wrong. I was the bad guy. I reminded myself of that. Pissing Morgan off was the worst thing I could do. I felt sweat at the back of my neck.
“Nothing dearie. Just remember, that’s all. I didn’t come here to cause you any problems.” She turned back to the bar. I walked off with the drinks, my head racing with fear. There were a thousand ways she could destroy me and I thought of them all simultaneously.
But when I returned with the drinks, Liz seemed not to notice the tension in my face. She took her glass of wine and smiled at me with eyes that said, “I don’t know why I wanted to come to this thing.” It was the same boring party that all work related functions turn out to be. An evening of food and drinks with people you already spend too much time around and do not consider “friends” in any real sense of the word. I put my arm around Liz and we slowly made our way to the far side of the room, as far from Morgan as we could get. I kept glancing across the room, monitoring her position as we moved through the crowd.
We sat at a large table with Jim Carver and his wife, Tom Reilly and a date, and a couple of other summers and their dates. It was painful. I could see Morgan sitting across the room with the other summers from Yale, all of them ingratiating themselves to several partners who’d also gone to Yale. It looked like a pep rally promoting the virtues of incest.
Jim and his wife talked about their vacation in France, how they rented a villa, took walking tours, and ate too much. One of the other summers mentioned that his uncle owned an estate in the same region, but he said it as though it were practically his. It was a comment designed to impress Carver, but it didn’t seem to work. Reilly, however, made a point of commenting on everything, as though compelled by some inner need to constantly remind the world of his existence.
At one point, Liz leaned over and whispered in my ear. “My God, this is going to be more painful than I’d imagined.” I had to agree. All in all, it was a thoroughly intolerable conversation that gave me a reason besides Morgan to want to leave as soon as possible.
The conversation died off as everyone focused on eating and drinking themselves into oblivion. The more often a glass or fork was in one of their faces, the less often anyone had to speak. I watched the other two summers plow through a bottle of wine apiece.
At the end of the meal, before dessert was served, the managing partner of the Los Angeles office gave a speech that sounded very similar to the one we’d all heard at the beginning of the summer, except that all of the verbs were now past tense. The summer was wonderful. They’d enjoyed working with each and every one of us. It was painful to sit through. Everyone was glad when it was over.
Liz and I ate several bites of bad cheesecake, drank a polite amount of coffee, and waited for the moment when it would be acceptable to get up and make an exit. I continued to watch Morgan’s movements across the room. In the hour it took to eat, I’d managed to relax and scope out the doors. The coat room was not far from where we sat and the valet was just beyond that. If we acted early, we would be gone before anything bad could happen. But I’d seen Morgan pour at least four glasses of wine and I knew she had a tendency to speak freely when she was drinking. Swiftness would be rewarded. I leaned over and spoke in Liz’s ear.
“Are you ready?”
“I’ve been ready,” she whispered back.
I scooted my chair back. As soon as I moved the rest of the table did the same. There were polite comments about how wonderful everything had been, and then we were all standing around the table, nodding and shaking hands. It was happening at other tables too. Though there was ostensibly drinking and dancing following dinner, it appeared that few would be staying. No one, it seemed, wanted to spend that much time with their co-workers.
Liz leaned over and said she had to run to the bathroom. Then she added, “You get the coats and I’ll meet you