The Dinner Party

by Joshua Ferris

  “What are we here for, Mike?” he found himself asking out loud.

  Not gonna go over well. But you know what? Fuck it. What did he have to lose?

  Bent over, Mike looked up at him with one squinting blue eye. You could practically smell the fumes pouring off him from last night’s bender.

  “Is it just to move things? Or do we have some greater purpose in life? I like to think we’re here for something greater. As men, I mean. But that’s my two cents. What do you think? Think it’s possible that you and I—”

  Mike let out a terrific groan as he lifted the oversized AC unit flush off the cement floor and began to crab-walk it toward the van.

  It wasn’t until Jack happened upon an open box of old photographs that he began to rethink everything. Here was a shot of his Uncle Vern wearing several strands of Mardi Gras beads, puckering up before a silver trumpet. Uncle Vern would have been invited to the wedding were he still alive. And here was a rare one of his dad, also dead. His buddy Horvath—lost track of that guy after leaving Denver. Here was one of Steve and what’s-her-name. She never cared for Jack, and when Steve married her, that was the end of his friendship with Steve. And here was a little photo album in among the loose pictures documenting his tortured years with Sandra. Obviously couldn’t invite her. Here was one of Donnie: wide grin, cigar in his mouth, holding a fish in each hand on some dock, that stupid gap between his two front teeth. He couldn’t invite him, he just couldn’t. Or any of them. Take your pick. Except for Aunt Julia. But she had sent her regrets.

  He tossed the box aside. Add it to the rest of the heap and let it burn.

  “Be right back, Mike,” he said as he left the van.

  He walked up the blacktop path, past the office (deserted on Sundays), to County Route 9. Service was less spotty up there. He paced near the busy road as cars washed by until Lisa picked up. He could tell she’d been crying.

  “What is it?” he asked. But he knew. “The invite list?”

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” she said. “I can’t help it.”

  “Fuck it,” he said. “Invite ’em. Whoever you want, invite ’em.”

  She caught her breath. “Do you mean it?”

  “Yeah, I mean it,” he said. “What do I care? I just want you to be happy.”

  “Oh, Jack,” she said. She hadn’t sounded so happy in weeks. “What a relief!” She let out a big sigh. “Donnie, too?”

  “Whoever,” he said. “What do I care? You can finally meet the bastard. Might be nice, actually. He’ll ask your niece for a blow job, and your mother will finally understand why I never bring family around.”

  “Jenny’s eleven, Jack.”

  “I’m just trying to prepare you.”

  “Let’s not talk about my niece, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh, Jack,” she said, “thank you. This means so much to me. You have no idea.”

  “What else are we here for, right, Leese?”

  “I love you, Jackie. You’re such a good man.”

  “Love you too, Leese.”

  He hung up and went happily down the hill.

  “You got a problem,” Mike said when he returned.

  “What is it?”

  “Come see.”

  “Comme ça.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  They had run out of room in the back of the van. But that wasn’t Jack’s fault! That was Mike’s fault! He was the one who had failed to make a plan!

  “Told you it was too early to put that sofa in,” Mike said.

  “Oh, so this is my fault?”

  Mike shrugged.

  A minute passed. Mike took a seat on a box as if he were inside the van talking on the phone again.

  But he was right. They were out of room. They could either push on, or they could take the sofa out and start over, as Donnie would have insisted he do. “And do it right this time,” he’d have said, giving Jack a slap upside the head.

  “Well, what are we doing? It’s getting cold.”

  “Let’s take the fucking thing out,” Jack said.

  Donnie had been right a lot of the time—that was the trouble. Jack had to admit it. Donnie did things properly. He knew a thing or two. Jack had known very little. Of course, Jack had been ten years old or whatever. He couldn’t do things as Donnie wanted them done, as a grown man did them. But now Jack was forty-two years old, and he was still making a hash of things. There were boxes on the ground; there were boxes in the van; there were boxes in the unit.

  Maybe his age had had nothing to do with it. Maybe Donnie was right about that, too. Making a hash of things was just Jack’s nature.

  They were relaying the last of the book boxes from the van to the ground before taking the sofa out.

  “How about I pay you in books, Mike?” he said. “God knows I got enough of them.”

  Mike handed off a box and went back for another.

  “Not twenty bucks an hour but twenty books an hour,” he said. It was something Donnie would have said, but he wasn’t serious like Donnie. He was just playing around. “What do you say? Will you take your day’s pay in books?”

  He went back for another box, but Mike met him at the edge of the van empty handed. He stared down at Jack, and the look on his face said it all.

  “It was just a joke,” Jack said.

  “Twenty’s my hourly rate,” Mike said.

  “I know,” he said. “I was just joking.”

  But now in his mind the question had been raised, and Jack realized that Mike’s view of things was the only correct one from the start. This was a simple exchange, labor for cash. It had nothing to do with gestures of kindness, or if you knew the other guy’s name or not, or what man’s ultimate purpose on earth might be. What the market would bear—that was the only relevant question.

  So, was twenty really a fair price?

  The answer was no. And not because Mike disdained Jack from the start, or wasted all that time talking on the phone, or took a seat whenever he felt like it. These days, there was bound to be someone willing to work for less—for fifteen an hour, even ten—and to toss in a bit of humanity for free.

  The matter was settled long ago, but negotiations could always be reopened. “Look, Mike,” he might have said, “you and I both know that in today’s job market, I don’t have to pay twenty bucks an hour to find unskilled manual labor. So here’s what we’re going to do.” He’d hand over what was owed to Mike, saying fair’s fair. “But if you want the full job, I’m afraid it’s fifteen an hour from here on out.” What would the big man say to that? Would that get him talking?

  “Hey, Mike,” he said.

  Was he really going to do it? They had removed the sofa from the van and were loading things back in.

  “What did we say, twenty an hour?”

  Mike stopped what he was doing and straightened up. “Yeah?”

  “Because I’ve been thinking more about it.”

  “What about?”

  “Well, like how you were in there for a while talking on the phone.”

  More displeasure from Mike’s monobrow. “Yeah?”

  “Is twenty really fair?”

  Suddenly Jack felt like an asshole, like Donnie. Donnie did shit like that, not Jack. Mike, poor Mike, out here on a Sunday in the cold, getting yanked around! And for what? For nothing more than reminding Jack of Donnie. And in the meantime, look what it was doing to Jack. It was turning him into Donnie!

  Boom, boom, boom. Mike was down the ramp in no time. What, was he going to beat the shit out of him? “I told you already,” he said. “I don’t do nothing for less than twenty.”

  “Yeah, but Mike. It’s just moving shit.”

  Mike, agitated, cocked his head. Jack had said the wrong thing.

  “How’s twenty-five?” Jack said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “I said how’s twenty-five?”

  “Are you fucking with me?” Mike asked. “I thought we agre
ed to twenty.”

  “And now I’m offering you more.”

  “How come?”

  “Oh, just take it, Mike. You’re out here in the cold on a Sunday morning. Take it.”

  Jack went around him and up the ramp. He was glad to put some distance between them. The look on Mike’s face had been pure murder.

  Not worth twenty, and now suddenly he was paying him twenty-five. Over and over again he’d been told to keep his fucking mouth shut, but did he ever listen? No, and now look at what you’ve gone and done.

  Even after reorganizing the van, there wasn’t enough room for all of Jack’s things. They were going to have to make two trips after all. Jack shuttered the gate and joined Mike in the cab.

  Mike had his boot up on the dash and was eating the croissant from Le Perche. Jack stared at him in open disbelief. “What are you doing?”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t want that.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “You sure didn’t acknowledge it.”

  “Acknowledge it?”

  “Yeah, you didn’t acknowledge it. You didn’t say thanks. You didn’t say anything. Would it have killed you to say thanks when I offered it to you?”

  “Thanks,” Mike said.

  “What are you, a fucking retard?”

  It just came out. Mike stared at Jack as he pointedly dropped what remained of the croissant, crumpled the bag up while chewing, and tossed it to the floor of the van.

  Jack put the van in gear. They went like a cloud over the fresh blacktop, through the gate and out of the valley to County Route 9.

  They passed the rock quarry on the left, the gray pyramids of limestone and granite, and the iced-over pond in the distance, cowlicked with reeds. The road was stained white with salt from a long winter. Jack glanced over at Mike, who was now staring out the passenger-side window as if dreaming on his way back to the penitentiary. He wasn’t going to say a word. All the way down to Red Hook and all the way back, not a fucking word. A man could do that, a man could choose not to speak. Be a man like Mike and shut up. Will you just shut the fuck up? Shut up now or God help me I will shut you up.

  “You never asked my name,” Jack said.

  He waited for a reply. When none came, he said:

  “This morning, when we met. You didn’t ask, and I didn’t offer. You remember?”

  “You know, you talk too much,” Mike said.

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah, that is right. We’d have been done a lot sooner if you talked a little less.”

  “That’s interesting,” Jack said.

  More silence. Then:

  “You curious?”

  “Huh?”

  “I said, ‘Are you curious?’”

  “About what?”

  “What my name is.”

  “Oh. Well, Ryan told it to me.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you know it, then.”

  “Yeah.”

  Dull brown fields extended for acres. Then the road narrowed and shade trees crowded the shoulders. In clearings swiftly opened and swiftly shut again, modest ranch houses flitted by. Then the broad fields returned.

  “What is it?” Jack asked.

  “Huh?”

  “What’s my name?”

  Mike stared straight ahead.

  “You don’t know it, do you?”

  “Ryan did tell it to me,” he said finally. “I must of forgot it.”

  Jack was silent.

  “I believe it might be Jack,” Mike said. “Is that it?”

  Jack didn’t answer. They turned down a private drive lined with tall trees. They climbed a slow, meandering hill to a restored farmhouse with a view of the mountains, where they unloaded without a word. A lovely porch, a tree swing, a cherrywood canoe beside the artificial pond. He had everything in the world he’d ever wanted. Stupid to let Mike get under his skin like that.

  “What do you think, Mike?”

  “About what?”

  “About this view.”

  “Asshole,” Mike muttered.

  The two men got back in the van. The miles rolled by, and the silence intensified.

  “I talk too much?” Jack said.

  “I think so,” Mike said.

  “Well, you talk too little.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Would it kill you to carry on a little conversation?”

  Mike made no reply.

  Halfway to the storage facility, Jack pulled off to the shoulder. “You drive,” he said.

  “What for?”

  He opened the door, and the sounds of the world rushed in. He went around the van and opened the door on Mike’s side.

  “What am I driving for?”

  “Because I’m paying you.”

  Mike moved over, and Jack got in. Mike pulled out amid the traffic heading north.

  “But not twenty-five dollars an hour, Mike,” Jack announced on the straightaway. “I’m not paying you that.”

  Mike looked over. “You told me you would,” he said.

  “I told you twenty. Then I got to joking around, and this other thing came out, I don’t know why. I made a mistake, and I apologize for it. But twenty-five’s too much.”

  “You’re paying me the twenty-five,” Mike said.

  “I don’t think I am.”

  “I think you are.”

  Mike went through the light at the junction and turned into the storage facility. Jack got out at the gate and punched in the code, then slipped through the fence while Mike had to wait for it to retract. A minute later Mike blew past him. When Jack arrived at the rental unit, the bigger man was not in the cab texting, as he had been earlier in the day, but pacing back and forth on the blacktop, his breath visible in the cold. He came to a sudden stop and said, “I ain’t helping you with the rest.”

  “Oh yes you are.”

  “Something’s wrong with you,” Mike said.

  “Something’s wrong with me?”

  “I want what you owe me. And I want twenty-five an hour for it, just like you promised.”

  “You know what I used to be told, Mike? Stop acting all high and mighty, that’s what I used to be told, and get the fuck back to work.”

  Every time Donnie came forward, as Mike did now, Jack called social services, but nothing ever changed. Well, this time Jack swung first, aiming for Mike’s throat.

  Mike looked silly going down. “You look like a little girl!” Mike would have said to him had the tables been turned. But no, Mike looked more like a big fat eleven-year-old boy, a bully easily stunned and not likely to fight back when you stood up to him once and for all. Jack was surprised. Mike gripped his throat on the way down and began to gasp for air.

  Had the tables been turned, Mike would have told Jack to get up, get the fuck up you little pussy, but Jack didn’t want Mike up. He had put on a pair of steel-toed boots that morning to protect his feet during the move, and now he walked around Mike, timing every kick with a question.

  “You drive past me? You don’t introduce yourself? You make me wait in the cold while you text? You talk on the phone for ten minutes, but to me you can’t say a word? You eat my croissant and you don’t say thanks? You don’t know my fucking name?”

  He grew short of breath and had to stop kicking. He bent over, resting his elbows on his knees.

  Mike was still clutching his windpipe. He made a sucking sound as he tried to take in air. There was blood on the blacktop.

  “All right, get up,” he said to Mike. “Come on now, get up.”

  Jack nudged him. Then he sat next to him on the pavement. The traffic was washing faintly past, high up on County Route 9.

  “All right, I’ll pay you,” Jack said. “I’ll pay you the twenty-five. Okay?”

  Jack bent down close to listen for an answer, but all he heard was the struggle for air. That was hard to believe. Mike was such a strong man, much stronger than he was.

&nbs
p; He should have started without him. If only he’d taken a few boxes into the van while Mike was in there texting, he might not have fallen behind in the count, and then none of this would have happened.

  “I was even considering inviting you to my wedding,” he said.

  Didn’t matter now. Pretty much all that mattered was what Jack would do next. He had options he’d never dreamed of having when he was under Donnie’s thumb. He could say to Mike, as had so often been said to him, “You have only yourself to blame,” and leave him there, struggling to breathe in that desolate storage facility, so as to teach him a lesson. Or he could man up, as he had fantasized the men of the world would do when he was a boy and at their mercy. Mike was turning blue. He needed to see a doctor. Jack was a good man, but now he had to ask himself a serious question. What does a man do—and I mean a real man, now, what does a real man do—when he knows he’s done something wrong?

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to Willing Davidson and his colleagues at The New Yorker for working with me on several of these stories and improving them with great sensitivity and insight. Willing is sharp, fierce, and bullshit proof, which makes his enthusiasm (when it comes) all the more meaningful.

  Thanks to my early readers, always steadfast and encouraging: Robert Howell, Daniel Kraus, Christopher Mickus, David Morse, Grant Rosenberg, and especially Matthew Thomas, whose bright scalpel mind cuts to the heart of the matter every time.

  Thanks to the editors of the magazines, journals, and books where these stories appeared: Amie Barrodale, Natalie Danford, John Kulka, Heidi Pitlor, Kathy Poires and Rob Spillman, and to the folks at Prairie Schooner and the Iowa Review. A special thanks to David Hamilton.

  I’m also very grateful to Jennifer Egan, Jennifer Haigh, Edward Jones, Francine Prose, and Richard Russo for having championed individual stories included in this collection.

  There would be no collection as a whole without two editors in particular: Reagan Arthur at Little, Brown and Mary Mount at Viking. The final purpose of writing is to commune with readers like you, and I have reason to thank you both every day. The same goes for Georg Reuchlein at Random House.