said. “Jesus, the people that wander around at Beck’s parties!”
Searching his mind for a snappy comeback without success, Paul stood there for a moment feeling both angry and dull as the two of them refused to take any further notice of his presence. Someday... someday... ah, shit! He gave up, stepped through another archway, and changed realities again.
He was back in the first room he and Velva had entered from the main salon: soft red light, cushions on a beige rug, incense burning in the lap of a brass Buddha. But the whole ambience had changed. About a dozen vastly diverse people were sitting around on the cushions eating off plates from the buffet—rock critics, a few actors, agent-looking guys, starlets, businessmen in business suits. The room had become simply the first place people found to sit down after they had gotten their food. Two of the original inhabitants—the man in the silk suit with the blond hair and beard and a thin dark girl in an embroidered silk dress—still sat at one of the hookahs, smoking hashish and giggling quietly to each other. It looked like a bunch of actors from some other picture taking their lunch break on a disused exotic set, while two ghosts from the last film shot there hung on ectoplasmically.
But now Paul at least knew which way was out. The big room with the buffet and bar was just beyond the left-hand arch. He realized that he had developed an appetite. Then he remembered that Velva had wanted to eat an hour or more ago. And if she isn’t in there, no sweat, maybe I’ll run into Sandra Bayne at the bar.
The big room was somewhat more crowded than it had been earlier. People were piled four and five deep around the bar waiting to order drinks. There was a long line at the buffet table. A pall of cigarette smoke formed an artificial smog layer beneath the sky-blue ceiling, mingling subtly with the odors of liquor and food to form a slight miasma of staleness that hung in the air, the smell of the passage of party time. No one was dancing now, and the black jazz band was playing loose and disconnected riffs to itself; the musicians looked as if they had gotten into plenty of the stuff that was drifting through the back rooms.
The rock critics had disappeared from the bar, and Sandra Bayne was nowhere to be seen, but Paul spotted Velva waiting on the buffet line. She was talking to a guy in a fringed brown suede jacket and matching Australian slouch hat. His eyeballs were doing their best to crawl down the front of her dress.
“Paul! Over here!” She waved at him and gave him a glad-to-see-you smile. At least she didn’t seem pissed off at him for leaving her alone for so long.
“Jack, this is Paul Conrad, my date, the man I was telling you about,” Velva said, as Paul joined the line beside her amid some scowling from the people behind and an all-but-audible whoosh of deflation from the man in the slouch hat. “Paul, this is Jack Wilkes, he’s... what did you say you were, a fashion photographer?”
“Combat photographer, fer chrissakes,” Wilkes said in a beery voice that somehow seemed to match his drooping brown mustache. On closer inspection, his eyes proved to be thoroughly glazed; he was drunk as a skunk.
“Ah... photographed any good combat lately?” Paul asked.
“Are you kiddin’? I seen so much fried meat and butchered babies in the past two years that I’ve been drunk for the last six weeks, and if I’m lucky, I’ll stay drunk till I soak every last memory of Viet-fucking-Nam out of my bleeding brain and maybe I come out the other end a fashion photographer or a rummy on skid row which is better than making a living, shooting puke pictures of barbecued dinks, let me tell you, buddy boy, you think this game is all glamor and red-hot gash....”
“Jack just came back from Vietnam,” Velva said.
“I’d gathered.”
Mercifully, their turn at the buffet table came before Wilkes could bring things down any further. Paul spooned rumaki,
Searching his mind for a snappy comeback without success, Paul stood there for a moment feeling both angry and dull as the two of them refused to take any further notice of his presence. Someday... someday... ah, shit! He gave up, stepped through another archway, and changed realities again.
He was back in the first room he and Velva had entered from the main salon: soft red light, cushions on a beige rug, incense burning in the lap of a brass Buddha. But the whole ambience had changed. About a dozen vastly diverse people were sitting around on the cushions eating off plates from the buffet—rock critics, a few actors, agent-looking guys, starlets, businessmen in business suits. The room had become simply the first place people found to sit down after they had gotten their food. Two of the original inhabitants—the man in the silk suit with the blond hair and beard and a thin dark girl in an embroidered silk dress—still sat at one of the hookahs, smoking hashish and giggling quietly to each other. It looked like a bunch of actors from some other picture taking their lunch break on a disused exotic set, while two ghosts from the last film shot there hung on ectoplasmically.
But now Paul at least knew which way was out. The big room with the buffet and bar was just beyond the left-hand arch. He realized that he had developed an appetite. Then he remembered that Velva had wanted to eat an hour or more ago. And if she isn’t in there, no sweat, maybe I’ll run into Sandra Bayne at the bar.
The big room was somewhat more crowded than it had been earlier. People were piled four and five deep around the bar waiting to order drinks. There was a long line at the buffet table. A pall of cigarette smoke formed an artificial smog layer beneath the sky-blue ceiling, mingling subtly with the odors of liquor and food to form a slight miasma of staleness that hung in the air, the smell of the passage of party time. No one was dancing now, and the black jazz band was playing loose and disconnected riffs to itself; the musicians looked as if they had gotten into plenty of the stuff that was drifting through the back rooms.
The rock critics had disappeared from the bar, and Sandra Bayne was nowhere to be seen, but Paul spotted Velva waiting on the buffet line. She was talking to a guy in a fringed brown suede jacket and matching Australian slouch hat. His eyeballs were doing their best to crawl down the front of her dress.
“Paul! Over here!” She waved at him and gave him a glad-to-see-you smile. At least she didn’t seem pissed off at him for leaving her alone for so long.
“Jack, this is Paul Conrad, my date, the man I was telling you about,” Velva said, as Paul joined the line beside her amid some scowling from the people behind and an all-but-audible whoosh of deflation from the man in the slouch hat. “Paul, this is Jack Wilkes, he’s... what did you say you were, a fashion photographer?”
“Combat photographer, fer chrissakes,” Wilkes said in a beery voice that somehow seemed to match his drooping brown mustache. On closer inspection, his eyes proved to be thoroughly glazed; he was drunk as a skunk.
“Ah... photographed any good combat lately?” Paul asked.
“Are you kiddin’? I seen so much fried meat and butchered babies in the past two years that I’ve been drunk for the last six weeks, and if I’m lucky, I’ll stay drunk till I soak every last memory of Viet-fucking-Nam out of my bleeding brain and maybe I come out the other end a fashion photographer or a rummy on skid row which is better than making a living, shooting puke pictures of barbecued dinks, let me tell you, buddy boy, you think this game is all glamor and red-hot gash....”
“Jack just came back from Vietnam,” Velva said.
“I’d gathered.”
Mercifully, their turn at the buffet table came before Wilkes could bring things down any further. Paul spooned rumaki,
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