But all agreement seemed to end right there, and the party committee, of which I was a member, must have met at least four times between Christmas and New Year’s Eve in an attempt to find a solution acceptable to all. The biggest areas of disagreement concerned food and decorations. There were members of the committee, and they presumably spoke for others in the building, who maintained that neither food nor decorations were necessary elements of a good party and that it would be foolish to waste money on them. The strongest proponent of this line of thought was Norman, whose wife was pregnant and who was undoubtedly trying to save every penny he could. If we’d gone along with his reasoning, the party would have cost him only the price of his own bottle, plus whatever we decided to chip in for setups. But Jason argued, with my firm support, that it wouldn’t be New Year’s Eve without food and balloons and confetti and noisemakers and hats. Norman countered by saying a good party was only a good collection of people, and Jason squelched him by suggesting we didn’t even need liquor if a good party was only a good collection of people.
“We’re paying for our own liquor!” Norman said heatedly.
“Yes, which is exactly why we should all chip in for decorations and food.”
“No,” Norman said. “In the first place...”
“Ah, come on, Norman,” I put in. “If everyone drinks all night without any food, we’ll get sick.”
“We’ll get drunk,” Norman said, “not sick.”
“We’ve got to have something in our stomachs,” Jason argued.
“Then eat before you come to the party!”
“The thing’ll go on for hours. We’re bound to get hungry again.”
“Then bring your own food.”
“That’s ridiculous. It’ll be cheaper if we all chip in for it.”
“Why should we?” Norman said. “All I want to do is drink and celebrate New Year’s Eve, so why should I chip in for food?”
“I think we ought to put it to a vote,” Jason said.
We voted, and it was decided that each couple coming to the party would chip in five dollars for food, setups, and decorations. Norman was in a rage. He was Jason’s closest friend, and this must have seemed like outright villainy to him. He had voted vehemently against the motion, and now he sulked in a corner for several moments and then said, “Well, I’m not chipping in for all that stuff.”
“What do you mean?” Jason asked.
“Just what I said. If that’s the price of admission, count me out.”
“It’s not the price of admission. We just want to make sure—”
“Then can I pay for the setups alone?”
“Well...”
“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t eat any of your food or touch your noisemakers or hats.”
“You want me to lend you five dollars?” Jason asked.
“I don’t need your five dollars, thanks. It’s not the money, it’s the principle.”
“What are you going to do?” Jason asked. “Just sit there with your wife while we all stuff ourselves?”
“We won’t be hungry. We won’t touch your food,” Norman said with dignity.
With equal dignity Jason replied, “You are entirely welcome to come to the party, and to use our noisemakers and hats, and to eat our food. You are entirely welcome, Norman, whether you choose to pay the five dollars or not.”
“If I don’t pay, I won’t eat,” Norman said.
“And you won’t make any noise, either, right?”
“I don’t need noisemakers to make noise. God invented voices before he invented noisemakers.”
“God invented tightwads, too, before he invented—”
“Now look, Jason,” Norman said angrily, “don’t go calling me a—”
“I apologize,” Jason said angrily. “Are you coming to the party or not?”
“I’m coming to the party!” Norman shouted.
New Year’s Eve that year was a cold and dismal night. The windowpanes in Timmy’s room were frosted with ice, and we hung blankets over them to keep the cold away from his crib. Both Joan and I dressed in the kitchen near the radiator on the south wall. I wore my blue suit, and she put on the black dress she had worn to her college junior prom. I had mixed a plastic container full of orange juice and then poured some gin into it, and we expected that to last us the entire evening. We were about to go out of the apartment when Joan stopped me. She put her hands on my shoulders and reached up and very tenderly kissed me on the mouth and then whispered, “Happy new year, darling.”
“It’ll be a good year,” I said, and Joan smiled and took my arm and we went out into the hallway. Herbie and Shirley were just coming out of their apartment next door. He was wearing a gray pin-stripe double-breasted suit that looked as if it had belonged to his father. Shirley was wearing black, and there was an orchid pinned to the waist of her dress. She smiled a bit shyly and said, “Herbert brings me an orchid every New Year’s.” Joan and I nodded in approval, and the four of us walked together to Jason’s apartment at the end of the hall. The door was open, and the record player that Peter, the dental student, had provided was going full blast. We had worked in the apartment all that afternoon, moving furniture into the other room, leaving behind only chairs, a stand for the record player, and a long table, trying to clear the small room so that people could dance if they wanted to. Jason’s three kids had been deposited in an apartment on the third floor — it would have been Norman’s apartment had they not argued so vehemently before the party — and so were in no danger of being awakened by the revelries. We had strung crepe paper across the room and draped it with confetti streamers and balloons. Joan hadn’t seen the results of our labor until we walked into the apartment, and she smiled now and squeezed my arm and said, “It looks marvelous.”
There were perhaps twenty people in the apartment when we got there, with another ten expected, the rest of the tenants having made other plans for the night before the idea for the party presented itself. No one was dancing as yet, but there was a lively buzz in the room, and drinks were being poured freely, and the long table was set with the ham and turkey we’d bought, and several loaves of bread, and potato chips and pretzels, and celery and carrots, and it all looked very nice and warm and I began to have the feeling this was going to be one of the best New Year’s Eves I’d ever spent. I poured drinks for Joan and myself from the plastic container, and then I set the container down on the table and asked Joan to dance, and Jason yelled, “There they go, they’re breaking the ice!” and everyone laughed. But we were indeed breaking the ice, because Herbie and Shirley followed us onto the floor almost immediately, and several other couples joined us, and pretty soon everyone was dancing with the exception of Jason and Mary, who stood in the doorway to the other room, watching us with pleasant smiles on their faces, and Peter and Gerry, who seemed to have discovered each other after a long siege of struggling with teeth and were talking and laughing as if they’d just been introduced. It took me several moments to realize that Norman and his wife weren’t in the room. I looked at my watch. It was only ten-thirty, which wasn’t too late, considering this was New Year’s Eve, but I began to wonder whether or not Norman would show up. And then, as if in answer to my question, Norman and his wife Alice appeared in the doorway, smiling and carrying a bottle of scotch, and they walked immediately to a pair of chairs opposite the long table set with food, far away from the table, clear over on the other side of the room, and promptly poured themselves drinks and began drinking.
“Well, let’s eat,” Jason said suddenly, and I turned to look at him, because it was only ten-thirty, and many of the guests hadn’t shown up yet, and besides, most of us had had late dinners in anticipation of the evening. But there he was, moving toward the table and beginning to slice the ham.