even sleazebags.
But really, for the cousins, forget the guest list and the food selection; she should have cut straight to the chase and ordered up some working girls.
“You ready for a refill?” asked Jim.
“I’ll come with you.”
Better this way—better to leave her relatives with people who could stand them.
She and Jim slipped away for ten minutes, snuck into the room with the ducks and locked the door behind them. But then, in the yellow-green glow from the stained-glass lamps, in the drowsy aftermath of the pot, she drifted. She woke up later in the quiet and realized it, alarmed. She had fallen asleep. She sat up with a jolt. Damn it, she’d missed her own party.
The house was still beyond the door, the clock on the wall read 2:48. She had not meant to vanish. How inconsiderate, how wrong. Also, she’d screwed up the cousin thing. She felt panicky.
She got up and pulled her clothes on in a rush, the dress, the heels. The music was turned off, she thought, or she’d be hearing it. Her guests must all have left, gone to their homes. Some must have asked where she was, some must have felt ignored or irritated—but anyway she had to know, if there were any still here she had to go out there, play the hostess, take care of them.
She left Jim sleeping on his side, mouth agape on the pillow, opened the door and stepped out into the silent hall. A few lights were still on, here and there, but overall it was dim and on the edges of her vision she had an impression of orange and black shades in the rooms, great caves looming off to the sides, beer bottles on the tables, wineglasses on the windowsills. Ashtrays, empty food bowls on surfaces—how many guests had there been, after all? Thirty, she thought, thirty guests at the most, but now it looked like more, it looked like forty or fifty.
She passed the ballroom and saw the doors. They all stood open still and the drapes rushed out in rills when the breeze came up. It was a chill breeze now, in the small hours. She would close the doors, she thought, and went into the room. In the dimness she stepped across a trail of crackers, crumbling to powder underfoot, and walked toward the pool, visible through the line of doors with its wavering aqua light. She started to shut the doors and then thought she saw something outside, a movement in the back garden beyond the corner of the pool enclosure. For no good reason she thought of burglars, then chided herself for paranoia.
But someone was still here, she thought. Someone remained.
She went through the doors, planning what to say if it was Steve or Tommy—how to appear gracious and pretend she hadn’t retreated into a back room to get laid and then, stoned as a twelve-year-old on his first high, abandoned them. As though, somehow, she was controlled and prim. This was how she wished to appear in their eyes: someone who was responsible, grateful, and unduly burdened. Someone straight as a pin and fully deserving of their charity.
Give it up, she told herself, moving onto the patio.
Alternatively she could confess her guilt, make a clean breast of her character flaws and throw herself on their mercy. She went around the pool and opened the gate on the far side, heard it creak behind her and stepped out onto the path that led between the koi ponds and the willows. There were footlights along the pathways and she was glad of them. She stopped on the flagstones and listened. She thought she heard a whisper; she didn’t want to interrupt anything. But then—she stopped again, holding her breath—maybe it wasn’t intimate, maybe it was just talk.
Further along the path the bushes were closer beside her, there was less room to move, and the sound of her heels on the uneven stones seemed louder. She peered through the dark. There was a bench in the trees, back there, with footlights around it—a small paved area, one of the round wrought-iron tables, and she went toward it cautiously. There were shapes under the trees, near the bench—a wheelchair, facing her, more or less, and sitting in it a girl with long hair, her face down. For a second she thought it was Casey, before she knew it wasn’t.
It must be the college girl, she thought—still shocked, in the background of her recognition, that her