By Design (13 page)

Especially tonight, in the middle of her Very Special Party Disaster. Which she was deeply regretting, all over again, at this point.

She took a deep breath, got a noseful of somebody’s perfume drifting off a coat, and sneezed. She rubbed her nose on Juliet’s shearling. What had she been thinking? A weird selection of friends, family, and hangers-on (Juliet!) did not a party make. All to impress a guy who wasn’t even here.

Emmie heaved herself back into the room, toward that nice bottle of pinot grigio she had been planning on rationing. Keeping herself stone sober was now officially off.

Between sips of wine, Emmie busied herself with swapping cookie sheets of finger foods in the oven—to have something to do, to avoid having to make small talk, to dodge her father, to distract herself while waiting for Graham to show up. Every once in a while she took a peek at the action in the living room—not that there was much, mind—and noticed Juliet was glancing at the front door just as often as she was, downing quite a few gin and tonics, and trying desperately to get Avery and/or Adam to flirt with her.

Emmie caught her breath as Rick sidled up to one of the windows, tugged aside the curtain, and peered outside. Emmie sauntered over to him as unobtrusively as possible. She smiled. Rick smiled back. Emmie positioned herself between him and the others in the room . . . and then abruptly slapped his hand holding the curtain, with a small but vicious
whap
.

“Ow!” Rick cradled his red, smarting hand.

“Stop that!” she hissed.

“But it’s starting to snow really hard—”

“Well, don’t
telegraph
it! You’ll start scaring the prisoners—I mean guests. Worse comes to worst, you and Trish get a sleepover here, away from the kids. Win-win. So cut it out, you hear me?” Rick nodded. “Good boy. Step away from the window, real casual like, and there’s an extra mini-quiche in it for you.”

“One of the ones with bacon?”

The doorbell rang again, and Emmie ran for it. Annette and Martie and their husbands stood on her doorstep, coated in a layer of white that had accumulated in their short walk from the car. Emmie was slightly disappointed that it wasn’t Graham, but she was happy that the foursome would at least reenergize the party.

Sure enough, Annette bellowed, “Let us in, darlin’! It’s effing freezing out here!”

Emmie was more than happy to comply and, as she found herself mobbed by three short, wide individuals and one tall, lanky, stooped one, she whispered to Annette, “Where have you been? I’ve
needed
you!”

“Oh, we had to go to the holiday dinner at the Moose lodge first. We go every year. It’s a good time—an all-you-can-eat pasta bar.”

“And they had some fantastic entertainment!” one of the husbands, the short one, whom Emmie assumed belonged to Annette, added. “Great stuff—I bought their CD!”

Sure enough, Annette said, “Emmie, honey, this is my husband, Artie. Artie, this is Emmie.”

Artie was even shorter and wider than Annette and looked remarkably like his sister, Martie
(Martie and Artie? Seriously?
she marveled), but with a shining dome covered by several hairs arcing overhead. He stuck out a beefy hand. “Emmie! Heard a lot about you! A lot! Annette just loves you!”

“Oh! Well . . . thanks!”

“Yep, sure likes you a whole lot better than that jackass of a boss you work for—”

Emmie suddenly developed a very loud, consumptive cough. She caught a glimpse of Wilma glancing over, so she kept coughing until Artie, alarmed, clapped her heartily on the back. Then she found herself coughing for real, her eyes watering.

“You all right?” Artie asked, while Annette, Martie, and Martie’s husband, who was yet to be named, grouped around her, concerned.

She gulped for air and nodded. “Please,” she choked, “go on in and make yourselves comfortable. I think you know lots of people already.”

“Yes, I think I see
your boss
,” Annette commented, elbowing her husband in the side in case he didn’t catch the hint.

Emmie recovered enough to usher everyone into the living room, making the acquaintance of Martie’s husband, Stan, on the way, and suddenly, she realized, her house was full. She retreated to the bathroom, fixed whatever makeup had smeared during her coughing jag, then sat on the edge of the tub for a few minutes, her head in her hands. It was going to be all right, wasn’t it? Sure it would. Of course it would.

She took a deep breath and returned to her party. As soon as she entered the living room, she could sense something was wrong. And then she saw it: Annette was talking with Wilma. Heatedly. She was fairly quiet—as quiet as Annette was capable of being—but Emmie could pick up the bad vibes from across the room.

Annette was saying sharply, “Really, John? Polka dots? What were you thinking?”

Wilma had plastered a condescending smile on his face, but it wasn’t sticking very well. “Now, look here, Annette—”

“That’s Mrs. Polschuk to you, you con artist—”

Oh crap,
Emmie thought,
she’s lost it.
So much for Annette’s promise to be civil. Emmie started heading toward them to defuse the situation before it turned into a rumble, the Polschuks against the Wilmans . . . and then she was body slammed from the right. She glanced over and saw an inebriated candy cane sticking to her.
How
many drinks had this ten-pound Christmas elf downed in the brief time she’d been here? Juliet’s empty glass was tipping sideways in her hand, melting ice cubes nearly sliding out onto the floor.

Juliet clutched Emmie’s sleeve and said, “Graham is coming later.” It occurred to Emmie that that was all Blondie had said to her all night. “Graham is coming later.” Okay, that was three times. Emmie nodded and tried to detach herself so she could avert the impending blowup a few steps away.

“I
beg
your pardon—” Wilma huffed.

“You’d better,” Annette countered. “That bedroom’s giving my kid nightmares!”

Emmie looked around for some help, to no avail. Avery and Adam still sat cozily on the couch, gleefully dividing their attention between the Design War on their left and Drunken Juliet on their right, like they were at Wimbledon.

“I don’t know why he isn’t here yet,” Juliet mumbled into her glass, and Emmie was glad she had found something else to say, although she wished she’d get off the Graham subject.

From somewhere beneath the din, a phone rang. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Trish digging in her purse. “Hello . . . yes?”

The exchange between Trish and the caller was suddenly drowned out by the most god-awful noise Emmie had ever heard—and it wasn’t Annette braining Wilma with an antique glass ashtray, although that seemed imminent. No, this terrible, terrifying sound was like . . . the hounds of hell. No, wait—the hounds of hell were . . . singing a Christmas carol?

Emmie pinpointed the source soon enough: Artie had turned off her iPod speaker dock that had been churning out tastefully religion-neutral holiday tunes and instead had fired up a CD. No, she hadn’t been having an auditory hallucination—there really were dogs howling “O Holy Night,” accompanied by . . . was that an accordion/ bagpipes combo? What was worse, Artie had turned it up to eleven.

Emmie stood stock still, at a loss for words, while Artie smiled excitedly and shouted over the music, “This is the band I was telling you about! MacGregor and McGraw! They were at the dinner tonight. I bought their CD! Of course, they didn’t bring the dogs—kind of a shame, because that’s their hook, you know?” And Artie gleefully shoved two or three cocktail wieners into his grinning maw.

Meanwhile, across the room, Trish was gasping into the phone, “He
what
!” while desperately casting around the room for Rick’s attention. “How did he even get that
into
the washing machine? . . . Never mind. We’ll be home in five minutes.” Trish hung up and, after bellowing, “Rick! Coats!” she spared a second to shoot a regretful look at Emmie. “Sorry, hon,” she said. “We’ve gotta go.”

Emmie sighed. “Will it involve an emergency call to the plumber?”

“Third time this year. Got him on speed dial.” Trish shrugged on her coat and gave Emmie a quick, tight hug. “I’m so sorry,” she shouted into her ear to be heard over the accordion/bagpipes/canine chorus, which had moved on to “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” “I’ll try to come back, okay?”

Emmie knew she wouldn’t, but she appreciated the gesture. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll call you with the postmortem tomorrow.” And it would be the mortem-est of postmortems. She just had a feeling.

Emmie followed Trish and Rick to the front door and got a faceful of snow for her trouble. The wind was really whipping now; she held her breath as Rick backed the Mom-Mobile slowly out of the driveway. As the minivan crept down the street, another vehicle came up at a pretty good clip for a zero-visibility winter night. Emmie frowned at how fast the idiot was driving and watched carefully to make sure he didn’t hit any of her friends’ cars that were parked at the curb. Granted, the street was wide enough for the driver to avoid them, but not if he slid on a patch of black ice or was driving with a little too much holiday cheer under his belt.

But the driver didn’t hit any of the cars on the street. He did something worse. He pulled up and parked. It slowly registered in Emmie’s addled cranium that she was looking at a white pickup truck. A very familiar white pickup truck.

“Shit.”

She slammed the door and leaned on it, wishing for a nice, thick portcullis to drop down and prevent what was going to happen next. Before her, Juliet was now hanging on Adam, who was leaning away from her desperately (Avery was laughing and not helping his boyfriend in the slightest). Annette was still giving Wilma a piece of her mind, loudly (as if she did it any other way), and Travis wasn’t interfering—apparently he was rather enjoying the fact that his significant other was being taken down a peg for once. Artie was now
dancing
, albeit just a sort of in-place bounce, along with the travesty of a CD he had brought along. Her father and his new girlfriend were staying out of the fray, in the dining room area, watching all the activity with alarmed expressions.

Even though she knew it was coming, Emmie jumped a mile when the doorbell rang. This was the last thing she needed. What she
needed
was everyone to get the hell out so she could run a bubble bath and open up a fresh bottle of wine, but she wasn’t about to get that anytime soon.

Oh, what the hell,
she thought.
What’s one more crazy person at this point?
So she opened the door.

No, not one more crazy person. Two.

“Hiya, Emmaline,” Kyle said with a broad grin. “Wazzup?”

“Kyle, why are you here? With . . .”

“You remember Caitlynn, right?” The girl was slumped under his arm, looking a whole lot the worse for wear.

Emmie glared. Of course she remembered Caitlynn. How could she not?

“Gonna let us in? It’s a frickin’ blizzard out here.”

Emmie was in no rush to give Kyle any sort of relief whatsoever. Instead she watched Caitlynn the way a biologist might study the activity of some critters in a petri dish: detached, calm, and observant. The girl was clearly under the influence. Too much influence. She leaned heavily against Kyle’s side, her nose in his armpit—proof right there she was pretty far out of it.

Kyle looked down at the half-conscious girl. “We’ve been out having a good time tonight, haven’t we?” he said, jostling her. She groaned in response, then mumbled something into his jacket. “What’s that, sweet pea?” he asked in a sugary tone.

Caitlynn said, louder, “I’m gonna throw up.”

Honey, you just read my mind,
Emmie said to herself.

“Aw, of course you aren’t.” Kyle chuckled, giving her another little shake.

“Ky-ullll!” Caitlynn groaned, quite clearly, and it wiped the stupid grin off his face.

“Aw, dammit, Caitlynn. I told you that last Jäegerbomb was a bad idea!” He appealed to Emmie. “Can she boot in your bathroom?”

Emmie looked stricken. What a choice—let Caitlynn in to hurl or watch it all come up on her front porch. Judging by how pale the girl was, there was no time to get her back into Kyle’s truck and let him deal with the consequences. She sighed heavily and opened the door wider. As Kyle ushered Caitlynn into the house, Emmie called after them, “Make sure she hits the target, Kyle, or
you’re
cleaning it up.”

Kyle waved over his shoulder with his free hand to let her know he heard her as they made their way through the gathering. “Hey, everybody!” he found time to exclaim. “Nice party!”

Caitlynn only slammed against the wall in the hallway once before Kyle managed to steer her into the bathroom and shut the door. Now everyone at the party was quiet, peering down the hall. Annette wrested the CD player remote away from her husband and turned off the yowling dogs. In the new silence, everyone could hear Caitlynn whining about something, likely announcing that she was going to vomit, and Kyle’s low-toned, wheedling responses, likely telling her to aim for the toilet bowl instead of the intricate throw rug that would be much harder to clean up. You could hear an appetizer toothpick drop in the living room as the exchange went on—whine, whine, mutter, mutter, whine, whine, mutter, “Ky-ulllll!”—and finally the juicy, choking gag that signaled an end to the discussion.

Everyone in the living room winced. And again, amplified by the concave porcelain: “Blarggghhhh.”

Bob Brewster approached his daughter and murmured, “Emmaline, shouldn’t you go in there and see if she’s all right?”

“Dad,” Emmie replied, “this may be my house, but whatever is going on in there is
not
my responsibility.” And she crossed the room to turn her iPod back on. The more sedate holiday music she had originally chosen as the dignified soundtrack to the nice party she had envisioned didn’t do a whole lot to drown out the sound effects coming from the bathroom—now it appeared Caitlynn was alternately sobbing and whining during a vomit intermission—but it helped.