“You make me feel old,” I say.
The gin bottle is in Banks’ crotch, the glass resting on the top of the bottle.
“I sensed that,” Banks says, “before I got too wasted to sense anything.”
“You want to hear a story?” I say.
“Sure.”
“The woman who was driving the car I was in — the Princess …” I laugh, but Banks only nods, trying hard to follow. “I think the woman must have been out to commit suicide. We had been out buying things. The back seat was loaded with nice antiques, things like that, and we had had a nice afternoon, eaten ice cream, talked about how she would be starting school again in the fall—”
“Artist?” Banks asks.
“A linguistics major.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“What I’m saying is that all was well in the kingdom. Not exactly, because she wasn’t my wife, but she should have been. But for the purpose of the story, what I’m saying is that we were in fine shape, it was a fine day—”
“Month?” Banks says.
“March,” I say.
“That’s right,” Banks says.
“I was going to drop her off at the shopping center, where she’d left her car, and she was going to continue on to her castle and I’d go to mine …”
“Continue,” Banks says.
“And then she tried to kill us. She did kill herself.”
“I read it in the papers,” Banks says.
“What do you think?” I ask.
“Banks’s lesson,” Banks says. “Never look back. Don’t try to count your tail rings.”
Danielle walks into the room. “I have come for the gin,” she says. “The cook said you had it.”
“Danielle, this is Banks.”
“How do you do,” Banks says.
Danielle reaches down and takes the bottle from Banks. “You’re missing a swell old time,” she says.
“Maybe a big wind will come along and blow them all away,” Banks says.
Danielle is silent a moment, then laughs — a laugh that cuts through the darkness. She ducks her head down by my face and kisses my cheek, and turns in a wobbly way and walks out of the room.
“Jesus,” Banks says. “Here we are sitting here and then this weird thing happens.”
“Her?” I say.
“Yeah.”
Lorna comes, very sleepy, carrying a napkin with cookies on it. She obviously wants to give them to Banks, but Banks has passed out, upright, in the chair next to mine. “Climb aboard,” I say, offering my lap. Lorna hesitates, but then does, putting the cookies down on the floor without offering me any. She tells me that her mother has a boyfriend.
“What’s his name?” I ask.
“Stanley,” Lorna says.
“Maybe a big wind will come and blow Stanley away,” I say.
“What’s wrong with him?” she says, looking at Banks.
“Drunk,” I say. “Who’s drunk downstairs?”
“Rosie,” she says. “And William, and, uh, Danielle.”
“Don’t drink,” I say.
“I won’t,” she says. “Will he still be here in the morning?”
“I expect so,” I say.
Banks has fallen asleep in an odd posture. His feet are clamped together, his arms are limp at his sides, and his chin is jutting forward. The melting ice cubes from the overturned glass have encroached on the cookies.
At the lawn party, they’ve found a station on the radio that plays only songs from other years. Danielle begins a slow, drunken dance. Her red shawl has fallen to the grass. I stare at her and imagine her dress disappearing, her shoes kicked off, beautiful Danielle dancing naked in the dusk. The music turns to static, but Danielle is still dancing.
Friends
Perry had just walked into Francie’s living room, headed toward the table for the bowl of anchovy-stuffed olives. Dickie, who had called earlier to say he was too stoned to come, looked up and raised two fingers to his sweaty forehead in salute. Before Perry could say anything but hello, the phone rang, and he answered. The woman Perry used to live with, Beth Ann, used to complain that Perry should have been a robot — he was programmed to answer the phone and would talk politely to whatever wasted friend it might be, at whatever ridiculous hour.
“Delores?” he said.
“I’m in Miami,” she said over the static in the line, “but I’m coming your way. I came to round up Meagan from my parents’ place.” Static cut off her next sentence. “I haven’t talked to you for so long. How are you, Perry? I heard you were winterizing your place in Vermont.”
“Yeah, I am. I can live in half the house now. I came down to Francie’s this weekend for a party. It gets lonesome up there. I broke my goddamn foot. I had on sneaks, and I turned my ankle jumping off a wall.”
“Your hand was broken the last time I saw you.”
“Only two broken bones I’ve ever had in my life,” he said.
Dickie had picked up the bowl of olives and was having one. He held the bowl out to Perry. Perry took two, and with his tongue rolled one to either side of his mouth.
“I’d love to come up there.”
“There’s plenty now that’s livable. Come on up. Bring Meagan.”
“Thanks, Perry. I think I really might. Is Francie there?”
“This may sound crazy, but Francie is passed out with her head under the bed.”
“Everybody’s drunk?”
“I’m not drunk, Delores. Is there anything I can tell Francie tomorrow?”
“Maybe you’d know.” (He waves away the olives.) “I wanted to know if my oak table is still there. The one with the wide-board top.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Would you look in the kitchen for me? I think she piles cookbooks on it.”
“Sure.”
He walked down the hallway to the kitchen. T.W. and Katie were putting the make on each other in a corner of the kitchen. The Scandinavian rock-’n’-roll record Daryl Freed had brought to the party was playing for the fifth or sixth time. He looked for the table and it wasn’t there. He remembered the table now. He was sure it wasn’t in the house.
“Hey, Delores? It’s not there.”
“No?” she said. “Thanks for looking.”
In the other room the needle scratched across the record, somebody cursed loudly, and Chuck Berry started singing.
“Jump a wave for me,” he said.
“Sure,” she said. “Stick your finger in some maple syrup.”
He put the phone down in time to face his fate: Dickie coming at him, ski mask pulled over his head, fireplace poker extended. He laughed a little more than he felt like laughing and stepped aside so that when Dickie stumbled and tripped, the poker jabbed the wall.
“It’s all sexual,” Dickie said. He pulled off the ski mask and smiled widely. “I put a hole in her wall,” he said. “Hey, I saw you had two poems published. Congratulations.”
Perry tilted his head like an obsequious maître d’.
“They were good, too,” Dickie said. “I read them in one of those free magazines on the airplane.”
Perry frowned, confused.
“No I didn’t. I read them in the magazine. Francie gave it to me. Where is our hostess, anyway? Did I hear you say she was about, but indisposed?”
“Why don’t you go check on her?” Perry said.
This time Dickie did the courtly bow. He turned with a military pivot — long ago he and Dickie had gone to the same boys’ school — and headed out the door just as the needle was scratched across another record and Daryl Freed cursed. After a long silence the London Bach Choir began to sing. “Cut that shit!” somebody hollered. “I mean it — cut the shit.” The London Bach Choir was silent. T.W. and Katie, arms around each other’s waists, walked down the hallway, past the door. He knew they were going to bed. He looked down at his foot. The cast looked larger than he remembered. He had not put on his sock, and his toes were lavender from the cold. Francie never heated the house well enough in the winter. When he was partying he didn’t notice it, but when he stood still, he noticed both the cold and the slight pain across his instep. He looked at the glass of Scotch he had left on the table and decided to leave it there. He took an olive, picked up the Scotch only for a second, to wash away the salty taste, and left-right-left-right, without his crutch went into the living room. Nick and Anita were dancing. Roger Dewey and Daryl Freed were sitting on the floor in earnest conversation, bobbing heads at each other like plastic birds dipping for water. Somebody Perry had never met before — a man (a teen-ager?) with white streaks fanning out from his temples whom Freed had brought to the party — sat next to Roger Dewey. It looked as if he was mocking Roger’s gestures.