So I got invited to one of those house parties where the parents go away for a few days and tell the kids not to do anything stupid but they’re stupid anyway.
Why I went, I’m not sure. I guess because both Dave and Onion said they were busy, so at least it was something to do on a Saturday night. Still, I was a little wary of the company and what I might be getting myself into.
It took me half an hour to ride my bike there. Had I known it was going to take that long, I probably wouldn’t have bothered going.
The house was old but nice, way out in the original part of town. It was one of those tall Victorian things with a big front porch, a fancy paint job, and intricate woodwork. Had it been decrepit instead, from the outside it would have looked like a typical haunted house.
Two things hit me right away when I went in. First, the furniture and decorating looked straight out of the 1920s, which I thought was just excellent. It was like going back in time without a time machine—just like The Post, only older yet—and could easily have served as the time traveler’s house had there been a lot more clocks in the parlor. Second, the smell of beer was overpowering, as if the place had been soaked in it, which was exactly what was happening.
Not surprisingly, nobody looked old enough to drink. One of those parties.
Since I don’t drink, I immediately felt like I didn’t belong. If the house hadn’t been way out in the boonies, I would have worried about the police raiding the place and beaten a hasty retreat.
“No. No, thank you,” I must have said a dozen times as people kept trying to hand me a beer.
“Oh, come on, man,” one glassy-eyed partygoer implored. “Just one little beer. Join the crowd.” He motioned back to the unsteady horde behind him, their slurred voices louder than they had to be in the packed room.
It occurred to me then that Dave and Onion probably knew what kind of party this was going to be, which was why both of them claimed to be too busy. If that was true, I wished they had warned me. I didn’t intend to stay long, but since I had gone through all that trouble to get here, I figured I would check the place out first since it was a pretty cool house.
Other than Jason—the guy who invited me—and his younger brother Josh, I didn’t know a soul there. There were a few vaguely familiar faces from The Big Brown Box, but I didn’t know their names.
Josh was the bartender, although I use that term lightly. His whole job consisted of opening the refrigerator, pulling out a beer bottle, popping the cap off and handing it to whoever asked for it. Keeper of the Cold Ones was probably a better title.
Josh was kind of a blond emo kid, minus the heavy makeup. If I had to guess, I’d say he was no older than fourteen, fifteen, tops, dressed in tan baggy cut-offs and a too-long, matching tan T-shirt. He didn’t seem to particularly enjoy his job since he also wore a frozen scowl.
Some bartender.
I just kind of wandered the house, poking my nose everywhere it didn’t belong since there was nobody to stop me. Besides, in their inebriated state, nobody seemed to care.
As I passed by a washroom on the first floor I caught an overpowering whiff of puke. There was yet another reason not to drink—why heaving your guts out is considered a fun time I have no idea.
I made my way up the narrow stairs near the kitchen and found what had to be a guest bedroom. I thought so because while the room was tidy, when I opened the door it had a dusty, abandoned smell to it, as if the perfectly made bed hadn’t been slept in for ages. There was an overstuffed wing chair in the corner, which looked comfortable despite its gaudy Victorian stripes, so I sat down. Even that smelled like it needed cleaning, or at least a vigorous vacuuming. I liked the room because it seemed frozen in time, like an Egyptian tomb or something, even if not that old.
Besides, it was the one place in the house that didn’t reek of beer. At least, not yet.
Just a couple of minutes later, Josh stepped into the room and glanced at me, a Mountain Dew in his hand. I figured he was taking a break from his bartending duties—that, or they finally ran out of cold ones. He wordlessly went to a window and looked out, taking a sip from the can. I wondered what was really in it since Josh now seemed a bit unsteady himself.
Then I was struck by how much he resembled the robed Eloi from The Movie and wondered why I hadn’t realized it immediately.
More out of boredom than anything else, I decided to go into movie mode, and picked the scene where the time traveler questions the Eloi at their dinner table. Besides, I figured, saying something to someone was a whole lot better than saying nothing to anyone after all the effort it took to even get to the party.
“Perhaps you . . . do you have books?” I asked.
Jason turned and looked at me. “Books?” He blinked. “Yes, we have books.” He took another sip from the can, his expression otherwise blank.
I sat up straight in the chair, surprised at his movie-perfect response.
“Oh, wonderful!” I gestured widely, just like George the time traveler does in The Movie as I continued the reenactment. “I can learn all I want about you from books! Books will tell me what I want to know. Well, well, could I see the books?”
He shrugged and silently led me into another bedroom, possibly his, where a lone bookcase sat by the closet door. Only two of its five shelves had books, and even those shelves were less than half full. The books were dusty, as were the shelves.
Secretly, I couldn’t have been more pleased.
I pretended to pull back a curtain that fell apart before selecting a decades-old copy of The Guinness Book of World Records, opening it with the same eager anticipation the time traveler does when he examines one of the Eloi’s books. Then I changed my expression to one of dismay as if the book were decayed and unreadable, just like in The Movie.
I looked up at Josh the emo-Eloi with practiced disdain. “Yes, they do tell me all about you.”
And with that, I let the book drop as if it had disintegrated and swept a hand across an empty shelf, pretending to destroy a dozen brittle, useless volumes, their words of wisdom lost forever. A cloud of dust sprang into the air, as if on cue.
“What have you done? Thousands of years of building and rebuilding, creating and re-creating so you can let it crumble to dust!”
I slapped the empty shelf for emphasis just like the time traveler.
“A million years of sensitive men dying for their dreams. For what?” I flicked my fingers in his face and imagined—real or not—that more book dust sprung from my fingertips. “So you can swim and dance and play!”
Like the unnamed Eloi in The Movie, he barely reacted except for a puzzled look.
I pretended to hastily dust off my arms and then hurried back downstairs.
“You!” I said, pointing randomly around the crowd. “All of you! I’m going back to my own time!”
No one paused their conversation or even glanced in my direction.
I continued the time traveler’s soliloquy. “I won’t even bother to tell of the useless struggle and the hopeless future! But at least I can die among men! Aaah!”
And with that, I strode out the front door in proper disgust.
The next thing that should have happened, of course, was that Weena would have opened the door to watch me leave in search of my time machine. But no one appeared, and the loud party chatter continued unabated.
I hopped on my bike and headed home, imagining that each push of the pedals was propelling me back through time, back to my world and home.