“Are you okay?” she said, but it was a statement, not a question.

“Sure, honey, why wouldn’t I be okay?” I sniffed loudly. “This is one rockin’ party. But your daughter—”

“You’re very talkative and sniffly.” She was glaring. “And you’re sweating.”

Sarah tugged on my arm again.

“That’s because I’m having fun.”

“And look, all around us, half the college showed up and is already inebriated to the point of unconsciousness.”

“Honey, you’ve got to deal with your daughter—her doll’s freaking out on her.”

“People are complaining that the music’s too loud,” Jayne said.

“Only your friends, chica.” I paused. “Plus I can hear you perfectly fine.”

“Chica? Did you just call me chica?”

“Look, if you don’t want to be sociable and can’t be tremendously cool about how to throw a party . . .” I found myself absently fondling a bowl of candy corn.

“There are students in our pool, Bret.”

“I know,” I said. “What? They’re swimming.”

“Jesus, Jay’s wasted and so are you.”

“Jay does calisthenics,” I said indignantly. “He doesn’t get wasted.”

“What about you, Bret?” she asked. “Do you get wasted?”

“Look, being America’s greatest writer under forty is a lot to live up to. It’s so hard.”

She gave me a scathing look. “I marvel at your courage.”

“Will you deal with your daughter, please?”

“Why don’t you deal with her?” she said. “She’s holding your hand.”

“But who’s going to greet the mystery guests and—”

Jayne walked away midsentence and started talking to someone dressed as Zorro, who was in real life a runner-up on last season’s Survivor.

I dragged Sarah over to Jayne and said, “Listen—will you take Sarah back up to bed?” I asked, no joke.

“You do it,” she said without looking at me.

A moment later, after noticing I was still there, she added, “Get lost.”

But Sarah wouldn’t go back to her room—she was too frightened, so Marta escorted her to ours. The cocaine was flowing through me as the Ramones were singing, “I don’t want to be buried in a pet sematary/I don’t wanna live my life again” and when I staggered through a mob of dancing students and saw the Patrick Bateman guy was still here, there was suddenly the sense that the party was verging out of control. Something in me dropped and exploded—a moment of pure, almost visceral despair—and I needed another line. I looked back into the crowd. Jay had drifted over to the celebrities—my wife and David Duchovny—and Robby had disappeared. So I walked up the curving staircase to the second floor to check out Sarah’s room—using my investigation of the alleged Terby incident as an excuse to do more blow.

It was so quiet up there that you could barely hear the party downstairs; that’s how large the house was. It was also freezing, and I shivered uncontrollably as I moved down the darkened hallway. I walked by Robby’s room—his friend was zonked out in the huge king-sized bed, the Steven Spielberg movie 1941 (which had been on a lot lately) glowing from the wide-screen TV, the only light in my son’s room. I continued my walk down the hall and stopped at a huge expanse of window that looked out over the backyard: people were swimming in the heated pool and sprawled on chaise longues. A group of students had congregated in the mock graveyard, sharing a joint, and another group was crawling around each other through the headstones. And above the headstones I noticed the moon and a lunar light fanning over the field and there was actually a mist rolling in from the woods and drifting toward the house. I wanted suddenly to do another massive line and join the students when something behind me flickered, then dimmed—it was a wall sconce, wrought-iron and gold-rimmed, one of many that lined the hallway walls about six feet up from the floor. Tonight, though, they’d all been switched off.

But when I walked toward a sconce it lit up briefly and then dimmed as I passed by. This happened at the second sconce I passed, and then at the third. Each time I neared one it began glowing and then as I passed the sconce it dimmed again, as if they were moving with me, lighting my way down the darkened hallway. I started giggling at what I thought was a brief hallucination, but since it kept happening with each sconce I approached my hope that this was a drug-induced vision no longer made any sense. So I concluded it had something to do with how complicated the electrical situation had become due to the party—all the purple lights and extension cables causing problems throughout the house. That was what I told myself as I made my way toward the darkness of Sarah’s room.