Adam Haslett - Union Atlantic

“In my experience, killing doesn’t cure much.”

She raised her head, turning her ear to listen to something over the din of the party. “Do you hear that?” she asked. “Do you hear barking?”

“You need to understand something,” he said. “You haven’t won anything. You just haven’t lost yet.”

“What have they done with them?” she cried, standing abruptly from the table, straining to hear some phantom noise. “Henry,” she called out, bringing a halt to the table’s conversation, the bankers and their wives staring at her in polite alarm. “Henry, where are they?”

RELEGATED to the children’s table, Nate and the gang had waited what seemed an eternity before the fat-slathered pork and spareribs finally arrived. They set to gorging and in no time at all their plates were clean and cleared and peanut-butter parfait topped with American flags on toothpicks appeared in front of them.

“I can’t take this music anymore,” Jason said. “We need to get out of here.” He rose without pushing back his chair, causing his knees to slam against the underside of the table and spill multiple water glasses before he fell again into his seat.

Eventually, they roused themselves and headed out through the broiling kitchen tent, past a swarm of short, dark people scraping half-eaten dinners into heaping garbage pails, the taller black waiters staring blankly at the tips of their cigarettes, as the head man popped the corks of the champagne. “On the trays!” he shouted, as the four of them slipped through an opening by barrels of melting ice.

“It’s hotter than a jungle out here,” Hal said.

Spotting a guard lounging at the gate in his shirtsleeves, they tacked rightward toward the trees in front of the house. That’s when they heard growling and the rustling of chains. Jason jumped sideways, falling into a rose border.

“Dogs,” Hal said.

Walking nearer, Nate recognized Wilkie and Sam. “Weird,” he said. “They’re my tutor’s.”

“That’s deep. What do they teach you?”

Their bowls were empty and they looked up at Nate with sad, gaping eyes.

As the others drifted off, he untied their leashes and shooed the two of them up onto the terrace and into the house. Adjacent to the kitchen was a kind of cat apartment with carpeted walls, wicker bassinets, and in one corner a forest of dangling string. Way too large for this feline retreat, Wilkie and Sam knocked about like vandals in a child’s room, their bulky heads clearing windowsills of teak brushes and padded collars, Sam ripping strands of twine from the mobile with an impatient yank of his jaw.

“Chill out there,” Nate said, looking through the cabinets of tinned salmon and prescription drugs for something more substantial. Finding nothing, he opened as many tiny cans as he could into the miniature bowls before the dogs shouldered him aside to get at their supper. He fetched them water and sat for a moment on the chair in the corner, watching their glistening tongues lick the steel clean.

And then their heads were up again, eyes still brimming with hope.

“That’s it, guys. Sorry.”

They sniffed at the cat baskets, rummaging in search of their inhabitants.

“Stay here, okay? Just stay.”

He pulled the door ajar and crossed back through the kitchen, heading out into the front hall, wondering where Ms. Graves might be. Here and there on decorative chairs and benches guests had taken refuge from the heat and the crowd, an older couple dozing upright on a chaise longue, a Japanese businessman in a tight black suit tapping away at his BlackBerry, while a few feet behind him a gaunt woman in a sweat-stained silk dress ruminated on a painting over the fireplace.

Heading up the stairs, Nate paused on the first landing, from which three hallways ran off into different wings of the house, each painted a different color, one beige, one pale blue, one dark red. The others had likely retreated to the third floor, back up to Jason’s room, which could only mean more bong hits and combat, a prospect he didn’t relish just now given how forcefully his retinas continued to pulse to the beat of his heart.

Stilled there on the landing for a moment, he found himself slowly drawn to the pattern on the wallpaper of the blue hallway. Little indigo diamonds were set on an azure background and surrounded by tiny gold stars each in turn ringed in a halo of silver, the design stretching on uninterrupted by picture frames or light fixtures, as if decoration of this particular wing had gone unfinished.

Coming closer, he could see another pattern beneath, stamped in outline onto the paper itself: hexagons contained within octagons contained in circles, which were themselves woven of figure eights, each figure only an inch wide, the stamp repeated a thousand times over. Moving from background to foreground and back, his eyes roved up and down, left and right, searching in vain for a place to rest, for something to comprehend or analyze, but he could find nothing, no larger, central figure or meaning, forcing him eventually to give up and simply let the pattern enter him unconceptualized, the whole ungrasped, which strangely enough, after a few moments, produced an oddly pleasurable sensation, a kind of relief from the responsibility to understand, at which point he moved in a step closer losing all lateral perspective, as when he’d lost himself in the endless zigzag of the houndstooth check of his father’s overcoat as he was carried half asleep from the backseat of the car up to his bedroom as a boy, pressed against that endless repetition. The sudden memory of which he now condemned as sentimental. Thus covering self-pity in self-punishment, both of them equally false, both of them walls thrown up to block the view of something hopelessly vaster.

He kept on down the hall, coming to the open door of a bedroom done up in nautical style with powder-blue curtains and a navy bedspread and a replica of an old ocean liner set in a glass box on a table between the windows. At the bedside table, he picked up the cordless phone and dialed.

It rang three times, as it always did, before his mother answered, her voice rising gently on the last syllable of “Hello?”

“It’s me,” he said. “I’m over at Jason’s. I told you, right? His mother’s having this party.”

“Is she? Oh, good. Have they given you supper?”

“Yeah. They’ve got these tents set up and everything. Are you going to watch the fireworks?”

“Oh, I’ll probably put the TV on later. I suppose they’ll be starting soon. It’s a good night for them.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“That I’m not there.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m fine. I’m just catching up on the paper. There’s a wonderful piece about walruses with the most amazing pictures. Such odd-looking creatures and they sing these incredible songs to one another. I’ll cut it out for you.”

“I could come home if you want.”

“Nate, don’t be silly. I’m fine. Are you staying the night?”

“I might.”

“Well, enjoy yourself.”

“Did you put the air conditioner on?”

“Oh, no, it’s so loud. I hate the sound of it. I’ve got the windows open and there’s a bit of a breeze.”

“Mom, you should turn it on. It’s broiling.”

“It’ll cool down.”

“Well … I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“All right, then. Good night, dear.”

He put the phone back in its cradle, aware all of a sudden of the quiet.

“Nate? What are you doing here?”

He turned in wonder to see Doug already halfway into the room.

“Jason Holland,” he finally sputtered. “He’s my friend.”

“Jesus. What a mind-fuck this party is. Where the hell did Glenda put the bathrooms? I’ve been looking all over.”