With Friends Like These... (8 page)

“What is it you do nowadays, then?” I asked. Free of being even potentially smitten, I now could be socially correct with him.

“This and that.” He seemed to consider whether to continue, then decided to do so. “Opening a restaurant.”

“With Lyle as silent partner,” Sybil said. She had not been part of this stilted conversation, but that didn’t appear to matter to her.

Quinn shook his head. “Changed his mind. Selling off assets, not buying them.”

“That’s just a pose, that middle-aged hippie blather.” Nonetheless, Sybil looked momentarily sober.

“I remember when Lyle really was a hippie,” my mother said. “I remember the beads and the fringes and the beard.”

“Still has the beard!” the lighting technician said with an air of revelation. “So there.”

His wife put her hand to her mouth and laughed silently, secretly, like Madame Butterfly.

Shepard leaned forward and squinted at Quinn. “It wasn’t a TV movie. It was when you played that mass murderer on Second Generation—the one who terrorized me.”

Quinn shook his head. “Never been on Lyle’s show. Out of touch with him—”

“Out of touch! How prissy and euphemistic,” Sybil said. “Don’t be so damned civilized! You two didn’t speak to each—”

Quinn turned up the volume of his voice and let it roll right over her. “—until he married Tiff.”

This time my mother’s interest wasn’t forced at all. “Your daughter, correct?”

“Step,” Quinn said. “Married Tiff’s mother.” Yet another shrug. “She died.” The shoulder went up one more time.

“How touching! You raised that lovely girl, then introduced her to your dear old friend!” Priscilla, the sweet old spinster schoolmarm, head spinning with untested romantic delusions, was nearly giddy with delight. “How perfect!”

Sybil snorted and called the waiter over for yet another refill. Somebody had to flag her, take away her car keys.

Quinn shook his head. “Nothing to do with it.”

“Then it was destiny. And it obviously had a happy ending,” Priscilla chortled. “Just look at those lovebirds.” She smiled innocently at Sybil, whose skin mottled in little patchy blushes. “It thrills me to see that Lyle found happiness at last,” Priscilla cooed.

Revenge for Sybil’s attempts to muddy the image of her great triumph and former student, Lyle. “I’ve never seen a happier couple,” she added, in case the salt hadn’t yet rubbed into Sybil’s jugular.

The salads were removed, and by some silent consensus, it was decided that it was time for mid-course milling. People stood to talk to diners at other tables or to make use of the facilities upstairs or down the hall. Our table’s population declined by half. Shepard, the lighting director’s wife, and Priscilla left in succession, and I wondered if there were a social amenity that I, too, should be attending to.

However, as I stood up, Lyle and Tiffany headed my way.

They’d been making rounds from table to table, she looking bored and gorgeous, and he shaking hands and exchanging jokes and pleasantries with each guest. I watched as one by one faces brightened at his approach. The old attention thing again. He bent close to hear what an elderly relative said, looked concerned at another’s remarks, laughed along with a third.

When it was our time to greet Lyle, I stood, as did my mother, and before I knew it, I was enthusiastically wishing him happy birthday and saying what a great party this was, and almost believing myself.

“Be honest,” he said with a smile. “You’re bored silly, but you’re a great soul and you’re enduring it and helping me have the time of my life. Getting old isn’t bad with friends to share the—”

Tiffany did not successfully stifle her noisy yawn.

“Sorry, darling,” Lyle said. “I tend to get carried away. Now, if you’ll excuse us, Mandy, we want to check how things are coming along in the kitchen. Tiff’s a perfectionist.” Tiffany impassively watched her husband through a fringe of lashes. She did not seem amused or charmed or feel the need to pretend to be.

After Lyle and Tiffany left, I realized Richard Quinn had at some point drifted to my side. I was mildly flattered. I wasn’t interested in him, but that didn’t mean I would mind his being interested in me.

Having approached, Quinn stood aimlessly, as if he had no idea what to do next. Very eighth grade. But I remembered the cure for it. My mother had given me lots of teen-help books, and all agreed on one universal credo for success with males. Ask him about himself. “Where are you opening that restaurant of yours?” I asked.

“On the Delaware.”

“Our Delaware? Here in Philadelphia?”

He nodded.

“When?”

“Two weeks. The Scene.”

“What scene?”

“That’s its name.”

“Ever done anything like this before?”

He shook his head.

Oh, Mom, you never said it would be this hard or pointless. “Tell me all about it,” I said, bypassing subtlety. And finally it appeared I had hit oil. Quinn was nearly voluble, listing problems with building codes, liquor licensing, his former backer, and the decision to add on an expensive second floor for private parties.

“Private parties?” The God of Proms had brought this man to me. “How large a private party?”

My voice must have been too urgent, because he looked startled and needed to think a bit. “Three hundred,” he finally said. “Why?”

I waxed eloquent on behalf of my seniors. He seemed intensely interested in me all of a sudden. We made a date to inspect it for the following day. I was elated. The evening of my party-martyrdom had justified itself. For the first time in all history, or at least in mine, virtue would indeed be rewarded.

Meanwhile, the party tides once again shifted and guests and waiters filtered back into the room.

A quarter of an hour or so later, once everyone was involved with buttery-soft beef in a dark sauce, tiny crisped potatoes, and deep-fried baby artichokes, Lyle stood and tapped his spoon on the side of his water glass. The string quartet that had been discreetly entertaining us grew silent.

“I don’t want to interrupt your meal,” he said. “Please, continue.” And people did, so that Lyle spoke against a background of dancing knives and forks. “I want to thank you for being part of this celebration. I don’t think you can know what this means to me. In fact, I’m positive that at least a few of you don’t know why this means something to me and I’ll bet you were surprised by my invitation.” The line was greeted by scattered dry laughs.

He cleared his throat and continued, looking down at a small stack of three-by-five cards. “Life, I have found, is not one smooth line. There are bumps. But this is a time to declare that once and for all, our differences and difficulties and misunderstandings and partings of the way are part of our histories and nothing more. I’ve been joined with each of you at certain significant junctures, and you are all part of the mosaic of my life. At a certain age—and certainly fifty is that age—it seems important to relegate collisions and scrapes to history.”

I found the beef better than the talk, and much less schmaltzy. My attention wandered around the room. Sybil stared at her ex through slitted eyes, much more engrossed by him than I was.

Priscilla Lemoyes’s hands were pressed together at the base of her neck, reverently. He did better with senior citizens than wives. Hattie also beamed and nodded, but Tiffany looked exactly like my students at a stupefying assembly. She examined her manicured nails, one by one, over and over.

“I have been blessed with more than my share of life’s gifts,” Lyle was saying when I tuned in again, “so there was nothing material I wanted for my birthday. Besides, as I approached the half-century mark, I saw how cluttered my life had become. And how I had become too busy to enjoy it. Most of you”—he paused for a moment—“know I’m about to make serious changes”—another breath—“to take time to smell the roses and grow them, too, and to be with my lovely wife.”

His not lovely ex-wife snorted and glared. The current missus was too engrossed in her nail polish to react.

Lyle paused for several rapid breaths. He was much more nervous than I would have anticipated. I was afraid he would hyperventilate by the time he finished his talk. “And my son and friends,” he added. “Time with them, too.” It sounded embarrassingly like an afterthought. He looked flustered. Perhaps he was flubbing his talk.

“Before I take the next step, I wanted to see you—my life, to look around a room and see the faces that are the landmarks of my adventure through this—through this—” Again he looked nonplussed. Maybe he couldn’t read his three-by-five card prompts. “Like this building—almost where I grew up—like all of you—like…excuse me,” he said. “Overexcited. Can’t catch my breath. Must be why they call us old wheezers.”

“Geezers,” his son corrected him without a smile.

“A few faces couldn’t be here because of…” Another pause as he breathed, rather raggedly, I thought. “Others…no longer among…us.” His inappropriate stops and starts made his delivery choppy and his meaning difficult to apprehend. I reminded myself that he was accustomed to being behind the scenes, not onstage. He had the right to be edgy.

“For all—of—you here, thanks for—this—that—moment I—wanted.” The rhythm was ever more erratic, punctuated by gasps, and he was skipping words. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. This couldn’t be an attack of stage fright. “It,” Lyle said, “—the—greatest…”

There had been a gradual cessation of background noise. No more clicking knives and forks. People glanced anxiously at one another, checking whether their alarm was shared. When Lyle actually made it to the end of his talk, there was a spontaneous standing ovation, half praise, half relief.

Lyle pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and put it to his eyes, then wiped at beads of sweat on his forehead and temples. Then he clutched his handkerchief and bent forward.

“Lyle?” Hattie asked.

“Legs,” he said. “Cramps. Bad. I…oh, boy. Old—all—at—once!” He rolled his eyes skyward. “Give me a break!”

Feeble laughter greeted his attempt at lightness. The collective mood roller-coasted, dipping into apprehension, murmuring questions like background music, then audibly relaxing when Lyle made light of his discomfort. It was nothing, then. We were still at a party. Life was normal and fun. And then Lyle winced and buckled forward and the anxiety level skyrocketed.

Lyle waved his hand, pushing away his physical problems, but he was bent way over, as if his cramping legs wouldn’t hold him. He put his hands to his throat, his face contorted with fear.

“Lyle! What is it?” Hattie cried.

His breathing had become so raspy I could hear it plainly at my table as it jaggedly pumped. “Throat,” he said. “Burns—hurts—”

“Is there a doctor in the house?” somebody called.

Shepard McCoy stood up.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Sybil screamed. “You’re an actor, you fool!”

But no one else had stood. No piece of Lyle Zacharias’s life mosaic had gone to medical school.

“A heart attack?” my mother asked.

“I’ve never heard of one like this,” the former schoolteacher murmured.

“Some horrible infection?” I asked. We were still paralyzed by etiquette. Dear Abby, is it proper to suggest that the host is desperately ill if he says he’s not and you might spoil his party?

“Baby, what is it?” Hattie shrieked. “Where does it hurt?” Baby was still gasping and the tears in his eyes seemed from pain.

I stood up and began wedging myself between seats, en route to the door, which seemed very far away. I angled myself to watch what was happening while I maneuvered. “Excuse me,” I said many times to guests who were too engrossed in the ongoing disaster to respond.

Tiffany stood by Lyle in red-spangled ineffectiveness, her hands half raised in the I-give-up position.

The room buzzed with nervous collective wing-fluttering as we absorbed the idea that the completely unexpected and potentially disastrous had indeed happened.

“Dizzy.” Lyle canvassed the room the way a drowning man might look for the disappearing horizon. I could not believe that the self-confident man who’d stood up a few minutes back had so thoroughly and swiftly become this disoriented, terrified creature. He even looked different—bloated and sallow.

“Who—”

I stopped where I was. His breathing was loud and rough, like sticks over heavy metal grating. He was disintegrating in front of us as if he’d been seized by something alien and inhuman. Now, in addition to the breathing, the pallor, the bloat, the buckling legs, and disorientation, his eyes had lost their moorings.

“No!” Hattie screamed.

He lurched forward. I made my way toward the dining room door, past the lace-clothed side table where the dark and white chocolate dream of a birthday cake waited.

“Who—” whooshed out of Lyle, “—kill me?”

Hattie screamed. The room buzzed with the single word as question and exclamation. “Kill. Kill! Kill?”

Wheezing like a fireplace bellows, Lyle forced more words out. “Who…poison me?”

I ran like hell for the phone.

“POISONED?” TIFFANY SCREAMED at the top of her lungs. Her words reached all the way down the hall to where I stood at the small front desk. “What are you saying?” she howled. “
I
ate the same food!”

I dialed 911. “A man’s been poisoned. I think.” It was embarrassing making an emergency call with caveats and small print. Perhaps there’d been a poisoning—no guarantees. But there was definitely a sick person and, strengthening my case, fifty other people who had eaten the same food. If, of course, the food was at fault.

Nine-one-one didn’t remark on my quibbling. Instead, they said to stay calm, that help would be there any minute.

I tried to follow their advice and remain collected, although I was having trouble remembering how, particularly given the commotion in the dining room.

The scene was out of Breughel by way of Vanity Fair. Lyle Zacharias, breathing with obvious difficulty, braced himself on the long table that held his ornate birthday cake. Smartly attired party guests wavered between blasé seen-it-all sophistication and a visible desire to stampede. The repeated motif—whispered, shouted, questioned, in deep basso tones and cultivated soprano—was the word poison echoing like the dull pulse of mass hysteria.