I turned to him and smiled. He no longer looked like the boy I’d dated in school. That boy had been reedy slender and blond, with no muscles at all. His bright blue eyes had dominated his face.
The eyes remained the same, dominating and filled with personality, but the rest of him had changed. He was as heavy as he had once been slight, and in place of those visible ribs were rock-hard abs from all the weights he lifted. He ate to compensate for the tension, I think, because he didn’t drink or smoke, and to compensate for the eating, he exercised.
“There was no kissing,” I said to him, happier than I wanted to be to see him. “I just saluted her, that’s all. This is quite the party.”
“This is quite the expense,” he said. “Imagine what the council will say when they see this on the city budget.”
I grinned. “Fortunately, that’s not my job.”
“But it could be mine,” he said, looking at Louise talking to the man near the presents. “I was kind of hoping that once she had her stepping-stone to the governorship, I could become mayor.”
“One party won’t get in the way,” I said.
“You’re assuming that this party is the only budget item that’ll bother them.” He sighed and grabbed his own champagne flute from a passing waiter.
I looked up at the waiter as he went by. It was the man who had frowned in the kitchen. He looked familiar. His skin was a ruddy color that wasn’t common in the Pacific Northwest, except among people who worked on the ocean. He had a square jaw, and hard cheekbones, the kind I always associated with those 1930s pictures of Aryan youth.
“Know him?” Greg asked.
“He looks familiar,” I said as he went into the kitchen. “Does he to you?”
“In a generic waiterly way.” Greg smiled. “I told Louise we should have dancing, but she didn’t listen to me.”
“There’s no room,” I said. Besides, Greg wouldn’t have been able to dance with me even if there had been music. His wife Emma pretended that the fact that we’d dated didn’t bother her, when, in fact, it was very clear that it did.
I scanned the room, but didn’t see her. “Is Emma upstairs?”
The smile left his face. “She wouldn’t come.”
“Because of the house?” I asked.
“Because of the separation.” His voice was low. “She doesn’t like my ambitions.”
Emma had always wanted Greg to settle down and make money. He had always been more interested in public service than in making monetary use of his expensive law degree. Apparently the fights had come to a head.
“When did you separate?” I asked.
He shushed me and whispered, “Not everyone knows.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“It happened last week. I have an apartment near City Hall, which I’d had anyway. I guess I knew this was coming.”
Everyone had known this was coming, maybe even from the moment the vows were taken. But Greg seemed quietly devastated.
I put my hand on his shoulder, startled to feel the same kind of muscles I had felt on Marcus. “I’m really sorry,” I said again.
Greg grinned. The look didn’t quite meet his eyes. “No, you’re not. You never liked Emma.”
Not many of his friends had, and I always figured the ones who had liked her just pretended for Greg’s sake.
“I am sorry,” I said. “For you. This is hard.”
“Yeah,” he said, and then sighed. “Duty beckons.”
Duty didn’t, but Louise did. She was waving him over with a hand so manicured I could see the shine of the nail polish from here. Time for the packages. I hoped they got to my name quickly. I was ready to leave.
Marcus had left his new conquest and came over beside me. “Did you check the upstairs?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t forgotten the upstairs, but I didn’t see the need to torture myself. “I ducked into the kitchen for a while.”
Which reminded me of the waiter, whom I no longer saw. “Did you notice that waiter, the one who looked like he’d been a member of the Hitler Youth?”
“No,” Marcus said. “Why?”
Greg had clapped his hands for quiet. I sighed. I knew this drill. First they’d demand silence, then they’d hand out gifts. Louise worked off a list. I had noted last year that the city contractors like me got one of two things: an espresso maker (if the city had spent a lot of money on you) or a care basket filled with all kinds of city products, like salmon and some of our famous cheese and locally grown filberts.
I, of course, had gotten a care basket, even though the city spent a lot of money on our services. I thought that it was merely an oversight, then Greg had reminded me that we weren’t listed in the budget. We were buried in other line items. So no one really knew how much money we made cleaning up local property except maybe Debbie and me.
Greg started calling out names. The man beside Louise handed out the packages, and Louise kept charge of the list. People walked up, got large gaudily wrapped gifts, and then walked away, grinning.
Marcus rolled his eyes. “How long is this going to take?”
“Usually about an hour,” I said. “You want to go back and make goo-goo eyes at that sweet young thing?”
“She’s hard to talk to,” he said.
“Because?” I asked.
His face shut down. “Because I told her what I do.”
That was one of the major drawbacks to our business. People thought we were on the level of gravediggers and morticians. Even the popularity of programs like CSI, which made one small aspect of death work glamorous, didn’t spill over to us.
“Tough break,” I said.
He shrugged. “Anyone with reactions like that’s too shallow for me.”
But he didn’t sound sincere. And then he took my champagne and finished it for me. I watched him drink another, and decided that at some point in the evening I’d have to wrestle the Mustang’s keys from him and get us home.
It took two more hours before we could leave. I never did see the waiter again, but I got absorbed in my present — a small wireless weather-forecasting kit, with barometer and thermometer, something that actually appealed to my scientific sensibilities. Marcus slowed on the drinks — he’d found another pretty woman to chat up, and apparently this time he didn’t make the mistake of telling her what he did — and I didn’t want to interrupt his rhythm.
I looked at the stairs twice, but I didn’t go up them. I searched for Greg, and found Louise instead. She was leaning against a side of the arch, holding but not drinking a glass of champagne. She watched the proceedings with tired eyes.
When she saw me, she smiled again.
I wasn’t sure I liked that. Two real smiles from Louise in one evening. Something had to be wrong.
“It’s going well, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Better than I would have thought,” I said.
She sipped the champagne — or pretended to. Maybe that was one of her secrets. Pretending to drink when everyone around her got blotto.
“It’s a tribute to you people,” she said.
At first, I thought she meant the little people, the non-politicos, and then I realized she actually meant us, Dusty’s Cleaning.
“Thanks,” I said, glancing at those stairs.
“I mean it,” she said. “This place is cheerful. Who would have thought?”
I looked at her. Her entire face looked tired, and she was too thin. Maybe it was the strain of the party, or maybe something else had gone wrong in her life. I wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t about to ask.
“It’s what we do,” I said.
“Exorcise the ghosts,” she said, as if in agreement.
But the ghosts weren’t exorcised for me. They still lurked beneath the party favors and the seasonal joy. When this crowd left, and the caterers finished, when the last staff member shut off the lights, the house would revert to its post-murder self. The high-velocity spatter would paint itself on the walls, the cries would echo in the upstairs bedroom, and the blood would seep into the rugs.