The door opened. Blame it on that. The door opened, and so I went inside. You probably think I shouldn’t have, but where else was I going to go? Where I’m not supposed to go is where I’m supposed to go, if that makes any sense at all. By now, I think you know what I mean.

THE BLUE HOUSE

I CRASHED the party in my nurse’s uniform, swallowing stolen speed as I moved down the long, dark, crowded hallway. Inside, I acted very nonchalant—hey guys, waving at a few strangers—so I wouldn’t give away that I was there without the vaguest kind of invite. I made a beeline for the kitchen, where I knew I could find a bottle, because amphetamines weren’t enough; I wanted to get smashed. Minding the kitchen door was Nicholas’s nemesis, the notorious Luce, who was supposedly the anti-Christ but seemed pretty harmless to me. Aren’t you Nicholas’s newest girlfriend? he said sarcastically, and then he broke out into this caterwaul of a laugh. Go ahead and laugh at me, I thought. The joke’s on you, buddy. You’re gonna wake up in the morning with a dead body in your house.

Let me offer you a drink, he said. You look a little déshabillé. Have you ever had Aquavit? he said, pouring me a colorless liquor, which I drank in one swig because all the speed left me parched. You’re Scandinavian, aren’t you?

Norwegian, I said. From the hinterlands.

Oh yes, the hinterlands.

He wasn’t put off by my sullen way, which was a pleasant change. My last night on the planet, it would be a relief to not have to fake being sweet. Pasty-faced and paunchy, Luce swept around like an overweight superhero. He was the kind of guy I would have liked to pal around with because he was so jolly.

Norwegian Queen, he said, be sure to come upstairs to the second floor for a little treat.

He gave me the creeps a little then, the way he said that, but I just poured myself some more of the colorless drink. Upstairs for a little treat. Sure, I said, but to myself I was thinking, Fuck off, poseur. As I’m sure you can understand, I didn’t trust anybody anymore. Besides, I had bigger plans up my sleeve.

I walked around the living room and the bedrooms and the back porch, just picking up other people’s glasses and downing their backwash.

It was a pretty debauched scene inside that house.

I saw some stuff I was probably too young to see.

All those debauched people were pretty proud of themselves. You could just tell. They moved around as if they were in some secret golden castle.