David was playing “Sweet Painted Lady” on the piano. He had one sweet painted lady sitting on the bench beside him, and another leaning on the lid of the piano. He was also dressed as one, but more – because David Valentine required all the attention forever.

This was his Titania, Queen of the Fae getup, which required actual paint. Green paint. And a white wig. Hyacinth had scolded him, as she usually did, that this was kind of offensive.

“Titania is an Invisible,” David had replied, with logic. “Naturally she would look like a coloured person. It is flattering. It is an homáge.”

“David, the goddamn dress has a battery,” said Hyacinth. And about an acre of filmy black fabric and lace, and glitter. And fifteen paper butterflies that constantly fluttered around it. They even did that when it was on the hanger in the closet.

“There is no law that says flattery needs to be understated.”

There was also no law against painting yourself green and pissing off an entire race of people, and even if there had been, David probably would have flouted it. He did have a couple of coloured… Well, not friends. David didn’t really have friends, except maybe Barnaby and Hyacinth, and not even always them. But he did have a couple coloured people who showed up at his parties on a semiregular basis, and they didn’t seem to have a problem with Titania, Queen of the Fae. Or, if they did, they had realized it would be pointless to mention it.

The ladies were quite fond of Titania. Ladies loved David in dresses. They thought he was precious. And sexy. (The men also did not seem to mind David in dresses, but they were not quite as vocal and shrill about it as the ladies — with the exception of certain very special men.)

The ladies didn’t seem to mind Hyacinth in trousers either. She was wearing a selection from David’s “I can still fit into these!” collection, which fit her much better than him.

Her appearance had been negotiated days previously. David allowed that he did not mind her wearing a blouse and trousers if she picked out a nice vest to go with them, something silky and feminine, and if she let him style her hair. Hyacinth agreed to a silk vest, but not a particularly feminine one (“This vest, David.” It was gold with broad raised stripes.) and a possible hairstyle that he would need to draw on a piece of paper and submit for approval.

He had done ten before she got one she liked all right, a plait with some gold streaks in it and a black velvet rose. David had insisted upon the gold streaks, to go with the vest. They were real gold, as was her faux eyeshadow (mergers were less vexing than makeup). She had also consented to some rouge and lipstick, but none of his goddamned body glitter — which he had continued to offer her up until an hour before the party.

David had condescended to her about being sixteen and in search of her own identity and patted her on the head.

“I have my own identity, Titania,” she replied. “Do drop me a telegram when you find yours.”

“I expect I may find it at Hennessy’s!” he said joyfully. (Hennessy’s was a department store. No. Hennessy’s was the department store, like Cygnet was the restaurant.)

Hennessy’s had provided most of the food (Cygnet did not cater, obviously) and the décor. Black and gold were a theme — gold for alimony, black for mourning, but sarcastically.

There were also a great deal of chains, paper ones with broken links and actual metal ones which David had personally mangled and snapped. (Hyacinth had refused to be involved in the decorating process. She thought the whole idea was stupid, and maybe in bad taste.) There were broken rings and broken circular things like rings and a few pairs of handcuffs which David had also appropriately mutilated — with one half open and the other half smashed and melted. Everyone got a broken gold ring for a party favour.

Other available amusements included funny paper hats and small explosive devices that sprayed glitter and streamers. No, not party crackers. Party horrible-thing-David-inventeds. They were loud and they set themselves on fire with coloured magic after you deployed them — and sometimes, occasionally, you as well.

For the more adventurous, there was a crystal bowl of random pills set out next to an identical bowl of coloured candies that David sincerely hoped people would get mixed up. (“Shall we flavour the tranquilizers, Hyacinth? Is it possible to flavour the tranquilizers? What do you think about strawberry?”)

The title of this soirée was, with characteristic subtlety, “Die, Veronica, Die.”

David excused himself from the piano, saying he needed to re-up his medication. He invited the sweet painted lady beside him to have a go at it if she so desired. He had gone three paces away when he heard her start up “Chopsticks” behind him, while giggling.

He turned, smiling, gently closed the lid over the keys, and rescinded the offer. “Perhaps you might kill yourself instead. I believe all of the sharp objects are in the kitchen.” He was still smiling. The lady had abruptly ceased.

Oh, it was early. He’d find another one. Nobody wanted to go to bed with a twit who liked “Chopsticks,” anyway.

He found Hyacinth chatting up a young deb who was maybe a couple years older than her and appeared interested. “Hyacinth, where the hell is Gray?” he demanded. (Hyacinth could also find another one, if necessary.)

Hyacinth narrowed her eyes and frowned, but she was insufficiently perturbed to start anything. It was too early for screaming. Inevitably, there would be screaming, but it was early for it. “Gone back to his room,” she said with a shrug. “Something about the ice in his drink.”

“Damn it, this is his party!”

“David…”

“Titania,” he said primly. He folded his arms across his padded chest.

“David…”

“Titania.”

She rolled her eyes. “Titania,” it was too early for screaming, “this is your party. All parties are your parties. He didn’t want one.”

“He’s been moping around the house for months. It’s like she cut off his dick. For gods’ sakes, it’s not even like she took all his money. He won’t even go to the movies. He won’t even get drunk. What the hell else am I supposed to do?”

Hyacinth flung an exasperated gesture. “I dunno. Talk to him?”

“Talk? To Gray?” Now he rolled his eyes. “Barnaby Graham does not talk to people, Alice. He punches people. He breaks things. He screams. He doesn’t talk.”

“Well, he hasn’t been doing any of that other stuff either,” Hyacinth said. Truthfully, she had never known him to punch people. She had seen him pick up David and shake him a couple times, but she would’ve done that to David, if she could’ve. Of course, David had known Barnaby a lot longer.

She leaned in and peered at David’s weird eye with the blown pupil. He had told her about it, of course. He had told her a million different things about it, but he was reasonably consistent about having been punched in the face. By someone. For some reason.

Did Barnaby punch you in the face?

She laughed at him.

David issued a low growl with a sour frown and grabbed her by the arm. “Come on. We’ll go and get him out of there. You talk if you want to.”

David did the honours on Barnaby’s door. Barnaby had pointlessly locked his door. Locked doors only worked on Barnaby, and the help — and the help never stayed for very long, let’s face it. Hyacinth would take a locked door under advisement, because she had no desire to see naked old men, and either knock or give some other warning before entry. To David, a locked door was an invitation. To David, a man with a loaded gun screaming, “Leave me alone or I’ll blow your fucking head off!” was an invitation.

However, with the doorknob broken and sizzling on the carpet, he took a step backwards and made an entre vous gesture at Hyacinth. “Go on. Heal his wounded soul with kind words and romantic gestures. Teach me, Alice.”

“Bite me, David,” Hyacinth said, entering.

“Titania!” David cried.

She shut the door in his face. It bounced and reopened a few inches, being broken and all, but David remained on the other side of it. It was more entertaining to listen to Hyacinth trying to be sensitive than to shout at her.

“Okay, wow,” said Hyacinth, softly.

Barnaby had a lot of papers. She knew that. He had moved in with papers. There was a lot of information in dead animals and dice rolls and broken objects, not all of it on the subject at hand, and he liked to take notes in case something might be important later. He filed these. He had some kind of esoteric system that was alphabetical and concept-related. Moon, Mirrors and Misconceptions occupied neighbouring files in an M box, for instance.

That was weird, but it was in boxes in the closet. He would go in there with a slip of paper or come out with a slip of paper and then go back with the slip of paper, and sometimes he had some papers on his desk, but this was behaviour you could also expect from an accountant or an actuary or something.

The boxes had escaped the closet and the papers had escaped the boxes. The boxes were scattered on the floor and the desk and the bed, and one on the desk chair. They were opened and rifled. Some of the papers were also heaped and scattered, but a considerable amount of them had been affixed to the wall. Like, a six-foot by six-foot amalgamation of overlapping papers. Some plain, some lined, some curled and yellow, some long ones that had been pulled off kitchen list pads.

In true crazy-person fashion, he had managed to get hold of some string, looked like packing twine, which had been used to connect some of the papers. He had also put simple charms on some of them to make them glow. There was a sketch of a highball glass with ice cubes in it and a lot of notes around it that was blinking a subtle green.

The actual glass was thawing on a coaster on the desk.

“Uh, Barnaby, do you need pills? Because we have access to pills…”

She supposed it was also possible he’d had way too many pills.

“Hyacinth, hand me the string,” he said.

The string was on the desk next to the glass amid scattered tacks. She pocketed it. It was handy to have pockets. “Yeah. No. How about you tell me what you’re doing, first?”

He took a few steps back from the wall and folded his arms across his chest. “I’m trying to get it organized,” he muttered.

“Get what organized?”

He turned on her and snarled, “My goddamned life!”

He looked kind of horrible. He was still in his party clothes — dark pants, a vest, a shirt with black buttons and cufflinks, even the coat –— but his complexion was blotched and red, his eyes were bloodshot and his hair was twisted into little curls behind his ears, like he’d been running his fingers through it. There was an ink-stain on his cheek that looked like a bruise.

“It seems like it’s not going very well,” Hyacinth offered him after a pause.

Barnaby sighed and sat down on the bed. He put his elbows in his lap and his head in his hands.

Hyacinth lifted a box so that she could also sit on the bed.

“Don’t move things!” Barnaby cried. “I have everything how I want it and you imbeciles have to come in and move things! I don’t need you to move things! I like everything how it is!”

“…Okay, I’ll put it back.”

“It can’t be put back!”

“I’ve kinda got an idea we’re not talking about the box, Barnaby.”

“You have no ideas! You’re vapid and devoid of purpose!”

“You sound like David. Are you gonna need the phonograph in here?”

“Shut up.”

“Yeah. No.” She sat down on the bed. He did not punch her, or even look up. She put an arm around him.

“Don’t hug me.”

“I am not hugging you. My gods, you must be starved for physical affection. It’s a good thing she left!”

He leapt from the bed and accused her with a pointed finger. “But why did she leave me, eh? There’s the point of it!” He gestured to the wall. “Fifteen years, Alice!”

He approached the wall and peered very closely at it, to the point where he probably couldn’t even see what he was looking at. He stroked the papers like an affectionate man with an evil white cat.

“I am certain it was something very small,” he muttered. “I would have seen it otherwise. Perhaps that vacuum cleaner I got her for our tenth anniversary was of the wrong composition. Tenth anniversary is tin.” The instruction booklet for it was stuck to the wall.

“You bought that woman a vacuum cleaner?”

“It was a blue one. I let Arthur pick it out,” he said. “I shouldn’t have let Arthur pick it out.” He added another note in pen: Arthur has terrible taste in vacuum cleaners.

“I dunno, Barnaby. Don’t ladies like jewellery?” She didn’t, but she was around other ladies a lot and they seemed to like it.

“Veronica bought her own jewellery.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” said Hyacinth.

Barnaby took a step backwards and frowned, considering this. “Pisces?” he wondered aloud. He had Veronica’s star chart charmed up over there. He examined it. What planet influences jewellery?

He had to have that down somewhere. He returned to the boxes.

“Barnaby…” Hyacinth touched him on the shoulder and pulled him back. “She left you because she didn’t love you anymore.”

It was like throwing a custard pie at a brick wall. “But why didn’t she love me anymore? Can you answer me that!”

“Well…” Hyacinth shrugged and angled her head away. “You didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to her.”

Not that she blamed him for that. If she had been married to Veronica, she would’ve bricked the woman up in a dark room like an anchorite and occasionally passed in plates of flat food. Pancakes and flounder. Of course, she wouldn’t have married that oversensitive painted harpy in the first place.

“I had obligations,” Barnaby said softly. “I had a job.” And now, steadily increasing in volume, “I had you! I had that two-faced rat in the striped trousers with the brain problem!”

“Present!” David cried merrily from behind the door. This was great. Hyacinth had a direct line from her brain to her mouth, and Gray had a serious connectivity problem between his senses and his consciousness — including the sixth one. He wondered if Hyacinth might get Gray to punch her. They could be twinsies!

“It seems like you chose us a lot of the time,” Hyacinth said, but she had the good grace to look pained about it.

“Of course I chose you!” he snapped. “You’re a child! David would’ve eaten you! Or fed you cough drops until you choked on them or something.”

“You would’ve left me in an arcade and let the Roll-A-Dance raise me,” Hyacinth said.

“That was only when we were drinking! You are not allowed in pubs!”

“I gotta say, Barnaby. You guys are drinking about seventy-five percent of the time. And hungover the other twenty-five.”

“So are you!”

“Yeah, but you’re my parents.”

“Your parents!”

David shrieked laughter behind the door. “Oh, gods-oh, gods-oh, gods! Our Alice has two daddies!”

Barnaby looked pale and disturbed. He swayed on his feet. “You have parents, Hyacinth! They live in South Hestia and they send David a stipend to look after you!”

“I’ve got some people who send David a cheque every month. Which must be very nice for him, but it doesn’t do a whole hell of a lot for me.”

“I am not married to David!” Barnaby cried desperately. “I am married to… I…” He stared at the wall. He had a lot up there about being married to Veronica, but “I am married to Veronica” was no longer a factual statement. In the dustbin beside his marriage were the statements, “I have my own house!” and “I have my own life!”

He shrieked and pegged the highball glass with the ice cubes at the papers on the wall. It shattered satisfyingly, spraying glass shards and watered-down whisky, and some of the papers slid down. The manual for the vacuum cleaner, being a bit heavier than the rest, slumped all the way to the floor.

The glass shards and the stained papers and the vacuum cleaner manual said, with no extra sensory perception required: Barnaby Graham, this is your life.

“I’m going to throw up,” said Barnaby.

“You want the wastebasket?” Hyacinth said.

“No.”

“We’ve got some of that new lemon-lime soda with the lithium in it. David likes it.”

“I do not want the new lemon-lime soda with the lithium in it! I want you to go away and leave me the hell alone before I kill both of us!”

“Barnaby…”

He glanced up at her and snarled, “I can strangle you with my bare hands and then eat all the pieces of my whisky glass!” He held up his hands, which were gnarled and shaking but reasonably capable of strangling skinny teenagers.

“Well, shit, don’t do that,” Hyacinth managed. She stumbled out of the room. She shrugged at David.

David grinned at her and clasped his hands. “Oh, please-oh, please-oh, please talk to Gray some more, Hyacinth. It’s better than opera.”

“I think he’s not ready to come out yet,” she said. “I said we shouldn’t throw him a party. He said he didn’t want one.”

“That is all entirely irrelevant,” said Titania, Queen of the Fae. David drew up the filmy skirt of his dress in one hand and strode past Hyacinth into the bedroom. The butterflies wheeled around his head. He was wearing high-heeled shoes with gold glitter on them. He nudged the door securely shut with one of them, so that it did not rebound and open.

(Not that Hyacinth couldn’t have opened it, she probably could’ve just blown a breath on it, But she was content to stand on the other side and listen. She was of two minds about this. On the one hand, she wanted David to make an idiot of himself. On the other hand, she wanted Barnaby out of the room. She never in her wildest dreams assumed she was going to get both.)

David spoke softly and cajolingly. Barnaby did not. So Hyacinth only heard Barnaby. He said, “No.” He said, “Get off.” He said, “I hate you.” He said, “Get your goddamned hand off of me you perverted bastard!” after which David was frogmarched through the bedroom door and ejected into the hallway with a helpful kick.

Barnaby slammed his door and sat down on the other side of it, holding it closed with his back.

David staggered, recovered, pressed gently against the door, and spoke with a smile, “You’ll never know you like it if you don’t try it, Gray. You don’t seem to be having much luck with ladies lately.”

“David, I’ve never had sex with you and I know I wouldn’t like it,” Hyacinth said. “I think you’d like to do it on a full-length mirror and you’d keep telling me to get out of the way.”

“The child speaks sense!” cried Barnaby, breathlessly. He was either laughing or sobbing.

“You know you can’t keep me out of there, Gray,” David plowed onward, but sweetly. He was still smiling. “Not doors or windows. I’m magical. I’m a fairy!”

From the other side of the door, “Oh, gods!”

“The only thing you can do is distract me, because I have a brain problem. There is absolutely nothing distracting up in this nasty old hallway. You have my complete and undivided attention. All the drugs and the liquor and the pretty people are downstairs. I shall have to have at least two or three pretty people fawning over me and telling me how adorable I am before I lose any interest in you — and you shall have to have some also! — because you are one of my favourite human beings. I like you better than Brandy Alexanders and oral sex!”

Hyacinth snatched at his arm and spoke in a concerned whisper, “No, David! Not oral sex!” with the same familiar inflection as, No, David! Not the scissors!

“I am prone to fits of hyperbole when addressing my loved ones,” David replied. “I may say I prefer you, Alice, to a grand piano.”

“But not playing it,” she said, frowning. She laid a hand across his brow as if checking for fever. Some paint came off on it.

He brushed her away. “Oh, no, no, no. Of course not playing it. I’m not mental, Hyacinth.”

“Yes you are!” cried Barnaby.

“Mental enough to eel my way back into your room and into your trousers, you ravishing creature!” David said.

Hyacinth clutched both hands around her middle and brayed laughter. “Oh, gods! Barnaby! Ravishing! I can’t cope!” She couldn’t help picturing him in heels and an evening gown. A red one.

“I could kill both of you, you know!” Barnaby said, raggedly.

“But then what would you do with all the happy idiots downstairs?” said David.

“…burn down the house, I suppose?”

David squealed and clapped his hands. “Do let’s burn it down together, Gray! I have a couple of automatons that might do it!”

“Those are called bombs, David,” Hyacinth said.

“Titania!”

“Titania, those are called…”

“…and they are not called bombs. They are works of art. They perform one beautiful function and destroy themselves doing it. They are like my own heart!”

“Last week you set the roof on fire with your own heart.”

“I am a passionate man, Hyacinth!”

“The police have a two-hundred page file on how passionate you are…”

“Oh, for gods’ sakes, stop talking!” Barnaby shrieked, ripping open the door. He stormed past them. “I’m going downstairs and be with normal people! And take pills!”

“And that,” said Titania, Queen of the Fae, brushing gently at her butterflies, “is how you talk to Barnaby Graham.”

They let Barnaby be around normal people for a little while. Well, relatively normal ones. High, drunk ones wearing funny hats and employing explosive party favours, but not painted green and trying to wheedle him into gay sex. David eschewed the piano and Hyacinth engaged only peripherally with the ladies, and they monitored him for a time.

He almost immediately got himself slapped offering a woman one-hundred sinqs to follow him around for the remainder of the evening.

“I am not trying to pay you for sex, you daft strumpet! I am trying to pay you to get away from sex!”

“He’s a bit rusty,” David noted to Hyacinth in passing.

“He’s a bit desperate,” Hyacinth answered back.

David made drinks and decorated them strangely (he dropped an entire salt shaker into a margarita) and kept giving them to pretty people to give to Barnaby. (“The angry man with the ink stains and the wedding-ring-shaped tan line over there.”) By sheer volume, some of these got through — the drinks at least.

Hyacinth still had the ball of twine in her pocket and she employed it. She found two women who looked as little like Veronica as possible (fat, smiling women with huge pillowy chests) and connected them with it. (She told them it was for a prank. Fat, smiling women had excellent senses of humour.) She walked them over to Barnaby (He was attempting to cope with a Tequila Sunrise with a bottle of lithiated soda in it — an unopened bottle) and presented them.

“Look, Barnaby! These lovely ladies have a mysterious esoteric significance!” She held up the other end of the twine. “And also this tray of cocktail sausages!” She stuck him with the tray and the end of the twine and the two ladies (he almost dropped the drink) and wandered off. “Puzzle it out, won’t you?” she advised him as she left.

Barnaby was finally delivered an iced whisky with an ice-cube-shaped lump of gold in it that had a different fortune on each side, six total, with Veronica Admunson is a human vacuum cleaner (she sucks!) facing upright. Others suggested that Veronica was an alligator handbag filled with dung, that Veronica was five-hundred cockroaches in an elaborate disguise, and that Veronica could choke on her alimony payments. David Valentine is a fabulous human being! and Hyacinth likes girls! rounded out the set.

Hyacinth likes girls! pushed him right over the edge. It was just so obvious and petty and stupid, and that made everything else seem obvious and petty and stupid too. And he’d had a lot of drinks by then and four or five either pills or hard candies (or a couple each) and a bottle of lithiated soda, and those two fat ladies wouldn’t leave him alone and they really had excellent senses of humor. He collapsed, cackling, in a wingbacked chair, and covered his eyes with a hand. “No way out. Oh, gods, no way out. Padded cell with drinks service.”

He sipped his drink.

Really excellent drinks service.

Hyacinth likes girls! the ice cube advised.

He lifted the glass and toasted the room. “To hell with every last one of you! I hate you all!”

This was received with laughter and cheers.

“Gray liked my ice cube,” David asserted smugly. He had just negotiated a lady’s bracelet into a vodka gimlet, but it seemed a Cinderella gambit would not be necessary.

“He liked my fat ladies too,” said Hyacinth, frowning. She knew she’d been beaten.

“You should’ve put rude fortunes on them,” David said.

Hyacinth grumbled and rocked back and forth. That was a good idea, and she thought they might’ve been amenable to it. Maybe somewhere under their dresses, just in ink.

She smiled at David and narrowed her eyes. “I bet I can pick up more girls than you.”

“I bet I can pick up more genders than you,” David replied.

“We have vastly different goals,” Hyacinth disdained.

“Cheers, Alice,” David said. He drank the vodka gimlet with the bracelet in it. He removed the bracelet when it interfered with the drinking. He guessed he might give it back to the lady he’d borrowed it from but he didn’t remember who she was or care.

Obligations tended and sarcasm dispensed, they felt free to go on about their business. Hyacinth found a couple of young unattached ladies and began to explain her social theory that fooling around with other girls was of no threat to one’s virginity and more of a fun experiment. David reassumed the piano and took requests, but only from people who called him, “Titania.” Barnaby wandered around his gilded asylum, sipping a drink, giggling helplessly and occasionally sobbing. He put his gold ice cube in his vest pocket for later contemplation.

“Titania, give us ‘Head Over Heels’!” a laughing woman called out.

David played a flourish and stood up with his hands still on the keys. “Johanna, you naughty girl! Who on earth told you about that?”

“I saw you do it at Tish and Bobo Coleman’s wedding!”

“That was over ten years ago!” He grinned at her. “Dear Johanna, I had no idea you were so old!”

Johanna gave one more squawk of laughter and abruptly ceased. The small group of friends around her continued with new vigor.

“Where’s Gray gone?” David said, clasping hands. “I can’t have ‘Head Over Heels’ without Gray. He hasn’t gone back in his room, has he? Gray! Are you among the living? Do we need a planchette? Gray!”

“What the hell do you want?” Barnaby demanded. He was over at the table with the pills and the hors d’oeuvres and talking to one of the fat ladies. “Haven’t your goddamned antics attracted enough pretty idiots? Have you tried chloroform?”

“Myself?” said David, touching his chest. “Not recently, but the night is young. Guess what?” He clapped his hands eagerly. “Dear old Johanna wants us to do ‘Head Over Heels’!”

“No!” said Barnaby.

“Gray, Johanna is an ancient friend of mine. Why, she practically raised me! I believe she helped the nurses deliver me. Wouldn’t you feel just terrible if she should die without seeing us do ‘Head Over Heels’ ever again? What would you say to her grandchildren?”

Johanna was silently snarling and had turned a deep shade of purple at this point.

“Get someone else to do it!” Barnaby said.

“Gray, you are my one true counterweight. I shan’t have anybody else. I would not trust them. ‘Head Over Heels’ is death-defying!”

“Play it the right way up, then, you stupid bastard!”

David laughed and held up his hands, “I’ve no idea how!”

Hyacinth was grinning and doing a subtle dance in place, like maybe she needed to pee. Whatever this was, she’d never seen it before, and it involved Barnaby. Barnaby never did things. Well, he drank and went along and occasionally said “No!” but not entertaining things. He didn’t perform. She had an idea there was a desire for attention in there somewhere, or else David wouldn’t have liked him very much. Maybe he was going to make a fool of himself!

She had entirely forgotten the aspiring sociology students beside her and they were both looking at David as well.

Barnaby elbowed his way through the crowd (he did not need to do this, but he seemed to feel like elbowing people) and stood behind the piano bench. He offered David a hand up, as if escorting a lady into a cab. David accepted the hand and stood on the piano bench, in filmy skirt and glittering gold high-heels, facing Barnaby. They were in a fine position to perform some kind of obscenity.

David pulled down his white upswept wig and adjusted it slightly. “I believe we will be depending entirely on the integrity of the bobby pins.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever done this as Titania,” Barnaby said.

“I haven’t done it in ten damn years,” David muttered. “That stupid idiot Johanna. I hate her. Did you invite her? I suppose I invited everyone. I must’ve been drunk.” He turned his head towards his audience and smiled. “Only for you, Johanna, my darling. Light of my life!” He waved a magnanimous hand at her. “‘Head Over Heels!’”

Barnaby wrapped both his arms around David’s skirt and legs. David bent over backwards like a gymnast and attempted to reach both hands to the keyboard, upside-down. He emitted an audible click, and said, “Oh!” Much quieter, he added, “Damn that bitch.”

Barnaby snickered at him.

Somehow he got his hands on the keys. His hair stayed on but he had felt it shift dangerously. He really couldn’t get his head back any farther, anyway. He supposed he knew where the keys were. He shut one eye and tried to do a little reconnaissance so he wouldn’t flub any of the notes.

“Die in a fire,” he muttered, “Johanna, my dove…”

He began to plink out a delicate melody. This was an older one. ABBA. He really couldn’t play it the right way up, maybe not even the right way period. He’d learned it this way — you know, for parties — at the expense of many bruises before he realized he needed someone to hold him down. Gray had presented himself. Well, he had been in the room and he had been willing to go along, which was his usual function. David considered a weak will and a curious nature to be excellent qualities in a friend.

“Good evening, ladies and gents,” he sang, trying very hard to keep the discomfort out of his voice, “I bid you welcome to this joyous event! This is my personal style. Most people love it, others tend to go wild…”

Oh, gods, if Gray made him do the whole thing alone it was going to be really obvious how much it hurt.

If Gray wouldn’t back him up, he was going to have to switch back to the real words and hope his audience was geriatric and drunk enough to admit they knew it. The damn thing wasn’t even that popular — he picked it so he could pretend he wrote it — there was a real chance they’d never heard it before. Hyacinth and her goddamn debs certainly had no idea what he was doing.

Barnaby let him dangle out there like a sailor walking the plank before joining in for the chorus, “And for the sake of this occasion we’ll keep playing head over heels! What can we say? We’ll perform cartwheels for your special day! A delight, just to be here tonight…”

David’s expression betrayed obvious relief, which was fine because no one could see it. His paint was running slightly. Damn it, it wasn’t supposed to do that.

He was just going to double the chorus and quit — he hadn’t done it in ten years, that bitch Johanna couldn’t possibly remember how long it was — but Gray opened his mouth and bellowed, “Second verse!” before he could even get his mouth open.

David looked down, or up, with a wince, saw nothing except ceiling and hissed, “I hate you,” in a low voice.

“Dear friends, it’s you we admire!” Barnaby overrode him, so David had to keep playing and join in, “If you’re applauding, we will never get tired. We’ll go all night if we must. If we’re not careful, though, our corsets will bust! It seems the least we can do, only for you. If you know the words, sing! And for the sake of this occasion we’ll keep playing head over heels…”

A few voices joined them on the repeat of the chorus — with some scattered applause that helped cover the sound of pained gasping. There was a third repeat of the chorus, which picked up even more voices, and then, technically, the song was supposed to be over.

David kept playing. His spine had gone numb (more or less) and he wished to express his gratitude for Barnaby’s assistance. (He was also not entirely certain he could straighten up again. He might have to spend the rest of the night like this, or beg someone to bring him some muscle relaxants from the pill dish.)

“I have this very good friend,” David sang, solo, “his loveless marriage has just come to an end. He has such terrible taste, I tried to warn him, it was all such a waste. She took his money and home, now he’s alone, but at least he’s single. And that is why on this occasion he keeps playing head over heels…”

Barnaby waited for that exact moment to drop him on the piano and walk away.

David struck the keyboard with a cacophonous bang and bounced. His heels clattered on the hard bench and failed to find purchase. He fell through the gap between bench and piano and landed precisely on his tailbone.

Barnaby didn’t even look back at him. He found a cocktail sausage and ate it contemplatively.

Titania, Queen of the Fae, was curled up on the floor under the piano and giggling like a maniac. Her hair was painfully askew, not to mention most of the bones in her spine. “Ow! Oh, gods! I hit the sustain pedals!”

Hyacinth approached Barnaby with a wide grin and shook his hand with both of hers. “Incredible!” she told him. “Better than opera! Better than ice-skating monkeys!”

“Similar,” Barnaby demurred.

Titania, Queen of the Fae, began drumming her heels on the floor and demanding liquor and medication. (And attention.)

Hyacinth presented her with one of those new lemon-lime sodas with the lithium and a gold letter opener. “Think you can summon up one of your black moods, Titania?”

David snatched up the letter opener and did his level best. It was past eleven o’clock in the evening and no longer too early for screaming — apparently.

Hyacinth folded her arms across her chest and then put one hand over her face. “Oh, gods, David, I was being sarcastic.”

“Titania!” shrieked David. “Why can’t either of you remember it’s Titania? You’re supposed to be my friends! You’re not supposed to drop me on pianos in front of a room full of people and abandon me! I was only trying to have a bit of fun! Why don’t you ever let me have any fun? Why do you hate me? I took you both in when you were destitute! You should love me! My favourite people in the whole world hate me! I want to die!”

Hyacinth sighed. She shot Barnaby a knowing glance. “You know, he was fine with it until I dished you out your attention first.”

“Thank you for that, Alice,” Barnaby said.

Hyacinth was uncertain as to whether that was meant as sarcasm, and it was difficult to figure it out with David going on like that. The guests were of no help. The guests were just watching and grinning — which was what David wanted, of course.

Hyacinth allowed it to continue until he started calling everyone horrible, at which point she figured he had run out of new material and entertainment value as well. “Barnaby, what have we got?” she asked wearily. “Butter knife? Cheese slicer? Something of that nature?” The scissors and the serious sharp things were locked in the kitchen.

Smiling sweetly, Barnaby handed her a cocktail fork.

She gestured at him with it, “This sort of behaviour is exactly why he goes out of his way to annoy you.” She sighed, and then she pointed the fork at her left eyeball and began screaming.

She matched David. He escalated. She escalated more. It went on for longer than usual. It was hard to get attention away from a man with a blinking electric dress and fifteen paper butterflies and a wig, particularly when he tore the wig off and sent bobby pins flying everywhere. She couldn’t do that. All she could do was rip up her plaited hair in the most dramatic fashion possible and clutch both of her hands in it. She had to get creative.

At about fifteen minutes in, having thrown over a table and destroyed a painting (an ugly painting, she thought) she finally succeeded in breaking him up. He doubled over laughing and probably blushing furiously, but you couldn’t tell because of the paint.

“Oh, gods, all right, all right,” he said. “She’s better at it than I am.”

This resulted in applause, led by Barnaby.

“Come down off the mantelpiece, dear child,” David said, offering a hand.

Hyacinth crouched and accepted it, then paused and regarded the contents of the mantelpiece. There was a pink figurine of a ballerina that she particularly loathed. She kicked it off so that it shattered, then she hopped down.

“Why, you horrible little girl,” said David. “That was a present.”

“It’s hideous,” she said.

David grinned at her. “Yes! Veronica gave it to me!”

Hyacinth regarded the pieces of ballerina, which she felt had been much-improved. “I am not in the least bit surprised.”

Oh, gods, somebody kill me, Barnaby thought, smiling with pained eyes. I’m never going to get away from here otherwise. I like it too much. It’s like needle drugs. It’s warped my brain.

David was approaching him with a smile and a piece of ballerina.

Barnaby regarded him hopefully. David. You’d like to kill me, wouldn’t you? You’ve certainly been trying long enough. That looks sharp. Perhaps you could cut my throat with it.

David tucked the chipped porcelain — a small pink shoe — into Barnaby’s vest pocket with the gold ice cube. “A memento, Gray. For gods’ sakes, keep it close to your heart and never marry another woman with an on-off switch who is making a loud sucking noise.” He paused. “Although I am not necessarily saying you shouldn’t go to bed with her. And then introduce her to me and Alice.”

“Please put me out of my misery,” Barnaby said faintly. “I’m begging you.”

“Oh, Gray,” said David. “I do try.”

David hugged him. David did not kill him. David had not even killed the party. David’s parties were made of titanium. Properly motivated, one of David’s parties could probably take over a small country, and then blow it up.

Barnaby attempted to make an early night of it, without conjugal accompaniment. This meant backing up the stairs at three o’clock in the morning while holding the gold letter opener in front of him and shrieking “No!” until he made his bedroom and barricaded himself inside.

…Not at the fat ladies. The fat ladies were dear and very understanding and he thought he might visit Patricia again when his brain felt a little less like twisted wire. No. At Titania, Queen of the Fae, and her entourage of determined attractive people, several of whom had been promised his second-hand virginity.

Once he got away from them, he sat down on his bed, he regarded his wall full of crazy, and he laughed and cried for a good half an hour.

He fell asleep among the boxes in full dress, without even removing his shoes, with the broken pink slipper and the gold ice cube poking him in the chest.

Titania, Queen of the Fae, descended the staircase, defeated but not discouraged, and waved a delicate, silken hand at her adoring masses. “I believe that may be the last we shall see of our Gray this evening, party people. A moment of silence, please.”

Naturally, she got one. A few heads even bowed.

“Now,” said David with an eager grin, “who here has an idea where we can get some chloroform?”

◈◈◈

There was a light rap on the frame of her closed (and locked!) door.

“All the young girls love Alice…” David sang spookily on the other side.

Hyacinth sat up amid a tangle of limbs and bedclothes and flopped back down with her hands over her face. She was not going to dignify that with a response.

In the absence of a reaction, he just kept singing. Louder.

Oh, my gods. Is he actually going to do the whole thing?

He was apparently either going to do the whole thing or keep going until she stopped him. She managed to control herself until he got to the part about Alice being a yo-yo, and coincidentally her age (he sounded so damn smug about it!) at which point her mouth decided it had had just about enough.

“There is only one yo-yo in this household!” she shrieked, scaring the hell out of her bedmates. “It calls itself ‘David Valentine’ and it is pushing fifty!”

The doorknob was heated to immediate failure — he didn’t even rattle it first! It snapped into two pieces and hit the floor. The piece on the inside started a minor fire on the bedroom carpet. David burst into the room with a furious expression. He was wearing his yellow silk kimono with the embroidered butterflies. He was covered in cold cream. Not just his face, all of him. He was apparently trying to repair his youthful appearance after the green paint.

“You take that back, you horrible ungrateful little girl!” he cried. “I am thirty-five if I’m a day!”

Hyacinth cackled and clutched both hands in her hair. “Oh, my gods, David! You look like a lemon meringue pie!”

“You look like a brain-damaged lesbian,” David replied sourly. He was too hungover for metaphors. (That chloroform was such a bad idea — if that was chloroform.)

“But a successful one,” Hyacinth said, grinning. She had three in her bed. She was pretty sure David had gone off with two.

David snarled at her, not even words, and staggered off, leaving the door open.

“Would any of you pretty ladies like some eggs?” Hyacinth asked them. She could not remember what any of them were called. There was possibly a Janine, or a Justine. Or maybe a Velma.

None of the pretty ladies wanted any eggs. They wanted out of the crazyhouse with the screaming and the lemon-meringue-pie man. Hyacinth made some eggs for herself, and a modified Bloody Mary for David (he liked them with iron filings and a raw egg). David’s bedmates did not join them for breakfast either. Nor did Barnaby.

They went upstairs and broke open Barnaby’s door at eleven o’clock. (He had tried to wedge it closed with a dresser. Silly Barnaby! They just took the hinges off.) Barnaby was made to have eggs and a Bloody Mary.

They found a guy asleep in the downstairs closet at one. He was wearing a silk nightie and some streamers. There was no sign of his clothing. Nobody knew who he was, not even Barnaby — though he tried breaking a few plates to see if he could get some idea. The man himself was in no condition to provide an identity or an explanation, and he was obviously missing his wallet. They gave him a Bloody Mary also, and an overcoat, and they put him in a taxi and they never saw him again.

That was the party for Barnaby’s divorce. David promptly began plotting another one. Presumably some occasion would provide itself by Frig’s Day.

◈◈◈

Barnaby cast a double handful of dice on the kitchen table. The tin cube, which still had a few flecks of gold paint clinging to it, informed him, Hyacinth likes girls.

She got that one wrong. David had put an exclamation point. It annoyed him, but he was still fond of the sentiment and he considered Hyacinth likes girls to be a positive sign. David being a fabulous human being was, of course, instant doom. Veronica being cockroaches in a clever disguise was more neutral.

He was reasonably sure he had screamed at her when she took the original gold cube away from him. It was possible he had hit her, but he was a little hazy on what he’d been actually doing in the present reality back then, as opposed to a mere possibility or the past or the future. Maybe he’d gotten it mixed up with hitting David.

She made him a new ice cube, and because it was tin, not good metal, she had left it alone.

The pink porcelain slipper landed on its side and reminded him, as always, not to marry another human vacuum cleaner. Well, it looked like he was going to manage that.

Hyacinth was standing at the kitchen window, monitoring the alley for any influx of people with burns or missing fingers. Cloquette Day necessitated a supply of metal — ideally gold for flesh, but steel would do — a jar of petroleum jelly and some bandages, and staying in the house.

They were the only two. Sanaam had taken the kids down to MacArthur park, and the General had seen fit to accompany her husband and daughter. Mordecai had gone along to ensure Erik didn’t handle anything stronger than a sparkler and survived the evening with all fingers intact. Calliope liked bright lights and colours, and she had taken Lucy along to get a taste of her first Cloquette Day, but she intended to make an early night of it. Ann was going to walk her home when she and the baby had had enough.

He gathered up the dice and threw them again. That got her to look over, “What? Didn’t you like the first one?”

“It said to throw them again,” he replied shortly. The distant future, stretching out past ten years like a tendril of creeper, was subtly different for this throw. He made note of it on the kitchen pad. “There is some kind of decision coming up in the future, ten years or more. A metaphorical fork in the road. You get those sometimes, double vision. Even treble or quadruple vision. Possibilities. They tend to straighten themselves out. There seems to be something strange about this one, though. I am researching it in my spare time.”

Hyacinth snorted. “Your spare time? What are you sparing it from?”

“Insanity, I suppose,” he said, resting his head in one hand. He made a few more notes.

Feeling awkward, Hyacinth plunked down at the table and had a look at some of the dice. They were a lot of esoteric shapes, with too few or too many sides, and a riot of colours — most of them painted resin but some metal or ivory or stone. It looked like someone had puked up a whole box of movie theatre candy. She selected a milky-green piece with ten sides and examined it against the light.

“Alice, do you mind putting Milo’s mental health down?” Barnaby said. “It’s rather delicate as it is.”

Hyacinth startled and set the cube back on the table, right where she’d found it. She wasn’t sure about the number, though. Was it a six or a seven?

“Hm,” Barnaby said. He made another note on the kitchen pad.

“Now, wait,” said Hyacinth. “You’re just screwing with me, Barnaby, aren’t you? I didn’t actually…”

“I’m sure if you did, you were meant to,” he replied. He sighed. He was unable to resist picking up the tin cube — Hyacinth had quite spoiled the original arrangement, anyway.

“It’s pointless missing him now, you know,” Hyacinth said, irritated. She was missing him too. “He didn’t really die on Cloquette Day, that’s just what we told the damn paper.”

“What is pointless is trying to apply reality to David in any way. It’s like nailing aspic to a wall.”

Hyacinth muttered uncomfortably and nodded.

“I was supposed to have a single, you know!” Barnaby declared, adopting faintly messianic tones.

“I know, I know,” said Hyacinth.

“It was a single. He was squatting, like a homeless person. They put intent lines on his dorm, all the doors and windows. He got in through the skylight for a little while, but they figured out where it was and they put a line on that too.” He sighed. “At least, that’s what he said. Sometimes. He also kept telling me he was there to get a degree in animal husbandry.”

“What sort of intent did he have?” she asked him. “I mean, was he going to burn the place down? How would they keep him out like that? It doesn’t even make sense.”

“Intent to enter the building and commence acting like David Valentine, I assume,” he said.

“Huh.” Hyacinth sat forward and rested her chin on her hands, elbows on the table. “Maybe that would work.”

“Anyway, to answer your original question,” Barnaby said, brandishing the kitchen pad, “it looks as if Milo and Calliope are going to produce at least one child together, a son, so one can infer that they are going to make up with each other and start having sex. Prospects for marriage are more uncertain. Calliope has no morals and Milo has only the vaguest idea that he is supposed to have some. Their poor children have zero chance at a normal existence — that is not in the dice, that is just common sense.”

“Do you have any of that?” said Hyacinth.

“Perhaps a few threads, like cobwebs in an abandoned building, but I can fake it.” He held up the tin cube so she could read the foremost fortune and smiled at her. “Vy vse yeshche lyubite devushek, Alice?” Do you still like girls?

She blinked at that. They’d quit doing Prokovian at the dinner table to annoy David when the crazy bastard had shown up one night speaking it fluently — with circles under his eyes like he hadn’t slept in a week. She guessed he wasn’t around to be smug about it anymore, but he wasn’t around to be annoyed either.

“Ya nikogo ne lyublyu, Barnaby,” she replied. I don’t like anyone.

“Good girl, Hyacinth,” Barnaby said. “I wish I had a chocolate to give you.”