralyzed with rage.

Her voice came low from her throat. “You piece of shit.” Her lungs took in air heavy with incense and pheromones and that powered volume that notched louder with every subsequent word: “You mother fucking dick!”

“Crystal, hey, it not–”

Preston took a step toward her. She didn’t hesitate. She pushed him with both hands. It sounded like he fell back against the sink. but Crystal had already turned around, was already moving down the hall, forcing herself not to run, forcing herself not to cry.

In fact, fuck crying. She wanted to kill him. If she didn’t get away from him, she’d do it. And fuck him if he was going to make her have a scene in front of everyone here.

Half these assholes probably knew what was going on, anyway. Guaranteed everyone in Preston’s bedroom did. Had he smoked out Gail, too, before he fucked her over the goddamn toilet?

She needed to be away from everybody for five minutes before she could move through the house, get her shit and go home. If she saw that fucking bitch on the way, she didn’t care who else was around; she’d fucking clock her.

She needed five minutes. Five minutes to breathe, to put the wall back up, to not look like a fool. Get her stupid hat back from Brad.

She whipped open Preston’s mother’s bedroom door.

What she saw there did not improve her mood.

…to be continued!

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