Lydia Millet: Ghost Lights

Then he came here and suddenly: nude. Nude nude nude.

“Here, have this one,” said Brady, and put a drink in his hand. Out of it stuck a parrot fashioned from colored pipe-cleaners: red, blue, yellow.

“So who’s our host?” asked Hal, lifting the drink to his lips. As he raised it the parrot swiveled and hit him on the nose.

“The folks throwing this shindig,” said Brady, whose own drink featured no parrot, “are ethanol. They just inked some kind of deal with BSI. The sugar monopoly.”

“Huh,” said Hal. If he took the parrot out it would stop falling on him when he drank. But in his pocket it would be crushed. He liked the parrot. He could give it to Casey. She enjoyed souvenirs, especially if tacky.

He held the parrot with one crooked finger while he raised his glass. That was the trick: restrain the parrot. Keep the parrot captive.

“Toucan’s giving you a tough time, huh,” said Brady.

“Oh. I thought it was a parrot.”

“Hey! Jeff!”

There was the lawyer, lifting himself out of the pool. He wore a Speedo. He reached out and grabbed a silky bathrobe, mounted the stairs and came up to them, nodding and waving at others he passed.

“Let me introduce you around,” he said.

They walked down the far stairs to the pool area again, where there was another bar. Beyond a wall lined with flowering vines were the beach and the ocean. A DJ played music on a stereo and people danced. They stood next to the dance floor, watching.

“Thanks for inviting me,” said Hal.

“Marcella. Marcella, this is Jeff Brady. The U.S. embassy. The one I told you about? The racquetball story?”

A passing woman shook Brady’s hand. Hal noticed long fingernails, shining silver.

“Hal Lindley,” he said, because the lawyer seemed to have forgotten his name. “Just visiting. Tourist.”

A guy on the dance floor bumped into him, sloshing his drink.

“Marcella handles the Canadians,” Cleve was telling Brady.

A server brought up an hors d’oeuvres tray. Brady picked up a small food item and shoved it into his mouth.

“What are they?” asked Hal, peering down.

“Sribuffs,” said the server, a dark young woman.

“Sribuffs?” repeated Hal. “I’m not. .”

“Shrimbuffs,” she said again, nodding anxiously.

“Shrimbuffs. Huh,” said Hal.

“ Shrimp puffs,” said Brady, impatient.

“Oh. Oh, I see,” said Hal, and took one, smiling sheepishly at the server. He tried to seem obliging.

“Why they can’t hire fucking English speakers,” said Cleve, shaking his head. “When the official language is fucking English.”

The woman moved off, her head down.

“You’d like her better if she had three nipples, you’re saying,” said Brady.

“Shit yeah. I would.”

Hal wanted another drink. Not to be critical; to suspend his judgment. The second thing he had learned, on this trip — after the fact that he liked knowing the truth about other people and at the same time keeping his own truth to himself — drink more. He should drink more, in general. Not to the point of alcoholism, but enough to float, in the waning part of the day, in a kind of pleasant and light liquid, a beery amber light. Life was better that way. People were softer around the edges, their conversation less grating.

“Excuse me. Making a bathroom run, then a drink. Get anyone anything?” he asked, raising his near-empty glass.

“G&T,” said Brady.

“Cognac,” said Cleve.

“OK,” he said, and moved off. See what the house held. He would have to find a way to keep the toucan in shape. . on his way in he took it carefully off the straw it was impaled on and slipped it into the loose pocket of his shirt. It should be safe there, unless he crushed someone against him. Manfully.

But that was unlikely. Gretel was absent.

•

In the bathroom there were seashells of all shapes and sizes. They were made by something, seashells. Various organisms. Were they some animals’ excreta? He could not remember. He had seen a show on shell-forming animals with Casey. The term calcium carbonate came to mind. The animals formed the shells slowly, but how did they do it?

Possibly the shells were like fingernails, protruding suddenly from the skin.

It was strange, come to think of it. He looked down at the back of his hand. Fingernails. They just started up.

They were made of keratin, he remembered that.

They were a form of hair.

He had read this, but frankly he did not believe it. Or simply, he did not agree. They might be made of similar proteins, he accepted that readily, but still they were not a form of hair . Any idiot could see that.

He finished peeing, washed his hands and picked up a shell that looked like a snail shell, except huge and spotted. There were also stripes. It was attractive. Inside, it was shiny.

He placed it back on the shelf.

The drink was treating him well. No doubt it had been mixed quite strong. They fooled you with the toucan. You thought: child’s play, and swigged heartily. Then you were drunk. But he should not complain, not even to himself. It was what he had intended, after all. He had already made the decision. From now on he would be a man who drank. He would stop short of chronic impairment, though. That was the trick; you had to learn to drink the correct amount. It was said two glasses of wine a day improved your health. Surely three could not do it too much harm, in that case. He could become an oenophile. That was the name, if he recalled correctly, for wine lovers.

Wine-loving assholes. Because let’s face it, a wine lover was basically an asshole. Like a cigar lover. The word connoisseur , in general, was a synonym for asshole.

If it was up to him, connoisseurs of all kinds would be audited on a regular basis, their files tagged and them personally harassed by the Service until forced to surrender their assets. They would be targeted for audits on a non-random basis, if it was up to him. Wine, cigars, old cars, all pastimes of the genus Assholus .

It wouldn’t be wine, not for him. The point was, he could have three drinks a day and cultivate new fields of knowledge. He could keep more secrets, possibly lead a secret life with secret leisure pursuits. But what kind of secret life could he lead?

Before, when he found out about Susan, he had wanted to lead a secret life to get back at her. Now he wanted one for a different reason: his own pleasure. Excitement.

He picked up his glass. He still had to get drinks.

Because the life he had currently, he reflected, climbing the stairs, was insufficient. It was quite simply inadequate. At a certain point, you had to insist on quality.

A woman he once knew, who lived down the street from them, had said frequently, “I’m going to exercise my rights as a consumer.” She had said this often. Then she would call a mail-order catalog, for instance, and complain about a substandard product she had purchased therefrom. She would receive bulk samples of things, or luxury items free of charge — bribes from companies in exchange for refraining from litigation, which she threatened often.

When she was his neighbor he had frowned on this behavior of hers, which seemed cynical and opportunistic. Susan had thought it was funny, but he had frowned upon it. Now, however, he felt a certain grudging admiration.

“Cognac,” he said to the bartender beside the pool. He could barely hear his own voice. It was loud now. There was music, coming from who knows where. He did not see Brady or Cleve. There were more people now also. It was as though, alone in the bathroom, he had slept for hours by himself while on the other side of the wall the crowd swelled and gained momentum. Kind of a Sleeping Beauty thing. “G&T.”