The year before, I had taken Red to the party, sort of a "bring your own" strategy, but this year I noticed that almost everyone there was my age or older (even when they were a decade or two younger by birth).
"Before you got here," my friend offered, "I was sitting at a table with people I didn't know. They kept asking about people that weren't there. 'Have you seen so-and-so,' one would ask and someone else would say, 'Oh, he doesn't like to go out any more, you know, he just stays at home. He's become such a recluse.' Jesus, pretty soon everyone I know will be dead."
I thought about how little I go out myself, about how often here I write about becoming just such a person. Jesus, I thought, Jesus Christopher Christ.
Just then a woman walked up and asked my friend if he remembered her. He clearly didn't even though she said they'd gone on a trip to Egypt together. And so the small talk started. . . but didn't stop. I knew the lady as well, but she gave only a cursory acknowledgement of that thankfully, and after a few minutes I excused myself to go for another glass of wine. My friend, evil genius that he is, quickly handed me his glass.
"I'll have another one, too."
I was in no hurry, however, to get back to what he was obviously trapped in thinking that he would have to gnaw his leg off to get out of that one. And so I strolled around the grounds a bit taking in the view. These once were the cream of the town, maybe, and maybe they still were, at least financially. They were, if nothing else, the money that swelled the crowd. They had travelled and spent money in good places. Time, I thought, is a terrible, terrible thing.
Suddenly I was grabbed around the neck and heard my named cooed by a female voice. I was hopeful. When I turned, it was a woman I just barely remembered at first, then better. She was younger than I but had not taken care of herself at all. She had become one of those skinny legged druggies with an alcoholic's belly, her hair cut short and dry, the skin no longer taken care of. She had once been a true beauty, and I remembered that the last time I had seen her was over ten years ago. She was still quite something. She was living in Palm Beach then and I told her how much I loved going there, and like a flash she had gotten something to write on and copped a pen from the bartender, and she wrote down her telephone number. She was adamant that I call her when I came down. I would, I said, and I put the card in my wallet for future reference. Months later, however, when I was there for a few days, I took the card out thinking to call her, but the phone number didn't quite make sense. She had written down one too few digits. And there I had been thinking all along of the much anticipated good times we might have. Now she was standing at the cheese table serving cheeses from a cheese shop she apparently owned. She was with another woman I have known around town, an attorney and raconteur, a woman without pretense and someone I liked fairly well, and so I recalled the tale to the two of them for fun.
"Oh. . . I swear I didn't do that on purpose," protested the cheese lady. "I must have been high. Jeez, why didn't you just try adding in the final number," she giggled.
"I wasn't that desperate," I said, thinking that it was even more true tonight.
Just as I turned to take my leave of them, I bumped into one of my neighbors, a dentist who thinks of himself as a cocksman, I believe, having drawn this impression from seeing him out a few times without his wife. He is of the type who likes to make his way with money, smoking expensive cigars, eating at expensive restaurants, drinking talk-able wines, driving expensive cars, wearing expensive shoes, etc. I wondered if his wife were here then thought that she probably wasn't. We shook hands and he came close in that uncomfortably intimate way some people do with whom your only intimacy is that you live next to one another and are now next to one another once again in an unexpected place.
"There's some real talent here tonight." He spoke from the side of his mouth.
"No kidding," I said. Here, let me introduce you to someone. I turned and brought him together with the cheese merchant.
"Excuse me for a moment," I said, "I have to take my friend a glass of wine."
When I finally got back with the drinks, Old Bore was still droning on about nothing in some profoundly emotional tone. I rolled my eyes and handed my friend his wine.
"Sit down for a moment," I said, "I need to tell you something."
There was nothing to tell him, of course, but it was the sociably acceptable way of giving him an escape route, and so, in mourning tones, Old Bore wrapped up her insipid tale and made sure to get my friend's telephone number so that they could soon get together for more incredibly good times.
"O.K." he said. "I've got to go. My wife's at home. Been in her pajamas since last night's party. I may have to drive to the beach to pick up my kid. I don't know."
I was disappointed. I would have stayed if he had, but the specter of falling into another conversation put a pall on things, so half-reluctantly I said, "Hold on. I'll walk out with you."
It was still early when I got home, too early for bed. Perhaps I'd watch a movie, I thought, reclusively nursing a short scotch through "The Great Gatsby" which I had recorded. "And this is it," I thought, "that life so greatly to be desired." I wasn't sure if I was talking about Gatsby or Nick or myself, but somehow sitting in the dark light of the big screen t.v. alone at home on a Saturday night, all things began to conflate. Yes, surely, this was the life so greatly to be desired.
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