T. Boyle - The Inner Circle

“Zombie cocktail?” he offered, thrusting the tall cold glasses into our hands before we’d had a chance to respond.

I noticed then that there were no chairs set up for the musicale, that the light over the phonograph was switched off and the records were still in their jackets on the shelves. Iris must have noticed it too, because she took a long pull at her drink and then asked about it in a voice that might have sounded just a shade too conciliatory: “Do you need any help with the chairs, Prok? For the musicale, I mean? We are having a musicale, aren’t we?”

Prok was finished with the cocktails now — or the first batch of them, four frosted glasses standing on the tray atop the low table, awaiting the remaining guests. He rose from his seat, warming his hands together as if at the conclusion of a job well done. “No,” he said, focusing on Iris, “I’m afraid we’ve decided to do something else altogether tonight—”

That was when Aspinall slammed the door that led to the attic and came clumping down the stairs. We all turned to watch him as he slouched across the room in his dark glasses and belted coat. The heat seemed stifling suddenly — I had to reach up and jerk loose the knot of my tie — and I wondered how he could stand it.

“Everything all set up there?” Prok asked, and I felt the first faint quickening of my blood.

Aspinall shuffled up to us and ducked his head to peer over his glasses and give Iris and me a nod of greeting before answering. “Oh, yeah, we’re good to go. But the lights, of course—”

“Right,” Prok said.

“No sense in wasting electricity—”

“Right.”

I’d never noticed before how pale Aspinall was, how bloodless and colorless, as if all those hours in the darkroom had bled him dry, and I couldn’t help asking if he felt all right—“Ted, are you coming down with something?”—instead of turning to Prok and demanding an answer to the question that was kicking and twitching like a newborn in my brain: What were we planning to film, and if we were filming, then why had the wives been invited?

Ted let out a little laugh and nodded to Iris again. His face was neutral, but the corners of his mouth turned up slightly, so that even in repose he looked as if he were smiling over some private joke. “My mother used to ask me that all the time,” he said. “Teddy, you need to get out and play with the other boys, play ball, get some sun, but I’m just a night owl, I guess. Hell, in the Village nobody gets up before noon — and those are the early risers.”

“I could sleep all day myself,” Iris said, and we all three looked at her. “And I think I would if it wasn’t for John Jr. But then you know how it is with a three-year-old, going on four—”

Aspinall didn’t know. His eyes were faintly visible behind the smoked lenses, half circles rinsed of light, like lunar bodies in eclipse. I noticed that Prok didn’t offer him a drink.

But then there was a knock at the door, and the Rutledges and Corcorans arrived together, Violet in a fur coat over a low-cut dress that showed off her breasts, Hilda in a pink spring jacket and beltless frock that might have been a nightgown but for the Jacquard pattern of it, Rutledge his usual sleek self, and Corcoran in a camel coat and his snappy shoes. Their faces were flushed with the chill and they stamped around the entryway a moment, divesting themselves of their outer garments, their voices intertwining excitedly in a recitative of arrival. Prok hurried everyone in, all business suddenly, dispensed the drinks in the tropical fug of the front room, and immediately set to making a second batch. Iris was already showing the effects of the first drink, her eyes shining and her lips ever so slightly parted as if she were trying to catch her breath or remember the words to a tune no one else could hear. I heard her say something to Hilda, something about the clarinet, and her words dragged in a stately adagio. She was standing with her legs spread for balance, and when I caught her eye she gave me a conspiratorial smile — we’d escaped the onus of a musicale, and here we were, in the midst of a party. With friends. Good friends. Our best friends. I should have taken her arm then, should have led her out the door and into the car, should have taken her home, but I didn’t.

For those who don’t know it, incidentally, I should say that the Zombie is an especially potent drink. It’s served in a tall glass — and the glass needs to be tall in order to incorporate all the booze the concoction contains, that is, two ounces of light rum, an ounce each of dark rum and apricot brandy, with pineapple juice and simple syrup to meliorate the bite of the spirits, and a float of one-hundred-fifty-one-proof rum to top it off — and just a single one of them was enough to make me feel that familiar tingling in my extremities that lets me know I’ve already begun to descend the long glassy slope of inebriation. And what was Prok doing? He was getting us drunk, his inner circle, his intimates, and once we were drunk and our inhibitions were down, we were going to go upstairs. To the attic.

We were all watching one another, at least the men were, because we knew what was coming, and we were frightened of it and exhilarated too. Rutledge was sitting in one of the hickory chairs at the far end of the table, leaning in over his knees to banter with Violet Corcoran and Mac as if nothing in the world were the matter, his Portuguese eyes glittering at me even while Corcoran flashed me a triumphant look and led the room in a short sharp explosion of laughter. The cocktail shaker went round. I heard the clock in the hallway strike the hour — what hour I didn’t know. And then Prok was tapping the long silver cocktail spoon against the side of the shaker. “May I have your attention, please?” he said, and the conversation trailed off with a whinnying laugh from Hilda Rutledge in response to something Violet had said.

Prok was dressed as usual in his standard dark suit, white shirt and bow tie, though I couldn’t help thinking the flesh-colored shorts would have been more appropriate to the occasion. His head — the massiveness of it, the solidity, the shock of hair, immitigable features, the hard cold empirical eyes — seemed like a sculpture cast in bronze. He was a giant among pygmies. I would have followed him anywhere. “We have a surprise for you, Mac, Aspinall and I, a surprise that’s long overdue, and if you would just go along with Ted here”—a gesture for Aspinall, who slouched against the near wall, shoulders slumped, dark glasses drinking up the light—“all will be revealed.”

I don’t know what I was thinking, but I followed the group up the stairs like a child on a field trip, Iris just ahead of me, the women’s perfume concentrated in the stairwell till it was like an intoxicant, as if I needed anything more. The steps creaked and shifted under our weight. Prok said something I didn’t catch, and Mac was there too, right at his side, an interplay of shadows, Corcoran two steps above him and joking in a low voice even as Ted Aspinall led us into the room and flicked on the lights. My heart was pounding, blowing out of my body. It was as hot as midsummer. I was sweating through my clothes. And what did I expect — that Iris would enjoy it? That it was time she saw what my real work was? That watching Corcoran and who — Violet? — go at it would somehow stimulate her, disarm her, at the very least make her an ally in all this? Or maybe I was getting ahead of myself. Maybe Prok had something entirely different in mind, another animal film, beavers, hamsters, chinchillas. But there was no projector. And the lights were fierce.

“All right,” Prok said, sidling round to shut the door behind us with a definitive click, “this is good. Very good. Now, if you would all please make yourselves comfortable—”