“Hello, hello,” they said to these people, “oh my God, how are you?” and grabbed drinks from passing trays: glasses of Lillet and orange, which the girls thought fabulously original and such a Lil thing to do, forcing a hundred-odd guests to drink an obscure and archaic aperitif that no one but Lil—or, they supposed, Sadie, from whom she’d probably cribbed the idea—would think to order. They were tremendously interested in cocktails, having gone off beer in the years since college, and they were learning how to make proper sidecars and Manhattans and French 77s, they told Maya and Abe gaily. Dave had become a master martini maker, his technique cribbed from an oft-watched episode of M*A*S*H in which Hawkeye explains how to obtain the proper dryness. “You’ve got to really stuff the shaker with ice,” said Dave. He was disturbed to be talking about such idiotic things with people he hadn’t seen in years, and as a result, he found himself taking an increasingly emphatic tone. “You pour the vermouth over the ice, then you pour it out through the strainer, so the ice cubes are just coated with vermouth. And then you add the gin. Ideally Bombay Sapphire.” Sadie made a face. “Gin. Bleh. Vodka’s much cleaner.” Maya Decker nodded gravely.
They made their way into the main part of the loft, now lit by the glow of hundreds of tiny candles—votives clustered on the table, around the “French bouquets,” which looked wild and lovely in the dim, rustic room, with its oak-planked floor. Beth sat down at a central table, with Sadie and Emily, and rested her hot forehead on Emily’s bare, freckled shoulder. “I think they’re about to do the toast,” she said wearily. “The waiters are coming around with champagne.”
“Or something that looks like champagne,” said Dave, coming up behind the girls, “but most definitely is not.”
“Dave, shut up,” said Sadie, not unkindly, as Tuck stood on a chair and tinked a fork against his flute. The room quieted and the girls rose and moved, with the other guests, toward the open space at the center of the room. “This,” said Tuck, clearing his throat, “is the happiest day of my life, as most of you realize. And so I want to start things off by making a toast to my wife, Lillian Roth-Hayes…”
This was the first chance that Beth had, really, to examine Tuck. She could tell from his speech that he was kind and intelligent, if a bit self-absorbed. But he was also well-spoken and well built, though short, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. His face, she thought, was crudely striking, his eyes so big and sad, like a silent film star’s. Like, she thought, Buster Keaton.
“Tuck was born to wear a suit,” said Emily.
“I suppose,” sighed Sadie. “I’m going to get a refill.”
“He usually wears glasses, doesn’t he?” Emily frowned and squinted.
“I don’t know,” said Beth absently, watching Sadie make her way across the crowded room, her long curls vibrating against her shoulders. She wore a simple dress of slate-blue taffeta, with a fitted bodice and a square neck.
“She hates him,” said Emily, jutting her head in Sadie’s direction.
“Hmmm,” murmured Beth uncomfortably. This was not the time, she thought, to fill her in on everyone’s feeling about Tuck, who was now recounting how he and Lil had first met, a story that, Beth was surprised to discover, she hadn’t heard from Lil. “We should probably listen,” she told Emily, and turned toward Tuck, who still held his hand in the air, his jacket raffishly unbuttoned, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. “I was standing on the steps of Low Library,” he said, “when the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen came up to me and asked if I could direct her to the business school. And I thought, ‘Well, I guess I’ll never see her again.’” Flicks of laughter rose from the crowd. “MBA students don’t tend to date scruffy poetry scholars. So you can imagine my surprise when, a few hours later, this gorgeous creature walks into my Yeats seminar.” Lil, at Tuck’s side, smiled and shrugged, embarrassed and pleased, her face flushed from champagne. “Turns out, she already knew something it took me two years to discover. The business school cafeteria sells the only decent coffee on campus. And she was a scruffy poetry scholar like me.”
From the crowd came shouts and claps and calls of “Woo-hoo” and “Here here” and “Mazel tov,” and Tuck thrust his arm higher, above his head, and shouted, “But we clean up pretty well, don’t we?” causing the volume of clapping to surge and the clinking of glasses to commence. “To Lillian Roth-Hayes,” he cried, slipping his arm around her waist and tossing back his champagne. Lil’s grin had grown so large it looked, to Beth, almost painful. She’d never seen Lil this happy.
Emily smiled. “That was sweet,” she said.
“It was,” said Beth, dipping her head closer to Emily’s, which smelled, wonderfully, of peppermint. Like Sadie, she wore a close-fitting dress—from the sixties, Beth thought—and the vivid blue-green of the satin contrasted sharply with her red hair. “You like him, don’t you?”
Emily shrugged. “I do,” she said. “Though I really don’t know him. But I think I get it.”
“Yeah,” said Beth. “I think I do, too.”
Lillian’s father had started speaking, though the chatter threatened to overtake his husky voice. Across the room, Sadie had reached an impasse by the threshold to the second bedroom. She stood under a small orange light fixture, talking to Tal, who bent his tall frame over to whisper in her ear, causing her to laugh prettily, throwing her head back and raising her thin shoulders. Her dress, Beth thought, was perfect. “Who’s the dark beauty?” a voice whispered in Beth’s ear, an unmistakably English voice. Beth whipped around. One of the Columbia guys stood behind her, smiling sardonically. He appeared to be somewhat older than she and wore his hair in an odd, archaic style, parted deeply on the side, so it fell across his expansive, bulbous forehead in thick clumps. His suit—unlike that of his cohorts—was an olive green color, which Beth thought rather ugly. His face, however, was quite handsome, in a manner so common and dull that Beth generally discounted it: dark eyes, square jaw, ruddy skin, the protuberant sort of nose that looked good on certain men. With his jacket unbuttoned and his hands slouched in his pockets, he had the louche, disaffected air of the corrupt second son on a Masterpiece Theatre adaptation of an Edwardian novel. The skin around his eyes was white with fatigue. A grad student’s eyes, she thought. “Which one?” she asked, though she knew which one. “The woman over there? In blue?” She gestured toward Sadie. The man nodded. “Sadie Peregrine,” she told him. “She’s Lil’s friend from school. Have you not met her?”
“I think I have, actually, but not when she’s been wearing a dress,” said the man, giving Beth a long, appraising glance, then turning his eyes back to Sadie, who was talking rapidly at Tal, her hands flying in all directions. “Women should always wear dresses.”
“Yes,” said Beth, feeling the blood rush to her face. “And they shouldn’t own property or vote.”
“Exactly,” said the man. “You read my mind.” He sipped silently at his drink, raising his eyebrows with pleasure. “And you don’t like her, Sadie Peregrine.”
“No!” cried Beth. “Oh my God, no! Why would you say that? She’s one of my best friends.” She paused, feeling that she was rambling, though she hadn’t said much at all, really.
“I see,” the man said, annoyingly, as though he was trying to make her feel she was blathering. “So then you know which of those fools is her boyfriend.”