Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,235

stay by my seat. I know it is mine because there is a card with my name. The card is the color of spoiled cream, and the ink is a sort of ochre.

Through the window behind my upholstered dining chair, the city churns, an ocean of catastrophe and chance. A red light windmills and swipes across the treetops of Central Park; an ambulance retrieves a body and delivers it to the aid of strangers. We are high in the air, but we cannot escape the violence of the streets. We content ourselves not to see—it is not the fact of indigence that distresses us, just the spectacle. I remind myself that the red lights are a sign. Every night is the worst night of someone’s life. It’s easy to forget that.

It is time to turn; I turn. Arms come together like branches of a star rising over the center of the table. Jeweled fingers and gold-cuffed wrists grip clear tulips. Candlelight inhabits the champagne, making it like effervescent caramel.

“Hear, hear,” they say, and we drink—to Mark, his promotion, his engagement. His success.

There is epic meaning in the erect and stately circle we form, in the alliance of ready arms, in the fists clutching the brittle glass. A toast is a ritual aside, a communal departure, a type of prayer. We step out of time because we have vanquished it. We are superior to the things of which we speak. I think of valorous knights and courageous kings, of notable deeds forgotten, great heroes dead and gone.

“A second toast,” Mark says, his voice fashioning tenderness. “To Eveline.” He gestures to me, they gesture to me, and I bow to straighten my perfect dress, which hangs against me perfectly. In the glimmering moon of my china plate, I discover a watery likeness of my face. Mindful of the way I hang my head, I right myself to confront the sea of eyes. “May the rest of our lives be as happy as these three years have been.”

“Salud,” they murmur kindly, though they are not kind. To them I begin and end with Mark. He is my origin and objective. To them I am no more than what I appear to be. They go to lengths to keep me in the prison of their view.

“Hurry up and drink,” Alicia says. “Dinner in twenty minutes.”

Bodies cleave from the table, forming genial clusters. I wait for an opening, which is like waiting to be picked for a team.

“Three years,” a voice thunders from behind my back. The voice belongs to Brett. “A long time, Eveline. A damn long time.”

I’m uncertain whether this is true. Sometimes a year is lavish and profuse, riotous as a gale. Sometimes it goes breath by breath by breath. Minutes can be critical, decades without meaning, and so I might say, but he is done with me. My reticence is proof to him of my stupidity. To Brett I am useless unless seen. He scans the crowd hoping we’ve been noticed. He feels manly when he stands with me, just as some people feel learned when they carry books. His gaze returns to my body. His eyes are mean and his skin prematurely wrinkled, and a shock of brittle hair marks the center of his skull. His nails are manicured, and beneath his cashmere turtleneck his breasts droop. The proposition he makes with his eyes is stealthy and simple—money, power, and comfort in exchange for sex. I wonder by what error of nature he has come to feel so virile. And yet his audacity is not without weight. Brett is a man of business, of wealth and renown. No opportunity is to be left unexplored, no friend so dear that he cannot be betrayed.

Maybe I will take him with me into the kitchen, where appliances gleam harshly in kitchen light, sending back warped ideas of yourself. In the kitchen, I will let him touch me—he would like that. His greedy fingers kneading my flesh, cramming into scars—scars are everywhere, no matter where you touch, you cannot miss. “Yes,” I will say to Brett, through the icy kitchen glare. “Three years is a very long time.”

My glass is empty. I hold it by its stem, considering the delicacy of the marks I make. My fingerprints are specific and small, like baby bridges. I think of fossils, fishy and particular, weary cadavers in khaki rock—proving, proving something.

Brett and I are joined by Dara and a man named Swoosey Schicks, whose name sounds like