*This piece is part of a project called ‘Style Matches’, and is intended to resemble the style of Bret Easton Ellis. This imitation is, I hope, a sincere and true form of flattery.
Well so the way it started was, my mother’s new husband was hovering by the island in the middle of the combination lounge and dining room, something quaint, something continental, in his house on the north end of Amberlyn where it turns into the bay, with bulkhead fittings joining the slab table and he’s been talking about steam turbines and coaling for the better part of an hour in the kind of voice that I heard buzzing out through the station floor loudspeaker at Central coming down from Stateside across the water. My mother’s new husband Barrett Holloway Rolfe, who looks about as old as one of my schoolmates, or maybe a class or two above, and who’s in a new twill wool jacket, worsted, from high street, Italian, but the kind you can get here, was steering for the topic since we got back from midnight mass. Like my grandfather, he’s in shipping, with his own fleet. I say fleet because I’ve heard as much. I fiddle with the stem on my wineglass, which is full of Prosecco, and I wonder if he put on the twill wool jacket because that’s what I was wearing when I came off the train. I’m sitting on the couch in the other half of the room. The shirt I have on underneath is muslin, but I have a sweater on between– wool, knit with a broad ribbing– and I wonder whether he’d backed off from matching all the way. Everyone up by the island is looking over and I’m looking back, perfectly serene, because I’m quite unbothered when you get right down to it.
One of my aunts manages to get her voice in and really lay her opinion out about ocean liners, and I realize that everyone’s talking the way Barrett does now, over the water. I’m starting to feel a bit quaint and upstate, in that sort of way. That’s what I’m trying to say. My mother’s husband tucks his handkerchief which has the letters BHR on it back in his breast pocket. I guess I’m paying so much attention to him because he was chummy at the station and I’ve never met him before. “I’ll tell you, any of you can mark me on this one, and you can thank me later for the foresight,” he’s saying. “But the steam liner is what’s really going to let us pull ahead. Now, it used to be, Cunard and White Star couldn’t be competed with because of the position of the British Isles as a port of entry for the Continent, but this is a day for Vesperia. We’ll be able to make ports as far as Hamburg and Copenhagen come spring. In fact, I’ve just bought myself another, a new liner from a berth out in Vailsburg, to add to the modest old fleet, as a bit of a Christ’s-mass present to myself. The point is—” he says, really starting to get into it— “is I’ll be able to run the liner from Salvian to *Galway *come spring. When Christ is born once again, we’ll have it in the Old Country, now how’s that, eh?”
Marvelous, just marvelous, was the singsong tune from one of the great aunts, the one who’d been talking about ocean liners in that same blaring voice. “Of course, now that both of the kids are going to be around, I think it would be just tremendous to start getting everyone together again. And, ah, you know, I’ve made the journey myself, to Galway,” Barrett was saying to the great aunts when the Devlin procession came in from the carriage stop. He was fiddling with his tie and I was spreading my knees apart where I sat, both to face my grandfather as he came in. Spreading your knees projects confidence, and you should bring your hands together, but you shouldn’t close your body off. Well, I’m sitting totally opened up. Barrett says Merry Christmas, and I do to, and my grandfather puts up by the island. There’s a nativity scene on a hall table splitting the combination room, in eyeshot of one of the holly-decked crucifixes along the walls. Barrett pours himself a drink, and one for my grandfather, and says *Sláinte *loudly.
“Conell!” Barrett exclaims. He slides the tumbler along the table. Grandfather picks it up. I don’t hear the response.
I’m sitting by myself still when the rest of them come in from the car and the room really starts to fill out. Most of them are in the other half of the room and I’ll be getting up soon. My mother is in a tan church dress and hat and a twill worsted waistcoat, British-made. She has long gloves on and she was clutching her calfskin purse when she came in. Of course she and I had talked when she and Barrett came to get me from Central, and right now she’s talking to my grandfather, which suits me just fine because I’m finishing my prosecco. I take slow sips because it tastes cheap. I don’t let my face show it. There was a zoo on the cape on the way down. I’d gone between trains, since they’d filled out the schedule so badly today that I had four hours and nothing to do while the train was coaling after the leg up from Marrowyn. I was there with my italian leather briefcase and a new pair of boots on the platform when I thought to go. There was a troop of macaques on the other side of the fence when I’d worked my way to the far end, and I spent probably too long looking at it, just watching them bang rocks together and pick bugs off each others’ back.
I’m still sitting there with an expression that projects unbothered confidence and thinking about the tribulations of the Blessed Virgin when my baby sister sits down next to me with a glass of prosecco in her hand. She practically drops and lets the couch catch her. She’s saying something inane about the way the garland’s wrapped around these cast iron hooks my mother’s husband has put up on the wall above the windows to someone, possibly me, and I wait a few seconds before I look up because I’m not surprised by its presence. The hooks hadn’t been there the last time I came by. I’m living up by the water, now, except I’m not really. I’ve been upstate for a while, but really what I’m getting at is that I’m buying an apartment, so I won’t be here long. My sister is wearing a Scottish cashmere cord-knit sweater over her church dress, which is more tasteful than my mother’s, and she has a white calfskin purse with brass clasps. She’s started to curl her hair. She’s actually my age, my twin. Her teeth are whitened and when she talks she sounds like she’s crooning to a baby or something. My great aunts are also talking like that, actually, so I guess that people talk like this in Marrowyn now. She sounds really unperturbed. “Merry Christmas,” she says, hovering right by my ear, then she puts her arms around my shoulders and squeezes, like she’s trying to hang on. I spot her eyes dart over to mother when she does this, maybe to check if she’s still watching. I spot this because I do it too. “I’m so glad you’re back, Junior,” she says.
“I’m glad to be back,” I say.
“Did you get my letters?” she asks. I tell her that I got her letters and read them all several times. I actually read a few of them several times. Then she looks at me and a little through me and doesn’t seem to care much anyway. “I passed my bar,” she says, still crooning like she’s talking to a baby, or maybe a really stupid person. Then she slowly looks over at Barrett, who is digging the cork out of a bottle of champagne. When it goes pop, I imagine it’s his head. His left eye soars across the room like a loosed bullet, clinging to one of the cast-iron hooks by a little tail of nerve. His right eye bounces, bits of brains and skull and nose and lip scatter through the air like confetti. Blood dribbles down and soaks his undershirt and his London herringbone waistcoat. He’s still standing when it happens, with all the blood running down his tie and dripping off of his pocketwatch chain and blotting out the letters on his handkerchief. A few pieces of skull land in Beatrix’s wineglass. I’m thinking of whether I want to pick the imaginary piece of his ear out of my own when Beatrix shakes me again, plainly oblivious, and repeats, “Isn’t that great?” And I say it’s the greatest news I’ve heard and think of picking a piece of his skull out of hers, too. Then she smiles and there’s a real sort of edge to it.
“You know,” she says.
I don’t know, so I say as much. She leans in to my ear and I can smell the eucharist and the prosecco. She adjusts her posture and pretends to lean her head on my shoulder.
“Barrett bought you a Model T for Christmas,” she says, and then her smile curls against my cheek. “But you should still act surprised when he shows it to you.”
I don’t feel surprised. I guess what I’m saying is that I would have been acting surprised anyway, but I don’t feel the need to explain that to her. Then she drinks a sip of wine and leans back in her chair and giggles shrilly, and her eyes flash with self-satisfaction and I mean really flash, and her hair looks like she stole baby Jesus’s halo. I look at one of the darkened windows and check myself out for a few moments until I get my smile just as bright. Then I lift her arms from around me to on my shoulder, and say, “We should go up.”
My mother beams when I walk up with my sister’s arms around my shoulders still. She takes them off to play with her shawl, and then she chirps, “Axel was just telling me about how it is stateside.” One of my great aunts chips in on the topic, graciously talking about how great the privilege of watching me grow into a charming young man had been, and I take that to be the shape of my mother’s white lie. *Well! *Don’t I know it!
I’m thinking about the monkeys again when I bring up going to school. Monkeys use tools. Primates do. That’s the thing, you know, people say it’s a dog eat dog world. People say, but eating other dogs is what’s wrong with dogs in the first place. Monkeys, though, monkeys don’t need to eat other monkeys. They pick bugs off of other monkeys backs. I’m thinking about monkeys and I’m holding my wineglass by the stem. “Of course,” I say, “I have a lot to thank Aunt Enya for as far as my upbringing is concerned, but I can hardly let Beatrix get too far ahead. Keeping pace is important in this city.”
“You’re not thinking of law, too, are you?” Bea says. She’s draping her arms on my shoulder again.
“Actually, I have been thinking of a legal program,” I say. “You studied up at Byrgenwerth, didn’t you?”
“Well, I do still correspond with some of the faculty,” she says. I am positive she has no intention of following through on the offer that implies.
My sister starts talking about legal advocacy, and Barrett is telling grandfather are chipping in about how much they could use someone to look after their shipping agreements.
“It’s easy to sway a Marrowyn jury, you know,” Beatrix says, with a hint of a sniff.
“I was thinking politics, actually,” I say. That’s the part where I flash a smile. I make sure not to smile to broadly– that stretches the laugh lines, and premature aging is a sign of weakness. Everyone looks over, except for Beatrix, who says politics is easy, too, these days, and anyway, she prefers a courtroom to a room full of stodgy old men. It doesn’t really make any sense; I’ve seen the judges in the papers, but when she says it, Enya starts nodding and hums. Beatrix is starting to talk about the Vesperian Association of Woman Lawyers when I lift my glass and say, “I think it would be plenty interesting once I got into it.” I have a second, while I’m swallowing the sip of wine, which I still don’t like.
“Oh, my god,” Aunt Enya says. Her voice sounds strained by the enthusiasm in her voice. “You should do something about the taxes, import duties,” she adds, and Beatrix rolls her eyes.
“Oh, yes—,” my mother starts to cut in.
“You know,” Enya is saying, “I was talking to an old colleague from the *Aid Society *who said her grandson wasn’t seeing a penny of his inheritance, all because of the taxes here!”
“—Well, someone has to do something about the taxes,” my mother says.
Barrett says, “They’re strangling my business. You’ll do something about the taxes, won’t you, Junior?”
“Call me that again,” I cut in with a glare. “Yeah, don’t.”
“Alright,” Barrett says with a laugh. I’m still not looking at him. I like the image I still have in my imagination. “You should do something about harbor control, too.”
“There’s a lot more to be concerned about than taxes, you know,” I sigh. “I mean it, I think this city’s gone to the dogs for lack of good leadership. Something…” I trail, but I haven’t lost my roll. I’m trying to work out exactly what’s so exciting about politics, other than the kind of thing that really gets blood going, I mean, getting new blood onto the council. You can convince anyone that the old guard or the old way of doing things is bad. I look. Everyone else has cake in their mouths. I purse my lips easily and find my word. “...in line with the will of the people. God appointed the new world to be the testing ground for a new kind of governance and we are falling behind, I say. I mean, ‘The Dreams Act’? ‘The Narcotics Act’? I hear talk of prohibiting liquor.”
“You should,” Grandfather says. His mustache waggles like an inchworm as his eyes fix on me. “Prohibition would be wonderful for business, much in the way Narcotics was.” Beatrix gives me an odd side-eye, a side-eye I frankly hardly catch, and much less understand. “It’s been just tremendous for business.”
“Cake anyone?” Barrett cuts in. “Boosh-ay de No-elle.”
“Oh, sure, if you want constant court-calls,” Beatrix answers.
“It’s Boosh,” Aunt Enya says. “Isn’t it?”
“Cream and cho-co-lait,” Barrett says. Mother’s face twitches for a second. I’d been stealing glances.
“It’s Boosh,” she says. “Oh sure, if we want constant court-calls.”
“Oh, sure,” Grandfather says gruffly. “I want constant court-calls. You can win them, and we’ll hardly need to worry, anyway, once your brother gets on the council.” I swear I see my sister lick her lips, as fluid as a shark.
“Anyway,” I say, “I don’t plan on prohibiting liquor unless that’s just what the people want. That’s the problem with Marrowyn, you know. The council doesn’t work with the city. They’re out of touch, and they don’t work with the good businesspeople of this city, much less the people. You know, we have to worry about things like disease and random killings and animal cruelty and whether, in all of this, it really matters all that much to go after narcotics.” Grandfather looks at me with cake in his mouth and a fork in his hand. I add, “And we *have *to support Marrowyn’s port, and the people who keep it moving.”
I pick my Christmas cake apart with a fork, and then I put it in my mouth and it tastes alright and somewhat dry. Mom dabs at her lip with a green handkerchief.
“Well said,” Barrett says, after (and I assume this) he’s finished chewing.
“Well said!” my mother adds. Well said, well said, they echo, up until my grandfather does too. Beatrix smiles and squeezes my shoulders and shakes me for a moment.
“Let’s see how Byrgenwerth treats you, Junior,” Beatrix says.
I lift my glass and pull the smile back out. “Alright, baby sister, let’s,” I say.
Oh, God, Beatrix is saying. We’re over on the couch again. Mom looks over, and she smiles like the lord’s angel. I suppose I look pretty well like Jesus, because I’m grinning like a baby, too. Smiles go a long way. “Oh, God,” she’s crooning, and laughing. I pin down what I think it sounds like: a bit southern, really, mixed with some kind of affect from across the pond. She’s putting it on effortlessly. I guess I’ll probably ought to, too. “Nobody cares that much about the city council, you know. It’s hardly governorship, or state senate. I thought this was a lark.” My little sister’s cheeks are flared red at the edges, but she’s not that drunk. I can tell because she keeps looking back at our mother and Barrett. Which I know because I’m doing that too. I say that I guess that’s what got us into this situation in the first place, and that I’m plenty secure in my cares about politics, anyway. Barrett looks over again and says I’ve turned into quite the firebrand. “Oh, that’s true,” Beatrix says. She turns on me like a shark, but still mostly looks through me. “You’re turning into quite the firebrand, Junior.” Then she leans back in the couch and I lean into my corner and twirl my wineglass to get the wine spinning. Beatrix is smiling in my direction but her eyes won’t meet mine, and I don’t really care to meet hers, so we go on like that for a little while until I shrug, and say I think someone ought to be, and they’ve all gotten enough fun out of the matter. Barrett’s been looking over again, all misty-eyed. He’s actually drunk, I think. His cheeks look like hot coals. So I sit there sort of serene again for a while until Bea puts her head back on my shoulder and turns in towards my ear.
“You’re being *such *a suckup,” she whispers, nearly ghosting my ear.
I laugh, totally out of nowhere, and I smile genially at the whole room, but irritation flares in me. There hadn’t been a hint of insincerity in my heart, except the once I’d smiled at my mother’s husband. I look over and she rolls her head to look out at the room, swaying off of my shoulder. “I’m not,” I say warningly. “I’ve been entirely sincere this whole time.”
Beatrix scoffs into her hand. She looks out at mother and makes her eyes glitter somehow and says, “Mom, I think we could both use some more wine.” Then she turns and looks at me cheerfully and says, “I might have to get us that if she doesn’t come over.”
I look at her a little askance.
“Okay,” Beatrix says in my ear. “What are you being, then?”
“I mean it,” I answer, under my breath, with the glass held to my lips. Barrett’s coming over with a pair of wineglasses in his fingers and a head on his shoulders.
“Here, darling,” he says to Beatrix. “Here, sport,” he says to me.
I put the new glass to my lips and try not to think about how cheap the wine tastes. That’s another thing, cheap wine. You never want to go under on the drinks, because good drinks can make bad food work. Cheap drink just projects cheapness. When he steps away, I glance at mother to make sure she’s gotten back into conversation with Barrett. I say, “I’m planning on getting into politics, and the family is a boon to that, as I see it.”
She takes a long sip, then covers her lips with the glass and snorts.
I look at her askance again.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” I say. “What?”
“Forget the wine. I have a present for you, too, but I never care for waiting ’til morning, anyway. You should come with me a second,” she says, and then rises from the couch.
I get up and we both look at mother. “Well, I’ll be to bed after,” I say.
“We’ll be to mass in the morning,” Enya says.
I step out into the room and my mother comes over and puts her head on my shoulder. She kisses my hairline and says she’s so pleased with the man I’ve become and I can’t deny it makes me proud to hear it. Barrett says something too. I follow Beatrix.
Beatrix tells me to wait outside the bathroom as she disappears inside, so I repeat, “What?”
“Have you ever done cocaine?” Beatrix says after a moment. “Would you like to?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, to the first question. I say, “Sure,” to the one after that.
Beatrix takes a pot out from under the sink and shapes up a few lines on the lid with a nail file. Then she leans down and snorts and snorts phlegm into a napkin or something.
I lean down to the lid and roll a dollar and suck in through my nostril. I’d lied. I’d never done it before. As soon as it hits my nose, I can barely hold back the sneeze. Stifling it leaves me coughing and coughing. Beatrix is leaning up against the counter watching me puff out little clouds of powder. She purses her lips and gives me a look I can’t make sense of. “Seriously, Junior,” she says, laughing, and I realize she isn’t talking about the coke a second before she goes on. “Municipal politics? Chrissakes.” She puts a finger to her lip and hisses, “Why? …I’m opening a firm, you should come join.”
“Oh, so you lied about looking out for the family interests?” I reply.
“I’m more disappointed that you didn’t,” Beatrix shoots back.
“Grandfather’s? No! I want to get a seat on the council, and he wants an inside man. It’s an obvious synergy,” I say. “Buzzy,” I add–
“Fuck,” she she cuts in, heavy on the lip. “I thought I’d heard the last of that nickname.”
“—Look, family business is family business. That means a free ticket in. That’s a gift and as you can see, I won’t turn down a gift if I think it’ll help. You should think about that, too,” I say. “I mean, so, you’re striking out on your own… why?”
“God.” she tosses her head dramatically. “What did they *do *to you upstate?”
“Nothing. What has you so pissed off?” I cut back in. She shakes her head vigorously.
“Oh, please. I’m not pissed off at all. I don’t know about you, but it’s shameful,” she says, and she’s starting to sound genuinely incensed. “Just shameful! I don’t want to be tied down to the likes of them forever. But—” and a note of disappointment creeps into her voice, still crooning. “I guess you do.”
“Buzzy,” I say, “I’m going to get on the council. Hell, maybe I’ll be the mayor. I’m going to keep my promises, because you know what, I’m sincere when I make them. If that ties me to the Devlins, well, I’m already tied to the Devlins. So are you.” I stop. My blood’s starting to run hot in my veins. “It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” Bea says. “I’m cutting myself off. I’m going against them. I’m doing this on my own merit.”
“Your own merit.”
“Yeah, I’m a hell of a proseuctor. That’s the thing, Junior,” she drawls. “I mean, hell. You wanna show it to the Muntzes, I’ll get that done without mom. I’m just going to put them in jail,” she says.
“I’m just fucking going to,” she adds.
“It’s stupid,” I say, and I cut out another line after Beatrix does. I’m thinking about the macaques. I shut my eyes and just think. About Beatrix and this stupid lawyer business. Then I’m thinking about the macaques again. I think, I wanna be the macaque who picks and eats the bugs off of all the other monkeys. That’s power. I think I wanna be the monkey who picks and eats the bugs. I guess I’m really feeling the powder and it’s making the cake swirl in my gut. I’m trying not to make eye contact with Beatrix because she’s still looking at me like she isn’t done, I guess she has more of a tolerance up. I’m thinking I’m going to be king of the monkeys.
“Fuck off,” she says, finally giving up on whatever she’d been trying to say. “I don’t know why I thought I’d share *that *with you after how we left things. You’re *such *a suckup.”
“No, I’m not,” I say in a whisper. I add, not loud enough to be heard, “I’m king of the monkeys.”
We’re on the roof. We’re up on the roof of my mother’s husband’s new house when Beatrix suddenly sits up straight. “What the fuck?!” she hisses. I don’t see anything, but I reach over and put the lid back on the pot. Beatrix’s eyes are narrowed, and she’s darting to and fro. It tears me from my thoughts
“What?” I cut in.
Beatrix starts to raggedly stand up. She puts her belly to the roof and slips out of her white italian calfskin pumps. “I think there’s a drunk on the property,” she says.
I shake my head and look. I don’t see a thing. I reach up for her arm and tug her. “Hey, siddown,” I say. “There’s nobody on the property.”
“No,” she hisses again. “Look, by the gate. Just by the wall.” She points, and I see it– a bum, or something, climbing up on the knee-high brick fence. What a travesty. I feel my arm pull. She’s stood all the way up on the roof, trying to pull away from my grasp. “Hey, you, Jack!” Beatrix yells. I can’t tell whether the drunk actually looks. My sister sways for a moment and yells again. “Hey, ya drunk! I’m *in *with law-yers!” Beatrix says, enunciating her syllables as though if she talks down just enough she’ll cut through the haze of whatever narcotics are coursing through the veins of the bum, who’s started to climb back over the wall to continue on his stumbling way. Probably a reveler from down at the bar, someone without anyone to celebrate with, and drunk or drugged out of his mind, too. “In with law-yers,” Beatrix repeats. “Hey! Bring me a beer from whatever dive you crawled out of or scram—”
I tug on Beatrix’s shoulder. “Cut it out, do you want *mother *to hear?”
She barely listens, muttering something I can’t catch. “–or me and my lawyer friends will fuck you into the ground!” she shouts.
I start slapping her arm and finally she sits down. I pull out a cigar and put it to my lips and light it and blow a ring through another. “He looks like father,” I say. Beatrix keeps her eyes on the bum, who’s holding his head in his hands midway over the wall, looking down and away. Beatrix puts her shoes back on.
“Barret… Holloway… Rolfe,” Beatrix says. “He *does *look like father.”
“I’ve known him for eight hours,” I say. I’m looking at a big painted billboard on one of the rowhouses along the harbor. There’s a model’s face down the side. Sunglasses perch on his perfect brow, a splendid white grin splitting his face like the rock in the monkey’s hands. See The New You, the sign says. My blood’s still buzzing from the cocaine, and I’m about ready to hatch into something new and something better.