“That’ll be twenty dollars, including the buffet,” he says almost apologetically.
“So what are you up to these days?” she asks, bending over the table to write a check.
“Still performing. I have a couple of gigs around town. That’s my card right there,” he says, pointing at a stack on the table. “Course, I’m working at Wal-Mart to pay the rent. But I’m saving up to go to this magicians’ expo in Vegas this fall. Should make a lot of contacts there.”
“That’s great,” she says, tearing off the check and handing it to him. She takes a card. “If I ever need a magician …”
“You never know!” he says.
“I just had to speak my mind,” Daphne breaks in. “No hard feelings.”
“No hard feelings,” Jack says with a big smile, taking Kathryn’s elbow and steering her toward the banquet room. As they open the double doors, “Freeway of Love” comes blasting out.
The large room, with its red-patterned carpeting and red-vinyl-seated chairs, is decorated with crepe-paper ribbons and multicolored balloons. WELCOME CLASS OF ‘86! is spelled out across one wall in gilt cardboard letters, like a child’s birthday decoration. There is no discernible theme. Several long tables, joined together and covered with white paper cloths, hold three punch bowls the size of aquariums and platters of what looks like cubed cheese. At the far end of the room, behind the empty dance floor, a disc jockey wearing mirrored sunglasses and an Ozzy Osborne T-shirt sits in the middle of a complicated sound system. The cash bar is mobbed with people.
“Okay, I’m here. Now can I leave?” Kathryn says.
“No way. We’re gonna boogie all night,” Jack says with a grin, swiveling his hips and pointing his fingers skyward.
“Then I need a drink.”
They make their way over to the bar, Jack glad-handing people all the way. He’s not even wearing a name tag, but everybody knows who he is.
“Ever thought of running for office?” Kathryn says as they wait for her vodka tonic.
“Nah. I’m a newspaper guy.”
“It must get oppressive sometimes, being so known.”
He looks at her with amusement. “You have turned into an old recluse, haven’t you?”
“Oh, my God, it is you,” a woman says, clutching Kathryn’s arm. “I didn’t recognize you at first. I’ll have to get Chip over here!”
Kathryn looks at her name tag; it says Donna (Murphy) Sanborn. Then she follows Donna’s gaze to several yards away, where Chip is slapping backs with a group of guys.
“We’ll catch his eye in a minute,” Donna says. She turns back to Kathryn. “He told me about your little chat on the plane.” Her mouth falls into a pout. “Sorry to hear about your divorce.”
“Thanks,” Kathryn says. “Your husband was very sweet about it.”
“He is a sweetie.” Donna looks over at him fondly.
“And it sounds like his business is going great.”
“Yep, it sure is. But he leaves his socks lying around everywhere, and he forgets to take out the trash. So he isn’t perfect. But I love him anyway.”
Kathryn feels a pang, envying the casual way Donna stakes her claim for him. Kathryn had never felt she could do that with Paul. Even when they’d been in love, it was never something they casually announced to people. Their bond always seemed too fragile, somehow, to withstand public scrutiny.
“Kath Campbell.” All at once Chip is at her elbow with a big smile. “Long time no see.”
“We were talking about you, honey. Were your ears burning?” Donna playfully pinches his waist. Pulling Kathryn closer, she says, “When you’re ready to start dating again, let us know. Chip works with a couple of real cuties.”
“I guess it’s a little soon,” Kathryn says, “but I appreciate the thought.”
“By the way,” says Donna, “that was a very moving piece you wrote. Jennifer was pretty screwed up, huh? I had no idea. I always thought she was Little Miss Perfect.”
“Well, I guess if you scratched the surface of most of us—” Kathryn begins, bridling a little at Donna’s blunt assessment.
“I’m going to be doing some business with your mom,” Chip breaks in. “Did she tell you?”
“Not yet. But I haven’t seen her much lately.”
“She’s a real dynamo, your mom.”
“Yes, she is,” Kathryn agrees. Smile and nod, smile and nod. She’s lost Jack; he’s off talking to someone else, a skinny guy wearing a Dysart’s Truck Stop baseball cap. In the distance she can see Abby Elson talking to Tim Peavey, the guy who sent Jennifer all those love notes and thought he was her boyfriend. Kathryn catches her eye, and Abby looks away. Over at the hors d’oeuvre table, Brian is impaling a piece of cheese on a toothpick and Rachel’s looking around for something edible. Will is nowhere to be seen; Daphne must have corralled him for table duty in the lobby.
“Well, whaddaya know, Kathryn Campbell,” someone says, tapping her on the arm, and she turns to find Matt Rosen, the poetry editor of Ramifications, smiling at her with exaggerated surprise. Though his hair is shorter and he seems to be taller, he’s dressed exactly as he was in high school, down to the oversized glasses, blue-striped button-down, and belt pulled one notch too tight.
“Hi, Matt,” she says warmly. She and Matt had spent hours together after school, laying out pages and editing copy, and she’s immediately at ease with his sly, intimate manner.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for the marrying type,” he says, grasping her hand with the ring on it.
“I must not be,” she says with a rueful smile. “I’m divorced.”
“Ah, then this is armor. Good strategy, with all these single guys milling around who used to have wild crushes on you.”
“Really? Where?” she says, pretending to look around.
“Well, at least one.” He grins and kisses her hand. “You’re more stunning than ever. Divorce becomes you.”
“You sure know how to flatter a girl,” she says.
Matt heads off to buy her a refill. Chip and Donna have drifted away. Kathryn steps back, leaning a shoulder against the red flocked wallpaper, and looks around at her classmates. She sees a succession of people she’d just as soon not run into: a lacrosse player she had a one-night stand with; an odd guy whose freaky submissions to the literary magazine she’d summarily rejected; a girl she’d actually been pretty good friends with whom she hadn’t thought about since graduation. Age and experience are recorded differently on each face—some are fleshier, some fit, some shockingly older, some virtually unchanged. There’s Mindy Miller, Best Smile, with adult braces on her teeth to preserve her winning feature. There’s Sean McCarthy, captain of the losing hockey team senior year, tan and buff, with a pretty little wife from somewhere else. Over by the deejay Kathryn sees three shy and awkward girls, best friends in high school, plainer and puffier now and uncomfortably dressed, furtively smoking cigarettes.
She has forgotten most of these faces, and she doesn’t remember many names. But in a way, she thinks, scanning the crowd, these people know her better than anyone she’s met since. They knew her every day, for years on end, before she figured out how to camouflage and reinvent herself, before she developed guile. In this world she’ll always be Kath Campbell, lit-mag editor and best friend of Jen Pelletier, foot soldier in various sports and activities, with several forgettable short-term romances, a pitiable singing voice, and no memory for jokes. As an adult she can lie by omission, but in high school she tried it all—to see what she was good at, to know what to avoid.
With a little shock, she realizes how little it probably matters to these people what she’s doing—or not doing—with her life. Everybody’s been through something. She’s heard that Karen Stevenson, who made fun of Kathryn’s bargain-basement clothes in eighth grade, has an autistic child. Mark Farrington’s sister was killed by a hit-and-run driver as she walked home from school. Barry Ballou was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s and zapped with chemo; when his hair grew bac
k, it was completely white. And on and on. Everybody has a story, and every story contains disappointment and heartache—if not yet, then to come. She remembers something a friend in Virginia told her once, when Kathryn was lamenting the sad state of her life. “People get it backwards,” Renee had said. “They take good times for granted, expect that’s the way life should be, which isn’t the case at all. Life is the hard stuff—the deaths and tragedies and divorces. The rest is a fluke, an aberration. A lucky break.”
“That’s cheerful,” Kathryn had remarked, but now it occurs to her that in a funny way it is. Why not assume the worst, and be pleasantly surprised? It can’t be harder than being perpetually disappointed.
“Well, well, well,” someone behind her says in a low voice. “More superficial changes.”
She turns around. It’s Mr. Hunter, with a curious smile.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
“You’re not content just to follow her. You want to become her.”
She starts to respond defensively, then stops herself. She looks at him, at the challenge in his eyes, and something shifts in her mind. “Maybe so.”
“It’s convincing,” he says. “I almost believe it.” Appraising her slowly, he says, “The blond hair does bring out something different in you. I’m not sure what.”
She sips her drink, watches him watching her.
“You seem bolder.”
“I feel bolder.”
“Oh?”
Her head is beginning to spin. Billy Ocean is singing “Caribbean Queen” in a seductive voice. Watch it, she thinks. “What are you doing here?” she asks again.
“I always go to these things. I take a perverse pleasure in watching my students age.”
“Must make you feel old.”
“No, quite the contrary. I’m like Dorian Gray.” He laughs. “All of you get older. I just stay the same.”
Scrutinizing the lines around his eyes, his sun-weathered skin, she says, “Don’t fool yourself.”
He smiles.
“No family. No ties,” she ventures. “What’s with that?”
Now he takes a drink, ice clicking against his teeth as he upends the plastic cup. “You don’t know my story,” he says.
“I know a little. You’ve never been married. You live alone on a lake outside of town. You’ve taught at the high school since you left college.”
“Grad school,” he says.
“Okay,” she says. “Still. Didn’t you ever want to do anything different?”
He looks up at the ceiling, festooned with ribbons, and purses his lips. “I don’t think I want to be having this discussion with you. I’m imagining a different conversation.”
“About what?”
“Let’s talk about you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What are you really looking for?”
“What do you mean?” she says, her heart beating quickly. She’s losing the advantage; she can feel it.
He laughs. “Come on. You know what I mean.”
“No, really.”
“This is not about finding Jennifer Pelletier.”
She looks at him, trying to see what he’s after, but his eyes are blank, reflecting pools. “What is it, then?” she asks finally, knowing as she does that she’s playing his game, hating herself for wanting to hear his answer.
Leaning closer, he says, “I think it’s about you, Kathryn. A diversion. A little attention.” He shrugs. “You’ve lost a lot of things recently, haven’t you? Your marriage, your job—”
“How do you know this stuff about me?” she snaps.
He smiles, a wide smile with lots of teeth. “Come on, remember where you are. Before long in this town everybody knows everything.”
“Then why doesn’t anybody know where Jennifer is?”
“I’m sure somebody does.”
“You’re sure?”
“It’s only logical.” He shrugs. “Nobody just disappears.”
At this moment Rachel walks past and Hunter looks over at her. Kathryn sees a smile pass between them, a slow, private moment.
“How well do you know Rachel?” Kathryn asks him innocently when she’s gone.
He shrugs. “How well do I know any of you?”
His words are vaguely familiar, but she isn’t sure why. And then she remembers: It’s the same thing he said in response to her question about Jennifer that day at the high school. Taking a long swallow, she drains her cup. “I’d guess you know some better than others.”
“How well do I know you?”
“You don’t,” she says. “And what you think you know, you’re wrong about. You don’t know anything about my motives.”
He raises his eyebrows in a skeptical gesture and tilts his head. “I’ll say one thing, Kathryn. You’re more interesting than I thought.” Reaching out and taking her cup, he says, “You need a new drink.”
“Someone’s getting me one,” she says. “Anyway, I need to get back to my friends.”
“Your ‘friends’?” He smiles. “Is that what you call them?”
“I really have to go.”
“Just one more thing,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about your being in my class, and why I had trouble remembering who you were. I think it’s because Jennifer’s presence overwhelmed you. You were never fully formed around her.” He looks at her intently. “You’re better off without her. You know that, don’t you?”
Kathryn stares at him. She doesn’t know what to say.
“Go,” he says, spreading his arms wide in an extravagant flourish. “We’ll meet again, I’m sure.”
LATER, AFTER THEY’VE lined up for a buffet dinner of chicken Cordon Bleu and Will has given a short speech welcoming everybody and thanking at least half of them, and the lights have dimmed for an encore presentation of the senior-class video that was shown at their prom, featuring Eddie Valhalla dressed up like a Bangor Ram and the cafeteria ladies singing “Shout” and other highlights and high jinks of the Class of ‘86 in all its youthful glory, the room begins to clear. Ice melts in scattered cups; plates of half-eaten food litter the round tables, their crepe-paper tablecloths hanging soiled and crumpled like forgotten promises. The carnation centerpieces have been ravaged for buttonhole boutonnieres and makeshift corsages.
“What was that all about?” Brian says, stretching, laughing, looking around at the others. The five of them are sitting at a table, picking at a plate of strawberries Rachel managed to snag before the buffet disappeared.
“Chicken and ham,” Rachel says, making a face. “Haven’t they ever heard of vegetarians? I’m starving.”
“I saw you eating those cheese cubes,” says Will. “Isn’t that enough protein for you?” He shakes his head in mock exasperation. “I work my butt off for you people, and all I get are complaints.”
“Well, the deejay was great,” Jack says dryly. “Those golden hits of the eighties really brought it back. I think I relived all four years of high school. Promise me we can try something different next time? Even John Tesh would be an improvement.”
Brian sits up. “Hey, man, I like John Tesh.”
“I saw you hangin’ with Mr. Hunter,” Will says to Kathryn. “It’s too late for grade-grubbing, you know.”
Kathryn’s eyes meet Rachel’s, and then Rachel looks away.
“What did he want?” Jack asks.
“Want?” Sensing a sharpness in his voice, Kathryn gives him a questioning look. “He was just goading me.”
“I never liked that guy,” Brian says. “I never understood how Jennifer could stand to spend so much time with him.”
“It was the club,” Will says. “She was way into that back-to-nature stuff.”
All at once, with a cold certainty, Kathryn knows. She looks at Rachel. “He’s the one. Right?”
“What?” Rachel mumbles.
“The one you wouldn’t name. The guy Jennifer was seeing. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.”
/> All of them turn to look at Rachel. She doesn’t reply. Behind them, the deejay is packing up his equipment. “Karma Chameleon” is blaring from the speakers.
“Is it true?” Will asks.
“I don’t know,” Rachel says, averting her eyes.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Will says, bounding out of his chair, knocking it over. “Cut the bullshit, Rachel.”
“Yes,” she says quickly, almost defiantly. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, Jennifer was having some kind of thing with him. It wasn’t that big a deal.”
“When?” Will demands.
“Spring of senior year.”
“How long have you known this?” Jack asks.
“Look,” she says, leaning forward in a conciliatory way. “She asked me not to tell anyone, and I promised.” She lets out a heavy sigh. “I found out by accident; I ran into them together one evening when I was going for a run out by Pushaw Lake. So Jennifer kind of had to tell me.” She flashes Kathryn a look. “And then, after she disappeared, I didn’t see much point in bringing it up. I thought it would make her look bad, divert attention from the real story. I didn’t want to complicate the investigation.”
“So you withheld information,” Will says.
“I didn’t think it was anything anyone needed to know about. It was private, between them. I knew that if anyone found out he’d probably lose his job. And people would assume things that weren’t true.”
“Like what?”
“Like—I don’t know. That he might be somehow involved in what happened.”
“And how do you know he wasn’t?” Brian asks. The light overhead is reflecting in his lenses, and his eyes are hard to read.
Rachel blinks. “I just—I don’t believe he was.”
“You didn’t even tell me,” Jack says.
She swallows. “I promised I wouldn’t tell anybody.”
For a moment all of them are silent, taking it in. Will picks up his chair and stands with his arms pressing down on the back of it, as if he’s gripping someone’s shoulders. “I think I’m going to have a talk with the police,” he says finally.