The After Party (19 page)

“Cat got your tongue?”

I shook my head, touched her brooch. I could never tell her about Tommy, but that was okay. It was a secret, mine and Ray's. Tommy would never even know how worried we had been.

“I like this,” I said.

“It's supposed to be a firework.”

“Ah,” I said. “That's right.”

“And Joan?” Ciela asked. “Where is the lady of the hour?”

“I have no earthly idea,” I said, and swallowed my daiquiri so fast it made my throat burn.

We danced. We drank Blue Hawaiians in honor of the Fourth, even the men, and ate little canapés as they passed by us on endless silver trays guided into our midst by white-gloved hands: meatballs stabbed with red toothpicks; sausage puffs baked in the shape of rectangles, etched with miniature stars and stripes; tiny,
rare roast beef sandwiches dotted with blood and blueberry compote. I must have swallowed a thousand hors d'oeuvres, washed down by a dozen cocktails, but my dress didn't feel any tighter, my makeup didn't run, and when I darted into the bathroom my hair was still pulled back into its French twist.

Ray held me as we swayed back and forth to the same song we'd heard on the way over—“Love Letters in the Sand”—a song I thought was corny.
How you laughed when I cried, each time I saw the tide, take our love letters from the sand.

“What does it even mean?” I asked Ray, over the music.

“What does what mean?” We had to shout to be heard, but there was an intimacy to the shouting, because we could be as loud as we wanted and people stood right next to us and couldn't understand a word we said.

“This song!” I said. “It makes no sense.”

“It's not supposed to make sense,” Ray said. “Just let yourself be carried away.” And he took my hand and placed it over his heart, and smiled dramatically, and I realized we were both drunker than we thought, but in a good way.

I only thought about Joan to confirm that I wasn't thinking about her. I only wanted to think about me, and Ray, and this night we were having, one for the books.

Then there was a crush of bodies, all moving toward the door. Ray grabbed my hand and we followed everyone outside. A man with a horrible comb-over stepped on my foot; a chinless woman with a glass of champagne in each hand mouthed “sorry” over his head. I shook my head and waved the apology away.

“What are we going to see?” I asked Ray.

“Better be something good,” he said.

“Fireworks!” a young man in a white sports coat shouted. “We've been called outside for fireworks!”

It was cool outside, mercifully so.

“This,” I said, “is divine.”

Ray had shed his jacket long ago, and his tie was loose around his throat. We stood a safe distance from the pool and admired hundreds of floating candles in red, white, and blue, in the shape of our flag, bobbing in the water, the wind blowing them this way and that, so the flag looked blurry, more beautiful because of the blurriness.

The scent of gardenias, which lined the patio in giant concrete planters, filled the air. Someone was handing out lit sparklers; revelers were waving them above their heads.

“Listen,” Ray said, and pointed to a waiter with a silver tray of champagne. “I'm going to snag us a couple of glasses. Look, here's Ciela and JJ. Wait here. I'll be back in a flash.” And he disappeared into the crowd.

“Do I look half as drunk as I feel?” Ciela asked, and I shook my head, laughing. She did, in fact, but we all did. I smoothed a stray piece of hair from her forehead. Her skin was damp. I never touched other women, besides Joan. But tonight I felt expansive.

The crowd began to murmur; the murmur turned into a dull roar. People began to point, then shout.

And that's when I saw her. On a raised stage behind the pool, where the band played. The back of her head, but I would have recognized it anywhere. Sid was with her.

Ciela shouted something in my ear and I shook my head; I had no idea what she'd just asked. She leaned in again.

“Ugly-handsome fellow, isn't he? He's got it, though. Whatever it is. He has
it
in spades. Just like Joan.” Her voice had turned serious without my noticing when. “I almost have it.”

“Maybe he got it in Hollywood,” I said.

“Hollywood? Sid Stark?” She laughed. Clearly Ciela had done her homework—a few weeks ago she'd never heard of the man. “I hear he's as Texan as they come. Born and raised in Friona.”

“No.” I shook my head.

“He made his money in cattle, then casinos,” she said.

“No. You must be wrong,” I repeated, though I was losing heart in my declaration. Joan had lied about so many things. Why not this?

“Maybe I am,” Ciela said finally. “I've still never met the man. Just gossip.”

Then the bandleader, Dick Krueger, dressed in a white suit, shouted into the microphone, his voice so loud I pressed my palms over my ears.

Joan smiled and laughed with Sid while Dick tried to quiet the crowd. We were drunk, rowdy. We did not want to be quieted. Joan wore a white collared dress, and it hurt me to admit how beautiful she looked. Or, more precisely, that she looked beautiful without my help. The dress showed most of her bare, tanned chest: the top of her breasts, the space in between them. She wore earrings shaped like feathers: wisps of sapphire growing from a diamond spine.

“Are you in a trance?” Ciela asked, mock-whispering in my ear.

“Her earrings,” I said, and touched my own ears, the diamond earrings Ray had given me for our first anniversary suddenly inadequate. “They're new. They must be a present from Sid.”

“You can see them from here?”

“I can see everything,” I said, and it was true. I could see Sid's pinky ring, crammed onto his meaty finger. I could see the way his sideburns were cut more than a little unevenly, as if his barber had been hasty with his shave that morning. Or perhaps Joan had shaved him, in a romantic moment.

“I guess we're not that far away,” Ciela said, and I wished she'd shut up and take JJ and leave me alone to observe Joan. I felt suddenly sober.

And then I knew what I had to do; it was suddenly clear as day.

“I have to go,” I said to Ciela. “I have to find Ray and go.”

I darted away before she had a chance to respond. My purse, where was my purse? I remembered that I'd given it to Ray, who had checked it with his coat. Then there he was, walking toward me, a flute of champagne in each hand.

“I thought we'd better slow down,” he said, and held out the glass for me to take. “Champagne's only a little stronger than ice water.”

Had we always talked to each other like this? I felt disgusted, suddenly, by how young we were pretending to be. We were old enough to know better. Ray read my disgust with confusion, first; then Dick Krueger shouted into the microphone over the crowd—“Well, you won't quiet down so I'll just yell. We have here Miss Joan Fortier along with her beau, Sidney Stark, here to light the evening on fire for y'all.”

Joan had been showcased like this before, at big events: at the Houston Fat Stock Show and Rodeo, at grand openings, at ribbon cuttings. She must have been doing this as a favor to Glenn McCarthy.

Ray's confusion turned to comprehension, then disgust to mirror my own. I felt a surge of hopefulness. I could save this night.

“I want to leave,” I said. “I want to go home to Tommy.” Tommy, my son, who was spending the night with Maria. What if he woke, and silently beckoned someone to come to him, as was his habit? Maria would not know to go to him. She was not his mother, after all. I was.

I smiled at Ray. “Come on. Let's get your coat and my purse and skedaddle.”

At first I read his smile as gratitude. That I was choosing home over Joan.

I was wrong. He tipped his champagne back and emptied the entire glass in a single swallow. Then he wiped his lips with the back of his hand; normally I would have told him not to, but now I just stood there, and waited.

“We're not going anywhere,” Ray said, and nodded to the stage.

Once, when we were dating, we'd gone to a ball game in Alvin and some roughnecks had bothered me when I'd gone to the refreshment stand for Cokes. Ray had stalked down from the stands; the boys—they had been boys, really, not men—took one look at his face and scattered. Ray was big, but he wasn't a man who used his largeness to impress. Although I guessed all men used their largeness to impress, whether or not they knew it. Back then Ray's anger had made me feel safe; now it scared me.

•   •   •

T
he fireworks display was indeed spectacular. But the night had turned sour. Joan had left the stage and disappeared into the throng of bodies. I danced with Ray for a while by the pool, but we were both just going through the motions. I was grateful when JJ signaled to us from the edge of the floor.

“JJ wants something,” I said to Ray, who was leading me determinedly. I had a feeling he would not let me out of his sight for the rest of the night.

“We're lighting up some Cubans,” JJ said to Ray, and it seemed I had misread my husband entirely, because he followed JJ into the Shamrock with barely a glance behind him.

This might be a test—what would I do, now that Ray was gone? Would I find Joan or Ciela? How would I let the night unfurl?

He walked away, my tall, handsome husband whom I was lucky to have. I could have been stuck with a man who was light in his loafers, like Darlene, or even someone who knocked me around sometimes, like Jean Hill, who lived on the outskirts of River Oaks, showed up to Garden Club meetings with too much makeup and shadows under her eyes. Ray truly loved me, even though I wasn't always sure he knew me, through and through; he hadn't known me in my darkest days, the way the Fortiers had—but did he really need to see that side?

Joan was nowhere to be seen. I shoved myself in between drunk people, withstood the press of sweaty torsos and sloppy pats to the rear end—that was what happened, when you traipsed
around without a man—and said “pardon me” more times than I could count. But still no Joan.

Finally I went to the lobby and collapsed on one of the green sectionals. This was where people came when they wanted to be heard. It was rowdy in here, with plenty of people, but there was room to sit.

Joan must have left. She had come last-minute, because Glenn had begged her, and then when she was finished with her appearance she and Sid had sneaked into their waiting car and gone back home, which was the only place, it seemed, she wanted to be these days.

This scenario meant that Joan had not lied to me, had not avoided me once she was here. I began to relax on the couch. My eyelids fluttered. Ray would come fetch me soon, and he would be so, so pleased: I would be waiting for him, like a good wife. We'd had our fun, and then I'd let him have some more fun without me. I was a good wife. I was a Texas wife.

And then I heard Joan's voice, and saw her slip into an elevator with three or four other people, and I rose.

•   •   •

T
he elevator operator couldn't have been more than eighteen. I touched his green tasseled sleeve as I stepped inside.

“Floor eighteen,” I said.

He paused. “That's the penthouse,” he said, stammering a little bit on the
P
. “Are you—?”

“I'm Miss Joan Fortier.” I patted my French twist, sighed, checked my tiny watch.

It worked. The air in the elevator changed once I said Joan's name. He didn't know who Joan was, of course. He was too young. But her name had always had a magical effect: people listened.

I'd never been to the penthouse before. The elevator came to a halt and I waited as the gold gates slid open for me. Waited like I was Joan: as if I'd forgotten I was waiting. As if it were nothing: interrupting a private party on the eighteenth floor of the Shamrock. Walking into a room uninvited, where I knew not a single soul except someone who probably didn't want to see me: it wouldn't have fazed Joan one bit.

It was all so easy, if I pretended to be Joan.

“Thanks, hon,” I said as I left the elevator, and I could feel his eyes on my back as I walked away. The room I was in was dominated by a dark, mahogany bar, and I was surprised to see Louis, whom I had only ever seen downstairs, tending it. You'd think I'd have been grateful, to see a familiar face, but I wasn't. I couldn't pretend to be Joan around someone who knew me as Cece.

“What'll it be?” Louis asked, and I was grateful he hadn't assumed I wanted my usual.

“Gin martini,” I said. “Dirty. Up.” I would only pretend to sip it. If I drank any more I might pass out before I found Joan.

So far, nobody seemed to have registered my presence. This was only the entry room; I had expected it to look like the Specimen Jar, which was completely open, where it would have been difficult for Joan to hide. But I'd already spotted several doors, most of them closed. I had no idea which one Joan had disappeared behind.

There was a cluster of mixed company, men and women, near
a curved couch, some sitting, some standing. I half hoped that one of them would turn around and ask who I was, but nobody did. They were engrossed in their own conversation, and I was simply another body in a roomful of bodies.

“Gin martini,” Louis said. “Straight up.”

I wished I could give him a tip but I didn't have my purse. And maybe the penthouse wasn't a place where you tipped. I wouldn't know. I wondered how often Joan came up here, and with whom. I wondered if Sid was new, or if Joan really had known him for a long time.

I no longer felt betrayed, as I had when I'd first seen Joan. My hurt had been replaced by a feeling of intense curiosity. A desperate curiosity. The thought I'd had while cleaning that endless grout with Maria circled my brain:
Good practice for when Joan is gone.
I wanted to find out what was happening to her, what had happened to her, before it was over.