Jane Mendelsohn - Burning Down the House

Watching him across the clouds of smoky light in the yellow atmosphere was Jonathan.

He caught Ian’s eye and wound his way among the tables and pulled out a chair. He carried a premium whiskey and set it down. He lifted the glass and drank before he spoke. Then he said to a waiter, He’s drinking too. Same thing.

Music played. A band in the pit, riffing a slow, grinding Dixieland melody mixed with an alternative moan, a groaning from an organ, and an electric fiddle.

Ian and Jonathan clinked glasses.

I’m glad you called. Here’s to your impending fatherhood. Congrats, said Ian.

Jonathan downed his drink and thanked him. You should see Miranda. She is fucking glowing.

That’s nice, Ian mustered.

Yeah, fatherhood, he said, looking into Ian’s eyes for a moment and then at the stage.

Yes, well, I wouldn’t know much about it.

Maybe you should, said Jonathan, still looking away.

Ian knew that Steve had told him everything.

And after a tense silence:

Am I here to be judged? said Ian, noticing the shot of whiskey kicking in. Because I feel like shit — actually much worse than that — already. You couldn’t possibly say anything to me that makes me feel more guilt ridden and sick than I already do. But in case you’ve forgotten I didn’t know about any of it at the time. And it’s your father who doesn’t want me to have anything to do with her. So don’t go assassinating my character.

Hey, said Jonathan. Fine.

A long silence between them filled by the first part of the show, circus performers in vaudevillian burlesque, avant-garde strippers, explicit tableaux, an MC in a G-string with a staccato voice that ricocheted from every corner of the space like gunfire. Colored lights filtered the action and bathed it in oranges and violets, wild orchids, and techno greens. Dancers kicked, comedians mugged. The first of several intermissions came. Ian gathered the courage to ask Jonathan about Poppy.

How is she doing?

Jonathan’s face acquired a look of concern and brotherly knowledge. She seems good, he said. Almost finished with high school. We weren’t sure she’d really make it, he went on, downing another shot, but it looks like she’ll get the diploma, he said.

How about her state of mind? Ian ventured.

I’m not so expert in that area, Jonathan answered, smiling broadly and looking down, the creases around his mouth angular and sexy, knowing and oblivious. As you may have noticed, he continued. But she seems okay to me. Looks gorgeous as always, a little skinny maybe, I guess. A little goth these days but nothing too scary. She’s quieter, thank God.

Quieter?

Yeah. Not always broadcasting her opinions and criticisms. Keeps to herself. In her room a lot. And gone a lot, I hear from Patrizia. Out at night, you know, the normal high-school sullen act.

Sullen? That doesn’t really sound like her.

What is this? Paternal concern? Jonathan lifted his hand and raised his eyebrows to get a waitress’s attention.

Ian felt an anger swirling amid his inebriation. A new cocktail. The mixology of emotions.

Yes, he said, maybe it is.

The lights went off. Abruptly. The curtain rose. Another round of parading bodies, a bawdy sketch involving a dancing bear and a girl grinding an organ, a cowboy entering and shooting the bear. Blood, damage, the wailing girl. A psycho western. The bear gets up, bloodied, and keeps dancing. It never falls. The entire cast emerges, carrying pistols, the group whips and lunges in a suggestive and macabre choreography. The crowd has advanced from ceremonial to ecstatic.

—

Beside Ian and Jonathan sit two overflowing tables, one filled with Russians, the other a group of Indians, Ian thinks. Mostly men in fine suits, a few women in sheer dresses made of silk tissue, fiery sequins, threaded nothingness. They are all whooping and crying out, grinning, gesturing, their faces composed in shadowy oil-painted portraits, hung at varying levels in this moving gallery of dusty light. When the curtain falls again the patriarch at the table of Indians and the patriarch at the table of Russians are engaged in some kind of unnatural ancient ritual. There stand against the wall in a great glass display case bottles of the world’s most expensive champagnes. Salmanazars, jeroboams, containing liters and liters of liquid worth tens of thousands, more.

—

First the Russian ordered one of the most expensive bottles. The lights went up, flashing. A drumroll. Waiters carried the bottle and glasses on a silver tray. Spectators stood. The Indians at the table bowed to the Russian, as he uncorked the bottle and let it flow freely to the outstretched flutes, spilling over diamond-braceleted wrists, foaming over the tablecloth, dripping down men’s chins. This continued. The Indian purchased the next-most-expensive bottle. Again: the lights, the music, the drumroll, the silver platter. Now the Indian patriarch uncorked the bottle and walked the outer perimeter of the table, pouring the liquid directly into his supplicants’ mouths. It rolled down their faces like tears. Candles sputtered on the linen. Guttural swallows and raucous swoons. The Russians applauded. The Russian patriarch summoned the maître d’ and whispered to him. The maître d’ rushed through a door. Moments later, the proprietor came out, a well-groomed man in his thirties, and shook the hand of the Russian, congratulating him on purchasing the most expensive bottle in the establishment: $70,000. Lights flashed in strobing exultation. The band unleashed a wail and the drummer ripped. The entire staff emerged, following the bottle, which was too large for a platter, which was carried by three shirtless waiters like a body, sacrificial, their bare muscular arms stretched upward, over the heads of patrons, stiffly straight, Egyptian, carved in stone. The curtain rose, dancers flung themselves around the stage, the men offered the bottle to the Russian, and he gestured for them to shake it, all three of them, with himself at the helm. They shook the bottle. They continued to shake. And then he uncorked it and it burst open and the spume curved like a geyser and bathed the heads of his progeny in a waterfall of froth, like some monster disgorging an ocean, a swallowed kingdom thrown up into the sky, pluming, falling down in an aurora borealis of raining excess. The Indian — or where was he from? Ian couldn’t tell anymore, his mind was a cave and he wandered through it with a lantern and torch, searching for a point of light to guide him — the patriarch from the other table, took off his jacket. Took off his tie. Stepped away from his chair and walked over to the Russian. He bowed to him and knelt down before him. The Russian lifted the bottle and poured the last drops of liquid onto the head of the kneeling and proudly defeated man. The game was over.

—

Walking home, leaving the scene of such supernatural decadence, he is grateful for the normal shrieking of revelers out on the streets and the sharp horns that ring out now and then in the hot night air. He welcomes their piercing, cutting through his thoughts. As if against his will he sees the horrors of his evening, and his thoughts travel instantly to Poppy. How can she grow in a world like this? It is impossible for him not to worry about her. It felt necessary to consider her present, and even more her future: how would she possibly make her way? If he considered these ideas too deeply he felt ashamed, as if he even had any right to care about her, and tormented by his ignorance and irresponsibility.

—

Four in the morning and Ian veers unthinkingly when he enters the lobby and finds himself in front of the elevator that leads to Alix’s side of the building. He presses the button for her floor. Why he’s there at that hour she doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, but she grants him succor, lets him slump on her couch, offers tea.