And these voices were lost in the throng of celebration. Bankers talked to busboys. Executives sang songs with cabdrivers. People dressed in owl costumes honked gun-horns for hoots. Lines of people talked at the meat tents. Guests played games and shot arrows at bundles of hay. People were encouraged to toss their plates and glasses against an enormous wood board situated above a trench. Men and women, men and men, women and women stole away into the evergreens to do what was done in the shadows. Danceable, rhythmic, drug-friendly music erupted from the stage, where Goblin’s own Eulas played. The music sailed through the trees and traveled the course of the grounds, entering every open window of the house.

The house was even livelier.

One man found the line for the bathrooms too long and looked for a sink instead. Stumbling already, passing a hundred somewhat recognizable faces on the way, he found himself standing at the doors of the master bedroom, the very place where Neal and Barbara Nash’s skunk-furred comforter enveloped their enormous bed. Taped to the door, a sign read:

NO FUCKING IN HERE!

And the man pissed where he stood.

5

By eleven p.m. no one had actually seen Neal anywhere at the party.

Soon rumors spread.

Neal Nash was dead. He’d died the day before his party and Barbara decided he wouldn’t have wanted it called off.

This was now his funeral, not his birthday.

Some even said he requested his body be tied to a tree where every mourner could take a shot with a .22 until there was nothing left but pieces for the dogs to dine on.

A new kind of party, a dark trip, a wild meat-fest, a drunk and dangerous party thrown for the birth of a dead man!

The idea was too good. People almost wanted it to be true.

And the celebrating swelled.

People swam with live bass in the pool. Others took showers indoors still wearing their suits and dresses. People passed out and got back up.

There was a sizable dent in the fort of food the thirteen cooks presided over. There was a dip in the ocean of booze.

And there was so much rain that, after a while, it felt like there was none.

Neal appeared thirty minutes before midnight. On the shoulders of fifteen men wearing leather jackets with o-60 patches sewn into their right shoulders.

“Make way!” they laughed. “Make way for the most decorated hunter in the history of Goblin!”

Neal was hooting like an owl when they tossed him into the pool.

6

Guests gathered by the pool and were led in song by a man whose eyes were half closed and who teetered on the edge of the water like a child about to fall down.

“Happy birthday to you!”

Those who were indoors followed the singing outside. Barbara slid into the water beside her husband.

“Happy birthday to you!”