But she knew that he was preparing to make his way over. Brenda was prepping him, discussing intimate and provocative details about her.
In the corner of the entrance hallway, a jazz trio played softly. Women guests were dressed in sparkling apparel. Men wore suits, a sprinkling of tuxes. Pondering her future, all she could imagine was a blankness, a void. Even within the restraints of time—today, tomorrow, the next day, a week, a year—she was filled with dread, a vastness of incomprehension.
She used to have expectations: to have her share of established milestones and their corresponding emotions. Life was supposed to follow a routine, with the buffering mix of wealth—marriage, children, possibly divorce, illness, and then, finally and mercifully, death. A pattern. But her life was a confusing unknown.
Breaking into her reverie and her line of vision was a shadow, and when she turned, she saw the bulky countenance of Jim—a blur of thigh and torso—clearing into the man. He stared down at her with the confidence and merriment of a person with nothing to lose. “I suppose,” he said, “there’s nothing quite as lovely as a beautiful woman sulking.”
Go away, she told him mentally.
“Brenda tells me you work at True Romance.”
She answered him unkindly with her eyes.
“Do you enjoy your job?”
She gave him a controlled frown.
“She says your maternal clock is ticking, but that you can’t find ‘The One.’”
She held her silence. Her only provocation was to not speak—to not take his bait. She’d dealt with men like him, with their adversarial flirtations.
“Tick-tock, tick-tock,” he said.
She turned and looked the other direction.
He gave a satisfied laugh.
For some time, they were silent. Then he said, “You’re not done with me,” and she heard him moving away.
Yes I am, she thought, watching his backside as he walked to the main living room; the silky cloth of his jacket creased in a triangular pattern between his shoulder blades, and the backs of his thighs pressed and bulged against his trousers.
She turned her attention back to Brenda, who was smiling and laughing and nodding. Brenda’s head went back, sounding a high peal of laughter.
When her head resumed its upright position, she turned to look directly at Esther, eyes shimmering.
Esther had an impulse to slap her, kick her, hit her, scream at her, or spit in her face. Instead, she smiled while Brenda beckoned with a hand, Come here. Come here, come here, come here!
Esther shook her head and Brenda glowered, then shrugged, as if insisting, Your loss, sweetheart.
Brenda turned back to her guests, resuming her joyful aura.
Esther listened to a flirtatious conversation between a man and a woman. They were standing near the fireplace, in a corner of the room, and from her vantage point, she could see that the man’s hand was cupping the woman’s ass.
“You don’t know what it’s like!” the woman said.
“That’s true,” the man answered. “I don’t know what it’s like.”
“If I were ugly and plain, no man would want me. Who would want me?”
“Not me!”
“Do you think I’m pretty?”
“Of course.”
“What do you like best?”
“Hmm. That’s a difficult question.”
“Come on! Answer!”
Esther saw the man squeeze the woman’s buttock gently in reply, and then the man and woman laughed. They moved into the main living room.
A log snapped in the fireplace, and Esther lost herself in the blueness at the center of the flames. At the base of the fire grate was a steady purple-blue hiss of gas, making the flames whip up and over the wood in a synthetically beautiful way.
As a child, she would have nightmares and would wake in a panic, make her way to her father’s bedroom. He wouldn’t ask her about her nightmares, knowing that she was reluctant to bring them back to life. He’d let her stay in his bedroom until she was ready to go back to hers.
“I’m here,” he would tell her, stroking her hair, comforting her. “I love you.” Her arms around his neck, legs looped at his waist, feet crossed at his back, as he carried her back to her bed.
She would slip into sleep, awaken—holding on, pressed against him—and slide back into sleep. Her face on his chest.
I’m here. I love you. I’m here. I love you.
She sensed the presence of someone behind the couch, disrupting her trance, a shadow against the wall.
Before she could turn, darkness enfolded her, cold palms and fingers cupped over her eyes: “Guess who?” A whispered voice.
A dark and clammy pause as she tried to figure it out. Female voice, female hands. Who could it be?
Another whisper: “Guess who?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I give up. Who?”
Nora came from behind the couch, wearing a silver-fringed paper tiara and a misguided red dress, no doubt a donation to her nonprofit.
Nora tugged at the bust to readjust her small breasts at its loose-fitting and strapless front. Top hats, paper tiaras, horns, noisemakers, and blowouts had been placed throughout the house, but as far as Esther knew, Nora was the only one taking advantage.
Nora picked up a blowout from the coffee table and blew at it, cheeks puffed—it made an awful toot noise, paper fluttering.
When she finished, she said, “Happy New Year!”—a fierceness in her expression, an exaggerated gaiety. She wasn’t wearing makeup, except for a harsh purplish-red lipstick that gave her mouth a pornographic look.
“It isn’t midnight,” Esther responded. She had always avoided Nora, knowing that Nora and Charlie were good friends, and that she couldn’t compete (and didn’t want to) with Nora’s saintlike altruism.
“I’ve never been to a party with a fortune-teller before,” Nora said. Inside the den was a fortune-teller, dangling beads at the doorway, and a small line had formed.
“Brenda has one every year,” Esther said.
“You’re kind of glum,” Nora said, a blotch of pink crawling up her neck.
“Not really,” she said.
Nora tugged again at her bust, pulling at her dress. “You could fill this out,” she said.
Esther decided not to respond.
Nora placed the blowout on the table, and then clutched one hand at the wrist of her other, crossed in front at her stomach. She had bony shoulders, a skinny neck. After a long pause, she said, “Can you imagine living in a place like this?”
Esther sank back, resting her head against the couch. “I can imagine many things,” she said. She didn’t trust Nora’s magnanimous persona or her exceeding goodwill. And Nora’s surprising her had seemed antagonistic rather than playful.
“At Clothing for Change,” Nora said, “we call Brenda Number Six-One-Nine. That’s her address—oh, you already know that.”
Esther didn’t respond. As the first recipient of Brenda’s hand-offs, she had reduced Clothing for Change’s intake, and she had the impression that Nora was alluding to this fact.
Nora gave her a long look. Her lips looked separate from her face, as if her mouth might float away.
“What?” Esther asked, losing patience.
Nora looked like she was about to say something.
“Do I have food in my teeth?” Esther asked.
“Charlie came with me.”
Esther stifled an urge to look around and find proof.
“He’s my date,” Nora continued. “Well, not really a date date.” And she paused before adding, “But he did come with me.”
Esther was unable to come up with anything to say. She was aware that Charlie might be watching her. She wondered if Brenda’s fight with Sean had to do with Charlie’s coming to the party, but that was impossible: If he was Nora’s date, how would they have known?
“We talk about you,” Nora said.
Esther was annoyed by this implied inti
macy. She was sure that Charlie’s relationship with Nora was platonic, since she knew his taste (she was his taste), and she made no effort to hide this knowledge from her eyes.
But it backfired, because Nora said, “You could at least pretend to like me.”
Esther moved so that her body was no longer sunk into the couch. The sudden turn made her attentive. Disliking people wasn’t wrong unless you were called on it.
She tried to remember what Charlie had said: that she must be kind to Nora; that Nora was special; that Nora had overcome her environment. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She had the urge to wipe the lipstick from Nora’s lips and apply a more appealing color. Her face did occasionally seem gawkily beautiful.
Nora looked off into the main living room, as if to show that she didn’t care if Esther had anything further to say.
Esther shifted against the couch, uncomfortable with the turn of events.
“He’s out on the deck,” Nora said roughly, as if the conversation had reached a hostile cutoff point. “I’d better go find my date.”
Esther said nothing.
“Don’t worry,” Nora said, “I don’t like you either.” And then, without once looking back, she walked away.
Nora’s strange and rude behavior made Esther more alert, and she watched as Nora disappeared at the stairs to the deck. To her surprise, she felt a peculiar respect for Nora, and from that perspective, Nora became more interesting. She would have liked to ponder this revelation and, furthermore, the fact of Charlie’s being nearby, but then she saw Sean, unexpected, walking through the main living room—he must’ve come home through the back door by the kitchen.
Sean moved through the main living room, across the hallway—his eyes on her. He paused briefly in front of a caterer with her tray of drinks, each hand accepting a fluted glass of champagne, ignoring the men and women around him.
When he passed by Brenda, she stiffened and looked at Esther, panic-stricken, as if to say, Help! Don’t let him ruin my party!
Sean sat down next to Esther with a melodramatic groan, the leather of the couch creaking with his weight. He handed her a glass, and then he swallowed the champagne from his and leaned forward to set his empty glass on the table next to her half-eaten shrimp. His shirt was thin and white, allowing a glimpse of his paunchy breasts and sausage-colored nipples, and it was unbuttoned at his throat, the thatch of hair from his chest blooming at his Adam’s apple. His fist went to the center of his sternum and tapped. “Excuse me,” he said, preempting the small burp that followed.
She set her glass on the table. His trousers were stretched tight across his thighs, and his hand was fisted at his kneecap, black hairs at his wrist entwined in the gold links of his Rolex watchband.
He kissed her in greeting: lips and beard against her cheek, a hand against her knee, the smell of alcohol. When his mouth left, she smiled her appreciation, although if he weren’t watching, she would have wiped her face.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he said, far too loudly, confirming that he’d been drinking heavily. “Where have you been all my life?” It looked like he was wearing lip gloss. His eyes held a base sadness, no matter what emotion was at the forefront.
His neck lurched, as if attempting to release stress, a quick jerking motion. The movement required additional jerks, reminding her of an ambulatory chicken.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
“Sure,” he said, but then he changed his mind with a great force. “No. I’m not okay, Esther. I am not,” he paused, smiling angrily, “okay.” Looking at his wife, who turned from his gaze, he added, “It’s a question of degrees.”
He looked back at Esther with mock keen interest. “Did you know,” he said, “that it actually takes three rings to get married?” His eyes widened, as if shocked by the news he’d just imparted.
“I wasn’t aware,” she said, even though he’d already told her this joke.
“Yes, that’s right, Esther. That’s right. Three rings. There’s the engagement ring, of course, and there’s the wedding ring—and then there’s the suffer-ring.”
He waited for her to laugh, and when she didn’t, his head dropped. She placed her hand over his, his knuckle against her palm; and then, thinking it too risky, she removed her hand. He looked up and watched her for a long moment. “You’re a sweet little thing,” he said. “You shouldn’t be alone.”
She thought of the clothes and purses and cosmetics Brenda had given her, the lunches and dinners and nail appointments. She smiled with tenderness. “I like being alone,” she said.
His smile was full of lurid implications. “I’m sure,” he said, “that I would like you best alone, too—all to myself, for as long as possible, in all sorts of ways.”
There was heat in her face, but she continued to smile. Before she could stop him, his arms circled her waist, pulling her close, his facial hair against her neck and shoulder. She liked Sean, always had, but he was testing her tolerance, and she struggled politely against him. He made a deep, smelling intake, as if inhaling her into his body, and then he withdrew his boozy breath, making a low-pitched, guttural noise.
“It’s so nice to have an emotional connection,” he said, lips wetting her earlobe. She attempted with more force to pull away, but he drew her in, the buttons on his shirt pressed against her chest. “I’m in hell,” he exhaled. She caught a glimpse of Brenda—pretending not to watch.
“Stop,” she said, wriggling against him. And then, more forcefully, “Stop! Stop, stop!”
All at once, he released her, leaning back against the couch with an anguished look.
“Okay, Esther,” he said, his eyes eaten up with grief. “Whatever you say. Okay, Esther; okay, okay. That’s right.”
AFTER ASSURANCES OF Esther’s affection, of her continued respect and friendship, of her sympathy and thoughtfulness and confidence, Sean—gloomy, tortured—had left for his office with its foldout sofa bed, to do what they had both agreed was the best idea: “lie down for a while.”
Soon after, in a case of fortunate timing, Charlie came through the main living room. Primed by her recent experiences, his reappearance took on a spiritual quality and filled her with a sense of longing and renewal. He seemed to represent all that life had hidden from her, and all that, without his help, she could never find.
All at once, her defeats were tolerable. She felt a thrill at his proximity, an awareness that Brenda was watching, and a latent desire, for once in her life, to gain something that Brenda wanted.
He wore a dark-blue suit—the same jacket that she’d worn during their walk on the beach—and she appreciated his lanky physique and ironic expression. It was on the side of intellect and spirit that he seemed rich to her, and mysterious and deep, and he made those things more real. As she kept her focus on him, everyone and everything around her evaporated into insignificance.
Tall, hair long and not so well brushed, he paused before the river boulder and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking, his hand skimming the surface. Then he appeared to be looking for something, and when his eyes found hers, he smiled. It was as if her consciousness had gone to him as straight as an arrow—they looked at each other without hesitation, a look that crossed the party and continued to vibrate, a look that seemed to say, mutually, You! Hello, you!
She smiled back for him with what felt like an authentic smile, her first since Christmas, setting off a type of internal sparking, and he moved directly to the couch, waving away two caterers with their trays of champagne and weaving through a pack of guests, until he finally stood before her.
“Barefoot, as usual,” he said, glancing at her bare feet, indicating his intimate knowledge of her. And when he looked into her eyes, she felt an extraordinary sensation: In the time that had passed since their walk on the beach, their emotions for each other had changed; it was as if, even in each other’s absence, their feelings had progressed.
She shot a quick glance at Brenda, who was sending her di
sapproval and anger from across the room. Esther shuddered and then sat forward, enough so that Charlie could witness the swooping curve of the dress at her back, taking her glass of champagne from the table. She swallowed, knowing that he was watching her throat. Her awareness of his desire increased her desire, and then his eyes passed over her neck and collarbone and faltered somewhere near her breasts.
She set her glass on the table and leaned back into the couch. When she did look at him again, she acknowledged with her eyes what she imagined he was thinking, and he laughed nervously.
“Jeez,” he said. And then he grimaced, as if embarrassed by his inarticulate response. A pause. “I’d better keep standing,” he said. Another grimace. “I mean, I’d better not sit.”
She took hold of the conversation. “You make me feel”—she held his gaze—“like I can do what I want.”
His eyes were serious, set on hers. She felt herself going hot, understanding the implications of what was about to happen. They let the moment hold.
“And what is it you want?” he asked. But before she could answer, he leaned over, his hands supporting him on the back of the couch, and kissed her—tenderly, quickly, in front of everyone.
He pulled away, straightened.
“I want to leave,” she said, “right now, with you.”
PART TWO
1
WHEN ESTHER WOKE, the first thing she remembered was that she had cried involuntarily after her orgasm, immediately in the wake of Charlie’s extensive, sighing climax, and blood rose up her neck, flushing her face. She’d slept hard, no dreams, a weighty, deathlike sleep. A large wet splotch on her pillow, along with the dampness at the side of her face, proved that she’d drooled.
She looked under the covers, confirming what she already knew: She was naked. A slice of sunlight shone across the bed, striping her arm, dust motes static. She was alone, a note on Charlie’s pillow: “Nothing to eat! Back soon with breakfast.” And she reached up and pulled the cord, window blinds clanking shut.
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