The door to the butler's pantry swung open and a man wearing a red vest and a bow tie appeared in the light and smiled down at Joe. Pressing past him, the man began to rummage through the bottles on the upper shelves. He chose one and held it up to the light. Then he pushed the cork out, took a long drink, and set it down on the counter. "Good gin, huh?" Joe asked. The man laughed. "No no man, that is the grape juice." The man had an accent like the gardener. He picked out another bottle and left.
Joe knew that the bottle did not contain grape juice, exactly, though he felt himself to be in a state of plausible deniability about this. He remembered how he had seen his cousins setting off fireworks by the creek during a family reunion. He imagined how, at the next family reunion, he would take these cousins down to the same creek, where he would have a pantry prepared. The gardener would bring them thin-stemmed glasses full of gin with olives in them, and they would shoot pistols at paper cut-outs of Lyndon Johnson while their parents played badminton or napped in sagging, sun-bleached chairs.
The first sip was sour but afterward made his tongue and throat feel tingly and thick. It was true: there was something grapey about this drink. He took another sip. His stomach warmed. For the first time in his life, Joe felt a sensual desire for meat. Well maybe he did think it was grape juice, after all. He took a long, long drink, until the bottle was empty, and then he thought of a clever thing to do.
The first person to see him was Mrs. Parsons. "Little Joe!" she said in a pressing whisper, "Is that pizza for us?" Joe tottered and smiled broadly. Mrs. Parsons didn't seem to notice the purple stains on his teeth. "Let me see," she said and lifted the cardboard lid with a green fingernail. Inside were six Girl Scout cookies and half a loaf of Wonderbread. Mrs. Parsons covered her mouth and laughed hissingly. "Pete," she said, "Psssst! Pete! Come and look at what Little Joe has brought us!" Mr. Stern walked over and put his arm around Mrs. Parsons's waist. "Hey there Joe!" he said, giving Little Joe a faint little joke-punch to the gut. This was Mr. Stern's way of reminding people that he had been a champion boxer in the army. Joe dropped the pizza box and doubled over; a stream purple liquid spurted from his mouth. Mr. Stern looked over his shoulder. "OK, Little Joe. Time to lay down if you're not feeling well."
Mrs. Parson led Joe back to the kitchen and pushed him up the stairs like a newborn head of cattle.
On the back porch it was one of those nights when you ask yourself: Why do I bother with these vacations? What is there to the Ozarks, or Florida, or a cruise ship that isn't already right here, in these great backyards? Just look at the swimming pool, steaming and bubbling like a shady green lagoon, and I didn't have to schlep through acres of tsetse swamp to find it either. These could be coconut halves we're drinking from, the smoke of exotic herb roots pluming from the butts of our Chestertons. How much do coconuts cost anyway? Something tells me not much. We just need to learn how to enjoy it, that's all....
Gazing off into the hydrangeas, Marty felt like a leopard. "Sarah!" he shouted, "a Brindisi! Libiamo ne'lieti calici!"
In a few moments the back door had been propped open and the hifi rolled through with Sarah pushing from behind. Marty had been a music major before law school, and he still enjoyed a good tune after he'd had the correct number of whiskies and felt like he'd just shouted the world an order: "At ease!" For ten years he'd sung just two songs. The first, Oh Sacred Head, Now Wounded, was for family holidays, when the children, hoarding their little toys in their little strongholds of snot and gift paper, inspired in Marty's heart a combination of schoolgirl envy and animal rage: these children are spoiled little ingrates, he would think, with no history of physical suffering or European culture. The second song was Libiamo ne'lieti calici, because it was a reveler's song, and Marty, at heart, was a reveler. A Bacchus. A wine women and song for tomorrow we die type of fellow. In college they'd called him "Guts."
The performance had gone well enough until the end, when, on that last high note, Marty's voice just stopped. It was like watching a violinist who, somehow, lost all his violin strings between parts. Air continued to seep from Marty's lungs, his lower lip continued to quiver, his eyes continued to shine with drunken elan, but no sound came out. At first the audience laughed, thinking it was a joke, or hoping it would seem to Marty that they thought it was a joke, but they grew silent when Marty refused to be infected by their good humor. "Sarah! Put it back on! I don't know what the hell happened! Must have been the devil or something!"
But the second attempt yielded the same result as the first, and this time nobody tried to crow it off. Marty glowered at the hifi. "Dammit!" he shouted, "God dammit! I'll do it without the damn record then! I've only been singing the thing for thirty odd years, right?" He cast his eyes warmly at his audience, hoping to be met by a scene of broad affection. What he found instead was pity. Pity and mild--almost patronizing--fear. Joe had given him the same look when he'd caught him vomiting into the aquarium on Thanksgiving. "My God," Marty snarled, "you people, you alcoholic, lush-humping bastards! Get out, you bastards, get your tag asses out of my lagoon right now!" At this he pushed the hifi into the pool and, to signify that the party had truly ended, threw a fifty-dollar bill at the bartender. "Somebody better call the police," he said, "because if everybody isn't out in five minutes there is going to be a new criminal in Shady Lap."
This too had happened before. Once someone had even called the police, two years back, when Jack Affers had refused to come down from the roof and Marty had gone in search of his rifle. And so it was in an orderly fashion that the guests were collecting their things--and whispering plans to go the Radovic's for crab cakes or the Dowls for a moonlight dip "au naturale"--when Marty spied Pete Stern doing something suspicious to the carpet. Marty moved quickly. "Hi Pete! What are you doing to my carpet?" Pete spun his head around. "Hi Marty, well there's--." Marty cut him off: "I see what you're doing. You've puked on my carpet, and now you're trying to clean it up, you fucking lush-humper." Pete stood up. "Now Marty. As a matter of fact it was Little Joe down here--." Marty cut him off again: "Little Joe is ten years old, Pete. Little Joe does not puke red wine onto his father's carpets like some lush-humping mick." Marty looked from Pete to Mrs. Parsons. As he did this, Pete punched Marty in the stomach. Marty fell to the ground, pulling over a lamp as he struggled to keep his balance. Pete gathered his things, including Mrs. Parsons, and exited through the garage. From his place on the floor Marty waved away the remaining guests, who had rushed to his aid. "I'm fine, I'm fine," he said, "Now get the hell out!"
When the house had emptied Sarah brought Marty an aspirin and a glass of RCOPLB. Marty graciously accepted these offerings and said he'd meet her upstairs. Then Marty thought about Pete. The worst part of it all was how Pete had tried to pin the whole business on Little Joe. But after all what wouldn't Pete say to cover his ass, the skirt-chasing thug dentist. Marty thought of the hifi at the bottom of the pool. For some reason, it reminded him of a dead mermaid. Stumbling to his feet, he finished his RCOPLB and wearily mounted the back stairs. On his way down the hall he stopped outside Little Joe's door. Turning to face it, as if he had planned to enter, he solemnly made the sign of the cross, the way a priest does over his congregation. "I love you, I love you, I love you," Marty whispered.
