Someone cranked up the stereo, and Felix took out the trash. The hired help; he’d become the hired help. Even from outside, the house pulsed with teenage anarchy. And was every light on in the entire house? Did youngsters have any idea of the cost of electricity? He went back inside and barricaded himself in his bedroom.
The lunatics had taken over the asylum, and it was only 8:00 p.m. Two hours until he served the cake; three hours until the girls left; four hours until the implementation of the noise curfew. And then he would be alone with six boys. Would he sleep? Would they? Suppose they wandered off somewhere in the middle of the night, decided to go walkabout through Duke Forest at 2:00 a.m.? The evening stretched to infinity. He was not going to make it to noon the next day; he absolutely could not do this.
He called Ella’s mobile, but she didn’t pick up and the phone went to voice mail. Unsure what to say—other than help—he hung up. He could watch a movie, but suppose he got distracted and forgot to check on the kids? As the parent in charge of nine teenagers—nine—he had huge responsibilities. There would be no shirking of duty. He set the timer on his phone for thirty minutes. He would do a walk-through every half hour until the three girls left. Make sure there was no sex, no drinking, no smoking. Nothing that could be classified as monkey business.
By 9:00 p.m., Felix was contemplating breathing into a brown paper bag. His heart raced in one direction and his mind in another, galloping through a reel of nightmares that looped from one imagined catastrophe to the next: an uncoordinated teen tripping over his own feet and breaking a piece of furniture; a fight erupting, which seemed highly plausible given the boy-girl ratio; one of the kids—Max, no doubt—needing to be rushed to the ER for a stomach pump.
Someone yelled hysterically; feet pounded past his door. Kids were running inside his house. And Harry’s voice drowned out all the others. Why was his son not the quiet wallflower? Why couldn’t Harry blend in and disappear? Why couldn’t all the kids disappear?
Wait—earplugs! Ella often complained that he snored—he didn’t—but she kept earplugs in her bedside table. Earplugs were the solution!
As Felix rummaged around in the drawer, his fingers landed on a small wooden box. Too small to be a jewelry box; too small to be functional. Curious, Felix opened it, and there lay a half-smoked joint and a lighter. So Katherine was still sneaking pot into his house.
Despite the large number of illicit cannabis plants grown in his old dorm room, Felix didn’t know much about dope. But yes, he’d seen The Big Lebowski. He picked up the joint. Right now, his world was too bright, too clear, too damn loud; he just needed to soften the edges. Mute everything to a manageable level.
Sitting on the carpet with his back against the bed and his legs stretched out, Felix stared at the innocent-looking joint. A few puffs wouldn’t be that illegal, and no one would know. He just needed help coming down from the ledge so he could function for another—Felix glanced at his watch—two and a half hours.
In the hall, Harry screamed. There was energy, there was high energy, and then there was Harry. A whole subcategory of energy.
Felix put the joint in his mouth, lit the end, and inhaled. And nearly coughed up a lung.
He repeated. Nearly coughed up the other lung. The third hit wasn’t as bad. And the fourth was nice, quite nice.
Weird—he’d never noticed before how red the bedroom walls were. Of course he knew they were red—he’d painted them! But wow, the color really popped. He made the Winston Churchill V-for-victory sign with his fingers.