The Dinner Party

by Joshua Ferris

  As the two men walked down Columbus together, Tom expected questions that never came. “Thanks again, Sid,” he said as they approached the man sitting on the bucket outside the bodega.

  “There he is, Mr. Lucky Strike!”

  Tom nodded as they walked past.

  “Could be you, Lucky!”

  “Is that man talking to you?” Sid asked.

  “We had an exchange earlier,” Tom said.

  “Do you owe him money, too?”

  At the restaurant, Tom had hoped to find his wife sitting with her mother, but Emily was alone. She looked stranded amid the Friday-night crowd, sipping her Manhattan, surrounded by plates of uneaten appetizers.

  “I had to order something, Sid. They wouldn’t stop giving me the evil eye. Where is Sophie?”

  Emily turned from Sid to Tom and back again. Sid placed his napkin on his lap and drank down the entirety of his glass of ice water. He was still chewing an ice cube, his chin glistening, when he turned to Tom and said, “You want to give us some idea now just what the hell is going on?”

  “There’s been a miscommunication,” Tom said, “that’s all.”

  “What about?”

  Both Sid and Emily stared at him, demanding answers. Where was their daughter?

  He could come clean, as he had eventually done with Sophie. But a father like Sid? He’d be a lot less forgiving than his daughter ever was. And Sid was a softy compared to his wife.

  Their searching looks grew more urgent. The pressure was on. Where had she gone? What had he done?

  “Sid, Emily,” he said. “This is just a little disagreement between Soph and me. It’s unfortunate that it had to happen right before meeting you guys for dinner, but you can’t time these things. It will get worked out. In the meantime,” he said, “I’m going to ask you both, please, to butt out.”

  He perspired more hotly in the immediate aftermath of this—he had never stood up to his in-laws before—than he had out on the street, and he took up his water glass. As he drank, he scrutinized Sid and Emily for their reaction. They regarded each other silently, searching for a unified front.

  Sid sat back in his chair. “You’re right, Tom,” he said. “It’s none of our business.”

  “I agree,” Emily said. “As long as she’s okay. Is she okay, Tom?”

  Tom set his glass down. “Thank you,” he said to his father-in-law. “And, yes, she’s fine, Emily. She’s just angry at me, that’s all.”

  His mother-in-law nodded and looked down at her drink. Tom was relieved. A little surprised, too. Oddly…touched. Was he family to these two people? He would not have said so. But now it seemed maybe he was. Seemed they respected him. Treated him as an equal, as one does with family. Who would have guessed that? Not him. No, they could never know.

  “Okay, look. If you must know,” he said, “we had an argument about how much time she spends at the hospital. I think she spends way too much time there.”

  “Oh, I agree,” Emily said. “She’s absolutely killing herself there, Tom. I hope she listens to you.”

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  “Gentlemen, we should eat these appetizers before they get any colder.”

  Sid finished his martini. “I want another one of these,” he said. “Where’s that waitress?”

  Tom looked down at his phone. Still nothing from Sophie. All his exhortations had failed to move her. He decided to try something different. “Now you’re acting like a child,” he wrote from the semi-privacy of his lap. “Your parents are worried sick. We’re sitting here like idiots. Can you give it a break for an hour and join us?”

  That should do it, he thought, hitting Send. He sighed deeply as he rejoined the company of his in-laws. But he didn’t have much time to savor his relief when he locked eyes with Melissa. She had been hailed and was standing between his mother-in-law and his father-in-law in a blue apron and a man’s tie, her fine ginger hair up in a bun.

  “May I have another one of these?” Sid asked her.

  “Well, look who it is,” she said.

  He had never asked her where she worked when not lending the caterer a hand.

  “How are you, Dylan?”

  Nor had he given her his real name.

  “Are these your parents?” she asked.

  All the blood drained from his face. “Yes,” he replied faintly.

  “We’re his wife’s parents,” Emily said. “Do you two know each other?”

  “Your wife’s parents,” Melissa said to Tom.

  “Did you just call him Dylan?” Sid asked.

  “Uh, can we have a word?” he said, removing his napkin from his lap. Panicked, stupefied, he failed to rise any further.

  Melissa smiled at him viciously. “Yes,” she said finally to Emily, turning to her, “we do know each other. Dylan and I were seeing each other until about a month ago, when I just never heard from him again.”

  “What does she mean, Tom, ‘seeing each other’?” Sid asked.

  Emily turned to him, her hand over her mouth.

  “I don’t know,” Tom said. “Nothing.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Melissa said.

  “Sid, Emily,” Tom said, “we’re going.”

  He began to stand when a firm hand took hold of his shoulder. He froze and peered over at Sid. They were eyeball to eyeball, it seemed.

  “Sit,” Sid said.

  Tom sat back in his chair.

  Sid stood up. “Get your purse,” he said to Emily.

  “Did you want another martini, Dylan’s father-in-law?” Melissa asked.

  “We’re leaving,” he said.

  The man was a stranger. Never had she been inclined to pick up a stranger in a bar. Perhaps she didn’t think herself pretty enough. She lacked courage, feared rejection. The truth was, she had only had a total of two lovers in her life. Her husband had had two lovers in the past month.

  She stood up, walked over to his table and sat down across from him with her drink. He returned her smile but also looked a little bemused. What was this perfect stranger doing before him suddenly? His companion would be back any minute.

  “Who is that?” Sophie asked him.

  The man across from her, confused, or amused, or both, said, “Who?”

  “The woman in the ladies’ room. The woman you’ve been talking to for the last half hour.”

  “Uh…a friend.”

  “A good friend?”

  “Uh…well, no, not really,” the man said. “More like a friend of a friend. Who are you?”

  She said her name was Melanie. She extended her hand across the table, and the man took it.

  “Are you going home with her?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Clara,” Sophie said. “Are you going to take her home?”

  “Do you know her?” the man asked.

  He looked around as if he might be the butt of a joke, a man suddenly in the middle of something.

  “She’s prettier than me,” Sophie said. “But I’m a sure bet.”

  “A sure bet?”

  She told him that she was going to step outside, where she would be waiting for him. He could take his time saying goodbye to Clara. Then he was free to take her home and do whatever he wanted to her.

  “I’m married,” the man said.

  “So am I,” she said.

  He looked at her.

  “So I take you…somewhere…and then…what?”

  “And then,” she said, “whatever you want.”

  “What do you mean, whatever I want?”

  “You do to me whatever you want,” she said.

  He no longer looked amused.

  Melissa brought Tom the check for the drinks and hors d’oeuvres his in-laws had ordered, but Tom had no way to pay it. He had no choice but to talk to the manager, who listened to his plight with a stony indifference. He asked Tom to wait, so Tom stood near the front door, getting in the way of every new party that entered. When he wasn’t in the way, he was gazi
ng into the dining room, watching Melissa buttonhole another server and point at him until it seemed everyone in the restaurant knew what was going on with the guy up front.

  He could leave his cell phone behind, along with his license. When he came back with what he owed the restaurant, he could have them back. That was the best the manager could do. That, or call the authorities and let them sort it out. It was up to Tom.

  He was halfway down the block when he heard his name called out. Melissa had his license in her hand and waved to him with it. “Nice to finally meet you, Thomas!”

  He turned on Eighty-Second to get away from her. He waded east through a current of heat, in the direction of the subway. He wanted a cab, but he had no money. Sophie had the keys; how would he get into the apartment? He couldn’t call her; the restaurant had taken his phone. And he no longer had a driver’s license to prove he lived there.

  “Hey, look who it is! Mr. Could Be You!”

  He didn’t reply. He worried the dollar bill in his pocket as he walked past.

  Night turned to brightest day as he descended the stairs to the subway. The homeless woman with the staph infection was still on the landing. His Metro card had insufficient funds.

  He retreated to the machine where new cards were issued and value could be added to old cards. The display screen informed him that he was a dollar and five cents short. The night’s many frustrations caught up with him all at once. “Motherfucker!” he cried, and hit the screen hard with his palm. The station agent looked over. He took a deep breath. Then he remembered the dollar bill in his pocket. Incredible luck! He ironed it out and inserted it into the machine. But of course he was still five cents shy. “A fucking nickel,” he said. He swiveled around to find a few people drifting alone through the station. “Anybody got a nickel?” he asked them. No one answered. “Hey, man—you got a nickel so I can get home?” The man ignored him. What a fucking asshole. What was a nickel to him? “Nobody here has a fucking nickel?” he said. It made him self-conscious, and he stopped asking. But he continued to mutter. “A fucking motherfucking nickel,” he said as he started to scan the station floor for coins.

  Sophie watched as the man took leave of Clara. A married man, meeting a woman in a bar, leaving with a second woman because she had thrown herself at him. Was everyone so depraved, or had Sophie just gotten lucky?

  Clara was prettier, but she was a sure bet. There was more power in a sure bet. Sophie had never known.

  He came out, and they set off together down Court Street.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I rescheduled,” he said. “I’ll email her later. Doesn’t matter. She’s just someone looking for a job.”

  They turned off Court and walked toward the tracks. At the dead end in the distance, the concrete wall was heavily tagged with graffiti; behind it, the subway descended into the tunnel.

  Was he attractive, this man she was about to…? She hadn’t noticed. She looked over, but the streetlight behind them was faint, and there wasn’t another up ahead. The weak moonlight was strongest here. He was…fine. Heavyset. Not her type. Whatever. Didn’t matter. They reached the dead end.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

  “I have nowhere to take you.”

  “Then where are we going?”

  He didn’t answer.

  What was the name she had given him? Melanie? Melinda? She wondered if he remembered.

  “Hey, what’s my name?” she asked him.

  He stopped and looked up and down the street. In one direction, it led back to the neighborhood’s many restaurants and bars; in the other, to an empty lot where the pavement gave way to weeds and the fence curled up along the top like a sardine can. “In there,” he said.

  “Where?”

  He pointed. “Behind that.”

  She peered into the no-man’s-land. There was an earth mover sitting in the sparse grass among half a dozen cars parked at odd angles. It was strange, hostile. Nothing at all as a girl imagines it. But it was closer to the secret way of the world…or so she told herself as she reached for the man’s hand and took the first step.

  The Breeze

  She was in the brig when her husband came home. Below her, neighbors reclined on their stoops, laughing and relieved, shaking off winter with loud cries and sudden starts. Someone unseen scraped a broom across a courtyard, the rhythmic sound of brownstones in spring.

  “In the brig!” Sarah called out and, with her wineglass at a tilt, peeked down again on the neighborhood. They called their six feet of concrete balcony overlooking the street the brig.

  The children’s voices carried in the blue air. Then the breeze came. It cut through the branches of the trees, turning up the silver undersides of the young leaves, and brought goose bumps as it went around her. The breeze, God, the breeze! she thought. You get how many like it? Maybe a dozen in a lifetime…and already gone, down the block and picking up speed, or dying out. Either way, dead to her, and leaving in its wake a sense of excitement and mild dread. What if she failed to make the most of what remained of this perfect spring day?

  She finished her wine and went inside. Jay was thumbing listlessly through the mail.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “What should we do tonight, Jay?” she asked him.

  His attention was diverted by a credit card offer. “I don’t care,” he said. “What do you want to do?”

  “Is there anything you want to do in particular?”

  “I want to do whatever you want to do,” he said.

  “So it’s up to me to come up with something?”

  He looked up from the mail at last. “You asked me to come home so we could do something.”

  “Because I want to do something.”

  “I want to do something, too,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, “so let’s do it.”

  “Let’s do it,” he said. Then he said, “What should we do?”

  She wanted to have a picnic in Central Park. They bought sandwiches from a place in the neighborhood and took the train into Manhattan. He unfurled a checkered blanket in the breeze and spread it under a tree whose canopy would have spanned half the length of their apartment. What new leaves were in ticked gently back and forth in a mild wind, like second hands on stuck clocks. She wore a shimmery green sundress with a thin white belt, slipped on quickly in the few minutes she gave them to get ready. His knees looked as pale as moons in last year’s shorts. They ate their sandwiches and drank a little wine, and then they stood and tossed a Frisbee until it was just a white underbelly floating in the darkness. Before leaving, they walked into a little wooded area and with barely a sound brought each other off in two minutes with an urgency that had hibernated all winter, an urgency they both thought might have died in its hole. It was all right now; they could go home. But it was early, and he suggested going to a beer garden where they’d spent last summer drinking with friends. There was a flurry of texts and phone calls, and before too long their friends showed up—Wes and Rachel, Molly with her dog. They drank and talked until closing time. Sarah skipped ahead down the street on their way to the subway and then skipped back to him, leaping into his arms. It stayed warm through the night.

  On their way into Manhattan, he told her that they had tickets to a movie that night. It was the 3-D follow-up to a superhero sequel. He had gone online the day before, only to learn that the IMAX showings were already sold out. He couldn’t believe it. How far in advance did this city make IMAX tickets available for pre-purchase, and how much cunning did it take to get your hands on them? It had been such a long week, and he was tired, and, for God’s sake, who thinks they need to plan more than a day in advance to see a movie? It was just a movie, it wasn’t—

  She put a hand out to stop him. “Jay,” she said. “I’m sorry, sweets. I can’t see a movie tonight.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s so predictable,” she said. “Aren’t you tired of seeing movies? All we’ve
done all winter long is go to the movies.”

  “But I bought the tickets already. They’re bought and paid for.”

  “I’ll reimburse you,” she said. “I can’t see a movie tonight.”

  “You’re always telling me you like it when I plan things.”

  “It’s a movie, Jay, not a weekend in Paris. I can’t sit in a movie theater tonight. I’ll go bonkers.”

  “But it doesn’t start until eleven. The night’s practically over by then.”

  “Whose night is over?” she said. “Who says the night has to be over?”

  “What are you getting so excited about?” he asked.

  Her focus shifted, as the train suddenly slowed to a crawl and was soon stopped altogether. Why had it stopped? They were sitting dead still in the bowels of the subway while the last hour or two—not even, not two—the last hour and change of daylight and breeze died out on the shoulders of those who had known better than to lock themselves inside the subway at such a delicate moment. Here was the underworld of the city’s infinite offering: snags, delays, bottlenecks, the growing anxiety of never arriving at what was always just out of reach. It was enough to make you stand and scream and kick at the doors. Their ambitions should have been more modest. They could have walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and stopped midway to watch the sun go down.

  She stood.

  “Sarah?” he said.

  The train started to move—not enough to jolt her but enough to get her sitting again. She didn’t answer or look over.

  She left the table and started toward the ladies’ room of the beer garden. She walked under a sagging banner of car-lot flags weathered to white, past a bin of broken tiki torches. A thick coat of dust darkened two stacks of plastic chairs growing more cockeyed as they ascended a stucco wall. Open only a week or two after the long winter, and already the place looked defiled by a summer of rough use.

  In the brig a few hours earlier, she had come to believe that in all the years she had lived in the city, this was the most temperate and gentle day it had ever conferred. Distant church bells had rung out. The blue of the sky had affected her deeply. A single cloud had drifted by like a glacier in a calm sea. Looking down, she had paid close attention to the tree nearest the brig, picking out a discrete branch. It ended in a cluster of dark nubs, ancient knuckles sheltering life. Now, breaking through, surfacing blindly to the heat and light, pale buds had begun to flower. Even here, in rusted grates, down blocks of asphalt, spring had returned. Then the breeze touched her flesh. A tingling ran down her spine to her soul, and her eyes welled with tears. Did she have a soul? In moments like this, absolutely. The breeze! She’d spent the day at her desk keeping her head down, and the snack pack convinced her it was okay—the snack pack and the energy drink, the time stolen to buy shoes online. Then this reminder, this windfall. As thrilling as a first kiss. This was her one and only life! It would require something of her to be equal to this day, she had thought at that moment in the brig, and now, looking at herself in the mirror of the ladies’ room, scrutinizing her eyes—already hungover, it seemed—she had, through a series of poor choices, squandered the night drinking and failed.