Conjunctions 65: Sleights of Hand

by Sleights of Hand- The Deception Issue (retail) (epub)

  AFTERPARTY

  Odd, was his first thought—although maybe logical of the extra-work world, he guessed—that it would be LJ, the one man inside whom he knew, who answered the door.

  “Ed! Welcome to the afterparty.” LJ looked his usual self, except he had on a thick black tie over his thin mint shirt. He was holding a drink that looked like whiskey. He only looked mildly drunk.

  When Ed asked him about the party if this was merely the afterparty, LJ laughed and disappeared into the crowd.

  Like the resurrected dead, suddenly confronted with the world of the living—and the living living with more animation than recollected—Ed was overwhelmed as he surveyed the electric particles of party around him. It was a well-lit, almost bare white room, of shocking magnitude—so big it was almost a ballroom—a size shocking to anyone who would have surveyed the building from its outside, as Ed had. Like all parties, it held its own standards of usual and unusual and it was hard to judge: the big on young, the small atop old, the gorgeous entangled with grotesque, the jeans and jewels, the fire with ice, the water with smoke, the dousing of laughter, the dappling of gossip … Children in velvet frocks and leather shoes, propped on pillows, with punch glasses poised on their laps. Attractive older women in stilettos, brandishing vegetable sticks at each other, chortling forcefully. A group of bespectacled foreigners arguing in another tongue, ormaybe just conversing. Young men swaying around a grand piano that an elderly man with closed eyes played. One old woman napping on the lap of three whispering young men, all lazing on a divan. Cats and dogs perched bored on bar stools. Groups of old blonde servers carrying trays full of pastry shells and empty champagne flutes. A fat woman bellowing opera in the kitchen to the nonstop applause of everyone who passed through …

  Through the noise, Ed thought he heard the penetrating trill of a house phone, which everyone else was apparently ignoring. He did the same. He was glad he had come. It looked like a good party.

  “Fluke?”

  An old server, with a blonde braid snaked around her skull, held a tray full of thin jellylike squares. “It’s fluke,” she snapped. He had no idea what it was, but took one and ate it and liked it.

  He wondered where LJ was. Or the charming young woman.

  He hoped it wasn’t “Just wait, booboo” but he did not rule her out—“’Cause if you think this is good, just wait, booboo, until the afterparty!” she interrupted, that first person who spoke to him, a young woman, a drunk, in an alluring purple lace dress, pressing herself with inexplicable urgency against the wall next to him. She was holding a drink.

  “Isn’t this the afterparty?” Ed said, noticing the teetering glass, adding, “Here, allow me.”

  She laughed, and with her eyes dead on it, she let the glass slip out of her hand and onto the floor. No doubt swallowed in the sounds of the party, it made no sound at all. Ed noticed the ground was full of broken glass.

  “It’s all afterparty,” she insisted. “After and after and after and after and …”

  He nodded politely. “Do you know whose party this is?” he tried to ask.

  “Even with a bad moon out there tonight, booboo,” she laughed, “no stop to the afterparty.”

  He thought, in spite of not wanting to leave the party, that it might be best to find Casper. “Excuse me, miss,” he said to her, as she laughed on, “Booboobooboo,” letting her body slip down the wall until she was crouched on her knees, crying. Ed kept his eyes on her as he walked on, bumping into a few bodies here and there, making sure to excuse himself each and every time, although at a party like this it didn’t seem to matter, and was rather somewhat encouraged—

  “Ed!” He had walked right into Casper, who was holding two drinks. He put one—the one with an unrecognizable, inedible-looking red garnish—in Ed’s hand. “Good party, no?”

  “Excuse me, excuse me!” cut in two elderly twins in matching suits. People were walking into each other and making it, remarkably with little drama, as if in the company of ghosts, Ed noticed.

  “There are some very important people here,” said Casper.

  “Whoa there!” exclaimed a young man, one of many in a classic tuxedo, as he shoved past Ed.

  Ed nodded. He could tell.

  “Love that piano!” said Casper, snapping his fingers to a percussion Ed could not detect. Although somehow he could make out that relentless phone, still, still going.

  A line of somber teenage girls in strapless dresses slithered around Casper into the kitchen.

  “Have you seen her?” Casper suddenly whispered, leaning in close.

  Ed shook his head, and—“Ow!”—scowled at an older man in khaki shorts who had broken the spell of routine bumps and nudges with a rude, jabbing prod, his elbow in Ed’s rib, not even excusing himself. When Ed said, “Excuse you,” the guy rolled his eyes and blew him a kiss, and disappeared. It upset Ed. “Did you see that?”

  Before he knew it the crowds had swallowed Casper and he too was gone.

  Some people were eating cake. It was the type of cake—overdone with frosting, flowered, too much for everyday life—that screamed birthday. He approached a young girl, no more than ten, he imagined, slowly taking tiny forkfuls of a towering slice.

  “It’s her birthday, is it?” said Ed.

  She looked at him with squinted eyes.

  “So, where is she?” Ed asked, with the newfound brazenness that the audience of children often lent adults.

  “Please,” said the girl, annoyed maybe, he thought, or just unsure of what to say, he hoped. She turned to him with unreadable neutral eyes and got up and walked away.

  Ed took her seat, dumbfounded. He stroked the sprawled orange cat next to him—the cat deep in what he felt was a feigned sleep—still, with little intentions of getting away or disappearing, neither apparently content with, nor evidently opposed to, another stranger’s hand on his body.

  “Do you know this man?”

  Ed got a hard tap on the shoulder from a set of nails—

  “Do you?” and an eyeful of the overbearing brown plane of cleavage, massive aged cleavage, was shoved right up to his face—a forceful slab of routinely sun-singed flesh, obviously an area worked on and meant to be looked at, with its mild shimmer of something alluring yet undeniably cosmetic, with its overpowering aroma processed to evoke the beach, hut drinks, but still women’s department store, sweat, rayon. Older and busty and thick, with a plump, shiny orange scowl. Everything about this woman rubbed Ed the wrong way.

  Plus, with her thick gold-bound fingers, she gripped a half-conscious LJ by the collar.

  “He says he’s with you. If he’s with you, then don’t you think he should be with you?”

  Ed nodded slowly. “I’m sorry,” he apologized for no apparent reason he could think of.

  “Oh, so am I, so am I,” she went on. “You don’t even know what he has been up to!”

  Ed shook his head. He turned to LJ, whose eyes were fixed downward. He had the look and even the burnt cheeks, Ed detected, of a man who had been recently slapped. Defeated and drunk.

  The woman leaned in with a whisper. “He did, oh, he really did it,” she hissed. Disgusted. The plastic orange puttied itself into a triumphant smirk, and she grabbed Ed’s hand and placed it on her bosom. It was warm and firm, meaty and well done—a shelf of angry, raw, prime woman. He made sure not to move a finger. “He did that,” she said, without moving his hand.

  He could not feel her heart beating. Soon, he wanted his hand back.

  “There!” she snapped, flinging his hand back to him. “And I, I don’t even play on your team!”

  Ed looked at her, dumbfounded. He was not sure what she meant by that (until hours later he spied her taking over a weedy young lady in all black—bulbous orange suctioned at the nape of the lady’s prickly tufts of blonde, swollen bronze and gold bangling at her brittle black and white, overbearing, hungrily having her way).

  “Please don’t do that,” Ed mumbled, as LJ’s head fel
l limply on his shoulder, and walked away.

  “Ed, look!” appeared Casper, with a friendly grip on Ed’s neck. He looked good—normal, Ed meant—not too drunk, he thought—and beside him was another well-dressed man in a suit and hat and cane, sharply done, like an old movie detective. “You know Roger!”

  Ed did not. Ed smiled; Roger did not.

  “Oh, sure you do! He’s on our floor!” Casper said.

  “I am surprised, Casper,” Ed said. “Well, are you new?”

  Roger shook his head.

  “Don’t mind Ed,” Casper said. “Absentmindedness is perhaps his only bad trait. Or is it, Ed?”

  They generated some casual talk. Work. Their building. Payroll. Four-oh-one-kays. Dow. Yearly profits. The economy. When suddenly Roger turned to a young woman and was off with a brisk wave.

  Casper quickly turned sour. “Did you say Casper?”

  Ed nodded.

  “Why? You know my last name. Use it.” The statement had an admonishing ring, but Casper as usual was cool. “A simple Mr. would do. I am your boss, after all.”

  Ed wanted to apologize but couldn’t.

  “By the way, you won’t need a ride back, will you,” Casper stated.

  Ed shook his head, even though he did. It was possible to deduce that Casper was punishing him, that it would all come back to haunt him at work, in spite of never hearing Casper request such a formality. It was possible that he could get fired, that what he had done carried some larger wrongness, that Casper was even more furious than he had showed, covering it up for the sake of the party spirit. It was possible that Casper was drunk, or Ed was, or Roger, whoever he was, whoever he was who had caused this—possibly not on their floor, possibly not even a coworker, although even more poignantly very probably was, and in fact, was probably very important—a further reason to fire Ed. It was possible that Casper and Ed were once friends, or close, and that now, thanks to Ed, it was over, forever.

  “Now where did he go?” asked Casper, and that was the last of him.

  Soon, Ed resorted to requesting shots. Eagerly, in between drinks, without mixer, without ice.

  Nice: increasingly, people, caught with lost, or abandoned, composure. Did they ever have it? He wasn’t sure, but he appreciated the sight of it. Everywhere, moments of clink and clang and clamor … attractive people fumbling: impeccable men with hands in chaos, fishy fingers wreaking havoc, bubbly, plastered; gorgeous girls mishandling antiques artifacts heirlooms invaluables, at their mercy: silverware all over there, crystal carnage, ashtray in revolution and cigarette cremains exploding on upholstery, rivers of wine flooding the quaking peaks and plateaus of shocked crotches, nut mix hailing on rug hides and pet head tops, confetti trails leading to somebody’s sick in the tub, pearls disengaged in the sink, privilege undone, broken class, everywhere, celebrants alike, all ahem-ing and excusing and whoa-ing and pardoning and fuck-ing, before falling all over them and themselves.

  It was, he thought, nice.

  As the hours began to blanch, Ed felt less intent on leaving.

  He was able to pinpoint the exact moment the alcohol really hit him. In front of him stood an elderly woman in a geometric-patterned coat—neurotically patterned, he’d go so far to describe—purple octagons, inscribed within blue squares inscribed within green triangles over and over a yellow backdrop. Nauseating! And then the cat on his lap, its tabby orange and white suddenly so tidily stripped and orderly bushed. Dizzying! And then the server with the crystal bowl filled with raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, with their flawless repetitive bulbs of juicy fruit—not to mention the black and white checkers of her kitchen floor—furniture: petrified, civilized, tattooed black-ringed galaxies, markers of age, certificate of old good wood—hair: follicles, locks, strands, toupees and toupees!—fur: real, faux, chinchilla, mink, rabbit, fox—heels on heels on heels—and somewhere, alone, unheeded, piles and piles of identical, photocopied, carbon-copied, work and work and work—lines, tab, return, print, jam, cancel, shut down—

  Ed was sick.

  “Pill?” offered the young girl, shaking a translucent orange pharmacy bottle.

  Ed shook his head.

  “Vitamin?” offered the man who had elbowed and air-kissed him, digging into his khaki shorts.

  Ed shook his head.

  “Toast?” snapped Roger, with the tip of his cane aimed at Ed’s heart.

  Shot, Ed went to the bathroom and sat in the dark until the pounding of a high heel and a high-pitched “Hellooo!” led him eventually to open up and walk out and announce to the iridescent burnt cleavage before him, “I don’t know what team you think I play on,” leading Cleavage to heave and moan and try to plod onward in spite of his speech, “but he and nobody in fact,” he went on, as Cleavage turned and slipped past him, disregarding, not even huffing and puffing about it or anything anymore, rather just forcing one last unashamed face-off with the shimmer-slathered bronze-roasted hot flesh before him, “is with me. Excuse me now!”—and he walked on before he could fully hear the door slam, with a hoot.

  Ed considered his medication; his medication considered Ed.

  No, it wasn’t normal. The phone had been ringing all night—or more, much more, than just a night by now, he knew. He was sitting with vitamins—and residue and rolled bills and broken straws and a ladies’ compact mirror—tearing, not even nibbling, at burnt toast scraps. His companions—his coworkers, he meant—were gone.

  It occurred to Ed that he wanted one thing: something true and real in all of it.

  “Go ahead,” suddenly said a sullen young man in jeans and a T-shirt who sat alone. It was the first time Ed had seen him. Something about him moved Ed. His face could be called entirely forgettable, Ed thought, and yet he seemed remarkably cut from a different clay altogether. He was shockingly normal. Valid, Ed thought, out of place, absurdly authentic and unadulterated. In his harrowing reality, Ed read a flesh and bones that was more than theirs.

  “What are you waiting for?” the young man said, his sullen tenor terribly lucid, clean, and true. He was pointing at the opposite corner, where a young lady in a glittering dress was motioning for Ed.

  She opened her mouth and the young man declared, “After all, I have nothing for you,” and she stuck out her tongue, and Ed suddenly got up and said to him, “Thanks,” and walked over and said to her, “Excuse me, but do I know you?”

  Ed too was a true man with feelings and history and life stuff and properties …

  He→single, white, male, lefty—events→public school, Bonnie, community college, minor car accident (other driver’s fault), state university, Sheila, Ann—roots→Protestant, housewife and dentist, only child—likes→blue, sometimes yellow, classical, mysteries, thrillers, asparagus, apples (red delicious), walking, science section (Times not Post; Tribune over Herald), badminton—goals→happiness, money that was well earned in the end, marriage to someone forever, children (at least three), a pet (likely: dog (Lab); dream: ape).

  He had had his share of the problems of the heart, ones he had not sorted through, that he believed could be fixed, cured, easy, if only the right person—and if only he hadn’t stopped looking, which he mostly had but, but, but—

  Well, he had never been one for parties or excessive socializing. He preferred work because he could do it, at least well enough to feel satisfied, without complication or turmoil or loss.

  He loved deadlines. He lived for the “dues,” the empty, demanding hands to fill, the final FedEx at four, the faxing to the minute. He loved an opportunity to wish for the passing of time, to find increasing comfort in the oily easing of that slippery second hand …

  Ed was homesick. Who were these people to make him feel odd for wanting to work? To reject the extra day? To kill the three-day weekend, to shit on its impossibility?

  (Had they won? What day was it? he thought.)

  Ed did not believe in impossibilities.

  Somewhere in the madness of the evening, he felt an importance he co
uld not fully pinpoint or validate. He wanted to remember the reason he was brought there in the first place.

  THE GIRL

  “It’s me—it’s my party,” she said, after tucking in her tongue coyly, glittering away in her dazzling dress, pale legs peeking through the strategic slit of the stunning white slink, that Ed thought, yes, could belong to the hostess and certainly a birthday girl.

  “But do I know you?” Ed said again. He meant it. He wasn’t sure he didn’t know her. Maybe it was the fact that an entire evening—now a day, days, three days?!—had been spent waiting to behold her, making the very notion of her familiar at least, that finally, when faced with that audacious apparition, in her unashamed pale luster, he could not help but feel he had sensed her all along.

  Her tongue jabbed out, as if it couldn’t help it, not without a certain preciousness, like an extended empty dessert spoon, a tool for dainty handling. Ed did not understand it. Lewd, cute, pristine, dirty—Ed dreaded another encounter with contradictions. With his blink, it was, like a quick flicker of a bad dream, gone.

  “I should certainly hope so,” she said. “You are after all at my party!” She shook her head suddenly. “Conversational burlesque. Pardon me. No, we’ve never met. You’re with Roger?”

  “Ed,” he said with an extended hand and, annoyed, explained, “And yes and no. Yes, I work with Roger—or so I think—I really just met him—so, no, I am not with him. I am not with anybody here, none of the males definitely, but none of the females either.”

  “Yet!” she laughed, crisp, airy chuckles that feathered distinctly atop each other like broken glass. Conversational burlesque? he thought. He did not know what it meant, or what he was to make of her, or do with her—or who that sullen young man was, who was now gone, and if he had meant to introduce them, or pass her on to him—or if she really was the hostess and, if so, why was she talking to him, of all people, or was she hitting on him, or tricking him, for what purpose, and was it a sign, was it the end of the night, morning, what time was it, what—