The After Party

by Anton Disclafani

  “Maybe he got it in Hollywood,” I said.

  “Hollywood? Sid Stark?” She laughed. Clearly Ciela had done her homework—a few weeks ago she’d never heard of the man. “I hear he’s as Texan as they come. Born and raised in Friona.”

  “No.” I shook my head.

  “He made his money in cattle, then casinos,” she said.

  “No. You must be wrong,” I repeated, though I was losing heart in my declaration. Joan had lied about so many things. Why not this?

  “Maybe I am,” Ciela said finally. “I’ve still never met the man. Just gossip.”

  Then the bandleader, Dick Krueger, dressed in a white suit, shouted into the microphone, his voice so loud I pressed my palms over my ears.

  Joan smiled and laughed with Sid while Dick tried to quiet the crowd. We were drunk, rowdy. We did not want to be quieted. Joan wore a white collared dress, and it hurt me to admit how beautiful she looked. Or, more precisely, that she looked beautiful without my help. The dress showed most of her bare, tanned chest: the top of her breasts, the space in between them. She wore earrings shaped like feathers: wisps of sapphire growing from a diamond spine.

  “Are you in a trance?” Ciela asked, mock-whispering in my ear.

  “Her earrings,” I said, and touched my own ears, the diamond earrings Ray had given me for our first anniversary suddenly inadequate. “They’re new. They must be a present from Sid.”

  “You can see them from here?”

  “I can see everything,” I said, and it was true. I could see Sid’s pinky ring, crammed onto his meaty finger. I could see the way his sideburns were cut more than a little unevenly, as if his barber had been hasty with his shave that morning. Or perhaps Joan had shaved him, in a romantic moment.

  “I guess we’re not that far away,” Ciela said, and I wished she’d shut up and take JJ and leave me alone to observe Joan. I felt suddenly sober.

  And then I knew what I had to do; it was suddenly clear as day.

  “I have to go,” I said to Ciela. “I have to find Ray and go.”

  I darted away before she had a chance to respond. My purse, where was my purse? I remembered that I’d given it to Ray, who had checked it with his coat. Then there he was, walking toward me, a flute of champagne in each hand.

  “I thought we’d better slow down,” he said, and held out the glass for me to take. “Champagne’s only a little stronger than ice water.”

  Had we always talked to each other like this? I felt disgusted, suddenly, by how young we were pretending to be. We were old enough to know better. Ray read my disgust with confusion, first; then Dick Krueger shouted into the microphone over the crowd—“Well, you won’t quiet down so I’ll just yell. We have here Miss Joan Fortier along with her beau, Sidney Stark, here to light the evening on fire for y’all.”

  Joan had been showcased like this before, at big events: at the Houston Fat Stock Show and Rodeo, at grand openings, at ribbon cuttings. She must have been doing this as a favor to Glenn McCarthy.

  Ray’s confusion turned to comprehension, then disgust to mirror my own. I felt a surge of hopefulness. I could save this night.

  “I want to leave,” I said. “I want to go home to Tommy.” Tommy, my son, who was spending the night with Maria. What if he woke, and silently beckoned someone to come to him, as was his habit? Maria would not know to go to him. She was not his mother, after all. I was.

  I smiled at Ray. “Come on. Let’s get your coat and my purse and skedaddle.”

  At first I read his smile as gratitude. That I was choosing home over Joan.

  I was wrong. He tipped his champagne back and emptied the entire glass in a single swallow. Then he wiped his lips with the back of his hand; normally I would have told him not to, but now I just stood there, and waited.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Ray said, and nodded to the stage.

  Once, when we were dating, we’d gone to a ball game in Alvin and some roughnecks had bothered me when I’d gone to the refreshment stand for Cokes. Ray had stalked down from the stands; the boys—they had been boys, really, not men—took one look at his face and scattered. Ray was big, but he wasn’t a man who used his largeness to impress. Although I guessed all men used their largeness to impress, whether or not they knew it. Back then Ray’s anger had made me feel safe; now it scared me.

  • • •

  The fireworks display was indeed spectacular. But the night had turned sour. Joan had left the stage and disappeared into the throng of bodies. I danced with Ray for a while by the pool, but we were both just going through the motions. I was grateful when JJ signaled to us from the edge of the floor.

  “JJ wants something,” I said to Ray, who was leading me determinedly. I had a feeling he would not let me out of his sight for the rest of the night.

  “We’re lighting up some Cubans,” JJ said to Ray, and it seemed I had misread my husband entirely, because he followed JJ into the Shamrock with barely a glance behind him.

  This might be a test—what would I do, now that Ray was gone? Would I find Joan or Ciela? How would I let the night unfurl?

  He walked away, my tall, handsome husband whom I was lucky to have. I could have been stuck with a man who was light in his loafers, like Darlene, or even someone who knocked me around sometimes, like Jean Hill, who lived on the outskirts of River Oaks, showed up to Garden Club meetings with too much makeup and shadows under her eyes. Ray truly loved me, even though I wasn’t always sure he knew me, through and through; he hadn’t known me in my darkest days, the way the Fortiers had—but did he really need to see that side?

  Joan was nowhere to be seen. I shoved myself in between drunk people, withstood the press of sweaty torsos and sloppy pats to the rear end—that was what happened, when you traipsed around without a man—and said “pardon me” more times than I could count. But still no Joan.

  Finally I went to the lobby and collapsed on one of the green sectionals. This was where people came when they wanted to be heard. It was rowdy in here, with plenty of people, but there was room to sit.

  Joan must have left. She had come last-minute, because Glenn had begged her, and then when she was finished with her appearance she and Sid had sneaked into their waiting car and gone back home, which was the only place, it seemed, she wanted to be these days.

  This scenario meant that Joan had not lied to me, had not avoided me once she was here. I began to relax on the couch. My eyelids fluttered. Ray would come fetch me soon, and he would be so, so pleased: I would be waiting for him, like a good wife. We’d had our fun, and then I’d let him have some more fun without me. I was a good wife. I was a Texas wife.

  And then I heard Joan’s voice, and saw her slip into an elevator with three or four other people, and I rose.

  • • •

  The elevator operator couldn’t have been more than eighteen. I touched his green tasseled sleeve as I stepped inside.

  “Floor eighteen,” I said.

  He paused. “That’s the penthouse,” he said, stammering a little bit on the P. “Are you—?”

  “I’m Miss Joan Fortier.” I patted my French twist, sighed, checked my tiny watch.

  It worked. The air in the elevator changed once I said Joan’s name. He didn’t know who Joan was, of course. He was too young. But her name had always had a magical effect: people listened.

  I’d never been to the penthouse before. The elevator came to a halt and I waited as the gold gates slid open for me. Waited like I was Joan: as if I’d forgotten I was waiting. As if it were nothing: interrupting a private party on the eighteenth floor of the Shamrock. Walking into a room uninvited, where I knew not a single soul except someone who probably didn’t want to see me: it wouldn’t have fazed Joan one bit.

  It was all so easy, if I pretended to be Joan.

  “Thanks, hon,” I said as I left the elevator, and I could f
eel his eyes on my back as I walked away. The room I was in was dominated by a dark, mahogany bar, and I was surprised to see Louis, whom I had only ever seen downstairs, tending it. You’d think I’d have been grateful, to see a familiar face, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t pretend to be Joan around someone who knew me as Cece.

  “What’ll it be?” Louis asked, and I was grateful he hadn’t assumed I wanted my usual.

  “Gin martini,” I said. “Dirty. Up.” I would only pretend to sip it. If I drank any more I might pass out before I found Joan.

  So far, nobody seemed to have registered my presence. This was only the entry room; I had expected it to look like the Specimen Jar, which was completely open, where it would have been difficult for Joan to hide. But I’d already spotted several doors, most of them closed. I had no idea which one Joan had disappeared behind.

  There was a cluster of mixed company, men and women, near a curved couch, some sitting, some standing. I half hoped that one of them would turn around and ask who I was, but nobody did. They were engrossed in their own conversation, and I was simply another body in a roomful of bodies.

  “Gin martini,” Louis said. “Straight up.”

  I wished I could give him a tip but I didn’t have my purse. And maybe the penthouse wasn’t a place where you tipped. I wouldn’t know. I wondered how often Joan came up here, and with whom. I wondered if Sid was new, or if Joan really had known him for a long time.

  I no longer felt betrayed, as I had when I’d first seen Joan. My hurt had been replaced by a feeling of intense curiosity. A desperate curiosity. The thought I’d had while cleaning that endless grout with Maria circled my brain: Good practice for when Joan is gone. I wanted to find out what was happening to her, what had happened to her, before it was over.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked Louis, stirring my martini with the green, shamrock-topped swizzle stick, trying to sound casual, as if I didn’t much care where everyone was. I wasn’t Joan anymore. That had only lasted long enough to get me up here. Now I was Cece, and the sip I took of my martini was so terrible and astringent it was all I could do not to spit it out.

  Louis said nothing, and I felt my cheeks redden.

  “I don’t know why people want to be up so high,” I said, staring into my drink. “If Russia drops the bomb we’re toast, up here. Better to be down there”—here I raised my eyes to Louis. He was watching me, quietly. I pointed to the floor—“than up here, closer to the sky.” I couldn’t stop. I opened my mouth to go on, but Louis reached across the bar and put his hand, cool from handling ice and cold metal shakers all night, over mine. Louis was as old as my grandfather would have been. I decided his hand over mine was a kindness.

  “Miss Fortier is behind that door,” Louis said. He took his hand away and pointed to the door closest to us. “She’s not alone.”

  I went to the door and, before I could convince myself not to, flung it open. At first I couldn’t see a thing, and then, gradually, my eyes adjusted to the dark. I had screwed up my courage for nothing. I was in a long, empty corridor with another door at the end.

  I clutched my martini to my chest, spilling some on my dress. The carpet was plush, tricky to navigate in heels. I couldn’t help but think of the long hallway in Sugar Land, Texas, all those years ago. I had gone somewhere unknown for Joan then, too. And here I was, five years later, a wife and a mother, doing the same thing.

  The scent of the Sugar Land house came back to me: potpourri, the plastic that covered the furniture, the ghost of Joan’s perfume.

  When I reached the second door I pressed my ear against it, but heard nothing.

  I twisted the knob, half expecting it to be locked—Sid and Joan might have been in there together, having sex, but I didn’t care.

  The door wasn’t locked, and I saw right away Joan wasn’t in the room, either. Only Sid, and three men who faced me as I entered. They were standing by a glass table, looking at something. Papers. I spotted a briefcase, a crystal decanter of brown liquor. A pen. The various accoutrements of men.

  “Sid,” I said, my voice shaky. I tried to steady it. “Cece. Cecilia Buchanan.”

  I held out my hand—for him to shake? To kiss? I didn’t know. But Sid’s face was impassive, his vitality, which had been on public display just an hour ago, a distant memory. This was Joan’s Sid, but he seemed like a different person entirely.

  His friends—his associates?—watched me with the same blank expressions, and I remembered the first time I’d seen him, how he’d scared me and I hadn’t known why. I set my martini on the brass side table near the door and turned to go—“I’m in the wrong place,” I murmured, or something to that effect. I was a woman among strange men. I had thought Joan might disappear, but now it occurred to me that I might disappear, too. We could all disappear, so easily.

  I was so close to leaving—my hand was on the knob. But no, I had to find Joan.

  I turned back around and met the eyes of one of the men, idly spinning a cigarette between his fingers. He stopped, gave his attention to Sid, and I understood that I had nothing to fear from Sid’s company, only from Sid himself.

  “Joan,” I said, and I was proud of how clear my voice was, like a bell in this silent room.

  “She’s in there,” Sid said after a moment, though I had no idea where “there” was. He needed to make me wait. I would wait. “In the bedroom,” he said after another moment, and pointed to a pair of French doors at the far end of the room. And then he waved his hand, dismissing me.

  This was a suite, I realized as I entered: Sid and his associates were in the living quarters, and Joan was in the bedroom. This was where Sid would retire when he was finished with whatever it was that occupied him out there; he would send the men away, and come into this room and wake Joan and they would have sex. Or perhaps he wouldn’t wake her. Or perhaps he wouldn’t send the men away. All those years ago Joan had let herself be used by men she barely knew. She’d done it once. Who was to say she wouldn’t do it a second time? Hadn’t already?

  Joan was asleep on the bed in her beautiful white dress, her makeup perfect except for a speck of ash, from the fireworks, on her cheek. I gently wiped it away with my thumb. There. She looked perfect now.

  I stood over her for a moment, two. Or maybe it was ten. I lost track of time. She was inert and vulnerable, and I felt a protectiveness I had not felt since Tommy’s birth. I checked my watch; it was three thirty in the morning. Ray was surely downstairs, looking for me, but Ray might have been a million miles away.

  Joan opened her eyes. She stared at me in silence for so long I thought she might be dreaming.

  “Cee,” she said. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  She seemed lucid enough. That was the first thing I noticed. And then she sat up, and I saw a bruise on her shoulder, where her dress had shifted.

  She followed my eyes, touched the bruise, then returned her hand to her lap.

  “I found you,” I said, as if we had been playing a game, and Joan was the prize. “Who are those men out there?” I asked.

  Joan said nothing.

  “Who is Sid, Joan? Tell me who he is.”

  Still she said nothing.

  “Joan,” I said, “you need to leave. Come with me.”

  “Where do you want to take me, Cee?”

  I hadn’t thought about where I’d take her.

  “Home,” I said, firmly. “I’ll take you home.”

  “My home or yours?”

  Taking her to my home was out of the question. And her own home—it was Sid’s domain now.

  “Evergreen,” I said.

  She grimaced. “Evergreen. I think you and Mama are the only people who call it that anymore. My father would, of course, if his mind hadn’t turned to cotton.”

  I held out my hand. “Let’s go there.”

  She stared at my hand, then looked up at me
. “Cece, I need you to leave.”

  “Leave?”

  She nodded. “Leave here. Leave me alone.”

  “I can’t,” I said, simply. “Don’t you know that by now?”

  She rose, walked steadily to the window—she wasn’t drunk—then drew back the deep-green curtain. She rested her cheek against the glass, and I could almost feel the delicious coolness against her hot skin.

  “Evergreen’s the last place I want to be, and you’re the last person I want to see.”

  “Evergreen is your home,” I said, ignoring the barb.

  “I left my home a long time ago.”

  Beyond Joan the city was lit up with a million glimmering lights, evidence of its industry, its breadth. Joan had a home: Houston. The city she could not live without, the city that could not live without her.

  “I’m afraid Sid is going to hurt you.” I went to her. “I’m afraid for you,” I said at last.

  “The last time you were afraid you went and told Mama, and I was sent away, and I came back and I was good for a while, wasn’t I? I was golden. But now I’m tired.” She closed her eyes again.

  She’d never before spoken of being sent away; we’d never mentioned that night in Sugar Land. We had so much history, Joan and I, that it had always seemed easy to pick and choose which parts of it we recognized.

  Yet here Joan was acknowledging what had remained unspoken for so long. Perhaps the similarities between then and now were obvious to her, too.

  “How are you tired, Joan? Tell me.”

  “I’m tired of all of it.”

  “I’ve seen you like this before,” I said, and I knew I was coming close to dangerous territory. I’d never spoken so frankly of that time in her life before. Of that time in our lives. “Do you remember the night I found you? In that—that house.” It felt thrilling, to finally talk about it. I couldn’t stop. “You were dead to the world. With those men. They could have done anything to you.” My voice broke; I brought my hand to my mouth. “Maybe they did.”

  She opened her eyes. I thought she might be crying, but she wasn’t. Our faces were so close I could see the mole on her right temple beneath a thick layer of powder.