The first house party I had dipped into had been a bust. No clues, no oranges even. But I had to suck it up and muscle ahead. I had a few other parties to go to that night, to look for clues toward the Tenny Bros.
I made my way to the front of the house I had just ducked out of, the smell of gas still heavy in my nose. The university was still all glow and bustle to my right, and I had to make my way left, further down Mills.
When I came to the address, the house front was strangely quiet. To be sure, there were plenty of “private parties” that went down on Mills, but from what Schlep’s Directory had told me, this place should have been jumping.
I stepped onto the porch and listened a bit through the door, like I was Antonie Buddenbrook. There was music playing, but it sounded weirdly quiet. And it didn’t sound like any party anthem I knew. I had my suspicions, but I kept them wrapped tight in my coat as I walked through the door.
If there had been any bumping and grinding in my absence, it ceased immediately as I stepped in. There were eight people, mostly young men with scrupulous faces (which is to say, marked by scruples) and very short, neat hair. Their clothing was extravagant, like a mockery of party wear. They stood, statuesque, in the living room, which seemed like a theater set, with its burgundy and spinach-green sofas.
After a few beats, one of the statue men unfroze and greeted me. “What, is up? My… hellacious, brother?”
That was it. Something was very off. As he spoke to me, my eyes glanced around the room and to the kitchen. Like a clutch of emeralds dispersed at the bottom of a sea cave, cans of Rolling Rock glinted before me, in people’s hands, in a neat circle on the kitchen table. I ignored the statue man and made my way to the kitchen.
“Ah, Rolling Rock!” I cried in my most American sounding voice. “Extra Pale! Thank you stranger.” I took a can from the circle, which was open and felt about a third full, and held it to my nose. It didn’t smell a thing like beer; it smelled like vintage cognac.
I held the can high in the doorway and surveyed the group of statues, who seemed increasingly nervous. “This isn’t a house party,” I told them. “This is an existentialist literature reading group! Isn’t it?!”
It was at that point I felt something hard hit me in the back of the head. As I fell into a Raymond Chandler stupor, I heard a voice quoting Jean-Paul Sartre distantly, like he was at the end of a tunnel: “Nothingness lies coiled at the heart of being like a worm!”
I woke up what must have been five minutes later, on the lawn outside. As I eased up and looked at the house I had been ejected from, I saw that the door and windows had been perfectly barricaded with furniture and bric-and-brac. It was admirable work, would make a sans-culotte proud. I rapped it once before walking away.
As I stalked off, though, I heard a window scratch open and one of the statue men hailed me from the second floor, quoting Sartre once more. “Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal! Hell is other people!” he cried, before slamming the window and propping a lamp in front of it.
I checked the time on my phone—it wasn’t even ten—which emboldened me to trudge away back toward campus. I was gonna have another visit with Professor Rice. I was mad, real mad and I was gonna take it out on him, for being so imperious about this whole thing. He knew who the Tenny Bros. were, and damn it all if I wasn’t gonna figure it out.
I made it to Memorial Library without much trouble and found my way to the 4M floor. The automatic lights had long shut off and besides Rice, I was probably the only one there. I made my way to his shelf and pressed the button.
Something horrible happened. I saw, as Rice’s makeshift apartment rolled closer to me, that there was a great disorder to his shelves. Books knocked down, canned biscuits lying on the floor. And a terrible, terrible swishing sound. As Rice’s hammock rolled into view, I saw him slumped in it, stiff and alabaster, the hammock swollen and hanging. A blood balloon. His meerschaum pipe of John Barth smoking, the “Infinite Regress” laid split down the middle. He clutched a piece of paper in his hand.
And I thought I heard laughter in the stacks, when the shelves stopped moving.
