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him?”
    “Sure, he was too far gone to care.”
    Whalen spoke again. “All right, so you had a few drinks with old Scott. Tell us something that we haven’t all done.”
    Will looked at Whalen. Thinking: I’ve never had a drink with Scott. There was something about Scott that scared him. He might not be homosexual, but he was pretty damned eccentric.
    Whenever Will spoke to Scott he thought: We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
    “But that’s just it, Whalen, my man. He passed out. Flat out in his living room, muttering garbage about William Blake and poetic realism and throwing the cup at the altar.”
    “Oh, no. Not that shit!” Tim said, laughing. He dug out another cigarette. Tim was loving this. This kind of event — people completely out of it — was Tim’s element.
    Except — except .   .   . Will didn’t remember Tim ever being out of control.
    “What shit?” Kiff said.
    “Scott has this thing,” Tim said. “The Church’s teaching on yanking the crank —”
    “Beating the meat,” Whalen added, grinning.
    Kiff looked lost.
    “You see, Scott says that the Church is out to lunch, because it compares the onanistic act of spilling one’s seed with dumping a chalice of consecrated blood onto the ground. Drives him nuts.”
    “I never heard him say that,” Narrio said.
    Tim shook his head. “Last year, Mikey. You were out of class that day. It must have been National Pizza Day.”
    Everyone, including Narrio, laughed.
    “Yeah, well,” Kiff said, trying to regain the floor. “He was out, gone. So I decided to nose around a bit.”
    “You what?” Will said.
    Kiff turned to him and Will smelled Kiff’s foul breath. The guy needed a refresher course on human hygiene. Coke, fries, the occasional Devil Dog. But was there any toothbrush action in the guy’s routine? Will doubted it.
    “I looked around his house. Why not? It’s filled with books, papers, all sorts of neat stuff. A really great wine cellar.”
    “Jeez, you spied on him!” Whalen said.
    “Right!” Kiff grinned. “And guess what I found’”
    For a second, no one said anything. Because, Will figured, nobody had an idea.
    “I got it,” Tim said. “You found his mother, in a wheelchair. All dried up .   .   . Norman,” he added, laughing. “Norman, put me down’”
    Will laughed, but he saw that Kiff wasn’t enjoying this. His story wasn’t getting him the respect he felt it deserved.
    Kiff made a fist. “No, Tim. That’s not what I found. I found a closet. And then, behind the closet, a fucking secret door’!”
    Tim raised his eyebrows.
    And Will saw Whalen look up.
    Narrio looked at his watch — quickly — then back to Kiff. He had their interest now.
    “Go on,” Tim said.
    “Yeah, a secret door right behind his little wine cellar. It looked ajar — as if he had just been there and had the door open, and was too fucking drunk to close it. I opened it. But I couldn’t see too well. There was no light. But I reached in, and then I felt what was there.”
    Kiff waited, letting everyone hang there, blowing in the breeze.
    Will thought he heard a rumble outside. Damn storm is coming, he thought. And I’ve got no raincoat, no umbrella .   .   . nothing.
    The song on the jukebox changed. The Rolling Stones jumped in with “Get off My Cloud.”
    Seemed appropriate.
    “My eyes got used to the dark. It smelled like hell in there. And I could just about make out that there were books, shelves of them .   .   .”
    “And?” Tim said, licking his lips, smoke whispering out of his nostrils like a sleeping dragon.
    “Tim, it was fucking unreal.” Kiff looked to the others.
    “I pulled a few of the books out. And damn, he had something called The Book of Enoch . The fuckin’ Book of Enoch . Do you know what the hell that is?”
    Will expected everyone to shake their head no.
    But Whalen nodded.
    “Yeah? So? Big deal,” Whalen said.
    Kiff reared back. “What, Whalen? The Book of Enoch . How many copies are