In the full-length mirror, Jack saw that he'd painted his nails in too hasty a fashion--it appeared that he'd had a barefoot accident with a lawn mower. The skirt fell off one hip, and he'd torn one side of the camisole, which exposed the tight, twisted back strap of the ivory-colored bra. Jack's tennis-ball breasts were noticeably smaller than his biceps. He looked like a field-hockey player, maybe three or four months pregnant, just starting to show.
He would have forgone the toenail polish if he could have worn his shoes, but the model had used them to weigh down his suit jacket, which was under about four inches of water in the bathtub.
It was just a musicians' party--Jack didn't expect that the dress code would be very severe. He thought it was adequate that he'd used a gob of the model's extra-body conditioner and then blow-dried his hair. He looked like a slightly pregnant former field-hockey player (now a hooker) who'd been struck by lightning, but compared to the girls who were the usual groupies with the rock-'n'-rollers at the Sunset Marquis, Jack was head and shoulders above the competition.
Except for the model--she was hot. She'd stripped off Jack's suit pants and the white dress shirt; she was dancing up a storm in his boxers and her bra. The musicians and their entourage were so wasted that Jack could have been Toshiro Mifune in drag, and no one would have noticed him. All but one guy, who appeared to be giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to his harmonica. He stopped playing and stared at Jack--well, at Jack's tennis ball in two halves, specifically.
"Did you come with her?" he asked Jack, nodding to the dancing model.
"I recognize the boxers and the bra," Jack said. It was a Jack Burns kind of line--it gave him away.
"You could pass for Jack Burns," the harmonica player said. "I'm not shitting you."
"Really?" Jack asked him. "Any idea where the honey in the boxers ditched the rest of her clothes?"
The harmonica player pointed to a couch, where a tall young woman was stretched out; she was asleep or passed out or dead. (Unmindful of the din, whichever the case.) She'd covered herself with Jack's white dress shirt, which either she or the model had used to blot her lipstick. Jack found his suit pants and took the wallet out of the left-front pocket. There was no point in keeping the pants--not with the suit jacket under water in the model's bathtub--and he had a hundred white dress shirts. It was the kind of night when you cut your losses and left.
The model was still dancing. "Tell her she can keep the boxers, but I want my bra back," Jack said to the harmonica player, who was yowling away on his instrument like a runover cat; he barely nodded in Jack's direction.
There was a bouncer-type who'd not seen Jack come in. The bouncer followed Jack out, into the semidark grounds, where there were other villas--some lit, some not. There was already dew on the grass. "Hey," the bouncer said. "Someone said you were that weirdo Jack Burns."
Jack's face came up to the broad chest of the bouncer's Hawaiian shirt; he was blocking Jack's way. Ordinarily Jack would have sidestepped him; he could have easily outrun him to the lineup at the velvet rope out in front of the bar. The bouncer wouldn't have messed with Jack in a crowd. But Jack's skirt was so tight that his knees were brushing together when he walked; he couldn't have run anywhere.
"Is that you, honey pie?" he heard Emma say. The bouncer stepped aside and let him pass. "Just look at you--you're half unzipped!" Emma said to Jack. She threw her big arm around his hip, pulling him to her. She kissed Jack on the mouth, smearing his lipstick. "What happened to your shoes, baby cakes?" she asked.
"Under water," Jack explained.
"They better not have been your Manolo Blahniks, you bad girl," Emma said, putting her big hand on Jack's ass.
"Dykes!" the bouncer called after them.
"I've got a dildo that would make you cry like a little baby!" Emma yelled at the bouncer, who looked suddenly pale in the bad light.
A tall, floppy guy, like a scarecrow, had fallen on the velvet rope in front of the bar; he was draped over it like a coat over a clothesline.
"I think it's illegal to drive barefoot in California," Emma was telling Jack.
"I promise I won't sleep with your mother," he whispered to her.
Jack was almost asleep, with his penis still stiff in Mrs. Oastler's hand, when Leslie spoke to him. "I had to promise your mom I wouldn't sleep with you, Jack. Of course, we're not really sleeping together--not the way Alice meant--are we?"
"Of course not," Jack told her.
One of Mrs. Oastler's fingernails nicked the tip of his penis, and he flinched against her. "I'm sorry," she said. "I haven't played with anyone's penis in quite some time."
"It's okay," he said.
"You gotta talk to your mom, Jack," Leslie said, the way Emma might have said it.
"Why's that?" he asked.
"Talk to her while there's still time, Jack."
"Still time for what?"
"Emma and I didn't talk enough," Mrs. Oastler said. "Now we're out of time."
"Talk to my mom about what?"