* * *
I stand on the fringe of these starched, professional circles and try to follow the narrative arc of a stranger’s portfolio. And then as someone is deep into an account of a deck renovation and simultaneously a screed about the sympathy we should all have for the police, the child in the pink wig is climbing the stairs, her brown Kewpie face opening when she turns and looks directly into my eyes. The moment it happens, it’s clear the eye contact is a mistake, that she’d glanced at the crowd and did not mean to find me looking. But the surprise on her face is short-lived as she cools, turns away, and continues up the stairs. Then Rebecca appears, practically out of thin air.
“I could use your help,” she says, pulling me across the room and into the kitchen. Once inside, I swat her away and try to regain some dignity.
“Happy anniversary,” I say as she shakes the drawer, reaches inside.
“Thanks,” she says, arching an eyebrow at her watch. I take her in. She is, I suppose, sexy in the way a triangle can be sexy, the clean pivot from point A to B to C, her body and face breaking no rules, following each other in a way that is logical and curt. Of course, in motion, when she turns and stoops to open the oven, the geometry is weirder. She takes the cake out and kicks the door closed. She opens a tub of frosting, pops the tabs on the cake tin, and takes a generous dollop of frosting onto the spatula.
“Is my husband drinking?”
“What?” I ask, watching as she tries to frost the cake, which is still too hot to take the spread.
“Does Eric drink when he’s with you?”
“No,” I lie, adjusting my breasts. I put a palm to my forehead and find that it is slick.
“He shouldn’t be drinking.”
“Why?” I say, wiping my palms on the dress, only to find that the fabric, this slippery second skin, does not absorb the moisture. Rebecca looks up at me through her hair, a bead of sweat pearling at her hairline, rolling down onto one false, mink lash. As Rebecca reaches into a bag of confectioner’s sugar with her bare hand, I think of Eric’s flushed face, the time he pushed me to the floor. How I wanted him to do it again.
“I know you’ve been here before.” She stacks one layer on top of the other, filling oozing down the sides. She looks at me directly, and this is the first time I notice her eyes are gray.
“You were in our bedroom,” she says. “I could feel it. Everything was so neat.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. “I know you don’t understand. I can tell you’ve never owned anything,” she says, and then she withdraws and says it’s time to bring out the cake. When I look at it, it is perhaps the least appetizing thing I have ever seen. She puts the cake onto a platter and carries it out to the party. As I follow her out, I notice that there is a door by the pantry, and beyond this door a dark side street, haloed in lamplight and slick with rain. She is halfway into the other room, something exhausted between us that makes me certain it wouldn’t matter if I left. I can’t say why I don’t.
* * *
And there he is, standing in the center of the room, the lights dimming as Rebecca gives him the platter. He holds it awkwardly, frowns as a camera flash blooms from the back of the room and throws the moment into sharp relief. Rebecca pulls a candle from behind her ear, asks the room for a light. When one is supplied, she turns to me and places it in my hand. Amid his effort to balance the cake, Eric notices me. What happens to him then, a sudden and swiftly contained conniption that draws all the color from his face, is not half as delicious as it should be. Eric’s fly is down and this current iteration, this soft, breathing haircut—I can’t say what it is, but I get this feeling that this is actually his most honest form, and it really pisses me off.
* * *
So I light the candle and recede into the dark as another flash tears through the room and Rebecca starts singing into a mic with a cord that a guest coming from the bathroom nearly trips over, her hair platinum in the flash when it becomes apparent to everyone in the room that Rebecca hasn’t opted for a standard lovey-dovey Beach Boys or Boyz II Men but a Phil Collins joint, arguably the Phil Collins joint, with no musical accompaniment, the negative space of the original song having nothing on this rendition, this staggered delivery that makes clear to everyone in the room that she is taking no artistic liberties and remaining faithful to the song’s true pacing, which in a silent room makes it sort of an ordeal, creates a desperation on the part of the crowd that after each curt pause, her voice be able to take these familiar turns. Her voice is mostly amelodic, and between the choice of song and the cramped space of the living room, everyone is attuned to her copious lyrical mistakes. It is unclear if she is singing to anyone in particular, though Eric is doing his best to be a good audience, smiling wearily for whichever lovers of chaos are still taking photos with the flash. The cake nearly slides off the platter when he turns to look at me, and I turn to look at Rebecca, who is, despite everything, the most comfortable person in the room. She raises her arm above her head on the segue into it’s no stranger to you and me, and as one is wont to do after this verse, the whole room is braced for the breakdown, which Rebecca accommodates with a pause so sustained that I hear someone across the street scream, Where is the dog! before Rebecca ties up her cover, brings the lights back up, and starts clapping for herself, which we all dutifully echo back.
* * *
All this time Eric hasn’t looked away from me, within his confusion a promise of retribution that I find thrilling—historically the sort of high sweetest at its inception, when a man’s wrath is just a consideration, when he curtails the impulse because he thinks he’s different while you know he is the same. As Rebecca takes a handful of cake and forces it into his mouth, the room fills with laughter and I turn and climb the stairs, partly to go to the bathroom and partly to be alone. I look through their cabinets and find it a surprisingly unsatisfying activity, not just because everything is generic and OTC, but because I have come to the part of the night where I am incapable of any uppercase emotion, and every circuit responsible for my cellular regeneration has begun to smoke.
* * *
This is the conclusion to most parties I attend, and it usually helps to take a moment alone in the bathroom, though the inevitable presence of a mirror can complicate things. Even if I have done the adequate mental jujitsu to convince myself that I appear like a normal human being, a trip to the bathroom to regroup can on occasion turn into the kind of fun-house voodoo that happens in DMV photos and long exposures of Victorian children. There is something about looking into someone else’s mirror, something that always gives me more information than I need. In the past three years I have tried to turn lemons into lemonade by reciting old Tumblr affirmations into these mirrors, but it hasn’t helped.
* * *
I take some cough syrup out of the cabinet and take a long drink. I look in the mirror and I do not hate how I look, nor have I ever, even though I am not usually the prettiest person in the room. My biggest issue when I look into the mirror is that sometimes the face I see doesn’t feel like mine.
“I am happy to be alive. I am happy to be alive.”