Picture Palace by Paul Theroux

meet the storm and traveling in to beat against the low jetty: flecks of white on the swells highlighting the turbulence, peaks subsiding and beginning, a sound at the sea-wall like icy digestion, and from the house, laughter.
    There was something barbarous about all those drunken people raising hell in the house on such a beautiful night, and as soon as I saw them at the windows I wanted to go away. I said, “I hate parties.”
    â€œYou might meet a nice fella,” said Orlando.
    â€œI’ve got a nice fella,” I said. I squeezed his gloved hand. “I’m staying with you.”
    He said, “What about you, Phoebe?”
    â€œYou know damn well what I want,” she said.
    Orlando laughed, then yanked up the hand brake. The motor shuddered, coughed, spat, and died.
    Inside, there were mostly youngsters, tearing around and sweating. They were ladling some sort of orange poison out of a punchbowl which had hunks of bruised grapefruit in it. It was a fairly typical get-together for those years: if people weren’t drinking there was a dead silence; if they were, they were drunk. There was no in-between.
    Everyone cheered, seeing Orlando, and they swept him away from Phoebe and me. For the next hour or so it was a madhouse, the noisy college crowd making a night of it, one enormous brute pounding a ukulele with his knuckles, couples canoodling on the sofa, and some out cold and making a Q-sign with their tongues hanging out of their mouths.
    I was deeply shocked. It dawned on me that I was seeing another side of Orlando: this person had been hidden from me, and I wanted to take him, then and there, and go home. Boys in crimson sweaters kept coming over and asking Phoebe to dance. She said no, but at last I said, “You might as well,” and she began dancing with Sandy. Then Orlando, who had not been dancing, snatched a girl’s arm and whirled her around in front of Phoebe. The dancers were jumping so hard the pictures shook on the walls. I sat there with my feet together thinking: I’m a photographer.
    Later, Orlando came over to me. His eyes were glazed and his other self smirked. He said, “Where’s Phoebe?”
    â€œDancing her feet off.”
    He made a face. “Why aren’t you?”
    â€œNo one asked me,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t want to.”
    He dragged me out of my chair and whisked me to the center of the room. Then he did a kind of monkey-shuffle; I imitated him and we were dancing. I heard someone say, “That’s his sister,” and I tried even harder.
    Orlando knew a trick that took my breath away each time he did it. It was this: he stood in one spot, clenched his fists at his sides and did a backward somersault, landing on his feet. He had done it for us in the garden or on the beach—I had a photograph of him where he appeared as a pair of whirling trousers above an admiring Phoebe. That night dancing with me he did three of them in a row and caused such a sensation that everyone stopped to watch him. He very nearly took a spill on his last somersault—he backflipped and I thought he was going to land on his stomach—but he came up smiling on two feet.
    Phoebe said, “Stop it, Ollie, you’re going to be sick.”
    Orlando, who was red in the face from all those jumps, said, “I’m all right—I can prove it.”
    â€œGo ahead,” said Phoebe.
    â€œGive me room.”
    People had gathered around to listen, and after that wild dancing and those somersaults Orlando’s curly hair was damp with sweat and lying close to his head. He blazed with energy, his shirt half unbuttoned and his teeth gleaming. Someone kicked the phonograph and it stopped yakking “What’ll I Do” and Orlando said in his growly voice,
    Â 
They flee from me, that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber . . .
    Â 
    There was a hush—he had silenced them with his