Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Nearly an hour later, we turned down Hannah’s driveway. Charles expertly navigated the Mercedes through the corridor of empty cars parked along the road. Frankly, I was surprised he was able to drive so well given his state of impairment (see “Unidentified Fluid,” Chapter 4, “Engine Troubleshooting,” Automobile Mechanics , Pont, 1997).

“Don’t get a ding,” said Jade. “If you get a ding I’m in trouble.”

“She knows more people than we thought,” Leulah said.

“Shit,” said Milton.

“This is perfect,” said Jade, clapping her hands. “Absolutely ideal. We’ll blend. I just hope we don’t see Hannah.”

“You’re worried about seeing Hannah?” shouted Charles. “Then we need to go back, because let me give you the heads up, honey bunch! We’re going to see her!”

“Keep your eyes on the road. It’s fine.” Jade huffed. “It’s just…”

“What?” Charles slammed his foot on the brake. We all went forward and backward together like children on a bus.

“It’s just a party. And Hannah won’t really mind. We’re not doing anything terrible or anything. Right?”

Anxiety, Doubt and Uncertainty had unexpectedly stood up in Jade’s voice and now they were meandering through it making Helluva Good Time quite nervous.

“Kind of,” said Leulah.

“No,” said Nigel.

“Could go either way,” said Milton.

“Somebody make a fucking decision!” shouted Charles.

“Let Gag decide,” said Jade. “She’s the responsible one.”

To this day, I’m not sure how or why I said what I did. Perhaps it was one of those uncanny occasions when it really isn’t you speaking, but Fate, who intervenes every so often to make sure that, rather than your choosing the easy road, recently paved, with clearly labeled street signs and maple trees, she, with the cruelty of drill sergeants, dictators, and office personnel, makes certain you stick to the dark, thorny path she’s already laid out for you.

“We’re going in,” I said.

Hannah was a Snowy Egret, and when one heard she was planning a social affair, one couldn’t help but expect a Snowy Egret kind of party — flutes of champagne, cigarette holders and a string quartet, people asking each other to dance with delicate rests of cheeks against shoulders and very few clammy palms, adulterous intrigues behind laurel hedges and grandiflora roses — the sort of elegant, whispery affair the Larrabees could host with their eyes closed, the kind Sabrina observed from her tree.

As we approached the house, however, and saw the weird crowd of animal, vegetable and mineral dribbling through the front yard and across the driveway, Milton suggested we cut into the woods and head to the other side of the house, maybe sneak in the door off the patio where Hannah had a kidney-shaped swimming pool, which she never used.

“We can still leave if we want to,” said Jade.

We parked the car behind a van and sat in the dark, at the edge of pine trees, watching in the loose light of fourteen tiki torches some fifty or sixty people crowding Hannah’s patio. They all wore surprisingly complicated costumes (ghouls, alligators, devils, the entire crew of the USS Enterprise ), those in masks sipping straws in blue and red plastic cups, others eating pretzels and crackers, trying to make themselves heard over the meat-cleaving music.

“Who’re all these people?” asked Charles, frowning.

“I don’t recognize them,” said Jade.

“I guess they’re friends of Hannah’s,” said Leulah.

“You see her?”

“No.”

“Even if she was here,” said Milton, “it’d be impossible to tell which one she was. Everyone’s wearin’ masks.”

“I’m freezing,” said Jade.

“ We should have masks,” Milton said. “That’s what the invite said.”

“Where the fuck are we going to find masks now? ” asked Charles.

“There’s Perón,” said Lu.

“Where?”

“The woman with the sparkly halo thing.”

“That’s not her.”

“Seriously,” said Jade uneasily, “what are we even doing here?”

“You guys can sit here all night,” said Nigel, “but I, for one, am going to enjoy myself.” He was wearing his Zorro mask and his glasses. He looked like an erudite raccoon. “Who else wants to have some fun?”

For some reason, he was looking at me.

“What do you say, old broad? Shall we dance?”

I adjusted my wig.

We left the others, hurrying across the yard — one nerdy raccoon and an inverted carrot — to Hannah’s patio.

It was jam packed. Four men dressed as rats and a mermaid beauty queen with a half-mask of blue sequins were actually in the swimming pool, laughing, throwing a volleyball. We decided to make our way inside (see “Walking upstream in the Zambezi River during a flood period,” Quests , 1992, p. 212). We crammed ourselves into a space between the plaid couch and a pirate talking to a devil oblivious to the repercussions of his massive sweaty back when he suddenly and without warning backed it into two much smaller people.

For twenty minutes, we didn’t do anything but sip vodka out of the red plastic cups and watch the people — none of whom we recognized — crawling, slithering, waddling their way around the room in costumes ranging from the teensy-weensy to the wholly insurmountable.

“Butterfly hazy!” Nigel shouted, shaking his head.

I shook my head and he repeated himself.

“This is totally crazy!”

I nodded. Hannah, Eva Brewster and the animals were nowhere to be found, only graceless birds, doughy sumo wrestlers, unvelcroed reptiles, a Queen who’d removed her crown and distractedly gnawed on it as her eyes strolled the room, probably searching for a King or Ace to come royally flush her.

If Dad had been present, he’d undoubtedly have commented that most of the adults present were “dangerously close to relinquishing their dignity” and that it was sad and disturbing, because “they were all searching for something they’d never recognize, even if they found it.” Dad was notoriously severe when it came to commenting upon the behaviors of all people other than himself. Yet, watching a midforties Wonder Woman stumble backward into Hannah’s neat stack of Traveler magazines made me wonder if the very idea of Growing Up was a sham, the bus out of town you’re so busy waiting for, you don’t notice it never actually comes.

“What are they speaking?” Nigel shouted in my ear.

I followed his eyes to the astronaut standing a few feet away. He was holding his pressure helmet, a stocky man with a sideways sigma hairline () talking vigorously to a gorilla.

“I think it’s Greek,” I said, surprised. (“The language of the Titans, the Oracles, ” said Dad. (This last bit apparently meant “the language of heroes.”) Dad loved showing off his bizarre aptitude when it came to foreign languages. (He claimed to be fluent in twelve; yet fluent often meant yes and no, plus a few impressive phrases, and enjoyed repeating a certain witticism about Americans and their dearth of language skills: “Americans need to master lingual before they attempt bi lingual.”)

“I wonder who that is,” I said to Nigel. The gorilla took off its head, revealing a small Chinese woman. She nodded, but answered in some other guttural language that made a person’s mouth break-dance. I wasn’t even sure I’d heard Greek in the first place. I leaned closer.

“Aye, Savannah,” said Nigel, squeezing my arm.