I exit the bathroom after I’ve used it and the lady who interrupted is standing there and she is embarrassed and I am not and I step on her foot as I walk out and she says, “Oops, sorry,” like all women do and I am mad at that because it was my fault so why is she apologizing? and I hate that she said “Oops” in that little meek voice and now I’m in a bad mood. And I still have one flavor to go. It’s an hour later now and the guacamole is gone and the brie is all shell and these stupid people don’t know that the white part of brie is important to the taste, that it doesn’t count if you only eat the mushy inside, that the French would leave en masse if they came to this party and saw the Americans carving out their cheese like cave dwellers, but the party people only like easy cheese, and easy jeans, and they are all sipping from their fluted glasses and I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it’s giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water. Adam is back with his friends and he won’t look at me and they are sheltering him like a little male righteous wall and the redhead is gone by now or passed out somewhere and I am looking for black hair, looking, looking, and you’d think it’d be easy considering something like four-fifths of the entire earth has black hair and I do find one prospect but he seems harsh and too talkative so I pass him up and I find a cute black guy but he seems to be one of the married ones and I am trying to keep this as simple as possible and I’m looking, still looking, then bingo: it’s the tallest man in the room. He has sharp black hair over his ears and glasses and a swarthiness and he is the smarty guy and he is talking to a woman who is clearly entranced by him, but remember: I am a column of mercury, and this woman is wearing a blouse and khaki pants, drinking water from a mug imprinted with water lilies. The deal is done.
She is telling him about her job at a pet hospital. She is a vet of sorts. Every person on earth likes a vet except me, because I think there are too many animals in the first place. And when these vets keep saving the sick animals, we are just stuck with more.
“These are from the last cat,” she is saying, holding up her arm which is covered with raised tracks.
He nods, observes. I, however, am not interested in her fake drug habit look-alike war wounds. I bet a thousand dollars she grew up with a dog who had a name with a y or an ie at the end. I had a dog once, a big dog, a Great Dane, and I named him Off so when I called him, I said “Off!” and he came bounding over. It really fucked with people’s heads. At the dog park no one got it. They kept trying to figure out how I did that, if I was okay, what was happening. I was laughing all the time at the dog park. I wore dresses there too and I think people brought their friends to see me, like I was a sight in the city, a tourist attraction. If I was forty it’d be a problem but I’m not so they adore me. Off died early because he was a purebred but I didn’t put him to sleep, I kept him company and stroked his big forehead until I saw his eyes shut on their own. I had him cremated. I sprinkled most of his ashes into my plants, but fed a few of the remaining ones to the cat next door because she had always been tormented by Off’s size and I thought it was a little bit of sweet vindication.
It’s nearly midnight, and I’m waiting for the man here to say something so I can form my game plan. Adam is talking to a woman now and I can tell he is appearing extra animated to get my goat. I can only see the woman’s butt from here, but it’s very flat and Adam is an ass man so I’m not worried. I don’t shrivel up into wiggly jealousy. Instead I feel like thrusting through all the women here, stepping on all those dainty toes, releasing a chorus of “Oops, sorries,” a million apologies for something I did wrong.
The vet is still talking. “Last week,” she is saying, “the sweetest beagle came in with some kind of dementia and I had to put him to sleep …”
“That must be tough,” he says, “to put a dog to sleep.”
I’m underneath the yellow-and-pink floral painting. Fuck me, I’m thinking. She is taking too damn long. At the door, one of the couples is saying goodbye to the host. Her hand is on his elbow. The host looks dampened; I think somebody broke her stereo.
And suddenly, in a wash, I am feeling low. I am feeling like there is nothing in this whole party for me and I want everyone to leave now. I’m thinking about how when I filled out the evaluation for the painting teacher, and I said she should be fired, I made sure to sign my name. I’ve given some money to the university-not enough to get a building named after me, but close. And when the next session rolled around and I looked for her name in the catalog, I couldn’t find it anywhere. My final painting for the class was that-the catalog page without her name in it.