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I swallowed and said, “My refrigerator.”
She laughed. “Subtle. Well, I shan’t stare down the horse’s mouth any longer.” She looked at Robert. “Trish was looking for you. She’s out on the patio.”
“Thanks, Sue.” He turned to me. “You want to meet Trish?”
I started to say something but Sue Kimmel said, “I’ll bring him along in a minute. After we open this.”
I found myself being gently steered down the hall and into a large room crowded with men and women my age or older. The temperature was several degrees higher than in the hallway. I loosened my tie and followed as Sue pushed her way through the crowd, using the cold, wet champagne bottle as a shepherd’s crook, steering people right and left by touching exposed skin or thin cloth.
We finally ended up at a long bar running the length of the far wall. A big man, perhaps six feet four, stood behind the bar, using a built-in tap to fill a beer mug for one of the guys pressed up against the bar. He wore a strap over his shoulder festooned with car keys.
“Yo, Tommy!”
“Yo, Sue.”
She put the magnum of Bollinger on the counter. “Glasses.”
“Yo.”
He pulled two wineglasses off a rack behind the bar.
“Not those … the flutes. Christ, Tommy. Champagne flutes.”
She looked over at me and rolled her eyes. Tommy blushed.
“I use mason jars myself,” I said. I smiled at Tommy and he nodded after a minute, then moved down the bar to fill another beer mug.
“Well?”
I turned to Sue and raised my eyebrows.
She gestured at the bottle.
“Oh, well, okay.”
I’d read up on opening champagne, just in case this happened. The lead foil came off pretty much like it should and I started on the wire, untwisting and lifting it gently away from the cork. The way Sue had swung it around, I was afraid it might go off like a bomb.
The book I read said to ease the cork out gently, keeping a firm grip on the cork, to prevent it from flying off and hitting someone. Shooting the cork off, the book said, “was for buffoons and fops.”
I tried to ease it out, but the thing seemed immovable. I resorted to tugging and twisting, but it still wouldn’t move. I lifted it off the bar and put it between my legs, so I could get a better grip. This put my head down at the level of Sue’s breasts.
“My, David? What’s that between your legs?” She put a hand behind my head and pulled me slightly closer. My forehead bumped against the hollow of her throat and I stared straight down her dress. She smelled of perfume and skin.
I tried to straighten up, my ears and face burning. The cork loosened slightly in the neck of the bottle. I managed to pull away from Sue.
Sue was laughing, watching me blush. Then her smile died and I felt a hand grab my shoulder and pull me around. A voice, loud and deep, shouted in my ear. “What the fuck you doing with my girl?”
He wasn’t as big as Tommy, but he still towered over me, large, blond, bearded. I stared at him, blank, still holding the unopened bottle. He shoved me and I took a step back, bumping into the bar and Sue, and inadvertently shook the champagne. That’s when it went off.
The cork caught him on the chin, snapping his mouth shut on his tongue. Champagne geysered forth, soaking both him and me. I stared in horror, trying in vain to stop the flood with my thumb. This just caused the foam to spray rather than gush.
Beside me I heard Sue say, almost under her breath, “Premature ejaculation … again.”
“You little shit!”
He lunged for me, his hands going for my throat. I dropped, collapsing into a ball, his weight coming down on top of me, covering me, hiding me.
I jumped.
The champagne-soaked tie and shirt made a wet thwack as it hit the wall in my bathroom. “Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.”
Why does this shit always happen to me?
There was an ache in my throat and I wanted to punch something, break things. I stared at myself in the mirror.
Wet hair plastered my forehead and my jaw was clenched tightly shut. The muscles stood out on the side of my face and neck. I relaxed my jaw and found that my teeth had been aching. I took deep breaths, leaning forward on the counter.
After a minute I ran cold water and washed my face and rinsed the hair in front, to get rid of the wine smell. I combed my hair back in a slick, smooth shell.
The difference in my appearance was striking. My hair looked much darker and the shape of my head was changed. I frowned, then went into the bedroom and picked out a black shirt with a stiff, upright collar. I put it on and checked out the result in the mirror.
I looked very little like the boy who walked into Sue Kimmel’s with the champagne.
I jumped.
The football players had abandoned the front porch, but their spoor, crushed beer cans and cigarette butts, dotted the walk and grass. Even before I got to the house I could tell that the band had started—bass and drumbeat shook the sidewalk and made the windows rattle. I opened the door and the sound struck me with almost palpable force.
I considered jumping home again, but took a deep breath and leaned into the noise.
The hall was more crowded than before, but when I finally won free to the room with bar, it was less so. The wall of noise came from the other end of the room. I could see people dancing like they were insane.
There were only a couple of people at the bar, though Tommy was still behind it, drumming on the surface in time with the music. There were twice as many keys around his neck as before.
I hooked a foot on the bar rail and leaned my elbows forward. He glanced at me, then looked again. He came down to the end of the bar and shouted over the music. “Christ. You sure changed quick. I thought I knew everybody who lived in this neighborhood.”
I shook my head. “You probably do. I’m not from around here.”
“Well, you sure faded fast. Sue was looking for you.”
“Oh?”
He reached down behind the bar and came up with the magnum of Bollinger’s. “There’s some left. You probably could have drained a quart from Lester’s shirt, but that would taste rancid.” He pulled down a tulip glass and filled it, draining the bottle to do so.
“Was Lester the guy who jumped me?”
“Yeah. Sue sent him home. She was furious.”
I smiled. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come back myself. I’m glad he’s not here though.”
Tommy nodded. “He could fall down a hole for all I care.”
I blinked. “Don’t like him, eh?”
He nodded, grinned, and went down to the other end of the bar.
The champagne tasted like unsweetened ginger ale, its aftertaste unpleasant. I looked in the bar mirror and un-wrinkled my nose. I shifted my grip on the glass, trying to look more sophisticated, less awkward. I sipped at the champagne again and shuddered.
Some sophisticate.
I took the glass and wandered out onto the veranda, away from the music. There were tables and chairs, white, wrought-iron. Three of them were occupied. One was off by itself, in the shadow of the hedge. I sat down.
The band started playing oldies, songs from the early sixties. They’d been hits before I was born, but I’d heard them often enough. My mom would listen to nothing but old rock and roll, songs from her teens. I grew up listening to them, wondering what they were about. Didn’t particularly like them, didn’t particularly dislike them.
I knew all the words.
“There you are.”
Sue Kimmel pulled up one of the patio chairs and put down a glass of something with ice. “Tommy said you were back, but I walked past you three times before I realized you’d changed clothes.”
I licked my lips. “I didn’t mean to cause problems.”
She rolled her eyes. “Lester is the one who caused problems.”
“He must love you very much.”
She laughed. “Love? Lester doesn’t know the meaning of the word. Lester stakes territories. Lester would piss on fire hydrants if he thought other people had a keen enough sense of smell.”
I didn’t know what to say so I took another sip of the champagne. Ugh.
She swallowed some of her drink and smacked her lips. “I wanted to apologize to you, actually, for Lester’s behavior. He doesn’t realize it, but we’re in the process of breaking up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’ve nothing to be sorry about. I’d been thinking about it all week. He’s pissed me off too many times.”
I took another sip. The taste was bad, but it didn’t seem quite as bad as before. I lifted my glass to her, but didn’t say anything.
She lifted hers and drained it. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s dance.”
I felt a rush of panic. Dance? I set the glass down. “I’m not very good.”
“Who cares. Come on.”
“I really rather not.”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the chair. “Come on.” She didn’t let go of my arm, pulling me toward the music.
The band was playing something very fast, very loud. We threaded our way between gyrating bodies until a few square feet of floor space opened up. I felt closed in, threatened by all the close bodies and flying limbs. She started to dance. I stood there for a moment, then started moving. The music pounded on me like waves at the beach. I tried to find a rhythm that matched it, but the tempo was too fast.
Sue was oblivious, her eyes closed, her legs pumping in counterpoint to the music. I tried not to stare at the parts of her that bounced up and down. I felt miserable.
I waited until she was spinning around, facing away from her, and jumped back to the patio. Someone gasped to my right. I looked over and saw a girl staring at me from one of the other tables. “Jesus! I didn’t see you walk up, dressed in all that black.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” I picked up the champagne flute and took it back to the bar.
“Yo, Tommy.”
“Yo, David. No more champagne, man.”
“Fill it with ginger ale. And put a head on it.”
He grinned and filled it from the fountain gun. “Ze ginger ale, monsieur.”
“Thanks.”
I moved back onto the porch and reclaimed my seat. After a moment, Sue came out, looking puzzled, and a little angry.
“What’s the big idea? Don’t you know how many guys at this party want to dance with me?”
“I can see why. You’re very attractive and you dance like a dream.”
She blinked, her mouth half open to say something. She closed it and sat down. “That was good. Very good. Almost too good. Why don’t you want to dance with me?”
I shrugged. “I feel foolish. You know what you’re doing out there. I feel like a clumsy jerk. The contrast is painful. I’m shallow, I guess, but I don’t want everybody to know just how shallow.”
“Yeah. Real shallow. Compared to Lester, you’re a bottomless pit.”
“I’ll bet Lester can dance.”
“In a fakey, self-centered kind of way. More John Travolta than Baryshnikov.”
I shrugged again and felt stupid. Is shrugging the only expression I know?
“I’m going to get a drink. You need anything?”
I held up my ginger ale.
“Don’t disappear on me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She came back with her glass filled with some amber fluid. Behind her came Robert and a pretty redhead I vaguely recognized from high school. She was Trish McMillan, the girl Robert “sort of had a thing” with.
“Hell, man. I’ve been looking all over for you,” Robert said. “You okay? I heard Lester climbed all over you.”
“I’m fine.”
“How’d you change so quick? You have a bag with you?”
