Hothouse Read Online Free PDF

working it into his mouth.
    â€œYou guys know each other?” I ask.
    They shake hands while DJ chews.
    People are starting to pair up, I notice, both here at the party and for the longer haul. Philby and Jane have been circling each other for a while and it was fairly assumed that they would go through the events of senior year hand in hand. Same pretty much for Lexa and Burgess. This is all coming together and is all right by pretty much everyone.
    Was I dramatic to think, for a minute, that the events of my life would have somehow derailed these things? That anybody’s life out there was not going to go on as planned?
    â€œSo you are not going out with Melanie?” DJ asks.
    â€œI said I wasn’t,” I say, again.
    â€œWell you wouldn’t be the first guy to say something like that and not mean it.”
    â€œI mean it.” I turn to face him. “This would be a curious point in life for me to start lying to you, now wouldn’t it?”
    His hard smile then loses just that bit of the crystal-cut edging. “Of course it would,” he says, patting me lightly on the cheek.
    â€œYou are unusually handsy tonight, pal,” I say, gently taking his hand and placing it in his own lap.
    â€œI am, aren’t I?” he says. “I should probably have a beer.”
    â€œAre we drinking all their beer, though?” I ask. “Did you bring anything? I didn’t even bring anything.”
    Adrian, passing by, reaches over and gives the cheek another mild slap.
    â€œDon’t you dare,” he says, jolly, deadly serious. “You hear me? You just drop that shit right now. If you two ever have to buy another beer in this town I want to hear about it because somebody’s going to be due an ass whippin’.”
    Without pause, Adrian is on his way again.
    â€œKinda cool, huh?” I say, standing up now next to my oldest and dearest. “I mean, how nice does that feel?” I pat his shoulder.
    I feel his shoulder muscle tight as a baseball in my hand. “Let’s go drain every goddamn drop,” he says fiercely.
    We don’t drain every goddamn drop, but we make a solid effort. It is a nice party, a warm and breezy finish to what has been an unbreezy summer, and a decent approach shot at the better eventful year to come. The music is kept at a mellow level, glasses never break, fights never develop, bedrooms are not violated. Maybe it is the somber element DJ and I brought, maybe it is the newly mature and responsible air about us turning seniors and experiencing real life more than we had intended, but the party is a more dignified affair than last year’s or the year before. Some people, I suppose, might be a bit disappointed by that. I wouldn’t know. If they are, it doesn’t show.
    We are all, in fact, pitching in cleaning up as Adrian prepares to close up shop not too long after midnight, in accordance with the pretty fair and reasonable no-parents arrangement. There is even Simon and Garfunkel music coolly soundtracking the housekeeping as if to have the parental types there in spirit.
    â€œCanned goods and a kettle,” I say at the same time S&G say hello to darkness their old friend. I am washing up a sampling of the perfectly beach-house collection of mismatched drinking glasses in the old tub of a beige enamel sink. I shift on my feet, feeling the puckery sheet linoleum on the floor where the old man was found somewhere right here near me. Where the old man was found by my old man, right here near me. I imagine it clearly now, the scene. Not the grisly, not the befoulment, the decomposition and the dogs and that. I picture the remnants of the life that my dad came into when he came into this place. I see him seeing the canned goods and kettle, and wishing more than anything he had gotten there in time to sit down to a cup of tea with the gent. For every “stench of death” detail he ever brought home from this gig,