“Ecks, ecks, ecks!” she cried, repeating his sign-off with forced animation. Her thin shoulders dropped and her face turned deadpan. “I am, in point of fact, in desperate need of a cigarette.”
The statement was an adieu as she knew I didn’t touch the things—my unglamorous allergy prevented me from being an extra in the Old Hollywood film reel that was Belle smoking. The settings and seasons would vary but the scenes were always outlined by the elegant arcs of her motioning, monogrammed cigarette holder. With a few flashes of red she flitted off in the direction of a spiraling staircase leading to other clandestine corners and a terrace lining the back of the mansion. Like in a reliable drawing-room comedy, her departure signaled Jeremy’s return.
“There’s Chase!” he shouted to me over a persistently whining horn. “Have you seen Annabelle?”
“She’s here,” I admitted. “But she’s off floating somewhere. Listen, Jeremy—”
The confirmation of her arrival was a gush of fuel stoking his already blazing fire. He spun toward the bar and towed me along with him.
“Watch yourself with the Yak-Yak, Kirby,” Chase chortled as we approached his vicinity. “It’s strong enough to knock a girl like you over. You, too, M. Though we all know you’re only part female.”
We took the hit and sidled up beside him at the bar. With scores of empty china littered around him, Chase was a handsome Mad Hatter that we had intruded on mid tea party. He was throwing back teacups as zealously as his paternal ancestors had tossed chests of it into Boston Harbor in 1773. It was almost laughable seeing Jeremy stand next to the masculine spectacle of Chase—Peter Parker puffing with courage in the shadow of a bulging Incredible Hulk. But even in those unlikely circumstances, Jeremy glowed with an undeniable aura of belief. When it was all said and done, I think that was his magic—he believed in principles and people and possibilities that were long since dead or maybe never existed in the first place, and though you doubted it all in your core, you wanted to shake off your damp cloak of cynicism and suspend your disbelief badly enough that, for a moment or two, you actually let him convince you.
“I’m capable of holding my own, Chase,” Jeremy replied, evenly. “Yak-Yak Bourbon and otherwise.”
“Ahh—that’s it, Kirby—a bit of fight! Nice to finally see what’s been missing at the office all this time.”
Chase sneered down at him, licking his red lips like a reptile trying to detect the smell of fear in his environs. A poinsettia petal in Jeremy’s buttonhole drooped a number of degrees under the concentrated blast of disdain, but he refused to give Chase the time of day. With a totally gratuitous bow in my direction, he whispered “M.” to me and wove his way through the crowd to the back staircase.
“You just couldn’t resist, could you?” I glared at Chase, turning to follow Jeremy.
“Don’t waste your time!” Chase called after me, cupping one large hand into a man-made trumpet. “We all know the boy’s a homo!”
I followed the trail of wilted poinsettia petals out of the room and up the stairs. I was about to step onto the back terrace when I saw Belle’s fragile silhouette ten feet ahead of me, trembling with a cigarette in a futile attempt to light it against the rain, misting and luminescent around her. A second silhouette stepped up beside her and suddenly there were two shadows leaning against the cast-iron railing in front of them and a degree or two toward each other. The second shadow swung its arm around gallantly and with a crack and flash her cigarette was lit and she inhaled gratefully, craning her long neck back to exhale at the bleeding stars above. It was a naturally tender tableau—so rare nowadays—and I was embarrassed to be witnessing it.
“We can’t keep running into each other like this,” Belle breathed to the shadow, dotting the statement with the punctuating red glow of her cigarette.
“Or maybe it’s precisely what we should keep on doing.”
The second voice was Jeremy, and it was backed by a confidence I had scarcely heard in it before. The rain had slicked down his hair again and he was back to looking immaculate, his side-part perfect. Even the least romantic of us could see—this was the type of easily cinematic scene that would play out between them every time they would meet. Stardust levels would spike whenever she was near him, and I, if I weren’t careful, would downgrade to an intruder lurking in a doorframe. I took one step back into the hallway to catch my breath. All I could think to do was rush back down to the nerve center of the party and lose myself in the din. But every passageway was identical—each turn I took was as disorienting and nondescript as the last. Hearing voices, I opened an unmarked door to see Chase and some bratty friends of his in the middle of an age-inappropriate lark. A man was swigging from a bottle of moonshine as Chase took a vigorous swing at his head with a cricket bat. The bat cracked the neck of the bottle cleanly so only the top inch of glass was left sticking out of the man’s mouth. His eyes were two amazed circles as he spat out the neck onto herringbone hardwood floorboards on the other side of the room. I fled that scene and was finally back downstairs. Plucking a bedazzled headpiece from the cloakroom as my camouflage, I did one full, anonymous circle of the party.
On the closing bend I walked straight into a fellow I’d never seen before so wasn’t looking to avoid. He wore tortoiseshell glasses and an academic but not unstylish tweed jacket, and had a nose and cheeks dusted with a soft scattering of freckles. With one hand tucked neatly into his pocket, he was pleasantly observing the party from the periphery like a courtside spectator leisurely watching the pop and squeak of a rigorous tennis match.
“You look about as keen to get involved in this as I do,” he commented, raising his tin cup in my direction. “I’ve got a great front-row seat here, if you’d like to come heckle with me.”
He was a stranger—a tall and undeniably good-looking one at that—and a special oasis because of it.
“I don’t mind if I do,” I said, ducking under a fast-floating cocktail tray to step alongside him. “It’s a bit of a minefield in here.”
“I’m Scott,” he revealed, producing an overflowing teacup out of thin air and handing it to me.
“M.,” I revealed back.
“Just the initial?”
“Just the initial.” I laughed.
“It’s very double-oh-seven. Do you command an intelligence division?”
“No, I’m sorry to say I missed that interview slot during senior-year recruiting. I work at an investment bank.” I thought I’d better come out with the unpleasant thing right away. Telling him what I did for a living handed him a chance to take shelter behind the next cocktail tray drifting by and side-shuffle along the edge of the room away from me.
“You look far too smart for that,” he remarked, giving no indication of wanting to leave.
“You’re probably right,” I agreed, buoyed by the compliment.
“Hey, look, there’s one of your colleagues now!”
He pointed toward an irreverent rascal running in tight circles, uncoiling two never-ending ropes of pearls from a statuesque woman’s neck to use in a double dutch skipping competition under way on the far side of the floor. Bets were placed and, with a running start, the man slotted himself in between the circling whip of the shimmering strands, carefully training a lit cigar between his teeth. I squinted toward the jumping figure and, despite the plumes of cigar smoke billowing around him, nodded my head in confirmation.
“You’re not going to believe it, but I actually think he runs our large cap equity strategy.” It was, against all odds, a Bartholomew Brothers fund manager moonlighting as a Prohibition-era floor performer. For better or for worse, these were the sorts of things that the firm’s annual 360-degree review process never managed to catch. But this Scott fellow—he didn’t miss a trick.
“Another one who’s missed his calling. You know, he’d have a decent shot at next year’s Double Dutch Holiday Classic at the Apollo.”
We were both quiet for a minute and, though my palms were rapidly cla
mming up, it was so strange and nice to feel no impending pressure to bat my eyelashes or be falsely witty all in order to hold the boy. I had the sense he was hoping to hear exactly the stuff that was on my mind, unfiltered and persnickety.
A mob of guests rattled past us in a fiery blur—all limbs and beechwood walking sticks and cigarette holders bent at acute angles. They were trailed by a monocled man slaloming adeptly on a unicycle, balancing a tray with a miniature tower of champagne coupes that emitted a bright-yellow halo of fizz around him.
“They can’t get enough of the past, can they?” Scott said smartly. He had removed his glasses to buff the lenses and his eyes were slate gray, unassuming and clear. Looking to him, I could see the blazing spectacle around us reflected with surprising detail through his irises. It was obvious he was entirely comfortable standing in his own brogues, in his own time, in his own skin—watching the party, being removed from it yet part of it all the same, and his air of modest self-satisfaction made him fantastically attractive. Like me, he was one of the few people without a full-blown costume that night.
“You can say that again,” I answered, eagerly. “They’re totally nostalgic. Have zero interest in looking forward. Why is that?”
“They’re scared as hell,” he said, conclusively.
“Scared as hell? They look like they’re having a ball!” I cried, tossing back the dregs of my teacup.
“Oh, they’re definitely having a blast. Wearing a costume is always a riot, right?” He looked at my borrowed headpiece, gaudy and rhinestoned. Blood rushed bashfully to my cheeks. “Plus, putting on a show keeps you safe. In a way, it makes you untouchable.”
He put his glasses back on and gestured over to a couple taking turns flinging themselves around a pair of flamboyant flappers shimmying in spangled unison near the beached bathtub. Were they film stars? They looked familiar and otherworldly all at once. It took a moment for me to clue in, but after a few more seconds something quivered and I realized the flappers were not actual people but remarkably lifelike holograms—the kind that had become all the rage at parties and concerts and corporate events around the globe—projected upward from a stretch of polished hardwood. The couple wanted to be near the girls—knock knees with them, Savoy Kick with them—but they could never touch or be touched by them. Scott’s idea crystallized before me.
“They’re not really there, so they’re invincible,” I whispered, wondering how—with such elegant ease—the bawdy Bender had turned so philosophical.
The revelation triggered the reentrance of Jeremy and Belle into the room together, both happily damp but looking as though they had just stepped out of the sun. Her arm linked lightly with his.
“There are my friends!” I cried to Scott. “It’s been really fun heckling but it looks like I have to jump back into the fray.” I said it in the hopes that he’d come with me, but realized I had botched it, looking like I was leaping at the first available escape hatch. I suddenly felt two hundred pounds—overeager and lead-tongued and dull-witted. I had no idea what to say, how to rewind the last five seconds to get our conversation back on track.
“You be careful,” he warned, his hand still tucked neatly in his pocket. “You know Pierpont won’t wrap this thing up until that entire bathtub is drained.”
“I’ll keep my wits about me,” I assured him. I took one step away from him and felt a sentimental pull backward—a wish for him to ask me not to go.
“I hope we’ll bump into each other again!” he called out to me. “Ideally somewhere aboveground.”
“I’d like that.” I turned back to him and smiled.
“Well, M., you’re the one who should be in intelligence. I have total confidence you’ll know how to find me.”
I moved toward Jeremy and Belle, brain lightly spinning. I felt the urge to pull them both into a football huddle and rush out everything about meeting Scott. Maybe they knew him—maybe they would give me words of advice about what I was supposed to do next, about his last line that could have been a tease or a dare or a hope or just a dumb joke. But as I approached them I saw they were leagues away, from me, from Scott, from the entire Bender.
“Who actually throws this thing?” I heard Jeremy ask Belle, oblivious to my approach.
“His name is Pierpont!” she laughed back.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Pierpont! The man who throws the Bender is named Pierpont!”
“Very good name!”
“Isn’t it?” she gushed. “I can’t wait to name my children beautifully forgotten names like Pearl and Cornelius and Homer and Saint John, pronounced Sin-Jin.”
The band struck up a new, even more boisterous tune and Belle knew what she needed to do. Before I was able to reach them, she grabbed Jeremy’s hand and pulled him toward the dance floor that was rioting in circles around the beached bathtub. Chase would have rather taken a bullet to a limb than be caught on a dance floor. By contrast, I knew Jeremy would feel relieved to be in familiar ballroom territory. He always managed to cut a dash on any dance floor. He once told me his mother mandated dancing lessons at the local community center growing up—mortifying then, but it meant that in adult life he knew how to foxtrot and quickstep and Charleston with the best of them. But this was no classic ballroom and the dance Belle wanted to dance was by no means textbook, though I knew she too could ballroom dance with ease and grace—it was an essential pillar of her La Belle Vie manifesto. Jeremy tried to properly hold her several times to begin the slow-slow-quick-quick pattern of the foxtrot but with each attempt she swung herself closer to him, a constant pinprick to the gentlemanly balloon’s-length distance he was trying to keep. In his arms, she didn’t wilt but seemed to instantly relax like a cascading stem of ivy. She hadn’t looked that flushed with delight since the salad days of our sophomore year. Jeremy whispered something in her ear and she threw her head back again in laughter, sinking even closer to his bourbon-laced mintiness. I didn’t realize quite how avidly I was watching them until Chase appeared beside me, the odor of scotch now prominently lacing his Acqua di Parma force field.
“If you think it’s that pretty, why don’t you take a bloody picture?”
“Take a hike, Chase.”
“Do they even know each other?” he barked, amusedly. In his woozy state, his signet-ringed pinky finger had elevated and was parallel to the floor as he sipped another teacup full of hooch. The sight of the ring winking at me as his substantial fifth digit hovered in the air made me want to tear my own signet ring off in mild nausea.
“They met today,” I explained. “Outside the office, when you wouldn’t come downstairs to see her.”
“Let me guess, Belle took him for a spin around Battery Park on her handlebars? I guess being a petite male can come in handy for something.”
I wanted to spit back a line about Jeremy not being petite—he was almost six feet tall, he just wasn’t a bruiser. But I could only manage to articulate the real thing—the thing that mattered most.
“Something’s happened.”
Chase smirked at this. In his mind, things didn’t just happen—in life you stared things in the eye, grabbed them by the throat, and made them happen for yourself.
“Yes, it certainly has. As you can see the Yak-Yak has gone to my girlfriend’s head.”
“You can call it Yak-Yak if it’ll make you less miserable. But something’s happened.”
He glowered at me and I stared cloudily back at him. We had turned away for all of three seconds and when we looked back at the floor, Jeremy and Belle were locked in a kiss, with Belle swooning backward languidly and Jeremy holding the small of her back securely. It seemed to last an eternity, until Chase took his invisible polo mallet to the freeze-frame.
“Well, isn’t this a real goddamn crazy place.” He drained his china cup dry then shattered its dainty shell in his hand, his face entirely deadpan. Shards of porcelain rained down onto my shoes and I saw his still-clenched fist was bleeding. His English reserve
had trumped his American rowdiness and instead of thrashing the errant Jeremy, which he could have done easily, he stood there fuming with blue eyes blazing. “Fuck it. I can’t be arsed to waste my time with that wanker.”
The incident attracted the fleeting attention of nearby partygoers. Belle was lost on the other side of the moon, but Jeremy looked over to us. He hadn’t the foggiest idea we had been standing there to witness their silly twirling and the bright swoon of their kiss. It was an unprecedented moment—what on Earth was it? I could see Jeremy’s mind grating back and forth as he looked to us, trying to grind out the answer. I was sure, up until that point, he had never seen Chase look flustered. And I saw a look of amazement blanket him when he watched the great Chase, hunched in distaste and defeat, leave the party with bloodied hand oozing, and realized it was he and Belle who had done it.
* * *
The lucky silver dollar had gone missing. It was Jeremy’s prized possession, given to him by his late grandfather who had taught him how to balloon and everything essential in his life. You don’t need luck, son, but keep this silver dollar in your jacket just in case. It vanished from his inner pocket the night of the December Bender. A frantic call woke me in my bleary state the morning after.
“It’s the damnedest thing,” Jeremy said to me in a daze. He told me he had taken the coin out of his inside pocket on one of his trips to the gents. Turning the shining circle with two fingers, he had gazed at its reflection in the mirror while trying to digest his disbelief that Belle was training her attention so unambiguously on him. Despite all the other dapper types sidestepping in lockjawed unison through the mansion rooms and corridors around him—Chase Breckenridge included—she had picked him.
“Come back with me, M.? They might ask for that whaddyacallit—that secret handshake business at the door again.”
Thanks to the Bender, I felt as crisp as an accidentally laundered ten-dollar bill. But of course I couldn’t say no to him. I knew what the memento meant to him. Jeremy was a fundamentally superstitious man, one who ducked nimbly around ladders and shook his fist at any oblivious black cat padding across his path. So he couldn’t bear the thought of his budding Romance with Belle setting off on a disastrously inauspicious foot. A half giddy thought also occurred to me: Scott had mentioned Pierpont by name. Maybe he was a close friend of the host and had stayed the night, seeing the bathtub’s draining through till dawn when only the dark detritus of overblown revelry clung to its porcelain skin. Maybe, when the great gong of the daytime doorbell sounded, he would be there to greet us, fuzzy-headed and fragile from one too many tin cups of Yak-Yak.
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