Behind me were two women who were talking; apparently they had just visited someone in the hospital. "I think that her doctor's gone nuts," one said to the other. "Did you look at her chart? Under 'Patient's Diet' he wrote 'Bedrest.'
Finally I got myself out of there and bought the wine and went home.
There were a lot of messages from my guests on the answering machine; I had forgotten that I had left a message that said, "Hello, for breakfast today I had a doughnut, black coffee, and cranberry-apple juice. I'm having a party: please feel free to attend. Leave a message after the beep."
When I played my tape back, I had a lot of people saying. "Hi, for breakfast I had two eggs, scrambled, toast, and hot chocolate. See you later on tonight." I couldn't figure out for quite a while why all these people kept telling me what they had eaten for breakfast.
There was only one piece of bad news: all the women I had invited suddenly couldn't make it. One was sick, one had to leave town, another made up some lame excuse. They had spent so much time complaining to me about being single, I couldn't believe they would cancel on such an exciting event. But at least there would be me and my girlfriend Amy; she was in the middle of a divorce, and surely would be happy to accommodate as many men as she could, in order to prove she was on the rebound.
Before the guests came I was so jittery I felt like putting a sign on the door: died early last night, go away. But as it turned out, my downstairs front door buzzer was broken, and many of the guests didn't get in anyway. Everything was a bit skewed. I had to cover my table with a crepe-paper tablecloth (even though it wasn't Halloween the cloth was decorated with various pumpkins, it was the only thing I had been able to find) and I made a display of some hunks of cheese and some tiny triangular spinach and phyllo pastries that I had found in the freezer at the supermarket.
It wasn't the most elegant extravaganza I could have imagined.
But I myself looked splendid: I had purchased green satin Chinese pajamas and I wore these and a pair of gold sandals. I prepared my camera, with fresh film and batteries: I was definitely going to record the event.
Then the guests started to arrive: Mike, Fritz, Barry, Mar-ley, John, and Ted. And Bill, Stan, Larry, and Russell. I seated them on the couch, on the chairs, and on the floor. Everyone seemed genuinely affectionate toward me, even though I could hardly remember who they were. The men all brought bottles of wine and flowers. Amy arrived dressed in a leopard-print see-through blouse, tights, and spike-heeled shoes. She stood at the sink, defrosting a hunk of pâté she had stolen from the caterer's where she worked. "Come in and meet Marley," I said. "He's gorgeous, humble, and heterosexual."
"I can't," Amy said. "I'm frightened. I'm the kind of guest who likes to lurk in the kitchen."
"I don't have a kitchen," I said. "Just an alcove. Why didn't you tell me this before? You're the only other woman here besides me!"
The room was crowded with cigarette smoke, men were rummaging through my refrigerator looking for more bottles of wine. I thought of myself as Audrey Hepburn in that Breakfast at Tiffany's movie: Truman Capote was hunched over in the corner (actually he wasn't Truman, just some male friend who liked to make fun of me) and the rest of the room was filled up with men and my one girlfriend. That wasn't exactly how I had planned things, but that was how they turned out.
Of course, during the party itself there was plenty of food for thought. Was Mike getting along with Fritz (they were talking about tuna fishing and then moved on to what Eastern European tennis players wore on the courts); was Amy talking about her divorce for too long to Marley? Ashtrays, refills of wine, changing the tape from Nino Roti's movie scores for Fellini films to some modern African bongo-bongo music—I was looking for any activity that prevented me from associating with my guests. How the hell had Holly Golightly ever been able to have a good time? The buzzer kept ringing and ringing, but no one else ever arrived at the door (I didn't know then that fifty percent of the time it wasn't working). It seemed like hundreds of people would arrive at any minute, but when this didn't happen I climbed out on the fire escape to see who was downstairs; maybe they had rung and left.
"Wait, Eleanor!" I heard one of my guests shouting. "Don't doit! Don't jump!"
Then for a moment I did feel truly glamorous: in my green satin Chinese pajamas, crawling out the window to the fire escape, I was certain I looked like a genuine hostess.
Now, if only the door would ring with some man I was interested in, my evening would be complete. But I was expecting no guests that I was intrigued with, or even much liked.
Finally the front door of my apartment did ring, and I scurried off the fire escape to answer it. It was Jan, complete with suitcase. I quickly finished my glass of wine. "Hi," he said. "How are you?"
"Okay," I said. "Do come in. But I hope you weren't planning to move in with me—it's rather crowded in here all ready." I was a little put off by the suitcase.
"Don't worry," Jan said. "My girlfriend threw me out this afternoon. I just thought I'd stop by your party before I checked into a hotel."
"Have some wine," I said. I led him across the room to where Amy had arranged herself like a Spanish maja reclining on a bed of soapboxes. Actually she was sprawled on my futon, which was a bed as well as a spare chair. I took out my camera for incriminating photographs. Then I looked at my watch. I wasn't having a bad time, I just couldn't wait until the event was over and I could genuinely enjoy myself. I was sick of having fun. I found fun very traumatizing, difficult even. In some ways it was more fun not to have fun. To me, having fun was almost identical to feeling anxious. I thought I preferred to sit at home by myself, depressed.
Meanwhile, Mark and Beauregard arrived, apparently having come together. "Hi, guys," I said. "Where's Tina and Betsy?" I had assumed they would bring their wives.
"Uh," Mark said. He took out a cigarette and wandered off to look for a light.
"We didn't know we should bring them," Beauregard said. He looked embarrassed, and went to the table to get some food. His foot must have touched one of the table legs; he leaned forward and the whole table collapsed abruptly, spilling half-finished wine in plastic cups and cheese on to the floor. Three men knelt to clean up. "Oh, God, I'm so sorry," Beauregard said.
Jan propped up the table, crawled under it, and quickly screwed it into normalcy. I looked at him with new interest. "Don't worry about it," I said. "I don't think that table was meant for actual use. It was just a Platonic ideal."
Everyone was smoking cigarettes but the strange thing was nobody had any matches. It seemed that every surface was littered with empty matchbooks. As long as one person had a lit cigarette, though, somebody else could light up from them. Ted trapped me near the refrigerator. "Tell me, Eleanor," he said, "do you think children are just born the way they are, or do the parents have any effect on their personality?" Ted had an eight-year-old son who was already making it big: the kid had a rock band with a hit record.