Mrs. Fletcher

  “What a lovely home.” Margo surveyed the décor with what seemed like sincere admiration, and maybe even a touch of longing. “Thank you so much for inviting us.”

  Dumell and Amanda echoed this sentiment, while Julian Spitzer lingered near the door, skateboard tucked under his arm, nodding in dubious agreement.

  “You’re welcome,” Eve told them. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

  Shifting into hostess mode, she ducked into the kitchen to see what she could round up in the way of snacks and beverages. The answer, unfortunately, was not a whole lot. On the plus side, there was an unopened bottle of Australian Shiraz on the counter; wine was one thing she rarely forgot at the grocery store. On the minus side, the refrigerator held only a single beer, a Dos Equis Amber she couldn’t remember buying, along with a bottle of Hard Lemonade that must have been over a year old. The food situation wasn’t much better—half a sleeve of not-quite-fresh Stoned Wheat Thins, a block of cheddar that had hardened around the edges, a handful of baby carrots that seemed okay if you didn’t look too close, and a tub of hummus she wouldn’t have foisted on her own worst enemy.

  She found a platter and arranged the crackers in a semicircle around the brick of cheese, which looked a lot better after some minor cosmetic surgery. If nothing else, the carrots added a splash of color. The hummus went straight into the garbage, where it should have gone days ago. Removing the cork from the Shiraz, she heard a reassuring burst of laughter from the living room, and realized that it had been a long time since she’d had this many people in the house.

  She’d made the invitation on an impulse, after the lecture room had cleared out. The five of them were standing around, trying to figure out where to go for dinner. It was a frustrating conversation—Dumell didn’t like Thai food, Amanda avoided fish whenever possible, Julian wasn’t hungry—without any resolution in sight. Margo, the guest of honor, wasn’t even participating. She looked tired and rattled—who could blame her?—and it suddenly occurred to Eve that she might not be in the mood for a big night out.

  I have an idea, she said. Why don’t you all come to my house? I can order some pizza and we can decompress.

  And now here they all were, laughing and making themselves comfortable.

  How about that? she thought, as she grabbed the wine and the snack platter, and went to join her friends in the living room.

  * * *

  Amanda didn’t mind taking one for the team. Somebody needed to go to the liquor store, and it might as well be her. Dumell had been the first to volunteer, but Margo had looked so happy, snuggling up to him on the couch—she kept patting his leg and poking him in the shoulder, as if checking to make sure he was real—that it seemed like a shame to separate them. And besides, this was still kind of a work thing, even if she was technically off the clock.

  She was glad to get out for a bit, to leave the others to their wine and chitchat. She wasn’t in a super-social mood, not after the debacle at the Senior Center. It was just so disheartening, to get yourself all pumped up with optimism—a sense of ownership and personal fulfillment—and then have to sit there and watch your One Big Idea crash and burn.

  She glanced at Julian, her fidgety but mostly silent passenger.

  “Want some music?”

  “Whatever,” he said. “You’re the driver.”

  Come on, dude, she thought. Help me out here. He’d seemed happy enough to accompany her on the liquor run but apparently didn’t feel obligated to contribute anything in the way of conversation.

  “You like Prince?” she asked.

  “He’s okay.”

  Whatever. She pressed play, and the atmosphere inside of the car was instantly transformed by the spare, sultry sound of “When Doves Cry,” possibly the sexiest song ever written. It seemed a little too intimate for the circumstances, but there was no way she was gonna turn it off.

  “I’ve been going through a Prince phase lately,” she told him. “I sort of forgot what a genius he is. So many great songs.”

  Julian gave one of those noncommittal therapist nods, like it was interesting that she felt that way, not that he necessarily agreed with her.

  “What kind of music do you like?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. All kinds, I guess.”

  Jesus. It had been a long time since Amanda had hung out with a college freshman, so she wasn’t sure if this was standard behavior or not. Maybe terse, grudging replies were the most you could hope for. At least he was cute.

  “Is this weird for you?” she asked. “Hanging out with a bunch of old people?”

  “You’re not that old.”

  “Ha ha,” she said. “You seemed a little uncomfortable back there. I thought you might need a break or something.”

  “It wasn’t the people,” Julian explained. “It just kinda freaked me out to be in that house.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You know her son? Brendan?”

  “Not well.”

  “I went to high school with him.” Julian gave a shudder of disgust. “Such a fucking asshole. It gave me the creeps, walking in there and seeing his picture on the wall. Felt like I could smell him.”

  “I get that.” Amanda had only met Brendan once, but that was enough. “I didn’t like him much myself.”

  “Nothing against Eve,” Julian assured her. “She’s really nice.”

  “Eve’s great,” Amanda agreed. “Everybody loves Eve.”

  * * *

  Sanjay really needed to go. He had work to do, a big problem set in CS and a dense chapter in his Architectural History textbook. Sitting in a coffee shop listening to someone else’s problems was not a productive use of his time.

  “This totally sucks,” Brendan said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Sanjay wasn’t sure how to respond. He had no experience with a situation like this, and absolutely nothing of value to contribute, which made it even crazier that he’d gotten himself stuck in the role of advisor.

  “Maybe you should apologize,” he suggested.

  “I already did,” Brendan said. “She won’t even answer my texts.”

  The worst part of it was, Sanjay didn’t even like Brendan, or any of those other guys he’d met for dinner his first night of college. His roommate, Dylan, was okay, but the rest of them were jerks. It would have been fine with Sanjay if he’d never spoken to any of them ever again.

  But then he’d walked into the art show after dinner, and had seen Brendan’s portrait up on the Call-Out Wall. It seemed wrong to publicly shame someone like that, and Sanjay thought Brendan should know about it. That’s what he would have wanted if it had been his own face up there, not that it ever would have been. The problem was, you incurred an obligation when you made yourself the bearer of bad news. You couldn’t just stand up and walk away whenever you felt like it.

  “I didn’t even do anything,” Brendan muttered. “She punched me in the nuts, and I’m the bad guy?”

  “She punched you?”

  Brendan shrugged, like the details didn’t really matter. “You wanna get drunk? I got some vodka back in my room.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “We could smoke some weed.”

  “I don’t do that, either.”

  Brendan looked perplexed. “What do you do? I mean, for fun. On the weekends?”

  “My sister’s a senior,” Sanjay told him. “She has a car and she drives home every weekend to see her boyfriend. I usually go with her.”

  “So you hang out with your buddies?”

  “They’re all away at school. I just do my work and watch movies with my parents. They like having me there. And the food is way better than the crap we get at the Higg.”

  “Sounds pretty chill,” said Brendan. “I haven’t seen my mom since the day I got here.”

  “I bet she misses you.”

  “Yeah. She just sent me this.”

  Brendan picked up his phone and did some swiping. When he found what he wanted, he he
ld up the screen so Sanjay could see his mother’s text and his own reply.

  I miss you

  Miss you too

  Sanjay nodded. “Moms are the best.”

  “Totally,” said Brendan.

  He stared at the phone for a few more seconds before putting it back in his pocket. Sanjay took advantage of the lull to scoot his chair away from the table.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” he said, rising from his chair. “I really need to go to the library.”

  “It’s cool,” said Brendan. “Do what you have to do.”

  * * *

  Sometimes, Eve thought, a casual gathering like this just sort of gelled into a spontaneous party, which was, by definition, better than a party you had planned, precisely because no one saw it coming. It was a tribute to the people involved, the chemistry of their individual personalities combined with a collective desire to salvage something from what otherwise might have seemed like a wasted evening, not to mention a big assist from the pitcher of margaritas Amanda had whipped up in the kitchen, using a jug of cheap tequila and a pre-made, neon-green industrial mixer that was tastier than it looked.

  It was a conveniently small group—maybe a little too small—and they all seemed to be vibrating on the same wavelength, cracking jokes and laughing a little too loudly, toasting Margo for her excellent scarf collection, Dumell for service to his country, Amanda for the alcoholic beverages, and Julian simply for showing up, representing the millennials. There was a palpable sexual charge in the air—you couldn’t have a decent party without it—mostly generated by Margo and Dumell, who, as the night went on, had graduated from hand-holding and whispered endearments to a full-on make-out session on the couch.

  Eve knew it was rude to stare at the lovers, but she found it difficult to avert her gaze. Ever since she’d been aware of herself as a sexual being, going all the way back to middle school, she’d been aroused by the sight of people kissing in public, and the familiar effect was intensified in this case by the fact that Amanda was sitting only a short distance away in the wicker chair, and their eyes kept meeting in the awkward interludes that occurred while the happy couple was going at it. Most of these glances felt completely innocent—two friends rolling their eyes, sharing a moment of amused solidarity—but a few of them went deeper than that, lingering moments of silent, searching connection that made Eve wonder if a door she’d thought was closed might have swung open again.

  I should kiss her, she thought, even though she’d vowed never to go down that road again, never to embarrass or expose herself the way she had that last time. I bet she’d let me.

  This reverie was disrupted by the sudden realization that she was being watched, that Julian was staring at her with the same sort of longing that she herself was directing toward Amanda. She turned in his direction, raising her glass in a silent toast, not wanting him to feel left out. He returned the gesture, gazing at her with soulful drunken sincerity.

  Things were starting to get a little awkward when Margo finally extracted herself from a marathon kiss, brushing the hair from her eyes and blinking like she didn’t quite know where she was. She let out a long, slow, calming breath and straightened her skirt.

  “Enough of that,” she said, fanning her face with one hand. “Anyone feel like dancing?”

  * * *

  Amber went to a house party with Cat and some of her artist friends, but she left on the early side, unable to connect with the festive mood. Everybody there was really excited about the Call-Out Wall—they thought it would be great to make it a permanent installation in the Student Center—and they found it hilarious that Brendan kept texting her, begging for a moment of her time, sounding more and more pathetic with each successive message.

  Amber could appreciate the poetic justice of the situation—let him see how it felt to be silenced and powerless for once in his life, to be defined by other people—but it wasn’t as gratifying as she’d hoped it might be. In fact, the more she thought about Brendan the guiltier she felt, as if she’d done something bad to him, which was totally frustrating, because he didn’t deserve her sympathy or anyone else’s. It was just like her—just like a girl—to feel sorry for a guy she had every right to despise, and then to turn the blame back on herself.

  She could have taken Cat’s advice and blocked his calls. That would have solved the problem of her constantly buzzing phone, and spared her his manipulative cries for help. But it seemed kind of harsh, and even a bit cowardly, to call someone out and then cut off all possibility of communication, as if they had no right to respond, as if they were dead to you.

  Amber was tired and a little depressed. She just wanted to go to bed and forget this day had ever happened. But there was only one way she was going to be able to do that, and there was no use pretending otherwise. With a small shudder of resignation and distaste, she picked up her phone and touched her finger to his name. He answered in the middle of the first ring.

  “Wow,” he said. “Took you long enough.”

  “What do you want, Brendan?”

  “I don’t know. Just to talk, I guess. I’ve been having a rough night.”

  “Well,” she said, a little defensively. “I’ve had some rough nights lately myself.”

  A nicer person might have picked up on her cue and asked what was wrong, maybe even expressed a little sympathy, but this was Brendan she was talking to.

  “The art show,” he said. “That was really fucking brutal.”

  “I’m sure it was. But you have to—”

  “Do you really think that about me?” He sounded genuinely curious. “That I’m a huge disappointment?”

  Amber hesitated. She’d known that Cat had been working on the Call-Out Wall all semester, but she hadn’t realized that Brendan was a part of the installation until two days ago, when she’d helped transport the paintings from the art building to the Student Center. She was startled when she pulled off a sheet of bubble wrap and saw his happy face with the words HORRIBLE HUMAN BEING written beneath it like a final verdict.

  What the hell is this?

  It’s my gift to you, Cat told her.

  He’s not a horrible human being. He’s just—

  Those were your words, Cat reminded her. That’s a direct quote.

  Amber didn’t deny it. She’d said that about Brendan on the morning after their disastrous date, when she felt raw and betrayed, and Cat had been there for her, the way she always was, offering support and validation when Amber needed it most.

  I was pissed. I just needed to vent.

  You spoke your truth, Cat said. Don’t take it back now.

  It doesn’t feel right, Amber had insisted.

  Reluctantly, Cat proposed some alternate captions—DATE RAPIST? MISOGYNIST?—but Amber didn’t think those were accurate, either.

  He was just a . . . huge disappointment, that’s all.

  All right, Cat said. You’re being way too nice, but I’ll change it if that’s what you want.

  That’s what I want, Amber had said, and she wasn’t about to retract her words a second time, or give Brendan a reason to think he’d been forgiven. She couldn’t even think about that night without feeling sick and degraded.

  “Dude,” she told him. “You got off easy. It could have been a lot worse, believe me.”

  “Amber,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”

  “It’s a little late for that.”

  “I know. I’m just saying.”

  “All right,” she sighed. “I should go. I’m wiped out.”

  “Wait, Amber. I was just wondering—” His voice turned small and hopeless. “Could I come over and hang out with you for a while?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Not to hook up,” he assured her. “I just don’t want to be alone right now.”

  She almost laughed, but she could hear the pain in his voice.

  “I’m sorry, Brendan. Our hanging out days are over.”

  “Yeah,” he said. ?
??I kind of figured that.”

  Amber ended the call and wiped away an embarrassing tear. It was so stupid and unfair that someone could treat you so badly, and still make you want to hug them. She thought she might call Cat and commission a portrait of herself for the Call-Out Wall:

  JUST WANTS EVERYONE TO BE HAPPY, EVEN THE PEOPLE WHO DON’T DESERVE IT.

  * * *

  Dumell hated to be the bad guy, but it was a weekday and he had to work in the morning.

  “Last dance,” he whispered in Margo’s ear. “Then I got to take you home before I turn into a pumpkin.”

  “I believe it’s your car that turns into a pumpkin,” she told him.

  They were glued together like prom dates, swaying under the spell of “Sexual Healing,” which felt just then like an uncanny coincidence, a not-so-subtle message from the universe, even though it was just another song on Amanda’s iPhone, part of a crowd-pleasing soul- and Motown-heavy playlist that had kept them going for the past hour and a half.

  “That’s even worse,” he said, making unsolicited eye contact with Julian, who was very drunk, lurching around the room with his hands up, like the music had placed him under arrest. “I still owe money on that car.”

  Margo laughed and kissed him again. The woman loved to kiss. It was dark and she smelled good and her warm body felt just right pressing up against him. Dumell reminded himself that nothing else mattered.

  Don’t be scared, he thought. There’s nothing to be scared of.

  Fear was tricky, though. It had a way of sneaking up on you, making you question yourself and worry about the future. What would people say? What would they think? Do I really want this?

  They rotated a little, and now he was looking at Eve, who was dancing with Amanda, though they weren’t actually touching each other. Eve had one hand in her hair and the other on her hip. Amanda had her eyes closed and her mouth open, head tilted upward like a blind musician. Dumell wondered if maybe something was going on there, ’cause it sure felt like it.