“I think I am having an epiphany,” he said. “I’ve had several since I got here.” He’d begun to sweat. He needed his laptop.

“That’s fantastic.” Peaches patted his arm. “But could you stay, at least for a little bit? I have to get the karaoke started, and Tupper needs your help at the bar.” Elizabeth would be horrified if their most distinguished guest left early.

“He doesn’t need me. Look, he’s got help.”

A cheerful group of bearded, plaid flannel shirt–wearing men were behind the bar now. They looked like hockey players, grinning and bumping up against each other. They’d probably drink the place dry, but Peaches could restock. Or was it Elizabeth who did the restocking?

Restock.

“Roy, do you want to go home to your computer?” Wendy asked gently. She’d seen this faraway look plenty of times before. He was writing.

“It’s fine for now. I’ll just take notes on a cocktail napkin or something.”

Peaches wasn’t listening to them anymore. She’d noticed a change in the music. It was still the Go-Go’s, but there was a trancelike overlay that she hadn’t heard before, a rhythmic throb that made her teeth vibrate.

It was Philip Glass, she realized, her absolute least favorite composer of all time. Greg loved him. He took showers and did sit-ups and sun salutations to him. But to Peaches, listening to Philip Glass was like being anesthetized and endlessly prodded in the back by oboes and clarinets.

The sound system was near the basement stairs. Peaches could just make out the toes of a battered pair of silver Converse high-tops and a long platinum braid poking out of a gray heap of primordial ooze. A beached walrus. A newborn humpback whale.

Elizabeth had made it upstairs.

Peaches approached the karaoke machine and ducked behind a speaker to address the ooze. “I hope this is okay,” she said loudly, because Elizabeth’s ears were encased in Saran Wrap and gunk. “Not sure how big you wanted to go, but the room is pretty full.” She shuddered involuntarily. “My husband worships Philip Glass.”

The “head” of the ooze turned slowly and stared up at Peaches with cool gray eyes. Elizabeth’s gross costume or artwork or whatever the fuck she wanted to call it looked like a massive dinosaur placenta. Peaches had asked her about the stench of formaldehyde. Apparently, the giant goo blob she’d encased herself in was partly made from fat cells of reptiles pickled in formaldehyde that she’d ordered in cans from a website for biology teachers. The other part was agar-agar, a jellylike sea substance from the health food store. The two did not mix well, and now that she was upstairs, the stench was almost unbearable.

It seemed like a lot of trouble to go through for a somewhat questionable result.