Rick Moody - The Ice Storm

— What’s to be thankful for at Thanksgiving? Davenport asked. Indian corn in plastic wrap for sale next to Velveeta? Butterball turkey with built-in thermometer? Rod McKuen? Helen Reddy doing “Delta Dawn”? Are you getting this all down, Charles?

They laughed. They sang. Half a line of “Delta Dawn.” And of “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero.”

— Okay, okay. Libbets turned up again. There’s plenty there. I don’t see how they could miss them. What kind should we do?

— Seconal, definitely, Paul said.

— Hey, as long as it does the job, Davenport said. I am not picky.

— You don’t think this is going to, you know, be a problem with the beers?

— Check the expiration date. Paul said. I thought they looked pretty cool.

The need behind teen oblivion overcame any reservations. Which was the way Paul figured it would go. Soon the three of them were crowded into the bathroom, around the medicine cabinet, looking at the little prescription containers. Libbets’s hands were shaking as she handed around the reds. And Paul was moved by this. He put his hand lightly around her shoulder, her soft and fragrant shoulder. Did she notice? They were each embarked on a solitary narrative of intoxication. Repartee wasn’t part of the whole thing.

Davenport looked the capsules over admiringly, like a collector of fine wines.

Paul let his settle under his tongue.

He felt a little bad about how easy it was, leading Davenport down this road, but in the long run, by late next week, they would forgive one another.

— Hey, maybe you should only take a half, old lady, Hood said to Libbets. Why don’t you put half in a glass of orange juice or something? You don’t weigh as much as we do.

— You guys aren’t trying to rip me off or anything, are you? Libbets said. It was almost like she was going to cry for a second. Paul was shaking his head, he was trying to wave her off. She swallowed the whole thing.

— No way, Davenport said. You mean so we could have our way with your sleeping body?

Davenport laughed grimly. Libbets had breasts and hips — she was curvy in fact, she was all gentle curves — hidden under her baggy army fatigues and sweatshirt. Two against one, that was Davenport’s idea. Her parents wouldn’t be home for days. No, Paul would defend her against Davenport. Take me, but leave the girl alone. She was friendlier than she wanted to be, she smiled more than she wanted to smile. The fact that she’d permitted losers like Hood and Davenport into her manse proved it. Thank God these exceptions arose. Thank God for drinking a bottle of wine with Liza during first class Friday morning. Thank God for snorting speed with Laura and Dave and going to the Tuck Shop to eat malted milk balls. Thank God for the confraternity of burnouts.

— Naw, Davenport said, we had a period in which we loved unconscious women, but we’re over that now.

Time stretched out. The world was full of information, but it was all happening more slowly. Paul buried his capsule in a potted palm by the window. But he was succumbing to the pot and beer. Some labyrinthine and endless decision was being made about whether or not to go to a nightclub called Max’s something or other. Would Sue Richards return to Reed Richards? Would Francis Ford Coppola make a sequel to The Godfather? Worlds real and imagined buzzed side by side, options and conclusions appeared and disappeared. When Davenport arranged himself on the couch, to watch Sanford and Son with the sound off, Paul saw how easy some things are, how you don’t need to try so hard. Davenport wouldn’t rise from that couch for twelve hours.

— I’m a hothead, Libbets, he said. I’m—

— Huh? Let’s go into the living room. Let’s let him sleep.

— He’s just crashed. This doesn’t last forever.

— Don’t you think we ought to eat something? But they couldn’t just leave Davenport.

— I wonder how bad the weather is, Paul said.

— I was just telling you, said Libbets. Snow tonight. It’s gonna be bad.

— The last train to Stamford leaves at…. I have to be on that last train or I’m fucked.

Paul switched on the lamp that illumined the Casey family portrait and they sat on the floor in its ostentatious glow. On Paul’s radio program, on the ten-watt AM radio station at St. Pete’s, he made hideously sentimental dedications to girls he’d never met. He wrote notes to them and left these notes in a drawer. He burned the names, or threw them out; he writhed in spoiled and cowardly silence. His outbursts of feeling were as unpredictable as sunspots. As he took Libbets’s hand — she permitted it to be taken — he knew he was liable to say anything. His exacting standards vanished. He loved Cat Stevens. He wanted to fill a dictionary with flowers. He wanted to lie on golf greens with her. He wanted to spy on her through a hole in a newspaper. He wanted to make a better family than the one from which he came.

— Let’s go back to your room.

— Excuse me? Libbets said.

— I want to show you my etchings, he said.

— Etchings?

— It’s a joke, he said. C’mon. I just want to talk. I have stuff I want to tell you.

Libbets collapsed into indecision.

— Hey, Libbets, you didn’t set me up or anything, did you? You didn’t invite Davenport here because you were afraid to be alone with me, did you? You aren’t afraid to have me here in your house, are you? Because I came a long way to see you. You wouldn’t do that kind of thing, would you? Libbets?

THE BRIGHT HUES of the sixties had vanished from :ontemporary interior design. Let me interrupt again briefly here. Where the wives of southern Connecticut in the past might have embraced — carefully, hesitantly — gaudy neons and Day-Glos, they had by 1973 settled into milder pastels and earth tones. Subdued patterns figured prominently in upholstery fabrics and draperies, although you might also find in these items unusual marriages of color — puce and gray, or lavender and ocher. Vera Neumann, also known as Vera, winner of the 1972 National Home Fashion League Trailblazer Award, was the standard-bearer of these color harmonies. The decorator fabrics themselves were more durable than in the past. Synthetics and cotton/poly blends dominated. Plastics had also penetrated far into the home. Coffee tables, modular furniture, kitchenware, and electrical appliances — all could now be fashioned from plastic.

Shag rugs of rust and brown like fallen leaves and corroded automobiles or green and gray like cave algae or a thick beach-coating of seaweed — shag was the area rug of the area. Shorter piles with startling mandalas and floral prints were also possible because of new manufacturing technologies. Yet shag continued to exert its charm over the decorators of New Canaan. It was versatile — it could conceal crumbs, ancient pieces of chewing gum, spittle, disease-carrying fleas and ants and silverfish, shreds of paper, and other unrecovered items. And it helped the vacuum-cleaner business move units. The seating unit had come to replace the couch in the vanguard of living room accommodations. A minimalist vocabulary was evident in these ingenious designs, reflecting the influence of simple, primal iconography in sculpture and architecture. Single-color stylings decorated sleek, curvaceous, cor-nerless shapes. The modular pieces of these seating units could be easily moved and rearranged in a variety of amoebic configurations. The traditional couch — and with it the loveseat, the divan, and the chaise longue — was in eclipse.

The new seating units were often fashioned from poly-urethane foam, a cheap, easy-to-manufacture, artificial filling. The Furniture Council of the Society of the Plastics Industry even presented a Poly Award for the groundbreaking adaptation of polymers. In 1973 it went to Donald A. Geddes, editor of American Furniture Design, who was named Polymer Man of the Year.