by Ann Beattie
In their early twenties, her crowd’s who’s-sleeping-with-whom? game had been preoccupying: one-night stands, affairs, betrayals confessed over vodkas on ice. All those years of pushing ice cubes out of trays. No apartment ever seemed to have a refrigerator with an ice maker. She remembered Trey, hitting a mass of 7-Eleven ice, having to go to the emergency room after breaking his thumb. Mandy had gone to the hospital with him and his twin sister, Tina, who—as they waited in the corridor—wondered aloud if they should call Alicia, because he’d been sleeping with her. At that time, Alicia had been low on the totem pole of women the other women liked, but now that she worked at Vogue, it was clear that when Alicia wasn’t liked, it was jealousy. Mandy jotted Genine’s name onto her list. She’d decided against getting take-out from the Mexican place on Thirty-sixth, and decided instead to order a sheet cake from the supermarket. Cake and champagne would be enough, since all people really wanted to do was talk. Carter and Jake should be invited. Colin Jaye, from Oak Park, who—after he’d ranted about cults and followers of gurus—Alicia had nicknamed “Sri So Sensible.”
A year ago at this time, Mandy had wondered if she might be in love with Trey’s good friend Jake Nemeyer, though the joke had been on her: he’d thrown an out-of-the-closet party, and afterward, Mandy had gone alone to the last showing of the night to see You Can Count On Me, which moved her to tears. Though she could see that she acted like the sister in the movie—dependable; loyal; someone who could be relied on to fix things—she identified with the wayward brother. When she got out of the theater she found it had been snowing. Late at night, snow: everything blurry; the air freezing. The cabdriver had said, “Unless somebody died, you shouldn’t be crying. What are you? Thirty? Did somebody die?” He had even guessed her age as older than she was. She had him take her uptown to the building where she worked. She told the night watchman she’d forgotten something in her office. He looked at her and let her in and didn’t call out when she walked past the after-hours book without signing in. She’d guessed correctly that he wouldn’t come looking for her if she didn’t emerge. She curled up on the fake leopard-skin rug spread over the wall-to-wall carpeting on her boss’s floor, her damp coat a good enough blanket that she eventually fell asleep. When the sky brightened, she went to the bathroom and washed her face, using a dot of liquid soap to clean her teeth. Back in the office, she saw that she had written on a memo pad: “Unless somebody died, you shouldn’t be crying.” She didn’t remember writing it, but in any case, the cabbie had been right. She thought of her grandfather, and his months of suffering before he died. She went to the window and looked into the snow in the general direction of where, on a different day, the sun would rise. She returned to the bathroom for hot water to fill her mug and emptied a packet of instant cocoa she took out of her boss’s desk drawer into it. She should have known, because of the way Jake always avoided kissing her on the lips. Her lips were chapped, so she put on lip balm, then brushed her hair. There were most certainly worse mistakes than the one she’d almost made. She went to her own desk and drank the tepid cocoa and resolved to buy the shoes with the impractical high heels. She did, slogging through the snow on her lunch hour to get them. Back in the office she dropped the box in the trash, and also the piece of paper, which she crumpled as she tore it from the memo pad.
The last details of Kathy’s party: buy birthday plates and napkins; get more wineglasses; make sure the florist on Lexington will have pink roses at the end of the week. At that same flower shop, Jake had once bought Mandy roses during a storm. As they exited, hail balls began to fall, and Jake had said, “With every half dozen roses, you get a bonus of diamonds.”
An e-mail from Alicia said that her trip to Paris had been extended: no chance of getting back for the party. Then Markson called to say he’d run into Kathy at Blue Boy and that she’d mentioned going to her boss’s house in Connecticut after work on Friday to meet the woman’s new grandson. Wouldn’t you know? Now Mandy would have to call Kathy’s boss and tell her about the party and get her to disinvite her to Connecticut. Other changes included: Trey and Tina Greene fighting about which artists should be in their gallery and deciding not to interact so often socially (she urged them to make an exception for the party); Reva Calistanova calling to ask if Mandy would like her old denim jacket, since she’d decided to change her look, and Mandy spontaneously inviting her to the party. An e-mail to Elizabeth had turned up the name of the guy Kathy spent so much time talking to at the watercooler, but also the information that he was living with someone. Just forget it, was her inclination. Still, the party grew: Markson would be bringing his cousin. Colin Jaye accepted with a handwritten note on off-white paper so thick and beautiful that Mandy saved it to use as a bookmark. She didn’t have an actual head count—that sort of thing was the preoccupation of an older generation—but she was glad she’d opted for the larger cake. She would pick up the twenty-seven roses the morning of the party. She borrowed her neighbor Mr. Parini’s crystal vase to hold the flowers.
It snowed, but late in the afternoon the sun came out. Rivers of slush overflowed clogged gutters and the skylight above her stove began to leak, but since she used the microwave and never heated anything on the burners, it didn’t much matter. It was what living in New York was about: accepting and improvising.
Things worked out with Jane, Kathy’s boss: she not only said she could figure out a way to rescind the invitation, but hinted she’d like to be invited to the party. She’d visited Kathy every day the previous spring, when she’d been hospitalized with a burst appendix. Kathy had come out of Sinai loving the former “bitch on wheels.” So of course Mandy invited her, and her husband, to the party—though Jane said that her husband had to go to Connecticut on Friday night, so he’d pick her up the next morning at the train. Just as well—other people’s husbands were like blind dates: the guy could be a bore; an egomaniac.
The napkins were dark blue with Happy Birthday written in silver. They were by far the prettiest napkins. Kathy was not a Garfield sort of girl.
It had been Markson’s idea to invite Clerey Dey, Kathy’s writing professor from NYU. He RSVPed by e-mail, but phoned the morning of the party to ask if people were bringing gifts. Of course! Was he trying to get out of that? But then she thought: he’s older; maybe his friends don’t exchange presents. “It could just be something small,” she said, and he said, “Oh, fine, that’s what I thought.”
Mandy had bought two Miles Davis CDs to play at the party, to be mixed in with Alicia’s Japanese hip-hop and Kathy’s beloved Eva Cassidy. So: the roses; the music; the Freixenet; the six Water-ford wineglasses her grandmother had willed her, the six new ones from Pottery Barn. Then there was the Ambien: somebody would be sure to steal a pill or two, so she hid the bottle. She put statice—brightly colored and cheap—in a mug on the back of the bathroom sink. She planned to light all three of her vanilla-scented candles. When her father had visited New York at Christmas, he’d brought chocolates from her favorite store and the imported candles from France she’d loved as a teenager (pleased to tell her vanilla was the newest scent), installed a dimmer switch so she could fine-tune the lighting. She tried it low, then a bit brighter. She decided that she was obsessing: she could adjust the lights when people arrived.
Mr. Parini, from whom she’d borrowed the vase, had given it to her with some marbles encased in netting at the bottom. Mandy extracted the sack and looked at it, cupped in her hand. She herself had a metal holder with spikes. She supposed that wasn’t the sort of thing one wanted to risk lowering into crystal. The marbles in netting were neither light nor heavy, which reminded her of the way her pet hamster had felt, cradled in her hand as it was dying. There she went: traveling back in time and getting morose. Is this marbles encased in plastic, or a living thing? she asked herself. She filled the vase with water.
Clerey and his fiancée, Monique (never before mentioned), were the first to arrive. Mandy didn’t really know what to say to them. Clerey w
ore a tweed jacket and looked like the academic he was. His fiancée didn’t seem to understand English very well, though she might just have been a person who frowned. She was older than he: fifty? Still, she had such elegance: suede boots of an indescribable color; her hair just so, with little wisps escaping to soften its perfection. Carter and Jake came next. To Mandy’s surprise, Carter was fluent in French; after introducing himself, he began to converse animatedly with Monique, though Mandy had no idea what he might be saying. Jake exclaimed over the flowers, and she thought: I should have known. Then she winced, embarrassed by her own stereotyping. Her father liked flowers. Her father had grown gladiolas in his garden in Virginia. Markson and his cousin came next. Markson had on his jacket lined in purple and a corduroy shirt and jeans: his winter uniform. Unlike the others—or at least as far as she knew—Markson was a Sunday churchgoer. Trey and Tina seemed fine. Paula—she’d forgotten inviting Paula!—looked right through Trey. They were still on the outs becaused he’d criticized her for having too much to drink at an opening at the gallery. She carried a beautifully wrapped box in telltale blue for Kathy.
When McLafferty came in, dusting the shoulders of his long black coat as if snow clung to it, he gravitated to Trey’s side. Trey, seeing Mandy’s finger raised to her lips, whispered his hello. Genine came next. “Does this dress look terrible?” Genine said, throwing her jacket on the bed. It was one of her thrift shop finds: a wool knit with pleated skirt. The way it fell below the knee detracted from her pretty legs, but who would tell a friend that? Behind Mandy stood Reva, her curly red hair held back with a headband. She was wearing jeans and a soft white sweater and carrying a box that she said contained a globe that glowed in the dark. “Is this pretty, or is it really not Kathy’s thing?” Genine said, showing Reva and Mandy the present she’d brought in an unwrapped jewelry box. It was a sweater guard, studded with fake pearls and bright stones. Kathy would never wear it in a million years. “Perfect,” Reva said.
Everyone seemed excited and ready to party. It was a miracle they’d all been free on the same night, and that no one had canceled for some neurotic reason. She’d gone back and forth about inviting Trey and Tina, because they weren’t really comfortable when they couldn’t be the center of attention, but now that they were here, she knew she’d made the right decision. She’d known Tina since they’d gone to camp together, the year they were fifteen. That early, Tina had resolved to live in New York City, which she’d made seem exotic and slightly frightening—though she supposed exotic things were exciting exactly because they contained an element of danger.
Kathy’s boss was overweight and soft-spoken. As she came through the doorway she almost collided with Jake, who’d opened a bottle of Freixenet and was sipping from a glass filled to the brim. Mandy went to the door and opened it for Markson’s cousin, entering a second time, holding a hastily bought birthday present: pineapple tops protruded from a brown bag. The last to arrive were Elizabeth, her nose Rudolph-bright, and Colin Jaye, whose attention was riveted by Elizabeth, though he seemed to be talking to himself about Tolstoy.
“My fuckin’ boss,” McLafferty said. “I knew he’d do this. I took the afternoon off, saying I had to go to a funeral, and the prick took off in the corporate plane and left a message on my machine to get myself to Colorado first thing in the morning.”
Markson fiddled with his gift: something in tissue paper, stuffed in a bag.
“Marky, you’ve looked wonderful ever since you dumped me,” Genine said, rummaging in her coat pocket. With the same intonation, she said, “Damn it, I lost another scarf.”
6:53–4–5. Mandy had a sudden idea that Kathy’s professor might be good at hushing people. She went up to Clerey and asked if he’d try to quiet them. Markson, sensing his reluctance, began to shush people himself. Mandy did not much like Clerey. It was a mystery, what a Frenchwoman would be doing with him, but life was a mystery (thank you, Daddy). She suggested that Reva get behind the chair, meanly interrupting the little flirtation that had begun between her and Markson’s cousin. She gestured to Paula to go into the kitchen, herded others into the bedroom. People giggled as the excitement built. “Where did you get such beautiful roses?” Tina said breathlessly. Mandy whispered the name of the shop, told her, also, the roses’ name: “Miss Maureen.” Tina giggled: “Named after some dominatrix.”
At five past seven Kathy was not yet there, but people had fallen silent. Mandy adjusted the lights. She looked at her watch. She felt a little like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, though everyone in the apartment was the same size.
7:20, 7:25. Another round of whispering: someone’s suspicion Kathy might have forgotten. 7:30. That was the point where it got to be bad manners, Mandy’s father always said: when you were a full half hour late.
From the apartment next door she could hear the gay guys bickering. She liked the older man, but his partner was a pain: sure enough, complaints about the lack of excitement in their lives. The complaining and the response were completely predictable. Paula’s cell phone rang, and she turned it off, embarrassed. It was 7:33.
At eight, there was clearly reason for concern. It wasn’t as if no one ever got mugged in New York. Mandy’s phone call had gotten only Kathy’s machine. It made her think of the way cameras panned violent scenes in the movies: someone’s outgoing message chattering as the camera recorded the destruction. There was a doorman at Kathy’s West End apartment, at least. Although she, herself, when she first moved to the city, had roomed with a girl from Georgia who bought heroin from her doorman.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to push on,” Clerey said, in something between a stage whisper and a pantomime. “I’ll give Kathy a call tomorrow.” Oh. That would make everything fine? Monique looked at the floor. She did not seem to be studying her pretty boots.
“You might run into her in the elevator,” Mandy said.
He considered her remark. He said, “Are there stairs?”
Self-absorbed man, Mandy thought. But she said, simply, “Yes.”
Ten minutes later, only a few people remained in the bedroom, and Paula was talking quietly on her cell phone. “I’m starving,” Jake said. “I didn’t eat lunch.”
Everybody had a theory about where Kathy was, but they were only guesses.
Then the doorbell rang. Mandy froze. Elizabeth ducked behind the chair. It was as if she’d broken a spell: everyone went somewhere, vanished. McLafferty’s eyes darted to the bedroom, and Mandy gestured for him to go there now, but instead he moved in the opposite direction.
“Mandy?” Kathy called, tapping instead of ringing a second time.
“Coming,” Mandy said.
It all happened at once: Mandy opened the door and Kathy walked in with a tall man just as McLafferty, who had snatched his coat from the back of the chair and was milling around the room, tripped and knocked the vase of roses to the floor. The shattering glass made for a missed beat before the people in the bedroom rushed out, knocking shoulders, grinning widely, shouting, “Surprise!”
“Oh my God!” Kathy said.
“Happy birthday!” Reva said. “Happy birthday, sweetie!” Paula said, and was the first to hug her.
“Oh, no,” Kathy said. “I can’t believe it. Is this…I’m late to my own party?”
McLafferty, on his knees, was picking up glass.
“Everybody, this is Steven,” Kathy said. “We almost got married, but we…it was, I mean, it was just the craziest afternoon.” She looked at the handsome man who stood at her side and smiled tentatively.
“We’re engaged,” Steven mumbled. “We just don’t have a ring.”
“Oh, that’s so great,” Reva said.
“Jane! Steven, Jane…Jane is my boss. I’m just, oh, this is so incredible.”
Everyone smiled, but they weren’t all that happy, Mandy supposed. Forget her lateness; she was engaged, and they weren’t. But who was this Steven? Mandy suddenly got a strong whiff of alcohol and stepped back. Steven had bec
ome unsteady on his feet. Kathy was propping him up with her elbow. Out of the corner of her eye, Mandy saw McLafferty picking up glass. He, alone, had not gone to greet Kathy. She looked at him, puzzled, and saw him walking quickly toward the bathroom, his coat slung over one shoulder. She had the strange feeling that something was more wrong with him than with Kathy and Steven.
“Champagne!” the Greene twins said, rushing out of the kitchen.
Everyone remained huddled in the doorway, giving their attention to the birthday girl. Mandy took a few steps backward, smiled gratefully at Reva, approaching the spill with a sponge and a roll of paper towels, and turned toward the bathroom door.
“McLafferty?” she said. No response. She turned the door-knob. The door opened. He was sitting on the side of the tub. His hand was bleeding onto his coat. The coat lay wadded up between his feet.
“What are you doing?” she said. She pulled the guest towel off the towel bar and clamped it against his skin. Then, just as quickly, she lightened the pressure. “Is there glass inside?” she said.
“I got fired,” he said. “That was bullshit about taking the plane tomorrow. I got caught manipulating prices. If I’m lucky, it ends with getting axed.” He nudged his jacket with the toe of his shoe, exposing the Bilzerian label. “I broke your vase and now I’m ruining my fuck-you cashmere coat,” he said. “I still owe eight hundred bucks on it.”
She felt slightly sick. They were all just starting their careers. Everyone got promoted. Nobody she knew had ever been fired.
