The Zuboff Party: Amends

May 9, 2020

I’m five drinks in and regretting my decision to spurn Morgan, because I’ve seen Hanna Maria nowhere, been shut out of four conversations, and been ignored by Tiffany twice when I’ve caught her eye from across the room. To be fair, the last one is something that I myself told her to do.

But that doesn’t make me feel any better.

I make my way up the steps towards the top floor, thinking that, if nothing else, I should at least check out the telescope tonight.

It takes a few minutes of wandering, but I eventually come across the heavy glass door leading up to the observation dome. A heavyset guard stands in front of it.

“Sorry sir, door’s closed for the night,” the guard says, even before I have the chance to open my mouth.

“You’re kidding me. Not even a peek?” I say, staring at the final flight of sleek white stairs that lays behind those glass doors.

The guard shakes his head.

“There’s a room with a big skylight just down the hall that way, if you’re interested,” he says, pointing out the direction. “The view is supposed to be good.”

“Thanks,” I say, and following his outstretched arm, I make my way towards the room.

The room turns out to be a large lounge space, some kind of trippy hip hop beat playing from a set of speakers set up by the side. There’s a bunch of dudes and girls sprawled over the plush couches, looking zoned out, staring at the night sky through the large skylight. The lot look more than stoned.

I begin turning away when somebody calls out: “Yo, bro, you want some of the good stuff?”

It’s a familiar voice.

I turn back around to see Sean Corolla, both legs propped up on a chair, thumbing the lid on a small tin, his eyes faintly glazed over, but nonetheless pointed in my direction.

I walk up to him and kneel down so that I can look him in the face. He’s got a slow, serene smile stretched across his face, and his irises look the size of needles.

He shakes the tin at me.

“New designer ****. They’re calling it Spacey, because, you know…” His head rolls back as he looks back at the thousands of stars twinkling in the sky. “It’s far out, dude…”

“You don’t even know who I am, do you?” I say.

“Course I know. You’re Claude… Claude… Claude Ashworth,” he says, the smile on his face growing inexplicably wider. “Shit man, you’re the reason why Morgan broke up with me.”

“About that… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen, you were just—”

“Yeah we were at each others throats back then, weren’t we?”

He laughs, as if it’s a terribly funny joke. A girl dressed in the next couch over, dressed in little more than a lacy black bra and panties, starts to giggle too, and then it spreads across the room. I’m surrounded by snorts and chuckles and guffaws of the people around me, like a series of funhouse mirrors distorting Sean’s original laugh.

“But it’s all chill man. I came at you first, you didn’t deserve it, you didn’t mean to hurt me,” he says. He opens up the tin and shakes out a small pill. “You want one?”

He puts it into my hand before I have a chance to respond.

“It feels good, takes the edge off, you know, just relax and spend the night. I hear Tiffany ditched you?”

“She came without me,” I say neutrally.

“I feel that man,” he nods, pounding his chest. “Really feel that, you know? We—you and I—we’re brothers. I got ditched too, man. Feels like its fate that you walked in here, you feel?”

Fuck it. Hanna Maria’s not here tonight. I’ve got nothing to do here. I get onto the couch adjoining his and swallow the pill.

“There we go,” Sean says languidly. “Takes a bit for it to hit, but you can’t miss it when it does, it’s like nothing else…”

“Great view tonight,” you say, looking up at the stars. “That’s Venus, up west.”

“Shit, you know your stars? And um… your planets?”

“A couple of ‘em. Not as well as stars you’re friends with,” I say, laughing at my own quip. It sets off a fresh wave of giggles from the girl in the black lace. “And see those two bright ones?”

“Yeah, I see ‘em,” Sean says, squinting at the sky.

“Castor and Pollux. They’re the twins.”

“Well then, fuck ‘em good. I’m done with twins for the rest of my life,” Sean laughs. “Good in bed, terrible anywhere outside of one.”

“That good in bed?” I say lazily, beginning to feel a warm fog nestle into the edges of my brain.

“You wouldn’t believe it. Like a dream. You think you’re seeing double, but fuck… that’s not double the pleasure, it’s… it’s like… twenty times more… a thousand times… a gazillion times more…”

“I think I’d like to give that a try someday,” I say, leaning back more into the couch.

“You’d like it. Man, anybody would like it,” he says.

We smile, lost in our respective highs, and stare at the night sky for god knows how many minutes.

“Hey,” I eventually say, breaking the silence. “Thanks for being cool about last week. The Ball, I mean.”

“Fuck man, no need to bring that up again. Fuck. I probably owe you one, for fucking with you, and then another, for getting me out of that ball and chain,” he smiles. “Chilling here, looking at the stars, flying high with the stars… this is so much better, isn’t it?”

“So much better,” I say.

“And just so you know,” he says, rolling over on his couch slightly so he can face me. “This isn’t just the **** talking. I don’t know why, but you’re a cool guy. We should hang out sometime, do something…”

“Yeah, doing something sounds good,” I say.

That sounds good. Really good. Like, Ella Sue’s fudge cakes good. Or, like, fucking the Merrygold twins good…

I realize with a start that my jaw is open.

Did I just say that aloud?

A tall feminine figure looms above me, blocking my view of the stars.

“Yes, you just did,” Hanna Maria says, her voice ice cold.