Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics

“We don’t want to be asked by a flatfoot to take a Breathalyzer,” he said agitatedly. I was shocked by his intensity. Dad said emergencies created an elemental shift in everyone, and while most people liquefied immediately, Nigel was turning into a denser, somewhat more formidable version of himself. “I’m going to find the others,” he said with Rockette-kick fervor. “We have to come up with a good story as to why we’re here because they’re going to be securing the scene, taking names and addresses,” he said as he opened the door, “and I’ll be damned if I’m getting kicked out of school for some slob who can’t hold his liquor and never took a swimming lesson.”

Some people have a knack for finding themselves, if not the star of every Detective Film, Skin Flick, Love Story or Spaghetti Western, at the very least, one of the supporting players, or appearing in an unforgettable cameo for which they garner critical acclaim and considerable buzz.

Unsurprisingly, it was Jade who was cast as Unwitting Eyewitness. She was outside talking to Ronald Reagan, who, in a drunken desire to show off, flopped into the heated pool, and, backstroking in his blue suit, avoiding the four rats playing Marco Polo, shouted out names as Jade looked on, trying to guess who she was dressed as (“Pam Anderson! Ginger Lynn!”). He accidentally kicked the dark, submerged body with his foot.

“What the—?” The Gipper said.

“Someone’s unconscious! Call nine-one-one! Who knows CPR? Get me a fucking doctor! ” Jade claimed she screamed, though Milton, who’d just returned to the patio after smoking the remainder of his joint in the woods, said she didn’t do or say anything until the Great Communicator and one of the rats hauled the great whale of a body out of the water, at which point she sat down in the deck chair and only watched, biting her nails while people began to murmur their “Oh, my fucking Gods.” A man in zebra print tried to resuscitate him.

Jade was still on the patio with Dutch and the other main characters waiting to be interviewed by the police, but Nigel returned to the bathroom with Charles, Milton and Lu. Charles and Lu looked as if they’d barely survived the War of 1812, but Milton looked as he always did, laid-back and lumpy, a smear of smile on his face.

“Who died?” I asked.

“A very large man,” Leulah said, sitting down on the edge of the bathtub, an unfocused look in her eyes. “And he really is dead. There’s a dead body on Hannah’s patio. He’s sopping wet. And this terrible blubbery color.” She pressed a hand to her stomach. “I might throw up.”

“Life, death,” sighed Nigel. “It’s all so Hollywood.”

“Did anyone see Hannah?” asked Charles quietly.

It was a grisly thought. Even if it was an accident, it was never a good thing for someone to die unexpectedly at one’s house while one is entertaining, for a person to “walk out of this outrageous world” (as Dad was fond of saying) on one’s property, in one’s kidney-shaped pool. None of us spoke. Behind the closed door, a few tadpole-words wriggled free of the noise (“Ow,” “Sheila!” “Did you know him?” “Hey, what’s going on?”), and through the open window by the tub, the police car radios fizzed, ceaseless and indecipherable.

“Well, I’d say run for it,” Nigel said, slipping behind the shower curtain, and hunching down as he peered out the window as if someone might open fire. “I doubt they even have a squad car at the end of the driveway. But we can’t leave Jade, so we’ll have to take our chances following police procedure.”

“Of course we can’t flee the crime scene,” said Charles irritably. “What are you — nuts?” His face was red. He was obviously worried about Hannah. I noticed, whenever Jade or Nigel did a little guesswork in the Purple Room about what she did on the weekends (if they so much as whispered “Cottonwood”), he became fiery and short tempered as a Latin American dictator. In a matter of seconds, his entire body — face, hands too — could go the pink of Tropical Punch.

Milton, as usual, said nothing, only chuckled as he leaned against the burgundy hand towels.

“It wouldn’t be a big deal,” Nigel said. “Drownings are obvious. They can see by the skin if it’s an accident or foul play and in this case, there’s a high rate of drownings that are linked to alcohol. Some bombed guy falls in the water? Knocks himself out? Dies? What can you do? He did it to himself. And it happens all the time. The Coast Guard’s always finding sloshed motherfuckers floating in the ocean who had too many rum and Cokes.”

“How do you know this?” I asked, though I’d read something similar in Murder in La Havre (Monalie, 1992).

“My mom’s a huge crime fiction fanatic,” he said proudly. “Diana could perform her own autopsy.”

When we decided we weren’t visibly drunk (Death had the effect of six cups of coffee and a dip in the Bering Sea), we returned to the living room. A new officer had taken charge, Officer Donnie Lee with globular, off-centered features reminiscent of a wrecked urn on a potter’s wheel. He was trying to line people up “in orderly fashion, folks,” with the sort of manic patience of an Activities Director on a cruise ship organizing a Shore Excursion. Gradually, the crowd ringed around the room.

“Let me go first,” said Nigel. “And don’t say anything. I’ll give you the advice my mom gave me. No matter what happens, look like you’re having a Christ experience.”

Officer Donnie Lee happened to have saturated himself in Paul Revere-like cologne (it rode far ahead of him, alerting all of his impending arrival) so by the time he came to Nigel, wrote down his name, phone number, and asked, “How old are you, son?” Nigel was prepared for the impending massacre.

“Seventeen, sir.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I assure you Ms. Schneider knew nothing about our showing up this evening. My friends and I mistakenly thought it’d be fun to crash an adult party. To see what it was like. Not, let me add, to partake in illegal substances. I’ve been a Baptist all my life, head of my own worship circle for two years, and it’s against my religion to partake in alcohol of any kind. Abstinence works well enough for me, sir.”

I thought his performance campy and over-the-top, but to my surprise, he went over like Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots . Officer Donnie Lee, those big wrinkles pressing through his great clay forehead (as if invisible hands were starting to rework him into a vase or ashtray), only tapped his end-chewed blue Bic pen on the side of his notepad.

“You kids watch yourselves. I don’t wanta hear or see you in this kinda venue again. Do I make myself clear?”

Without even waiting for our “Yes, sir, absolutely, sirs,” he moved on to take the contact details of the whiney Marilyn shivering next to us in her skimpy Seven Year Itch dress with a gruesome brown stain down the front.

“How long’s this gonna take anyway? I got a babysitter.”

“Ma’am, if you’d just bear with us now…”

Nigel grinned. “Nothing like a well-placed honey pot to attract flies,” he whispered.

Officer Lee didn’t let anyone leave until after 5:00 A.M. When we were finally allowed outside, we discovered a blued, tubercular morning: sky wan, grass sweaty, a cold breeze wheezing through the trees. Purple feathers roamed the lawn, chasing each other under the POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape, pestering a Hulk mask playing dead.

We followed the wearied procession to the parked cars, bypassing the crowd who wanted to stay to see something (a fairy, a gorilla, a blond golfer struck by lightning), the two police cars, the empty ambulance, the paramedic with dark, sunken eyes smoking a cigarette. Gold-chromed Nefertiti in front of us prattled on and on as she wobbled down the driveway in silver heels like ice picks: “There’s respons’bility comes with ownin’ a puwl,” she said, “second I got outta bed, I had a bad feelin’, I’m serius.”