The Blizzard Party

his queen and along with everyone else was playing with nothing but pawns, stopped looking around and shoved his hands in his pockets to protect his cargo, his precious Tami microscope in one, and in the other the leather pouch containing checks and deposit slips from his father’s import concern, scientific inquiry and capital of equal value in his Stuyvesant-bound mind, while Albert, whose last bright bulb had sizzled, flickered, and died, slipped into a comatose state, quietly shuffled forward, his arm draped over Vik’s, as each new fraction of the crowd disappeared into the wall, speechless, his face a heavy, wet cloth that threatened to slip right off his skull and land with a slap on the slick floor. The firm surface of the present had finally split and he’d fallen into the dark ravine of the past, never to be heard from again.
Their turn came. They were absorbed by the vacuum. Hustle, crush, the doors closed, a hush fell as everyone divided into tribes, those marble pillars who trained their eyes downward, those saintly souls who peered slightly upward at their ethereal destination, those dead-ahead bastions of cool whose refusal to acknowledge the alien nature of vertical transport signaled that they had achieved a divine state of pure, exquisite boredom. Everyone observed the protocol of silence. The wet chinchilla coat in front of Vik tickled his nose. Albert stood as if on review, eyes closed, swimming in his history, at least what he could recall of it, a fourth tribe unto himself. His teeth were chattering like a speed freak’s.
Thunk-rumble, the passengers poured into the vestibule outside PH1 and began adding to the graveyard of boots and coats, the precarious teepee of cross-country skis by the door. The coats had formed a mountain slope descending from the ceiling at the right-hand wall, somewhere at its core a wheeled rack on which early arrivals had hung theirs with care, draping scarves just so over lapels, taking pains to insert gloves in pockets, hats folded and tucked securely into a sleeve … there was movement on one side of the wedge, an excavation, a poor bastard who’d left a dime bag in the pocket of his coat. Knee-deep in wet wool, he dug deeper into the flank, the thick aroma rising in stinking waves around him as the new arrivals pitched their coats onto the pile. Though harried, he continued to dig. On the other side, boot arrangement likewise had initially followed some ordered system that had collapsed as footwear piled up like a slag heap, rising, shearing, rising again, shearing, absorbing new artifacts as each fresh batch of travelers arrived: a bag of wine, a plastic toboggan, backpacks filled with snacks and brandy for the voyage across Central Park, pulped copies of the Post that had been stuffed beneath sweaters as extra insulation, things that slipped free from breast pockets while de-booting: bifocals, Watermans, receipts, prayer beads, boxes of Camels, Marlboros, condoms, lighters, pouches, papers, baggies of weed, baggies of reds, blues, greenies, so that the boot pile was densely populated with excavationists—in fact, a sizable contingent of partygoers were tromping around on the site, mashing and squishing everything in their increasingly frantic attempts to recover the buried mind-altering substances, and, unfortunately, contributing to serious stratum disarray so that, had there been at one time a controlled, archaeological approach to recovering lost items, there was no chance now, as the whole pile was a contaminated context, goulash.
No way was Vik taking his hands out of his pockets, not now, and the pair moved hopelessly along with the crowd, squirting through the bottleneck at the doorway, Albert shuffling along like a trained seal.
Inside, the entrance gallery was dim and thick with smoke—not the painterly striations that hang suspended in opium dens like the gossamer robes of angels, but a searing, heavy storm of smoke that had established itself as the essential medium through which all commerce would be conducted. The Joan Mitchell hanging directly across from the door was nothing but a hint of blue through a fogbank. Entire bricks of marijuana had been combusted and were presently lounging around in cottony clouds, mingling with enough R. J. Reynolds’ bright leaf and burley to balance the North Carolina state budget. Here and there, microclimates, the sharp masculinity of Cohibas, Toros, Presidentes, Ascots, Perfectos, Chisels canoodling with feminine curls of Drum, Sir Walter Raleigh, Borkum Riff, Sutliffe Vanilla Custard, Prince Albert. Like a descant, the mysterious perfume of cloves everywhere, nowhere. In darker corners, the harsh burn of bidis.
Enterprising young Tanawat Kongkatitum, known to his friends at Columbia as Hiwatt, after P. Townshend’s customary stack, had set up a pair of multi-hose hookahs in the library and was charging the exorbitant sum of eight dollars U.S. for a bowl of shisha and hash. He was doing a bang-up business but it was getting crowded as the remains of his previous customers were taking up all the floor space. They were great for marketing but— Christ on a bicycle, Hiwatt said to a woman in four-inch spikes who was walking across an unresponsive carpet of bodies. Step right up!
Vik, looking for somewhere to stow Albert while he inquired about where exactly in the building the old man lived, was blown away from the pulsing heart of the party like a sloop caught in a squall, toward the residential wing, by the excruciating volume of the song, Iggy Pop grinding out “Lust for Life,” on about its eighth curtain call. To the east were six bedrooms and three bathrooms that branched off a dark central hall lined with Cubist paintings, couples making out, triangular shadows, more smoke, one of Hiwatt’s customers sleeping Pompei-style atop a Nelson bench, and underfoot a foreboding tangle of clothing.
The doors were all closed, and Albert stood docile at Vik’s side as he rapped on the first one. Impossible to hear anything over the noise, he cracked and peeked and saw, oh yeah, an orgy, or group action, at least,