well looked after tonight, as long as we could stand the noise and the heat.
“Let me get this. Happy New Year,” she said. “Or to a better year after this, I should say.”
“Amen to that.”
There was no talking among us after that. Sue sat and drank steadily, but although her shoulders were slumped with obvious fatigue, it didn’t seem as though she was getting destructive about it. I sipped at a bourbon, more for something to have in my hands than any real interest in the drink. Laurel held court from her chair, keeping track of a ridiculous number of meetings with apparent effortlessness, all arranged at the top of her voice to be heard over the din. Lissa went up to the bar for some popcorn and had never made it back; someone had waylaid her and the pair of them were talking animatedly, unheard over the racket. Somewhere in the background the bar’s sound system thumped and provided not so much a soundtrack as an underlying percussive structure to the cacophony. I was just glad that there was no smoking, else it would have been pretty nigh unbearable. As it was, it was only my friends who were keeping me there, and they were all in their own little worlds.
I glanced across the room through a temporary gap in the bodies and saw Duncan holding forth, expressively and charismatically, alternating humor and seriousness. People were clustered around him, either because they were truly interested in what he had to say—his information was usually interesting and useful, if nothing else, and he had influence in the field as a professor at an important department in New Hampshire—or to bask in his reflected glow. Larger and larger concentric circles formed around him, satellites gravitating toward a bright star. At one point he leaned in, as if speaking confidentially, and the people around him leaned in too; then he exploded up, nailing whatever punch line or conclusion to a shout of laughter.
I looked away and took another sip of my drink; I wasn’t so curious about the story as I was about my feelings, now that I’d seen him, testing them gingerly, the way you step on ice that you know is probably too thin to support you. When I got done being fascinated by the melting ice floating and clinking unheard in the glass, I looked up and saw that Laurel was watching me.
She did a little chin jerk and eyebrow thing, asking me wordlessly if I was okay; I just rolled my eyes and nodded. There was no reason for me not to be okay, I just found myself going over a long-buried past and wishing I didn’t need to. I’d successfully avoided it for over a decade; I didn’t see why I should bother digging it out now. Laurel nodded and turned, immediately caught up in another round of where-can-we-meet-and-talk with yet another passerby.
“Hey.”
Meg and Neal had come into the bar. I hooked Lissa’s abandoned chair by the stretcher and pulled it over for them. They sat down, one butt-cheek each on the chair. “Not interrupting anything, are we?” Meg asked.
I couldn’t detect any layer of hurt in her voice, but I was acutely aware enough of having been less than gracious in my dealings with her all day. “Nothing at all,” I said. I had just been about to excuse myself, but this seemed like a good time to make sure Meg and I were cool. “You guys got time for that congratulatory round I promised?”
“Always,” Neal said. “Meg’s told you, then?”
“Word’s been getting around.” I leaned over to Sue and Laurel and shouted, “Meg and Neal just got engaged. Two of my best students!”
“Well, I know what we need to do, then!” Laurel once again easily caught the attention of the harried waitress, who came right over. Other tables might go dry and pine for a sup of beer, but those who sat with Laurel never would. “Got any champagne?” she shouted. “We’ve got an engagement to celebrate!”
“I wouldn’t call it champagne,” the waitress said, shaking her head, looking alarmed. She glanced around her, and seeing none of the other staff, said confidentially, “I’d stick with the hard liquor and beer, if I were you.”
“Thanks for the warning,” she said. “Emma?”
I looked around. “Whiskey’s okay with everyone?”
Everyone nodded. “Whiskeys all around, then,” I said. “Single malt, if you’ve got it.”
By the time she came back with our drinks, Lissa had made it back with the popcorn