Whereas parties at the Moores’ were known for the mountains of deliciously trashy appetizers, Dennis’s were known for their bacchanalian excess. For Dennis, a party was all about the booze, and he always bought way too much of it: case upon case of European and Mexican beers, enormous bottles of bourbon and vodka and gin and scotch with plenty of vermouth and soda and juices and maraschino cherries and olives and anything else anyone might imagine would be a good thing to toss into a cocktail. No soft drinks, and no wine—if you wanted that, you had to bring it yourself. At some point, inevitably, someone got hungry and sent out for pizza, which everyone chipped in for with a good-natured and very drunk esprit de corps. There would also be some drug action—the occasional joint, one or two people doing lines in the bathroom, maybe a few people dropping Ecstasy—but mostly when you went to one of Dennis’s parties, you knew ahead of time that people were going to be getting really drunk. That was the given, even in high school, when some kind of parental supervision might have been expected.
Things hadn’t changed. Alison cautiously opened the front door—it had been standing half ajar, so there was no reason really to ring—and for a moment watched a bunch of total strangers laugh and shout at one another. She was glad that she had bothered to put on several choice pieces of her new wardrobe; Dennis was hanging out with people who dressed considerably better than she or any of their friends had in high school. These people had jobs and money and they seemed to think that a Christmas party was the perfect opportunity to show all that off. The house was just as she remembered it—exquisite—although the beautiful lines of the mansion’s soaring front foyer were obscured by the numbers of partygoers who truly seemed crushed into every odd corner they could find. Even though this was a fancier crowd, the rules of too much alcohol still, apparently, applied. Everyone was smiling and laughing and flirting cheerfully; they had all already had maybe two or three. It was numbers four, five, and six when things got a little wilder.
But as well as she knew this party, she didn’t know any of the players, and for a moment she panicked. It was a learned fear, something that she had just picked up in the past few months. In New York, when you walked into a party alone, you really were alone, and unless your host had invited you in order to palm you off on someone who was looking to be fixed up, no one was going to even bother saying hello. Up to this moment, she would have said that Cincinnati truly was different when it came to the party scene; when you arrived by yourself, people would welcome you politely, usher you in, and introduce you to their friends, who would ask engaging questions and try to make you feel at home. But now she wasn’t sure where she was. This party looked impenetrable and, given her already heightened nerves, downright terrifying. She almost turned and ran.
“Not so fast,” laughed a voice at her shoulder. A hand actually reached out and held her in place.
“Dennis! Merry Christmas!” She smiled professionally. Dennis looked exactly the same, his open and sunny Midwestern grin undercut by skittering eyes which were slightly too obvious in their hunger for things which would be bad for him. His dark hair was still thick, thinning only at the temples, which made him look even more sardonic than he was. He gave her the once-over with that hedonist’s appreciation she had seen before, but it wasn’t a source of real worry; in the past few years, Dennis was consistently too drunk to really try anything more than an inconvenient grope. In high school, he always seemed radical in his decadence, but it was easy to see now what a coward he was. Flushed with drink, hiding in Cincinnati, working at P&G—and she really had no idea what he did there, since he never shared the specifics—hovering constantly around the wealth and privilege accorded to a father he despised, Dennis was now in the full flower of his weakness. If he’d left Ohio he would have turned into nothing, but it would have made a man of him, she thought. He’ll turn into nothing here and it will just make him even more bitter than he is already.
“You look fantastic,” she said.
“Well, you look like a scared rabbit,” he told her, with a superior glint in his eye. He kissed her on the cheek, lingering just a second too long.
“I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“What do I mean by ‘scared rabbit’? I mean ‘delicious,’ Alison; you look good enough to eat. The boots are a terrific touch and they make you nice and tall. Well done. Now, let’s get this over with.” He put his arm around her shoulder and steered her straight into the heart of the crowd.
“Do you think I could take my coat off and get a drink, Dennis?” Alison laughed. Her heart was literally pounding; she could hear the blood in her ears.
“Absolutely, give me that, and what would you like?” He peeled her coat deftly off her shoulders and draped it over his arm. “Van, you have to meet Alison! Alison Moore, this is Van. Evangeline Wallace, she’s Kyle’s wife, and she took Kyle’s name, isn’t that right, Van? Sorry, Evangeline.” Alison stared. She had had no idea, honestly, that the interloper wife was standing there, right in front of her.
“You can call me Van,” Van laughed. She had a perfect laugh, silvery, delightful.