Excerpted from AUTONOMY

As the road turned, Helen spotted a vehicle stationed ahead with its lights on, apparently hogging the center line. The cops? Officers, please! she would beg them. I’ve got to get home to six-year-old! Could you give me a ride to the train station?

Except this was a regular beach jeep, she realized, and she approached, she could make out shirtless male figure lit up in the driver’s side window. He seemed to be chewing on beach grass. Absurdly gorgeous, like one of the Warhol boys: smooth-skinned and wholesome. Too wholesome.

 He blinked. “You running away from home?”

Which made her see herself as she must look to him, a tear-stained woman sidling out of the dark with an overnight case. 

I’m trying to get home,” she began to explain, then noticing that his eye contact wasn’t right and one of his nostrils was bleeding. “What are you doing in the middle of the road?” she asked.

“Heading to a party.”

“Well.” She glanced back and forth for headlights. “You’re not in any hurry.”

Farm Boy meditatively turned the long grass in his teeth. Then Helen almost jumped. She had assumed they were alone, but squinting through the warped plastic window, she now made out a shadowy silhouette perching behind him. A submerged instinct told her to act calm. Hello, she signaled to the figure on the rear seat, then turned back. “Could you  give me a lift to the train station?”

“You’d be waiting till the 5:55.” spoke up the shadowy figure in back. “We’re on the winter schedule.” His voice sounded warm and cool, its resonant timbre familiar to Helen. So, Celia hadn’t been lying, the train had stopped running.

“Hey!” Helen said, cocking her head as if she weren’t half terrified. “Do I know you?”

With shifting in the dark, the hunky boy got out, followed by his mysterious passenger. Yes, of course, Helen knew Selwyn Cristopher! After years of trying to catch his attention, they were having their first conversation. Did he recognize her? Helen had had the impression he addressed his onstage lines to her, but other people said that he produced the same effect on them. She introduced herself, tingling. “Is there any way back to the city you know of? Any chance you could give me a ride?”

The actor turned. “Randy? We’re still heading to Montauk, right?”

We ought to bring her along!” The friend wore tight, low-cut trousers from which his muscular torso emerged into moonlight. They were on their way to a party with hundreds of guests from Manhattan. “And if you can’t get your ride home from there before morning, one of us could run you to the station.”

This idea made sense. She wouldn’t be stranded all night in the cold, and if she did have to hitchhike back home to the city, at least the sun would be rising.

The skin above his lip was daubed with drying blood and Helen dug in her purse for a Kleenex, while Randy produced a small bottle from his pocket, unscrewing its rubber tip to administer drops, first to Selwyn’s eyes, then his own. Was this an actor thing, cosmetic?

The glass wand hovered. 

“Look up!”

Later, when Helen tried to figure out what responsibility she bore for what happened after, she asked herself why she hadn’t closed her upturned eye. And as she’d blinked the stinging liquid out, and felt it reabsorbed, she’d realized this could turn out to be serious. And it was partly her fault. She had wanted to be tricked, to submit these strangers if just for one moment, and why?

She turned to gape at Selwyn. “Did he just dose me with something?”

“Hey, fucker,” Selwyn turned to Randy. “You ever hear of asking first?”

“Oh god. How stoned am I going to get?”

Randy lips seemed to be calculating. “On one drop? A baby could handle that.”

Selwyn was holding the passenger door, but should she get in? Could he drive straight? Conversely, what if the rumors about freak-outs on acid turned out to be true? Where would be safest place to lose one’s mind? The answer surely wasn’t stranded on a lonely highway late at night.

Randy squeezed into the back with her suitcase, and Helen decided to climb into the front. With hundreds of guests from Manhattan awaiting them now at this party, it shouldn’t be that hard to make new connections and get a ride home.

So far, her perceptions seemed normal, Selwyn starting the car to make a beeline down the highway. The walk had chilled her, and for a moment, she relaxed into the car’s interior, inhaling a drying rubber smell infused with a complex male odor that was somehow reassuring. She stole glances at Selwyn’s fine profile: his sculptural lips and thick lashes, high cheekbones as mesmerizing in close-up as when hollowed by stage light. Pretending to ignore her gaze, he was humming the opening notes of a tune she knew, impassive, his typical mode of performance. It seemed to Helen that they were unnaturally perched, surveying the road from a gun turret. A faint phosphorescence released from each mailbox and pine bough confirmed that the car was in motion.

“Look,” Selwyn challenged, his eyes briefly closed. “Nothing happens. You see? We’re being piloted.”

“Yeah, by Jerry,” Randy said from the back. “We ain’t making this party. He’s gonna drive us off a cliff.”

They were riffing about Jerome Pack, and here she was, privy to it. Would she emerge from the wreck of this weekend with some theater-world gossip to share with the group? Selwyn resumed humming the hauntingly familiar tune, which was beginning to remind her of the old-fashioned Yiddish ditties her father sometimes sang much too loud as he shaved in the bathroom, while getting ready for, she realized now, some kind of tryst. While her mother would eavesdrop a few feet away.

“Shaving twice a day! Why doesn’t he look for a job?”

A stab of nostalgia for her long-dead father brought tears to her throat. But of course, this wasn’t Yiddish, though she knew the song from childhood, its lyrics unfolding in sequence, while Selwyn reached over and petted her hand.

If I invite

a boy one night

to dine on my fine Finnan haddie

They chimed in on the suggestive rhymes, clasping hands, only letting go so Selwyn’s could wander to her left thigh, which he warmed through her fishnets. That hand certainly knew what it was doing, and from under a sly, furry eyelash, she saw the lights of his eye glinting.

“Yes, my heart belongs to Daddy,” they chanted softly, careful not to rouse the slack-jawed passenger in back, whose half-closed eyes Helen had noted in the rear view.

“Now, is that true?” Selwyn lifted his eyebrow. “As in no chance? Or are you currently up for adoption?”

“Well...only to a good home.” His fingers had begun opening her jacket buttons. Paralyzed with unreal excitement, she was aware of her breast filling Selwyn’s cupped palm. Without feeling a thing. She added, “You might have the right references.”

A loud yawn from the back seat. “You lovebirds planning to leave me out of everything?”

“May I introduce you to Randy?” Selwyn said, pulling away. “The Emperor’s new muse?”

“I’ve had a few challenging roles in my time, man,” Randy objected mildly.

“That required getting out of bed?”

“Does this mean nobody’s getting adopted?” Helen was anxious to nudge the mood to its former flirtatiousness. She might have to resort to asking one or the other for a ride in the morning.

“I hear Jerry’s making room in the compound for Randy. So, do I get to crash in the urn on the porch?”

Pettishly Helen asked, “Why go to his party, if you don’t get along with him?”

The cat’s away!” said Randy. “Along with his wife and the kids. The whole Pack pack.”

“Imagine the fallout tomorrow,” jeered Selwyn. “He won’t know how this whole thing got started. I didn’t invite anyone but you. And a couple hundred freaks. I’d love to see the look on his face when he walks in the door. Cause I get the feeling this is going to be a crazier scene than the inside of Jerrys bald head!”

“Oh,” Helen registered. Crazy could be fun, or not. She recalled what she’d heard of the goings-on at the Pack property, nude brawls. The last thing she needed was to wind up in a paddy wagon, her face flash-bulbed all over the local gazette.

“Oh?” Selwyn echoed. Barely slowing down, they followed a turn in the road, a small house hurtling past on their right. “What’s so interesting about that?”

“I didn’t say it was interesting.”

“You sure didn’t state it directly.”

Helen face was hot. Accused, again. Of what?

“So, we’re not interesting?”

Helen told herself to remain silent. She had been in this position many times: any attempt to explain would be used against her.

“You don’t think we’re interesting,” Selwyn scoffed. “You just turn up everywhere—even on a highway at night in the middle of nowhere. Miss whatever-your-name is.”

“I’ve told you my name! Helen Hermann.” She pronounced it as Joe always had, like two first names.

“Mind if we check?” asked Selwyn, gaze reverting to the road. “Randy?”

“Not again,” Randy groaned. “Why do you do this to people?” She felt him shifting her bag, where he fished for her wallet.

“What are you doing?”

Randy had already fumbled out her city employee I.D. “Helen Hermann,” he read out loud, exaggerating the Germanic last syllable. “Okay, Selly? Don’t start making those nutty connections. She’s just a normal...what are you?” He held the wallet closer and then farther away.

“I’m a public-school teacher! Put that back!”

“What subject exactly?” snapped Selwyn.

“Third grade!”

“How do we know they didn’t issue you a fake I.D?”

“Why would a school want to do that?” Helen was frankly afraid. A car approached, speckles of windshield dust swarming over Selwyn’s tormented, still-magnetic profile. She looked back in longing at the fading taillights. If another car showed, she might try to jump out, even without her purse, and flag it down, hopefully straight to Manhattan.

“Hey, can we lay off the paranoid rap for one time?” Randy had restored the wallet to Helen’s bag. “You got to cut Seli some slack, Helen,” he went on. “Because I guess you’ve noticed him and Jerry have a symbiotic relationship, and when one person decides to cut the cord, it can get–-”

At that moment, Selwyn fishtailed, right, then left, while Helen shrieked, and Randy clutched his head.

“Who are you?” Selwyn asked with undisguised abhorrence. “I’ve definitely seen you before.”

“You need to look at a candle, man,” Randy said tensely. “Put on the radio.”

They’d swung to a halt at the side of the road, Helen pleading. “I’m a fan, I’ve been following your career. I’ve been on stage with you!” She corroborated with precise recollections of his performance in various Pack productions.

“Start the car again,” suggested Randy, leaning forward, while she was still covering Play Ground. When they bucked against a grinding undertow of brakes, it was mutually decided that Helen should take the wheel. Now they would have to proceed at a snail’s pace, since she had never been much of a driver, had let her license expire, and didn’t know what to expect from the first rush of a psychedelic.

“Maybe go faster? This stuff comes on quick. You don’t want to see Pegasus kick in the windshield before we get through the front gate.”

If anything, her mental state was sharper, honed by relief that they had emerged from the obscure conflict of the past minutes physically intact. She glanced at Selwyn, remembering the last time she’d seen him onstage in a piece called Whiteout: The Conduct of Citizens During a Multi-State Weather Emergency. On a tape loop, some historical blues singer moaned about his baby’s ringing telephone in eddying, distorted time. At first, she hadn’t recognized Selwyn, mummified in bandages, only his elegant genitals exposed in a decorous slump, never flinching even as audience members—some female, all white—were encouraged to shear off this bondage, the room frilling with predatory excitement, so that Helen hesitated to ply the heavy scissors, until someone beside her plucked them right out of her hand.

“How long does it take?” she asked Randy, now preferring to address him.  On the one hand she felt emotionally wrung out, on the other, her energy was radiating in incandescent spikes.

“You’re not going to get bored waiting or anything.”

As they approached their destination, Selwyn and Randy’s chatter normalized, gossip about the personalities they expected to greet at the party: Judith, Fernando. Alain. She was playing it too cool to ask for last names. The early stages of the evening had gone haywire, but now she was riding a surge of exhilaration, lungs ballooning forever on one silky breath.

As she turned onto a gravel drive and then followed it into the property, she became aware of Randy fumbling behind her. They were approaching a high Tudor house, light spilling from many windows. From the back seat of the car, her own voice squealed to life and abruptly blipped out.

Helen stopped the car and turned. “That’s private!”

What else you have in here, Teacher?” Randy teased, holding the tape recorder aloft, out of reach. His thumb pressed Play.

“…backhanded compliments I’ve ever received, David. But maybe you don’t understand that we are here to be naked, and I don’t mean in bed. And everyone here is observing you too. Well. Have fun on your side of the room!”

Helen’s taped voice, tonic and cool, was subsumed in edgy laughter. For once, she had not been made scapegoat. The whole gang had taken her side.

She’d managed to park near the half-timbered house. A stylish couple emerged from a sports car, dusting themselves before heading up the walk. When the front door opened they heard dance music, Let’s Spend the Night Together. Behind one set of mullioned windows firelight shadowboxed the looming silhouettes.

“Was that you rapping on tape?” Selwyn asked.

Randy pressed fast forward to a male voice.

“—my defense systems get activated when I’m around a girl who’s like a cuter, less hung-up version of my own internalized self-concept, which is why I had some trouble getting it on when we—”

“Hubba-hubba,” Randy said.

“Who wrote this dialogue?” wondered Selwyn.

The tape zipped in reverse and Inez’s feathery sibilants tickled the ambient hush. “—referring to that specific activity—cuddling—but that’s a compliment, coming from me. I’ve always felt sort of hung up in a group situation, but right now I’m warming up, finally, which makes me feel totally—”

“Hey, right on!” joked Randy. “I need that girl’s phone number.”

Helen finally retrieved the recorder and flicked off the Play button.

“Neurotic, uptight,” Selwyn mused. “So afraid of each other, connection. That’s the question you’re developing? What are they afraid of? It’s a starting point, but you’re going to need to shed some blood by thirty minutes in.”

Was Selwyn assuming she had authored her session, all the speaking parts? That she herself was the subject and source of every in-group head-game, each belabored compliment?

“I should get into something like this,” he continued. “What else are you working on? I need to change my scene.. I’m tired of getting my heart ripped out for inspiration by Certain Fuckers Who Don’t Have One.”

Getting her feet on solid ground required teamwork. Selwyn opened her door, while she clung to it, spastic with laughter reversing in one wringing sob to imploding despair. So lonely! All plunging toward infinite emptiness! He finally lifted her out of the car, made her stand upright. Trees and starlight vaulted overhead, and, urging her to “get her act together,” he hustled her over the dark lawn and up the slate steps to the door with its lion’s head.

A crowd of guests greeted them. Selwyn said something she couldn’t make sense of, and she heard patronizing laughter as she hid her face against his chest. In the next room, a baronial chamber, a blaze of warped music and energy flickered in undulant patterns, like flame-stitching. Flames were escaping a fireplace taller than she was. Everywhere, she saw figures in rippling states of combustion, air sagging and billowing, the whole room a gaseous moiré.

“What is this?” she heard herself cry. “Is this happening? ”Someone was telling her to calm down, a glass of iced fluids was placed in her hand, and she dropped it all over her dress, her nerves writhing.

The fire closed in.