The Basic Eight

by Daniel Handler

  “What are you talking about?” Kate said. “Does this have to do with Adam? He’s coming tonight, you know.”

  “I know,” I said glumly. There was no way I was going to be small and beautiful by tonight. “No, this doesn’t have to do with Adam. I’m just asking, theoretically, if a person got less ugly could it be said that they got more beautiful?”

  “Well,” Kate said dryly. Kate was saying things dryly, I was saying them glumly. I think these adverbial embellishments make the conversation sound less stark. “This is just theoretical?”

  “Right,” I said. “Theoretical. You know, like any intellectual conversation.”

  “Well,” Kate said, and this time she said it carefully. “Well,” Kate said carefully, “I would have to disagree with your statement. Martin Luther King said that peace was not merely the absence of violence but the presence of a positive force, or something like that, and I think it’s the same thing with beauty. I mean, you don’t look at some vast and beautiful landscape and think, There’s nothing ugly here.”

  Kate’s well-meaning smoke screen hasn’t foiled my unshakable logic, and I will extend it further. A less fat body makes a more beautiful person, so we need something that makes a less fat body, and of course we all know what makes a body less fat: less food. When I think of all the food I consumed just last night I am sick at my extravagance, and judging from my fat legs, my fat stomach, even my fat arms, this sort of extravagance goes on all the time. All that Thai food I ate last night for instance, that chicken dish and those greasy, greasy fried egg rolls, the grease of which luckily seems to have found its way to my hair instead of my body. The chocolate-covered mints at the movie. I will hereby dismiss, again, my justification that dieting is some tacky Middle American bourgeois pastime. It is very sensible, dieting. Simply eating less food and thus becoming more beautiful. To no other problem in life is there such an elegant solution. To start my diet I will not eat anything until the dinner party tonight, and then I will only eat sensibly, just salad perhaps. No longer will I allow myself to become as large as any of the obstacles that separate Adam and me from each other. To keep my mind off food I will do some schoolwork, thus also taking care of my other Cardinal Sin besides Gluttony: (Academic) Sloth. I will read Anne Bradstreet, another disciplined woman.

  LATER

  If there were any seeds of doubt in my mind as to whether I really loved Adam or just some image of Adam, they were all killed by the frost that was tonight’s dinner party. No, wait, that sounds like it was some cold, deadly evening. I mean the opposite. I guess I mean that if the flower of my love for Adam was being stunted by any feelings of doubt, then tonight fully fertilized my seed and allowed it to grow. That works if you don’t think about the fact that fertilizer is made of shit. I guess it’s obvious I’ve had wine, but the evening was magical, magical, magical and I want to write it down before it evaporates into the night air like streams of sensual smoke.

  Gabriel gave me a ride to Kate’s, which meant we had to arrive early so Gabriel could start cooking. Gabriel is terribly, terribly fussy about his culinarities, and never lets us do anything, not even chop, so Kate and I sat at the kitchen table and speculated on possibilities concerning Jennifer Rose Milton’s love life while Gabriel marinated some snapper and chopped red peppers with such ferocity that the off-white tiles of Kate’s kitchen looked positively gory. Gabriel had a pure white apron over a very handsome coat and tie and kept smiling at me.

  Natasha arrived, bearing cleavage and brie, and immediately fell into a squabble with Gabriel over how to bake it properly. Kate and I sat basking in the pretentiousness of it all.

  “I have a full pound of celery to chop and it’s already a quarter to seven,” Gabriel said, wiping his hands on his apron. They left faint red handprints like the frantic last flailings of a victim. Who could have known?

  “I’m telling you, Gabe,” she said, incurring his least favorite of her nicknames for him; he preferred ‘Riel pronounced “real” or Gall pronounced “gall.” “A tablespoon of olive oil. It gives the whole thing some lubrication.”

  “To most areas where knowledge of lubrication is key, I yield to your expertise. But olive oil on brie? This isn’t fucking mozzarella, Natasha!”

  “Hey now!” I said. Gabriel seemed unusually tense, even for a new recipe. “Do I have to separate you two?” They continued to glare at each other and it struck me that maybe there was something going on that I didn’t know about.

  “For God’s sake,” Kate said, and flounced across the kitchen. She picked up the Palatial Palate Cookbook and thumbed through the index. The two litigants stood stock-still–Gabriel arms akimbo, Natasha clutching the brie like Hamlet holding the skull, waiting for Kate to render her decision. She played it to the hilt, flipped pages, flipped pages, flipped pages. Finally she spoke. “Ahem. I quote directly from Ms. Julia Mann in her section on brie baking: ‘The addition of any oil to brie, or any other soft-ripening cheese, prior to baking, is redundant at best, disastrous at worst.’”

  Gabriel tried not very hard to conceal a smug grin. Natasha glowered first at Gabriel, then Kate, then for no good reason, me. You could hear a pin drop.

  And then a brie. It was wrapped in plastic, so there wasn’t a mess, but the fall to the floor left the cheese looking wounded and misshapen. It was such a pathetic sight that I couldn’t help but giggle, and in one of those magical tension-loosening moments that I believe float aimlessly around the planet, easing awkward situations worldwide, everyone broke out laughing. Gabriel put his arm around Natasha, and Natasha put her arm around Gabriel, and there we were, all laughing in a circle around a fallen brie, when Adam walked in.

  The first thing I saw were his shoes, which were black and thick–the direct opposite of Adam, come to think of it. My eyes just went up his jeans, up the row of buttons on his Oxford, uneven like a lazy fence out in the country somewhere, up his freshly shaven chin to his smile to his bright green eyes, and I felt myself fall right into his pupils.

  “The door was open,” he said apologetically, peering over Natasha’s shoulder at the fallen cheese.

  “That’s because we wanted you to come in,” Kate said charmingly, standing up on tiptoe and kissing him on each cheek. Gabriel snorted and went back to the cutting board.

  Natasha picked up the cheese with one hand and extended her other one to Adam. “Hello, Adam,” she said demurely.

  Kate returned the cookbook to the cupboard, clearing a path between Adam and Flannery. Their eyes met across the nearly empty room.

  “Flannery,” he said, and smiled.

  “Flannery,” he said, and smiled.

  “FLANNERY,” HE SAID, AND SMILED.

  SMILED SMILED SMILED.

  Ahem. Not only did he smile at me, he said my name, and there wasn’t a question mark after it, as in “Your name is Flannery, am I right?” nor was it a simple, cold acknowledgment, as in, “I recognize you but I’d much rather talk to Natasha, who has cleavage.” He smiled; I think, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we can surmise he was glad to see me.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m glad you could make it.”

  “Me too,” he said. Our eyes met, and locked, and I know it’s corny to say that but what the hell it’s late at night, I’m a little tipsy and besides it’s my own journal so who cares.

  Kate coughed slightly and we came to. Adam blushed slightly, even; but his shirt was pure white, so it just made him glow even more. Don’t think I don’t realize the drippiness of this prose.

  “Folks,” he said–what a charming thing to say! “Folks!” “I know you asked me to bring wine, but I forgot to ask what we’re having, so I didn’t know whether to bring white or red.”

  Natasha looked stricken at the thought of no wine. “So you didn’t bring any?”

  Adam walked over and put a mock-comforting hand on her shoulder, then, electrically, on mine. “Don’t worry, my angels,” he said in a Prince Charming Voice, “I have a fake ID. I will run to a ne
arby liquor store and purchase wine for everyone. Just tell me of the entrée.”

  Gabriel turned from a skillet. “Snapper!” he said shortly, and turned back.

  “You certainly are,” Natasha said.

  Kate stepped forward with a plate of chopped carrots, appeasing all with appetizers. “So, Adam, a couple bottles of white?”

  “Sounds good. Can I kidnap one of you who knows about wine? If I go alone I’m bound to come back with lighter fluid.”

  “Well,” Kate said, extending an arm out. I noticed she had done her nails for tonight. “Natasha needs to bake the brie, and Gabriel needs to cook, and the hostess certainly can’t leave, so would you, Flannery?”

  “Would I? Would I?” I said, and everybody laughed except Adam; it was a favorite joke of the Basic Eight God forgive me, but it’s easier to write that nickname than list us all individually. It goes like this: A man loses his job, goes to a bar and gets drunk, and gets into a car accident while driving home. When he gets to the hospital he is told that his eye needs to be replaced with a prosthetic. His recent unemployed status fixed firmly in his mind, he prices several models: an amazingly lifelike and amazingly costly porcelain model, a reasonably lifelike and reasonably costly glass orb and finally the bottom of the line, which he chooses. It’s made of wood.

  He wakes up from surgery, looks in the mirror, and embarks on the life of a hermit for the next fifteen years. Heedless of the pleas of his friends, he refuses to socialize or even leave the house. Finally, a friend comes to see him, gets him tipsy and drags him to a discotheque. Our hero sits in a corner, hoping the dim ambience is hiding what looks like an ugly mahogany periscope dangling from his face. Then, across a crowded room–the camera swooping between extras–he spots a beautiful woman, sitting quietly alone, who stuns him from her feet to her–the camera sliding up her body–glabrous head! A bald woman! Someone who will understand his pain! Someone undoubtedly alone, because she, too, feels incapacitated by a medically induced deficiency on the head! Breathlessly, he rushes to her and shyly asks, “Would you care to dance?”

  Her eyes light up. “Would I?” she repeats. “Would I?”

  He turns and stalks away, but not before shouting, “Baldy! Baldy!”

  Nothing made me happier than hearing Adam’s laughter bounce off Kate’s hill and up into the crisp night sky. “That’s wonderful,” he said. “Wonderful. So deliciously evil.”

  It was like I was already drunk by the time we arrived at the liquor store. Rows and rows of perfect green bottles shimmered around me like some perfect Egyptian reeds. From the corner of my eye the word “GIN” looked like the word “BEGIN.” Even the poses of cigarette poster models didn’t seem frozen but poised. Everyone was holding their breath (breaths? Who cares.), and for the first time I felt like they wouldn’t be disappointed. It was like watching a movie and the two famous people first meet and you sit in the dark grinning because you know how it ends: They’re going to fall in love.

  We walked back, each with a bottle, and in the light of the street lamps our shadows looked almost identical. In the movies we would have kissed, but this being paper and not celluloid, we just talked. We discussed being back at school, how neither of us has done any work on college applications and whether Flora Habstat would really quote The Guinness Book of World Records.

  When we got back the season had truly begun: Darling Mud on the stereo (loud music during cooking, quiet during dinner. Immutable.) and all the guests. V__ and Jennifer Rose Milton, with a slightly geeky-looking Flora Habstat in tow, were tied for most gorgeous, both in black silk pants to their embarrassment. Douglas, of course, was in linen, and, wincing at “on and on and on,” was already flipping through records looking for dinner music. It’s always his job, that and bringing flowers. Douglas is crazy about flowers. Natasha, who has gone out with him too, said that it felt like he was constantly giving her vaginas, but I felt nothing indecent; I just felt a little overwhelmed by all the xylem and phloem. But Douglas must have been pulling out all financial stops for Lily or something, because there was just a simple vase of daisies on the table. V__ begged Kate to let her polish something. V__ has some strange urges from being raised so rich and one of them is that she needs to have things polished before she can eat off of them. Kate scraped up some silver polish for her, and V__ spent the next fifteen minutes polishing some serving forks which were probably made of stainless steel but it made her happy. By the time we all sat down at the table the serving forks could have lit the room without the candles. Next to all the other tableware they looked like great shining daggers, fresh and ready to claim the life of someone close to us and throw the rest of us into turmoil and heartbreak. Not that Adam was killed with daggers, but it seemed like a good time to foreshadow.

  Before we ate came the toasts. Kate, at the head of the table where she belonged and where she will always belong, clinked her glass. “Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen, to the first dinner party of the season.”

  “The season?” Flora Habstat said. “You guys really have a season? Like football?”

  V__ looked at Flora in what is described in books as “archly.” “Not at all,” she said huffily, “like football.”

  “It’s just an expression. Kate means the first of the school year,” Jennifer Rose Milton explained hurriedly.

  Kate sailed on like a queen. “I think we should all go around the table, each of us presenting a toast. I will go first.” She cleared her throat and looked down as if collecting her thoughts, though I suspected she wrote the speech this afternoon. She raised her glass by the stem, as V__ had instructed us to do two years ago at our first dinner party. I cringe when I think it was just spaghetti with marinara and garlic bread. We all followed suit, and as my glass cooled my fingertips I felt connected to a long line of literary circles: Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker, and what’s-her-name, Virginia Woolf, Byron and his friends, even Shakespeare and Company. I was acting in a tradition.

  “To all of my guests, both frequent and infrequent,” Kate said, bowing regally to Flora Habstat and Adam. “May we generally be happy, generally be witty, generally be honest, but above all always be interesting.” We clinked and drank.

  Gabriel, the next in clockwise order, was looking at Kate oddly. “And may we always be friends,” he said. “That’s my toast. Better friends than interesting.”

  “Please,” Natasha said at my right, “better chicken than egg. Who cares?”

  “Obviously you don’t,” Gabriel said. It grew deathly cold.

  “I do believe I still smell that brie,” Kate said, and we all laughed. Kate glowed at her bon mot briefly before nodding for Douglas to go next.

  Douglas cleared his throat. “This may sound dire, but I would like to toast to the hope of making it through this year. When my sister was a senior she never really told me what was going on, but she was really stressed and worried and cried a lot. I think that sort of stuff can really test friendships, and so I want to toast to being careful and trying to make it through.” He raised his glass and we all slowly followed. Douglas always was a worrywart, but this seemed darker. Even the clinking of our glasses seemed to be at a lower pitch. For a second I almost ran to him and held him but then I didn’t.

  Lily looked like the burden was on her to lighten the tone, but snappy jokes aren’t her style. She plans things out. She looked at her plate and then out at us. “Here’s to rising above petty obstacles.”

  “Must we?” Kate asked. “What should we fight about, if not silly things like how to bake the brie? Must we reserve fighting for deep emotional conflicts?”

  “I’m sorry. My toast was inaccurate.” Lily narrowed her eyes. “Here’s to letting our favorite superficial things, like baking brie, replace whatever other superficial things, like, say, college applications, may get in our way.” With that, everyone drank; thinking about college applications tends to make us thirsty. “Amen!” cried Gabriel and Natasha in unison, and they looked at each other across
the table, tried to scowl and finally grinned.

  Flora Habstat was next and looked uncertain. She had been looking uncertain since we all sat down. Finally her eyes lit up hopefully and she raised her glass. “Here’s to being pushed to the limit academically, athletically and socially!” The PTA slogan. At one of our dinner parties. The trouble with everyone trying not to laugh at once is that you can’t look anywhere for fear of meeting someone’s eyes. We all stared at different points in space in tableau, like a table full of mannequins.

  Jennifer Rose Milton, at the opposite head of the table, tried to save the day. “I make the same toast as Flora, only more generalized.” Whether she is more kind or more beautiful is completely up for grabs in my book. “May all the clichés people try to sell us about this time in our lives come true. I mean, it would be nice to be pushed to the limit academically, athletically and socially, wouldn’t it? It would be nice to have the greatest time of our lives and to have our eyes shining with promise and all that, wouldn’t it?”

  We all nodded dumbly; if we had opened our mouths we still might have laughed at poor Flora.

  Natasha was the only one who had the guts to push us to the limit socially by trying to break our pent-up laughter. “In that case,” she said, her voice mock-softening, “I toast to world peace.”

  “You know,” Flora Habstat said brightly, “I read in The Guinness Book of World Records that world peace is the most frequent toast at official functions.”

  We couldn’t hold it. We all laughed loud and long, and luckily Flora Habstat looked confused rather than hurt so I think she didn’t know what we were laughing at. “If it would be all right with our hostess,” I said while everyone was still laughing, “I vote to dispense with the rest of the toasts. After world peace there’s little else to toast.”

  Kate looked a little disappointed but didn’t push it. “I suppose. Well, let’s eat.”