She walked into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of merlot and popped two Advils. She paused, then shook a third out and swallowed it with another wash of wine. She was still nursing a killer hangover from last night and needed to squelch it fast. It wouldn’t do to be a drag.
A long, hot shower later, she emerged feeling better as the Advil and the wine worked its magic. She brushed out her now shoulder-length hair and walked over to her closet naked, unfazed that all the curtains were tied back and the huge apartment windows gave any interested neighbor a clear view. The expensive window dressings were strictly decorative, and the thought of giving her neighbors, whoever they were, a little thrill amused her. She slid into a short black cocktail dress that crossed her bare back, impassively noting that it didn’t fit as snugly as it once had. She took time applying her makeup, masterfully covering up the shadows under her eyes, and finished her face with two strokes of deep red lipstick. Lighting up a cigarette, Zoe stood back to admire herself. Once she put on her mile-high heels, heels that even with her height only brought her to Colin’s nose, she knew she would wow him. She smiled.
She padded back into the living room, cigarette and refilled merlot in hand, and sat down to wait for Colin. She dialed Allie’s number.
“Hi!” Allie said happily.
Zoe heard commotion in the background—the unmoderated voices of young children, the murmur of the television. She pictured the kids and the dog surrounded by a sea of tiny toys. “Is this a good time?”
“Dana’s here, he can handle it.”
Zoe imagined Allie gesturing for Dana to take charge.
“How are you?” Allie asked.
“Now? Great. If you had asked me a few hours ago, however, I might have moaned.”
“Oh God, don’t tell me,” Allie said. Zoe heard her loading dishes into the dishwasher. “I’m not sure I can tolerate hearing about a night out on the town. I myself had a date last night, with poor Gillian who was throwing up into the wee hours of the morning.”
Sounds a lot like my own night, Zoe thought, although she couldn’t really remember all of it. “Sounds like hell.”
“It was actually. Poor little kid, throwing up is the worst.”
Tell me about it. Zoe’s cigarette fired red with an inhale.
“And now we’re all on standby, wondering who’s going to be bent over the toilet next.”
“Now that’s a visual I hope doesn’t haunt me all night.”
“Sorry, enough about vomit. Are you ready to go?”
“Ready and waiting.”
“I’m so bummed we can’t go. Although I guess with Gillian sick we wouldn’t have been able to come even if we had found a sitter. You need to remember everything and call me tomorrow.”
“Better tell that to Meg and Tess. I plan on getting very drunk. As the girlfriend of the birthday boy, I’m the de facto hostess to 100 of Colin’s most intimate friends. I don’t plan on doing that sober.”
“So it’s ‘girlfriend’ now.”
“I need a title, at least for tonight. We’ll see if he behaves himself though. That’s another reason for boatloads of booze—if he starts getting moody on me, I won’t notice.”
“Don’t get so drunk that you can’t give him a good kick in the butt if he deserves it.”
Zoe laughed. “You got it.”
“I actually wasn’t kidding.”
Zoe heard a knock on her apartment door. “Gotta go, Colin’s here. Unbelievable; he even charmed my doorman, he didn’t buzz me.”
Her cigarette smoke trailed her as she walked to the door and opened it to a tall and tuxedoed Colin. Zoe thought once again that he was the most handsome man she had ever seen.
“Wow,” Colin said to her with a dazzling white smile.
————
Allie put the phone down slowly. She was worried about Zoe. She had been drinking so much—more than usual, more consistently, and with more intent—and Allie was sure that she wasn’t privy to half of it. But by combining concerning stories with Megan and adding up the number of Sunday afternoon get-togethers that Zoe had skipped because she couldn’t get out of bed, Allie got the general picture.
To add to it she was dating Colin Parkman, a charming sociopath who skated from oozing charisma to raging jealousy to cold, calculating disregard with frequency and ease. He strutted around the city with Zoe on his arm as if she was a beautiful new purse or coat; a designer accessory that served a role en route, but was just slung onto the back of a chair once they stepped into the chosen festivity. At that point, Zoe became immaterial to his good time, which seemed directly proportional to the number of pretty young things who velcroed themselves onto him for the night. His bottomless wallet and chiseled features had given him celebrity status—not just in his own mind, but apparently in the eyes of many single women as well—and like a self-absorbed, B-list musician, the starry eyes of his roadies were his lifeblood. Allie knew from hearing the recap of several of their arguments that Colin expected Zoe to be president of his fan club, and that he had accepted her sarcastic reply with a smile on his lips and bitter steel in his eyes. After that, his random indifference had become intentional, cruel. Where he got the balls to behave like that, Allie didn’t know, as Zoe was certainly no wallflower. But for some reason, Zoe continued to date the sadistic bastard. Allie just didn’t get it.
Although maybe a little romance is better than none, she thought as she heard Dana throwing up in the bathroom upstairs.
————
Several hours later, the birthday party was in full swing with over 100 New Yorkers dressed to the nines and celebrating Colin’s birthday as if it were their own. Electronic dance music boomed through the room, its pounding beat reverberating in the oversized cocktails, the artistic hors d’oeuvres, and the glittering guests’ veins. It gave the room a dramatic, otherworldly pulse and further revved up the night’s engine.
Zoe, with a constantly-replenished martini in hand, leaned against the bar with her new best friend Chip, a guy who hadn’t known what hit him when Zoe sauntered up to him and turned on her cool, silky charm. She had abandoned Colin after he fired his first grin at some simpering blonde, and she had started to walk across the party towards Megan. But she saw Gavin and Tess glom onto Megan first, and Zoe had decided mid-step that tonight, she couldn’t quite muster up a life-is-great face in front of the Kellers—at least not without a little more lubrication—so she spun on her heel towards the bar and into the unsuspecting Chip. Since then Chip—who thought he’d just won the lottery—was gleefully oblivious to his role as pawn in the various chess games that were being played out.
While batting her eyelashes and making fluid conversation with Chip, Zoe had one eye on Gavin and one eye on Colin, who was smoothly holding court with several young waifs at the end of the bar. She suddenly had an eerie feeling that she was watching her life, and that she wasn’t in it. She looked around the room—people were laughing, kissing, singing, dancing—and she was hanging off to the side, biding her time. For what? Through her haze of gin and detachment, she realized that hanging on the sidelines was something she had perfected over the years; she ran in circles, other people moved forward.
She had lost her heart to Gavin nine years ago—nine years ago, she thought as she chugged her martini and held her empty glass up to the bartender—and had never fought for it back. Instead she had run from it, choosing men who chased her but who she could outpace without breaking a sweat, or her heart; keeping them and any feelings at all at a manageable distance. Colin was the first in the long procession however, who didn’t chase, who didn’t want more. He’d made it clear that all he wanted was adornment and a convenient companion. And impersonal, fiery sex. She had met her emotional match. And the abyss created between them was dark and unforgiving.
So now I’m stranded in no man’s land, cowering between all I want and
all I don’t want. The circles she was running weren’t complete circles, because she never came back around to Gavin; they were spirals, and she was going down. Above her was Gavin, a fantasy. She bit her lip, hard. He had never loved her the way she loved him. The relationship she’d wanted back had never really existed.
And below her was Colin, offering her a glimpse of the cold and murky bottom.
I’m not going to go there. She shivered. I deserve better. And P.S., she tossed her hair over her bare shoulders, better is not Gavin.
Chip was prattling on (and on) as Zoe accepted her drink from the bartender and then, without re-checking Colin’s status, she turned her back on Chip and marched as purposefully as she could while balancing on her heels and on her many martinis over to the little circle of Gavin, Tess, Megan, and Jared. Just going over to hang with my friends, she thought as she spilled a little of her drink on her Manolo Blahniks.
The birthday bash roared on, reaching a feverish pitch as groups of revelers—like the cocktails fueling them—mixed up and refilled, merrily consuming the unique potion of glitz and disinhibition. Then, like a pinprick in a fat balloon, the energy gradually dissipated as two by two, guests leaked out to catch the tail end of other parties or to wave down cabbies for a ride home. Somehow, during the last-minute bathroom runs, coat quests, and goodbyes, Gavin and Zoe found themselves standing alone together.
“You okay?” Gavin leaned in and peered at Zoe.
Why didn’t you ask that question in front of Tess? “Yeah,” Zoe said with a sneer. “Are you?”
“Because if there’s anything wrong… I mean, what’s with this Colin guy?”
How dare he comment on who she was seeing! She wanted to slap him across the face; instead, she would slap him with words. She opened her mouth to spit venom.
“You’re right,” he said, holding up his hand like a stop sign. “None of my business. It’s just that I’m worried about you.” He paused. “You know you can count on me if you ever need anything, right?”
Zoe narrowed her eyes. “Thank you, but I’m fine. I don’t need a babysitter. And I don’t need you.”
Gavin took a step back, put his hands in his pockets. “Because you seem really wasted.”
Zoe’s red lipstick smiled, but there was no smile in her eyes. “You’re very perceptive. I am really wasted.” She took a slug of her martini for emphasis. “What a good choice of words, Gavin. Wasted. I was thinking that very thing, that I’ve wasted so much time on people, on men who’ve led me farther and farther down the stairs.” She waved her drink in a circle and some splashed over the side of her glass. “And you know what? They’re happy, or happy enough where they are on that staircase; their lives are all chugging along just fine, it’s not like it changes when I come in or out of it. And I’m always the one who ends up a little lower on the spiral, and wasted, or maybe just null. Ha! Null and void.” She was swinging her drink around, swaying a little on her heels, and mentally poking her finger in his chest. In her drunken haze, she was making complete sense; she was Confucius.
Gavin scratched his head, looked around the room, then looked back at her with a frown. “Zoe?”
She continued her rant. “That’s it! Null and void, like a canceled check that gets thrown in the garbage. Originally signed with a flourish—such high hopes for that check—and ultimately not worth the paper.”
Gavin reached out to touch her arm. She batted it away.
“And you know what, Gavin? You’re not on top anymore. I mean, you’ve been a good friend, and I appreciate your concern. But you’re not on top. You’ve been displaced by,” she swayed and almost fell, but caught herself on the back of a chair, “well, I don’t know who yet.”
Tess appeared suddenly, looking flustered. “What’s this I hear about someone being on top?” She chuckled, a strangled cough.
Gavin guffawed and stepped toward Tess. There was a brief silence, and then he said, “To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure. Zoe, I think your martinis are catching up with you. Actually, I think they’ve won the race. Can we get you a cab?”
“No, thank you, I’m fine,” Zoe said, directing the most plastic smile she could muster at Gavin. Just then, Colin, who hadn’t said boo to Zoe in hours, slithered up in back of her and wrapped his arms around her from behind.
Gavin and Tess looked at each other.
“I’m fine,” Zoe said again.
Zoe watched Gavin put his arm around Tess, then watched them cross the room and go out the door. She caught him look over his shoulder at her before the door closed behind them.
She noticed that Tess saw him look too.
————
Zoe and Colin pushed the scraped-clean mirror away and leaned back onto Zoe’s couch with a collective sigh. They both licked their lips and ran their tongues around their gums to test the cocaine’s freeze. Then after a moment and without a word, Colin leaned towards her to begin the next activity on their regularly scheduled itinerary. Zoe pushed him back as his face joined the rest of the room in a wild spin.
“Too drunk,” she slurred. “I feel sick. You should go.”
She clearly didn’t have to convince him; Colin grabbed his jacket and practically sprinted for the door. Zoe guessed the waifs were still at the bar.
After his exit, Zoe’s living room began to spin so violently that even though she was still seated on the couch, she thought she was going to fall over. She opened her eyes, shut her eyes, tried to lie down, and then shakily sat back up. There was no position that slowed the manic merry-go-round. She knew she was going to get sick, so she slid off the couch onto her hands and knees and crawled towards the bathroom. Halfway there, she vomited all over the polished hardwood floor of her living room, and continued retching for forever, her stomach contracting and twisting, her dark hair swinging in and out of the liquid bile with each heave.
When she was finally depleted, she rolled away from the mess and curled up in a fetal position, whimpering, her soggy and splattered black silk dress hiked up around her waist. In a small crevice of her mind that was not pleading with the apartment to slow down, she began to panic. I’m going to die. Her sweat-soaked body convulsed with shivers.
She spied the cordless phone wavering on the living room coffee table, right where she had left it after her earlier chat with Allie, and dragged herself over to it. Her hands shook and the numbers in front of her swerved in and out of focus as she tried to punch in Allie’s number, forgetting that she could have just hit redial. A three-note tone shrieked in her ear and a robotic voice announced “The number you have reached is not in service.”
Zoe’s whimpers turned into tears. I’m going to die right here, right next to this pool of brown vomit. She begged the buttons to stand still as she stabbed at Megan’s number. Megan’s cheery, pre-recorded voice kicked on. Sobbing now, her hands quaking uncontrollably, she tried Tess. Please pick up, Tess. Help me.
“Hello?” Gavin’s voice croaked, a combination of sleepiness and call-in-the-middle-of-the-night alarm.
His face floated through Zoe’s mind, and along with his image, a flood of sorrow and remorse rushed through her. What did I do tonight? She couldn’t remember. All she felt was searing shame and a deep sense of loss in the pit of her stomach. Still sobbing, in a rush of words she cried, “Gavin, I’m going to die. I’m so wasted. You were right, wasted. And I’m so sick and the room is spinning and I can’t… Help me Gavin. I’m going to die.”
“Hang on. I’ll be right there,” he said in a steady, deep voice. “I’m calling 911. Don’t worry, I won’t let anything happen to you. I’ll be there as fast as I can. Do you hear me? Hang on.”
————
Tess sat up in bed, her sleep-puffed face dimly lit by the bedside lamp to her left. “Who was that?”
Gavin faced her with the receiver still in his hand. His face was white. “It was Zoe.
”
“Zoe?” Tess looked pointedly at her watch, although they both knew exactly what time it was from the red, glowing numbers on the clock next to the phone. “It’s 3:30 in the morning.” Her voice was shrill.
“She’s in trouble. She’s beyond drunk and she thinks she’s going to die. I’m calling 911.” He spoke urgently into the phone.
Tess stood up, then sat down again as she listened to the call, her emotions careening between genuine concern for her friend and years of unleashed resentment that she suddenly could not quell.
“What are you doing?” she said as Gavin started pulling on his clothes.
“I’m going over there. I told her I would go over there.”
“911 will get there before you.”
“I hope so.” He zipped up his jeans.
“Oh my God. I should come, but Juliette… ” She stood up again.
“Do you want to go instead?”
“No,” Tess said, sitting back down. “She called you.” A flood of emotions coursed through her head, her heart. “Why did she call you, Gavin?”
“I don’t know, Tess. We’re friends,” he said as he pulled on his shirt.
“Friends? She’s got lots of friends.” A sharp edge of hysteria sliced into her voice. “Why’d she call you, Gavin?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, yes you do.” She despised herself for starting this argument now, for scratching at her biggest fear in the middle of this crisis, but bitterness had taken over and was rising unedited out through her mouth.
Gavin stopped moving and looked at her in astonishment. “Can we talk about this when I get back?” He paused for a moment longer, and then turned and hurried out the door.
His words, his tone kicked her, full on. All the more so because she knew he was right; someone was in trouble and all she could do was argue about a phone call, argue about the fact that Zoe chose to reach out to them. But her shame only added to the fury that was now running riot through her body. It wasn’t “them” Zoe had called, it was Gavin. And her heart was hammering with that implication. It took every ounce of her self-control not to shriek at him as he walked out of the apartment, “You’re screwing Zoe!” Goddamn him.
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