Crackpot Palace by Jeffrey Ford

gave me a look of contempt. “We’re all Christians here,” he said and took a long swig of his beer. “What religion are you?”
    â€œWhere’d you get the beer?” I asked.
    â€œYou’ve been asked a question,” he said and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with the back of his beer hand.
    â€œI’m a product of the age of reason,” I said. “Where’s the food?”
    He shook his head as if in disgust and pointed behind me. I turned around, the crowd parted, and there was a long table with bowls and plastic cups and a crystal punch bowl half filled with a yellow liquid. As I walked away from him, I heard Dornsberry hurl the insult, “Clown,” at me. Any other time I might have pounded his face in, but instead I just laughed it off.
    The food table, in the state I found it, held a bowl with three pretzels in it and five other bowls of a tan dip that had crusted dark brown at the edges. A live fly buzzed in the middle of one bowl, unable to free itself.
    â€œThat’ll be a fossil someday,” said a voice behind me.
    I turned to see a thin man in a black tuxedo. He had a wave of slick dark hair in front; big, clunky, black-framed glasses; and a thinly trimmed mustache.
    â€œPretty appetizing, huh?” I said to him.
    â€œAllow me to introduce myself,” he said. “I’m the smartest man in the world.”
    I shook his hand and told him my name. “If you’re the smartest man in the world,” I said, “how’d you wind up here?”
    He gave a wry smile and told me, “I only answer questions for money.”
    I felt in my pants pockets for a crumpled bill. Taking it out and flattening it for him, I said, “Five bucks if you can tell me where I can get a beer.”
    â€œFive won’t do it,” he said. Now he had on a top hat and a cape and looked like Mandrake the Magician with glasses. “But five will get you half an answer.”
    I handed him the bill. “I’ll take it,” I said.
    â€œYou’ve got to go through the kitchen, that way,” he said and pointed. “Once you’re there, go out the side door onto the patio. That’s all I can afford to tell you.”
    â€œA steep price for some pretty thin shit,” I said to him and couldn’t believe I was getting belligerent with the smartest man in the world. There was something exhilarating about it.
    â€œWhen your wife asks her question later,” he said, “after I answer it, I’m going to kiss her and slip her the tongue so deeply I’ll taste her panties. She’ll see God, my friend.” He tipped back his top hat and laughed arrogantly.
    I picked up a crusted bowl of dip. “Touch my wife and you’ll be the deadest man in the world,” I said. Then I threw the bowl at him. He ducked at the last second, and the bowl flew into the face of a heavyset older woman in a sequined gown. Tan goo dripped from her jowls and the bowl hit the wooden floor and shattered. For a moment, I wondered where the carpet had gone. The woman I’d hit had been standing with an aged gentleman wearing a military uniform and sporting ridiculously thick muttonchop sideburns. “Preposterous,” he shouted and his monocle fell from his eye. He reached for the sword he had in a scabbard at his side. Meanwhile the smartest man in the world had lived up to his name for once and had split. I didn’t see him anywhere. I followed his lead and merged into the crowd, moving fast, sweating profusely.
    In the kitchen, there was a fire-eater. He was performing in the corner by the range. People had gathered around to watch and it was impossible to get through to the patio door, which I could glimpse occasionally between heads in the crowd. I had to wait for him to finish his act and hope the logjam broke up.
    I watched him. He had two little torches that he held with the middle finger of his right