The Dinner Party

The rain started on a Thursday night and it never quite stopped again. The moments which were not absolute downpours were marked by dark, heavy hours of gusting wind and gnarled thunder from some far-off place outside the city. It was as though the sun had turned in her resignation papers. Or was forced to resign in some galactic government coup. I thought of things in this way a lot. Grandiose and spectacular. Private and dark.

I had gone so far as to purchase three separate flower arrangements from Stephen Mueller, the florist in my neighborhood who was known as much for his scathing gossip and storied New York past as his pleasing corner storefront.

I bought an autumn bundle for the dining table, outfitted with deep oranges and reds, complete with a gathering of Christmas green on each side. I bought thick stemmed Lillies for the vase by the front door, something that would make my guests think that I always had some kind of life in my home, that I tended to living things with the graciousness of the small and elderly. Stephen convinced me to buy the third: something ornate and extravagant for the coffee table. This one had frosted branches, tiny cranberry vines, and red amaryllis and carnation. I didn’t look at the apartment in its solitude for too long. If I did, I would become overwhelmed and angry in a way that felt acute, yet diffuse and far away.

“Mr. Mueller, I’m afraid people will not know what season it is at my event! The dining table is autumn, the foyer is spring, and the coffee table is Christmas. Don’t you think that’s...a lot?” I said, picking up the arrangement earlier that Saturday.

“I absolutely do...not.” Stephen had a way of answering any question you had by making you think he was going to affirm you until the very end of his sentence. He liked to make sure you were still listening, always on the edge of your seat.

“I just–” I tried again, keeping a small and pleasant smile on my face.

“You can have a dinner party or you can have your pluggy twenty-something friends over to a small apartment with deli cheese and conversation about your high school marching band. The choice is in your hands.” He waved dramatically, as if refusing a repulsive free sample at a midwestern food court.

“You’re the expert, not me,” I resigned. “Wrap them up, please.” Even as the words walked the path out of my mouth, I felt bad about myself saying them. Worse still when I forked over $85 dollars in cash for the arrangements.

I got to work as soon as I arrived home with the flowers. I swept the wooden floors, dusted the bookshelf, and soaped the dining room table until it gleamed. I liked to have a clean home, and tidying it was part of my normal after work routine. I still cleaned the shelves at my job at the library, though it was a bit beneath my position. I never wanted to admit–even to myself–that organizing the books and putting out special arrangements for the monthly book spotlight is most often the highlight of my day.

I placed silverware in their fine bamboo holders. I lit a candle and opened a window, the sun’s familiar warmth jubilant against the deep fall air. Everything was coming together unless I let myself see it, really see it: the crumbs in between the seat cushions, the dust bunnies crouched in an impossible angle behind the large corner chair, the junk closet filled with old coats and sentimental childhood toys, the sticky undercarriage of the cheap teal toaster. The mess of things and obligations for living. These things, I had to repeat to myself, nobody will notice.

I moved into the bathroom next and began to tackle the limescale of the shower with a certain manic ferocity. Never mind that the typical dinner party did not include bathing–the thought of my guests noticing the repellant soap scum of my glass shower was stomach churning. As I chapped on latex gloves and bent to begin, I went over the invitations for each guest one by one, anxiously vetting if I had gone about this the proper way. I thought a lot like this, too: in past tense, cloaked with self-depreciation.

“It will be a great time... if you’re free on Friday,” I told Apple as we scanned books from the drop box back onto the library shelves. “I just moved in and finally got everything settled–”

“It does take a few months.” Apple responded. I thought Apple interrupted me a lot, but I politely took it in stride. Sometimes I chose to ignore it, sometimes I would continue talking over Apple, my way of a light chiding. Apple was four years younger and sometimes needed to be shown, with a light hand, that kind of behavior was not that of  a good friend or listener. It usually didn’t work.

“Yes. Well...I’d love it if you could come.”

“I will for sure. How about I bring a game?”

I loved games and was always thrilled to meet people who also loved games. Games were great in a competitive spirit but they also served as a conversational neutralizer. Any time where I did not have to be in charge of furthering conversation was the best time of any gathering.

“Yes. Games would be wonderful!” I exclaimed. I wanted Apple to exclaim something, too. It was only fair that she also expressed her excitement for having been invited to this soiree. Again, she was too young to understand these feminine nuances. We continued to scan books in creamy, repetitive silence until a neighborhood girl named Ron walked in, at which time Apple exclaimed, “Hey Ronnie! Can I help you find a book?” I seethed, but cooly under the surface, wondering why most women’s happiness was reserved for men and near strangers.

Next was Annah who lived three floors below me and made a point of making conversation in the mailroom whenever we came across each other. Annah was someone who I, honestly, would have made a point to not speak to in high school. Her political takes were not only irreverent but sometimes completely incorrect. But now–as an adult working woman–my friendship standards have lowered, and I made the decision to enjoy people who I thought met the criteria of interesting and talkative: Annah was both. Upon our second meeting, Annah confessed that whenever she came into contact with someone, she immediately sorted them into smart or stupid, and vowed only to speak with people in the smart category. This piqued my interest, and I sought a relationship with Annah more fervently. I am both competitive and exacting; it’s important to me to remain in her “smart” category. Thin and smart. There is almost nothing more than that in terms of how the world runs.

I knocked at Annah’s door and felt no nervousness but instead a particular heightened awareness of wanting everything to be just so. I found myself adjusting my long-sleeved striped shirt and tight, high-waisted blue pants over and over again until Annah appeared and smiled with her white-teethed mouth and alarmingly blue eyes. “Come in! Obviously. I am making tacos and there is plenty for you!”

“I couldn’t,” I responded with a kind of verbal curtsy.

“You can and will.” Annah had a way of taking charge that probably came from the fact that she was thirty years old. I obeyed, sat on the couch, and prepared to eat a second dinner of the evening.

“I came to invite you to this dinner party I’m having. Small, of course. It’s sort of a housewarming for myself.”

“An apartment warming!” Annah said. I laughed politely but wondered why some people felt the need to correct everything. My mother did this: lied all the time to friends about her Botox and house and diet. Of course, I never said a word. Mom always said telling the truth about something was only used to make you feel better about yourself; everyone should be on a need-to-know basis only. Annah would have hated my mother, I suppose.

Annah held her wine glass close to her chest, her wrist in a curling. “What can I bring?”

“Oh please, nothing,” I responded with the dismissive wave of someone who had evolved past the point of needing anything. So much practice in unraveling self from object.

Annah stared back as a response. Her stare had an intensity and a kindness which I always envied.

“Okay...a dessert,” I truced.

“I’ll bake a cake!”

Finally, there was Mia. Fresh off a breakup with her girlfriend, Mia had been hard to reach and even harder to speak with. Not that I had tried very hard; unpleasant conversations make me uncomfortable. With most people I like to send a text which says, “How are you?” and then provide a series of blanket responses which I simply pull from my iPhone’s notes app in reply: Ugh. I totally hear you. Have you talked to them about this? No, seriously. It’s not fair. You have to know what is meant for you WILL come your way. No apology necessary! Dude, I am here for you whenever! This is such a difficult time. These responses have coached various acquaintances through breakups, lost jobs, and toxic mothers. I wondered why everyone didn’t do this; it was so efficient.

My text to Mia began with the usual platitudes. Line 14 of my stock texts.

Been thinking of you...hope you’re feeling a bit better...I blocked her on Instagram...Her new girlfriend is sooo ugly.

And then I staged the invite:

Please come to this little dinner party I’m having! It’s just what you need to take your mind off of everything. It’ll be just girls, playing games and having a nice, home-cooked meal.

Mia responded with a photo of a cardboard cutout of Kristen Stewart captioned This is the closest thing I’m going to get to a girl in my bedroom. I typed out a frivolous ha-ha–with many "As" and in all caps. Of course, I had a perfectly straight face. Mia had a good laugh, but she wasn’t very funny herself.

After a few beats, Mia: I’ll be there. Bringing a red and a white. See you soon. Xo.

With my guests set, I began preparing my attic apartment for visitors. I went to the local grocery and bought the ingredients for my signature pasta puttanesca. Before buying the fish, I hesitated, remembering that Mia is a particularly picky eater. I hate adult picky eaters. Were they not embarrassed? Mia always belabored on about a particularly nasty dairy allergy she had. The puttanesca had a cream sauce base. I bought the fish and heavy cream anyway.

I felt as though I had given out each invitation meticulously and mindfully. But when it came time to prepare the flowers, my apartment, the food, a familiar anxiety began to set in. What if my guests didn't have fun? For them to have a bland time after I had taken such care to set all of this up, to make everything gleam–it just wouldn’t do. I changed the furnace filter. I opened the big bay window in the living room, but only halfway–flirted with letting the real world inside, but only a small breeze came through.

I was letting a red milk cream sauce simmer on the stove when Apple arrived. I had told everyone to come up on their own but to send me a text so I could hit the unlock buzzer. After all, each one of the doors leading up to my apartment, from the security gate to the second-floor walkup, locked behind you when closed. However inconvenient, it was a nice extra security measure from my ever-absent landlord.

“Hi,” Apple said demurely. Apple reminded me of a fawn, never quite sure where to go next, wobbling unsteady and beautiful on her long, thin legs.

“Hello!” I responded, heading across the dining and living areas to the front door to give Apple an awkward hug.

“It smells good in here,” Apple said with a kind smile.

“Please, take off your coat and come sit! Did you bring the games?”

“Of course. I’m excited to get to know everyone better,” Apple said, picking a piece of lint off her red sweater.

I was unsure how a game of Uno or the like could allow everyone to kumbaya with one another, but I didn’t question it. It’s rude for a host to make their guests feel dull. Besides, Apple wasn’t dull in nature, it was just a choice she seemed to make.

Annah arrived a few minutes later. “That door buzzer makes me feel like I’m on an episode of Sex in the City,” she said.

“Right? These new locks are really something though. I’m sure you know. I have locked myself out so many times I don’t even care to admit it.”

“They lock automatically or something?” Apple chimed in.

“Yes. Brand new last summer. Now, each unit has its own buzzer. Easy if you live with someone to buzz you in automatically. Hard if you live alone and like to run out to get a diet coke from the corner bodega,” I mused while tossing the salad.

“All true,” Annah said, “having someone to let you in on the off-chance you forget your key is the first and last advantage of having someone living with you.” She stood and poured herself a glass of wine. “Can you imagine? When I’m dating a guy and allow him to spend the night, I wake up at the crack of dawn and fantasize about him leaving until he does. Sometimes I date just to remind myself why I will never marry!” I laugh and Apple joins in, a tight yet genuine one.

 Annah is one of the very few people that I find generally clever, even if she does overdo it.

“Need any help in the kitchen? Everything is set up so beautifully!” With this compliment, I decide Annah is in fact my favorite. She always takes charge of a situation. Where Apple is a quiet nag with a streak of wit and wisdom, Annah is abrasive and loud with her kindness, warmth, and intelligence. I refuse the help, of course, despite Annah’s gaze and maternal shoulder squeeze over my saucepan.

Annah and Apple finally shook hands and exchanged Instagram handles. I was working diligently on the pasta and side salad when I heard them stroll through the living room passively canvasing my bookshelves.

They had traversed Pasternak to Portnoy before Mia showed up, out of breath and apologetically. “It’s so nice to meet you!” She reached out over a canvas bag and a fisted hand of Malbec to touch the forearms of Apple and Annah in a gesture of warmth and familiarity. “I feel like I’ve met you both, I’ve heard such nice things!”

I loved this part of dinner parties where the hostess could simply busy herself with matters of entertainment, and all the small talk would be left to the guests. Jobs, weather, and hometowns had been discussed before I began to bring dishes out to my table, intricately set.

“You buried yourself in there!” Annah said, chiding me as a general would to his army private at bed check. “Here, let me grab the salad.”

“Everything looks so great,” Apple said in her quiet, coated voice.

Apple always spoke something differently than what her eyes were saying. It was as if two loose green darts were running away from the rest of her body, her mouth and head always catching up before you could even acknowledge the iciness of her gaze.

“Thank you all so much for coming,” I said with a literary demure.

“You know, I’m such a picky eater, and this pasta is perfect,” Mia said between bites. “Fish is usually a total no-go for me, but this is seasoned so well, it tastes great!”

It was then that I felt a twinge of regret for putting cream in the sauce. Mia had made such an ordeal out of being allergic to different food groups: dairy, grains, wheat, red40. I did not believe in these kinds of allergies. You were celiac or you were not. You are on a diet or you are not. The rest is just a ploy for attention and I know this. Shellfish make me nauseous. Pineapple makes my tongue itch. But I keep these things to myself. Everyone has their irks.

Even so, I had told Mia the meal would be friendly to her dietary restrictions and did not follow through. I made a mental note to follow up with Mia tomorrow to see if she confessed to feeling ill or if I had actually caught on to an elaborate charade as I suspected.

I looked down at the food and began to eat. As if before my eyes, the dinner became a kind of Norman Rockwell painting: I was at the head of the table in a cushioned wicker chair looking out at my three guests in the yellow warmth of sparkling candlelight. The room itself was ornamented with deep reds from the autumnal floral arrangement. Stephen was correct after all,  I thought.

“Apple, wondering where you are on the fate of libraries?” Annah began. Her gab was, as usual, a blessing and a curse; where she was going with this statement could take it either way. “I’ve discussed this before, but I am so concerned with what will happen to the billions of dollars we have put into public literacy with little to no return on investment. Death of humanities, etc. Don’t you agree?”

I could see Apple briefly decide who Annah was: the slightest narrowing of her eyes, the most fleeting twitch of her mouth, then a stern line of nothingness. “Interesting you should ask,” she replied, without a hint of any emotion.

“I have this evolutional theory. We are hurtling toward modernity at such an unsustainable rate, I think we will have a sort of genesis of culture, people will turn totally backward, toward slow living, homesteading, blue collar America will have an emergence, capitalism will experience a shedding...”

“Wow,” Mia said, salting and oiling a piece of baguette. “Maybe.”

And then, as if a volcano erupted in the esophagus, Annah let out the biggest laugh. “Apple. AP-PLE! You genius!”

“What? Really?” Apple’s wide eyes mimicked the relief around her mouth.

Mia said, “Yeah, I mean, I could get behind it. This is the kind of anti-capitalist thought process that remains hopeful. I seriously hate bad news.”

I nodded with my head down, afraid my eyes would reveal my disdain for their idiocy.

“People will get so fed up with this rat-race bullshit eventually, and then...” Mia gestured with her saucy fork. “BOOM! Once rich people start doing it, everyone will start doing it. That’s the way the world works!”

“Life’s just a God-forsaken high school.” Annah nodded ridiculously in agreement. She closed her eyes beneath her glasses, as if she were sitting in a cafe being read slam poetry.

I started to have a moment that often happened in social gatherings: a comical, Truman Show like zoom out, where I begin to understand just how humiliating it would be to have someone walk in the room and hear the present conversation. It is my rule that if this occurs, it is up to me to change the flow. This has happened throughout my life–at school, at a slumber party, sitting at my republican grandfather’s dining room table–I take charge. I elegantly and simply shift the topic. Somewhere along the way, I supposed, I lost my ability to do this.

“Wait...” I chucked sardonically. “You’re not serious, right?”

Three necks craned toward me then, a suppertime Norman Rockwell painting gone surreal Salvador Dali.

“Of course, she is!” Annah said, as if defending a preschooler’s phallic fingerpainted art piece.

I cleared my throat. “Technology is the backbone of the world. The global economy, socialization, even schooling. We are way too far into it for it to be shut off and people actively choosing to go back to a more physically laborious way of life. I just...I thought maybe you were being facetious.”

I realized almost immediately that all Apple had heard was that she was a silly cockeyed fawn in my eyes.

“Yeah...I...I guess...I just thought–”

“And thought MATTERS, Apple,” Annah said, more maternally than angrily, which I resented more. Apple needed to learn that the world didn’t work according to desires; it worked according to standards and rules and capital.

“I am not saying that I like the way things are now, Apple, I would love your way!”

“It’s not HER way,” Mia chimed in. “She gave us evidence for why she thinks this could really happen for all of us. I think it’s great news!”

“But it’s not NEWS. News is when something has happened that you can report on. This is not a REPORT, it’s a baseless thought where people will go back to sharecropping and living off wood-burning stoves in winter. It’s a fantasy.” I hit the table then. The clanking silverware and suddenly tense shoulders of all three women brought me out of myself for a moment. I felt something akin to my prefrontal cortex separating from my line of speech. A feeling I recognize when I begin to lose my temper.

“People who want things to be better are not synonymous with philistines,” Annah leveled.

It was then, somewhere in her slack, nonchalant tone, that I realized no one was really mad except me. I looked out at the faces of everyone at the table and saw that two of the three wine bottles were completely empty. I had been so busy cleaning and cooking and plating and listening and nodding politely that I hadn’t realized everyone was having some pseudo-philosophical discussion because they were drunk and bored. It was then that I felt nothing but my own cheeks lance and burn.

“Of course not, of course.” I smiled as a fifties housewife would and dotted my mouth with a napkin. “I got so serious. Must be all of this wine!” I said. I hoped they didn’t notice that I had just one glass with dinner.

They began to smile and laugh, a hearty chuckle as water flows through a sink filled with dirty dishes and washes the sticky mess away.

What an odd bunch, I thought.

I began to clear the plates pleasantly as the laughs folded back into natural dinner table conversation. I ran warm water into the sauce pans, added a ring of dish soap, and began to scrub.

“He has to do all the cooking in our apartment. I cannot make a single dish successfully!”

“You really must check out this store. The shoes are all this cute and the pricing is excellent!”

“My brother was arrested! Can you believe it? No, I’m not going home for Christmas!”

“Yeah. I mean I’ve gone on a couple of dates but nothing serious. It’s been so frustrating trying to do it online.”

A few minutes later, when I felt that I had a good start on the cleanup, I let myself finally feel the wave of anxiety that I had made a bad impression at my own event. To counteract, I lit a spliff and walked into the living room with it. Almost immediately, it cooled my nerve endings, or at least dulled their impact, like the quiet hush that comes over a theater audience when the lights die down. It occurred to me only after I’d done it that a long hand-rolled cigarette held between my acrylic red painted nails it gave a kind of elegant after dinner touch.

“PERfection.” Mia kissed her own hands as I entered the room. I smiled modestly. “Oh, please.”

“No, seriously!” Mia exclaimed, sloshing her wine as she plopped down on the blue velvet couch, “you throw an amazing dinner party.” I waited for the others to nod in agreement, which they did dutifully. I felt relief, and then an open twinge: When was the last time I said something interesting out loud?

“Games, anyone?” Apple said. Annah and Mia responded with loud, imbibed affirmations. Apple got out cards and began to deal everyone their seven. “May I just say, ladies...” she started warmly, “it’s been such a pleasure to meet you tonight. I feel like we’ve known each other forever!” The other girls nodded in affirmation.

“We have so much in common, really.” Annah looked at me, the elegant hostess. “We have you to thank for bringing us together,” she said with a wink.

I was flattered. And then felt guilty for thinking that a small conversation would have created an impossible rift. We are women in our twenties; what conversations would not lead to a complicated discussion of capitalism after all?

The spliff was working. I settled into a comfy, oversized orange armchair, spread my shoulders out so my arms rested on the sides of the seat, like some kind of CEO.

“The rules are really simple,” Apple began. I noticed Apple sparkling a bit more, like a quiet small line of smirk was stuck on her face. I wondered if Apple would thank me when this was all over for introducing her to such a lively and smart group of women. Surely, I was owed that.

I focused my eyes through the haze of the high to listen in. Nothing better to move the night forward than a game.

“Pass?” Mia looked at the long, packed spliff. I handed it to her with a nod to keep going toward Apple and Annah. To smoke indoors was a bit unbecoming of a hostess, but I drank decidedly less wine than the rest, so I deserved this. This was how I justified things a lot–everything was in balance so long as there was a negotiation.

“Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza,” Apple said, as if that was something everyone on earth should understand. I surveyed the blank stares in the room. “Trust me. You’ll know these words by heart after you play even the first round.”

“This is a game for elementary schoolers, isn't it?” Mia asked. Mia was not the most well-mannered or the most intelligent, but she was direct and spoke with a conviction of authority despite having none. I like people with audacity. So long as I am not around it too long.

“Eleven plus,” Annah read off the card box to a burst of laughter.

“Listen! In Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, you’ll take turns flipping a card and saying one of those five words, whichever you want. But, if what you say matches the card you play, it’s a race to slap your hand down first. Last hand loses the round.”

“Grateful to be absolutely pissed out, then,” Mia said. “I drank six glasses of wine, smoked a spliff, AND I ate dairy. Full steam ahead!”

There was no sound in the room at all for a stark, eternal moment. Apple licked her bottom lip slowly, Annah stared at me, adjusted her glasses lens, stared some more. Mia counted her cards and tactlessly grabbed another one from the deck. My face felt entirely removed from my head. A lost expression, detached from making a choice.

“Dairy?  I–” I finally started.

“Oh please. I could smell it in the sauce the minute you set it down!”

“I totally forgot that–” I stuttered to keep up with the fib even as the sentence tumbled out.

“Don’t.” Mia was smiling as she had been most of the evening. Now, I was seeing the menacing overbite of the whole thing. “It’s fine. It was good. I took a pill for my allergy. I thought this may happen.”

“What–what do you mean by that?” I could feel myself frowning deeply as one does before an unrelenting cry. As children do when they are caught in a lie about eating dessert before dinner.

“Forget about the whole thing,” Mia said. This time, her gaze lingering, narrowing almost as if she would wink, but it never came.

“So...let’s start!” Annah lightly clapped her hands together and moved to sit cross-legged on the floor to be closer to the round, glass coffee table and, at the same moment, set an almost dead, red wine glass down sloppily. I realized there would be a monstrous ring on the table. I thought to say something, even opened my mouth to do so, but stopped myself. There is something about conflict of any kind that has always made me feel naked—disrobed and unwound in a room of curious onlookers. The spliff had streamlined my thoughts, made me realize with a crashing thump of the brain that I had never actually been that zipped up of a person; people just let me walk around with my metaphorical ass out all the time.

“Okay. I’ll start!” Apple said. The giddy glint in her eyes and mouth still there.

I was getting more and more nervous as Apple continued her display of profane, small happiness. I wondered what that meant. I wondered what was happening now. It was as if the room was speeding up, every minute only fifteen seconds long. Speech moving ever faster. The game picked up pace. Nothing more to drink.

“Taco”

“Cat”

“Goat”

“Cheese,” I muttered, almost out of breath. No one seemed to notice. It kept going. The absurd circle. A pencil attempting to cross out a moment etched in sharpie.

“Pizza”

“Taco”

“Cat”

“Pizza”

“Taco”

“Goat”

“Taco”

“Cat”

“Goat”

“Cheese”

“Pizza.” The card matched.

Annah, Mia, and Apple slapped their hands down. Mine was last. The acrylic of my red nails resting cold and damp on top of Apple’s.

“You’re out!” Annah exclaimed. There was an agonizing twelve seconds of silence when everyone’s hands stayed put. “I mean...I think? She is. Right, Apple?”

“That’s right,” Apple said. Her gaze was cold for the first time that evening, two bright eyes set upon me with no hint of emotion.

“Right, of course.” I did my best to smile. “Mia...Again... I’m sorry about the dairy.”

Mia cut me off. “Not a big deal.”

It cascaded down then, and I knew it. A deal so big that it encapsulated an entire idea: the chase of catching someone in a victimless lie. A kind of solo prank pulled and failed. No one was laughing because there was nothing to laugh about. A small cruelty, avoidable at every turn.

A new round began. The room continued to swirl at a quickening pace with every new word.

Goat Cheese Pizza Cat Taco Goat Pizza Cheese Cat Goat Taco Pizza Goat Cheese Cat Taco.

The women began to talk between card plays. I remained the only one out. For a game of no strategy, just fate, it felt remarkably targeted and suspenseful–almost torturously so. The usual topics came up: plans for the week and early shopping for holiday gifts. Then Apple said, “Well, I guess I have some happy news!”

“Do tell!” Annah exclaimed.

I was hit with an unmissable stretch of dizzying nausea.

“I’m starting a new job on Monday.”

I jumped down Apple’s throat like some kind of disgusting snake unable to resist the pathetic launch for a small bug. “You’re leaving the library?”

“I didn’t mention this to you?”

“No.”

“Well, it just happened” Apple said, like she was talking to her mother who she forgot to talk about her engagement. “But I’m not leaving the library, I got the manager position!”

“That's wonderful!” Annah said.

I stood in a room of sitting women. “I didn’t even know there was an opening.”

“Well...there kind of wasn’t! Blanche just talked to me about it. I interviewed last week and accepted it right away!”

“Blanche is a bitch.” I meant to think it. Said it instead.

There it was again. Three heads turned toward me, pleasant and small smiles on their faces, lightly narrowed eyes. Their true thoughts decipherable only with guesswork.

I scrambled. “What I mean to say is, of course, she asked you. Congratulations, Apple.” I knew I hadn’t managed to save myself. But people hang off buildings with their grip slipping, and they moan and grasp and grunt with every moment of hope and strength. It is human nature to try to survive. Despite the odds.

“Yes, congratulations! We should all go out dancing to celebrate soon!” Mia said.

Nothing sounded worse. I could feel the paranoia creep up each individual nerve of my spine. Does Apple like me at all? Do I like anyone here?

“Thank you, guys. Wow. I would love that, Mia. Now, back to the game. What time is it, after all?”

“After midnight,” I chimed, hoping to wrap up the party. I desperately needed the silent loneliness my empty apartment always wrought.

Annah regarded the time as though you were telling her the weather was the same as yesterday. A simple understanding. No action needed.

We could be here for hours I thought.

Cat. Goat. Pizza. Cheese. Taco. Cat. Pizza. Goat. Taco. Cheese.

The entire day flashed in murderous review: the money I spent on flower arrangements, a gathering with a group of my own design who proved themselves both ignorant and ill-mannered. The flaws that I saw in the girls were flaws they did not see in one another, in fact, these very traits were often celebrated and enjoyed. I had been hosting their party.

Cat. Cheese. Pizza. Goat

“I’m going to step outside for a moment,” I said. Each one of them regarded me in the feminine, caring way women always do. “You alright?” “Be careful.” “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Please. I think doing all of the cooking and the dishes just made me lightheaded! Let me know who wins.” And I smiled. I always smiled, though this one felt as though my lips were fighting a vice grip.

I bound down the stairs and continued to hear regular conversation in my descent. A good time floating out of my own apartment which I couldn’t manage to take part in.

I found a seat on the porch and, for the first time that week, managed not to think about anything. I could often reason my way out of my own anxiety with the same strategy. Thinking of myself as a disappearing entity. I am not even here. I likened the emotion to a water’s tide. I was boxed away behind my eyes, nothing but a moving husk of calm agreement. My anxious undercurrent was a water high and wavy, tossing itself about, until I, as if tethered by the moon, reduced it to a denied calm. A faucet switching off. The dirty dishes always get clean.

After about fifteen minutes, I got up to go inside and dismiss my guests. It was time to be discerning and let them know they needed to leave. I would say I needed a good night’s sleep. I would say something about plans for tomorrow. Plans that don’t exist. This is something I always thought about ahead of time. How to lie well and quickly, a slick path with no resistance.

My phone had been left inside in the heat of the moment, so I buzzed my own apartment to get back in.

No answer.

I could hear the girls enraptured in the game through the cracked bay window, distracted by the interesting side stories of one another which came up in spits and bursts.

I buzzed again.

Then, Apple alone stood with her eyes and nose visible to me on the ground below. I waved my arms up to her, calm enough not to look like a mad man, but annoyed enough to try to get her attention with effort.

Apple stared down at me. I could see the sparkle of her eye, even streetside. Her face, otherwise expressionless. And then, she slightly lowered herself back down to the couch and resumed the game. I knew so from the sounds. Cat. Taco. Goat.

Only a snip of my Lillie arrangement visible, I hit a bottoming of self-pity and longing like I`ve never felt. I thought about calling out loud, getting the ever-responsible Annah’s attention, but silence overtook me once I saw Mia take her camel hair trench coat off the guest hook and hang it into the spare closet. A few minutes later, I heard the chiming oohs and ahhs of Annah cutting into the cake she brought along for dessert.

Cat. Pizza. Cheese. Goat. Taco. Cat. Pizza. Cat. Taco. Cheese. Pizza.

I heard the clinking of my glassware, then light music from my record player in my dining room, the comfortable, idle conversation of three people as though they were relaxing in their home.

I sat on the porch. And there was the rain.