CONTENTS (TRANSIENT IMMOBILE NON-PERISHABLE): the latest decorations and pictures and ornaments and models of phone and TV and polyformer and holographic record reproducer and cosmoramic projector and even books—though the latter were hanging in the balance as potentially non-fashionable.
CONTENTS (TRANSIENT IMMOBILE PERISHABLE): an assortment of seven dozen different kinds of foodstuffs guaranteed by the catering company to be accurately twentieth-century in substance and appearance but not necessarily in flavour—certain essential compounds in such items as free-ranged chicken and slow-smoked bacon being no longer reproducible under modern manufacturing conditions—plus bottles and cases and barrels and boxes and jars and cans and packs of liquor and incense and wine and marijuana and beer and even tobacco to give the guests a decadent life-in-my-hands thrill that would also be properly in period.
CONTENTS (TRANSIENT MOBILE BUT IN A SENSE EQUALLY PERISHABLE): a hundred fifty people including the hostess and her guests and many human staff from the catering company which had a good reputation among the new poor of the happening world for concealing payments to waiters and cleaners by inflating their charges for purchase of goodies and thus enabling them to escape the moonlighting tax supposed to wipe out the profit a fully-supported recipient of welfare might derive from odd jobs like these.
EXCUSE AND REASON: making the guests pay forfeits which if she chose she could make so hideously embarrassing the victims would never want to see her again.
COST: about three thousand dollars.
VALUE RECEIVED: that would have to wait until the end of the party to be assessed.
* * *
Click and cram the elevators cycling, splash and crash the guzzling well begun.
* * *
AUDIO: the most bearable re-made recordings from the latter part of last century, not the most recent (stuff from the nineties was intolerably vieux-jeu). No, it had to be from the seventies, endowed now with a certain quaint charm, and on top of that it had to be the kind of music which led most directly to what was currently acceptable in the real world outside—chants sans paroles in the rather bland monotonous rhythms of five against four and seven against eight. The quality of the recordings was lousy and the divisible-by-two rhythms seemed banal and boring after subtleties like five against eleven. But each of the records allegedly had sold a million.
If someone comes in wearing Arpège Twenty-first Scentury or anything else like that what shall I make her—or him—do?
COSMORAMIC: mostly the fashionable colours of the nineties because they were currently bearable—apple-green, sour lemon-yellow, and the inevitable pale blues—but changeochrome was newer than the century and there wasn’t a moiré setting on the projector which would have been marginally allowable, so it was all stark flat colours and rather drab.
Come to think of it, that stuff of Mel Ladbroke’s is new, so what if someone drecky claims forfeit off him for bringing it? The hole; it’s my party and I say what’s allowed.
GUSTATORY: likely to be the biggest success of the party, no whistlers or moonjuice or any other this-very-instant drinks, but that weird cocktail chart dug up from about 1928 and programmed specially into the consoles—things called “Old-Fashioned” and “Bosom-Caresser” ought to appeal if only for their amusing silly names. Also the food exotic. Out of period, but absolutely unavoidable, generous supplies of antalc, disgorgeant and counter-agents to the most popular lifters, Yaginol, Skulbustium and Triptine. Not permitted at the party, all too new, all post-turn-of-century, but people would certainly turn up orbiting on one or two or maybe all of them.
Snff…? That’s Dior Catafalque, I swear it is! Whereinole did she dredge it up? It’s been off the market for twenty years! Make a point of asking her what it is; recognising it would date me …
SARTORIAL: the most incredible, the most phenomenal mish-mash assembled under one roof this generation except maybe in the General Assembly of the UN.
That girl’s wearing Nipicaps. I can tell—who better? Bit early to start imposing forfeits but that will be a lovely lovely start. Something mild—after all, they’re one of my own products—but something forceful enough to make people realize I mean business. One moment: girl? That’s no shiggy! Well, that forfeit defines itself, doesn’t it? Yum!
* * *
1969: the hostess in an outfit of PVC which was about as near as they were coming in those days to the stark sleek mechanical styles of the current trend, regrettably needing to be underpinned with the badly engineered and somewhat uncomfortable brassière and girdle appropriate to it—a discovery she had made too late, not having obtained and tried on the costume until it was too close to the start of the party to change her mind. But at least the slick surface was a kind of foreshadowing of 2010; she hated the idea of fur or velvet or one of those other crudely textured fabrics women used to stuff themselves into.
“My dear, haven’t seen you in lightyears! That’s a most marvellous rig you’re sailing under—did it belong to your grandmother?”
19??: Norman House in a full set of jet-black evening dress with a genuine stiff shirt and white bow-tie and even shoes of that revolting stuff called “patent leather”—a hundred per cent genuine to judge from the cracks in them. Guinevere gave him a venomous smile for not allowing her an instant opening for attack and wished that he didn’t look so inarguably magnificent in the sombre garb.
“You mean this is really tobacco? Cigarettes of that stuff that was supposed to cause so much cancer? My dear, I must try some—my parents didn’t smoke it ever and I hardly believe I saw the stuff before!”
1924: Sasha Peterson in a softly draped tea-gown of semi-translucent chiffon hanging almost to her ankles but slashed behind to the waist, invoking an old-fashioned air called “elegance”. Guinevere thought of what the mode-masters were saying about a swing back to a more natural look in shiggies and wished she had never dreamed up this sheeting party.
“Well, if I can’t have a whistler whatinole can I have? Oh, give me some bourbon on the rocks, then—I take it that’s allowed? I mean, if they had cold drinks at the court of Emperor Nero they had them in the last century?”
1975: a very young shiggy with a beautiful bosom wearing a niltop over a minisarong. Can’t legislate for that—any girl who’s recently discovered that her body attracts men will go the available limit to display it to them.
“Are we not even supposed to talk about the real scene? I mean, I don’t know whatinole people did talk about at parties in the last century—I wasn’t old enough to go to them.
1999 and only scraping under the limit by a chronological accident: Donald Hogan in a curiously antique-seeming brown and green totalsuit with a spiral zipper going from right ankle twice around to the left shoulder, face flushed and apparently worried about something but ascribing it for official purposes to the fact that if Norman hadn’t remembered to book him whatever was available from the rental agency he’d have had to turn up in the only universally acceptable costume—his skin.
“I shouldn’t hope for too much, darling. All tobacco ever did to me was make me throw up. I don’t know whatinole people used it for. No, darling, you can’t take it in like the smoke from a joint, you have to sort of puff it in straight and then accustom yourself to inhaling it without dilution.”
1982 or thereabouts: a positive travesty in the literal sense, in one of these ghastly outfits with five or six layers of mesh in contrasting colours hanging from the hips and shoulders, and shoes of enormous size sticking out below.
“One of the reasons I come to Gwinnie’s parties is she doesn’t feel obligated to ask all these sheeting brown-noses you keep treading on everywhere else, but there are too many of them here for my liking tonight!”
* * *
Right. Find out who they are and why.
* * *
“Of course the whole thing is sheeting crazy. That was the wildest roller-coaster of a century the human race has ever lived through, if you can call it living—h
ey, notice that good in-period catchphrase I used?”
Any time: Elihu Masters in a regal suit of Beninian robes, a loose red-and-white top over baggy pants and open sandals his round balding head framed in a kind of crown of upright feathers varnished into brown rigidity around a velvet skullcap.
“Yes, but what kind of a twentieth-century party? One of those stiff soirées you read about in old magazines dating back to 1901, or something right up close to our own day like a Sexual Freedom League meeting? I don’t know whatinole I’m supposed to be doing and Gwinnie has that forfeit light in her eye. Maybe it’s safest to tag along after her and be in the support group when she picks on someone.”
1960: Chad Mulligan perspiring in a hound’s-tooth check tweed suit which was all the costume rental agency had left in his size when he shrugged and let Guinevere persuade him to attend.
“Yes, of course I’m nervous. I hate to miss these parties of Gwinnie’s because normally I make out fine and she’s never picked on me yet, but this time I’m violating the conditions so flagrantly—I mean, this isn’t a last-century costume, it’s all I could dig out from my father’s wardrobe and it says right on the label ‘Summer collection 2000’ but there wasn’t anything older.”
1899: an incredible multi-caped garment vainly hauled in around a large waist and a skirt dangling to the ground and a silly bonnet on top of it all and the excuse prepared that there was no reason in those days why a dress shouldn’t have been worn for two years or even longer.
“When Gwinnie gets really nasty I’m going to blast off. I know another party which ought to be humming by then.”
Any time: Gennice, Donald’s one-time shiggy, in a minor stroke of genius, an undatable Japanese happi-coat and traditional slippers to match.
“Must have been funny living in those days. I know someone who rebuilds and runs cars for a hobby, for instance, but for all he can do to the—what’s it called? Exhaust?—they stink worse than a barrel of whaledreck. Makes my eyes water just to go near one when he’s got it running!”
1978: Horace, a friend of Norman’s, in a ventilated parka with contrasting hood over jodhpurs, a perfect memorial to the way men’s fashions were going over the edge into pure schizophrenia in that hysterical epoch.
* * *
SITUATION: a lot of people drifting about and looking each other over covertly or sometimes overtly, knotting gradually into groups of former acquaintances separated by strands of people who never met before and who haven’t yet softened their self-consciousness to the point of blending in. In short, as was probably the case in Pharaonic Egypt where they first established the tradition of giving parties, a party that hasn’t jelled.
* * *
“That’s a very curious perfume you’re wearing, darling.”
Nervous laugh. “Of course, you’re an expert on that, aren’t you? Do you like it? It’s a bit musty, isn’t it? It’s something called Dior Catafalque that my mother gave me when she heard I was coming to your party.”
“Catafalque? Really? Isn’t that the thing they lay out corpses on when they’re lying in state?”
“Yes—I think that’s the idea. It’s supposed to be sort of musty and decaying.” Shudder. “Actually it’s pretty horrible, but it is in period, isn’t it?”
“Goodness, I wouldn’t know for certain. I’ll take your word for it, though.”
* * *
SITUATION: same.
* * *
“Don! Don!”
“Oh—hullo, Gennice. Nice to see you again.”
“Don, this is Walter that I’m living with now—Don Hogan that I was with before, Walter. Don, you don’t look as if you’re enjoying yourself at all.”
It shows that much? But they said keep on with your ordinary life until you leave, so … Wish I had the guts to back down. I’m frightened!
“I need a lift, I think. Don’t suppose Guinevere would approve, though.”
“There’s plenty of pot. And someone did say that that codder there—I think the name’s Ladbroke—was from Bellevue. He may have something.”
* * *
SITUATION: same.
* * *
“You’re Chad Mulligan? Prophet’s beard, I thought you were dead!”
“Might as well be. Intend to be. Just think I might as well take a lazy man’s way out. Get me another drink.”
“Elihu, here’s a man you ought to meet! I saw one of his books in your room when I called the other night!”
* * *
SITUATION: same.
* * *
“I say, someone told me you were from Bellevue and … Oh. Excuse me. I just saw somebody I know.”
“Yes, that’s right. My name’s Schritt—Mister—Helmut Schritt.” A quick glance around and an insincere smile. “Routine precaution. There’s a vanishing chance that someone might try to foul up your—uh—business along the lines I recall being mentioned last time we met. Act as normally as you can and avoid any entanglements that would prevent you leaving a bit earlier than the mass, okay?”
“Act normally!”
“That’s what I said. Like keep your voice down when you talk about the—uh—subject of importance, hm?” Another of the insincere smiles.
* * *
SITUATION: same.
* * *
“Darling, that’s a wild rig you’re sailing under!”
“Gwinnie, I’m so glad you like it!”
“But aren’t those Nipicaps a trifle out of period…?”
* * *
Sudden tension. A personal silence for all the screaming of the records in the background. A shifting of several of Guinevere’s closest sparewheels to encircle the victim and savour the inaugural forfeit of the evening.
“I—uh—I…”
“Well, I mean, I should know, darling, since I have them made specially for the Beautique and sell them by the literally thousands! And they only made their splash two years ago.”
“Forfeit!” someone said decisively, and there were grins.
“Ye-es, I think so. And it sort of writes itself, doesn’t it? Take it off, darling, from there”—shoulder—“to there”—waist.
Sickly embarrassed but complying: result, the strange hermaphrodite. Scalp to neck, elaborate coiffure, immaculately painted face with eyebrows arched and lashes lengthened and lips clear red and earrings jangling; waist to floor, skirt and hose and jewelled 1988-style boots; between them, that incongruous bare male chest with good solid muscle and hair in concentric curves swirling out from the nipples.
“I think that’ll do nicely,” Guinevere said with satisfaction, and those around chortled and clapped her and each other on the back and those as yet out of range of her decisions relaxed and began to chatter loudly again.
* * *
SITUATION: same but with an admixture of high nervous laughter.
* * *
“Darling, of course I’m only really well grounded in feminine fashions, but I do seem to detect something a teeny bit incongruous in that outfit you’re wearing…?”
“Well”—swallow hard—“ah … as a matter of fact—”
“Darling, don’t prevaricate. You know how much I detest prevarication.”
“Forfeit! Forfeit!”
“Well, Gwinnie dear, it’s as old as I could lay hands on, honestly it is.”
“No doubt, darling, but you’ve been to lots of my parties and I’m sure you’ve had as much fun out of seeing other people pay forfeits as they’re going to get out of you. Now let’s see. What would be appropriate? Bearing in mind that it’s early yet, so because of that and because we like you a whole great slobbering lot we’ll want to keep it a mild one, won’t we?”
* * *
SITUATION: less laughter, more tension.
* * *
“Sadistic bitch, isn’t she?”
“You should see her when she gets on to an Afram, Mr. Mulligan.”
“If you call me ‘Mr. Mulligan’ one more time I’ll throw this liquor al
l over your smart period-piece.” Gulp. “Cancel that—I’ll break the glass on your ought-to-be-nappy skull. Anyway, she’s wrong.”
“What?”
“She’s wrong. But that’s irrelevant, I guess. If that’s the way her guests like her to run her parties I’ll just sit quietly here and give thanks to any deity who may exist that I ran into intelligent company. Elihu, I’d like to know something more about this place Beninia. There are some highly anomalous factors in what you’ve been telling me—”
“Excuse me, Chad, please. How did you mean, ‘she’s wrong’?”
“Norman, you do have eyes, hm? And you’re blessed with a reliable memory, hm? The hole, then! What were you wearing in the summer of 2000? Something like that, I’ll wager.”
“The summer of—? Prophet’s beard, of course! I’m an idiot.”
“You belong to an idiotic species. I even wrote a book to draw attention to the fact. I was idiotic myself to think it would do any good.”
He turned back to Elihu and waved his empty glass without looking away to his right, hoping that a passing waiter would take it in exchange for a full one.
Norman shouldered his way through the people crowding close around Guinevere and her intended victim. He heard suggestions: “Take it off and put it back to front! Take off everything that’s newer than the century! Make it look a bit older—like by tearing a few holes in it at the right places!”
“Just a second, Gwinnie,” he said boredly, triumphantly.
“What do you want to do, Norman—arbitrate?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. That looks like a year 2000 garment to me. How about it, friend?”
“Why, it says right here on the label that it is, but—”
“Twentieth century, then.”
“What? Norman, you’re spouting dreck. Go away. Now I think what we ought to do is—”
“The twenty-first century didn’t begin until a minute past midnight January first 2001.”