Free Asa, as I Knew Him by Susanna Kaysen Page B

chrome before peering through the glass to inspect the dashboard and seats. On the seats—red leather, bucket, ample—sat Reuben at the steering wheel and Jo on the right. His hand lay on her thigh; she was wearing the red skirt again. And her hand with its bitten nails grasped his wrist like a handcuff, as if it would never let go.
    Asa stepped out of the garage into the pools of light cast by the paper lanterns on the driveway. His bicycle was leaning against a bush, and he wanted more than anything to be onit, riding down a dark country road without a thought for Reuben or any of them. No side street in all of Cambridge would do; he needed blackness, the hum and strum of a thousand animals poised at the edge of the woods watching him pass, the living, soft country night all around him, to erase what he wanted to erase. Therefore he walked back to the party.
    Roberto sidled up to him and offered him a swig of something golden in a glass. Asa took it; it burned and stank like nothing he had ever drunk.
    “What is that?” he asked. “Kerosene?”
    “Special old brandy I stole from Papa. Where’s Reuben?”
    “Sitting in his car.”
    “All by himself?” When Asa didn’t answer, Roberto asked again.
    “No,” said Asa after a while, “he’s sitting with a girl.”
    Roberto did something unusual then. He put his arm around Asa’s shoulders. They stood together, sharing the nasty brandy in silence. And because Roberto was making a special effort for him, Asa was comforted. At the same time he knew it was his sense of injury that let him accept Roberto; in the normal course of things Roberto was an extra, a cranky appendage he and Parker tolerated from loyalty to Reuben, who felt loyalty to his brother.
    “We’re both outsiders, aren’t we,” said Roberto suddenly. It wasn’t a question. “I organized this damn party—all these parties, in fact. Did you know that? Reuben says, ‘Let’s have a party,’ and then I call people up, I arrange for the beer, I spread the word around town, I even hang these stupid lanterns. But they look nice, don’t they? I like the lanterns reflected in the pool. I do everything, and then I stand around watching it, while Reuben and Parker smooch with ninth graders in the bushes. I do attic patrol—you know what thatis? Checking the upstairs bedrooms to make sure there aren’t any couples in them. I even make sure Papa has a fresh drink every hour on my way downstairs from attic patrol.”
    “Why do you do it?”
    “Oh, why not? I like a party too. Anyhow, it’s what I do. Then I watch it. I watch people making fools of themselves, falling in the pool, getting lipstick on their cheeks, puking on a deck chair. I’m sort of the guardian of the party.” He laughed and looked at Asa sideways. “And you’re sort of the ghost of the party.”
    “What are you talking about?” Asa moved out from the shelter of Roberto’s arm.
    “You’re never in the bushes smooching, you’re always trailing around after them, jealous because they’re smooching or they’re drunker than you are and they’re having more fun.”
    “The hell I am,” said Asa. But Roberto wasn’t listening to him.
    “And you do what you have to do to pass—you know, to look as though you’re part of the party. You dance a few rounds, and you carry a beer bottle, and you know enough not to arrive in a jacket and tie. But you’re as out of it as I am. More. I live here, for Chrissake. I can tell everybody to go home. It’s my house. Shall I do that? This isn’t much of a party. The one in May was a lot better.”
    “No, oh, no,” said Asa. Roberto, standing in the glare of his lanterns, seemed flooded with a sudden power, and Asa half believed that a snap of his fingers would cause the crowd to evaporate. But he also knew himself to be just suffering from the inconsistency of life: Jo was in the new car with Reuben, and he was a ghost, and he hadn’t expected either of these events. So why