It was a spectacularly delusional dance. He truly hated her, and had already laid full responsibility for the creeping mediocrity of his marriage at Alison’s feet. But even as he privately nursed this whisper of blame—for a disaster which hadn’t even occurred yet—he simultaneously drowned, every chance he got, in the memories of their time together. Outwardly, no one would ever know. He barely knew himself, the cost of holding those two opposing psychological rivers right up next to each other, day in and day out. But he had a powerful mind, and an even more powerful will, put in place by years of Catholic indoctrination. No one would ever have to know.
The question now, of course, was how to get out of there without having to speak to her. He was furious with Dennis, who had told him in no uncertain terms that Alison had not been invited, and that there was no chance whatsoever that she would show up. He was furious with Van, who had insisted on coming even though he tried to beg off a half dozen times, on the off chance that in spite of his protestations Dennis actually might try to pull something like this. And he was furious with Alison, who he knew in his heart had come to check out and judge the woman he had married instead of her. Instead of her. He hated thinking of the two of them in the same sentence; his past and his future were completely different lives and there was no point in comparing the two women, and even if he did—even if he did—Van clearly was the superior choice. She was more beautiful, and there was a supple grace to her blonde loveliness which was, frankly, relaxing. “Relaxing” was the last word you would use in regard to any aspect of Alison. Van was every bit as intelligent as Alison, if not more so; Alison’s erratic emotionalism always crippled her in an argument. And Van was loyal. He knew that she would never turn on him, or abandon him, under any circumstance. The same could not be said of Alison.
Who, at that very moment, was pushing through the crowd in the foyer with an unflinching determination, headed right for him. As soon as the thought flickered through his head he had to deny it: She wasn’t technically heading for him; she was heading for the bar, and the phony Grecian pillar behind which he had hidden himself was positioned just to its left. Two teenage girls in sexy black barkeep garb poured drinks with a slashing efficiency which was called for under the circumstances; Dennis’s new friends from Cincinnati’s corporate set were predictably alcoholic and swarming, and Alison was temporarily trapped in their midst. She glanced skyward with annoyance and then, as her eyes raked back down in an attempt to gauge her distance from the bartop, her gaze suddenly and unexpectedly landed on him. Their eyes met.
He plastered a smile on as fast as he could, but it wasn’t fast enough. She saw, who knows what she saw, but it was seen before he could hide it. Even now! They were stuck in the middle of a crowd of strangers, they had not spoken or laid eyes on each other for almost a year and a half, and yet he could not escape the terrifying probability that she had once again managed to intuit some unknowable aspect of his interior life. This had proven true so many times that she used to tell him he had a glass head. He felt like he had a glass head now.
“Hello!” he said. It sounded like an idiot was speaking.
“Hello, Kyle,” said Alison. She had inched incrementally forward in line and he could see that her cheeks were flushed. That could have been the heat. Or the alcohol. Only she had not managed to get herself a drink yet. It was probably the heat.
“Can I get you a drink?”
“Can you what? Sorry. Oh. Sorry, no, I can get myself a drink, thanks.” She squeezed past another stranger. “Besides, you look like you have your hands full.” Her eyes flickered down to the drinks in his hand. A wilting cup of club soda and a possibly drinkable scotch, served over ice in a plastic tumbler.
“Right! I need to get this back to, my wife.” He stumbled over the words at the last minute. Of course he did. He meant to just say her name, Van, just toss it out there casually, the name of the woman he was with now, but then it seemed cold, he needed to do better by her, out of loyalty, and also let Alison know that he regretted nothing, he had moved on, he had a wife now, that was his reality, a reality that Alison knew nothing of. Sadly there were too many tumbling worries and the words escaped with that slight stutter step which, he knew, made him sound again like an idiot. He felt Alison’s eyes looking straight into his glass head. I didn’t ask for this. Fuck Dennis, and fuck her, he thought.
“Yeah, your wife, I met your wife, we just met,” Alison acknowledged. She had finally maneuvered her way through the throng and secured a spot at the front of the line. “White, anything white,” she told the sexy young bartender. “Wait. Anything white that’s not a Riesling.”
“Chardonnay?”
“That would be fantastic.” She smiled politely, but the girl was uninterested in the social niceties; she uncorked the necessary bottle and poured. Alison turned back to Kyle with an air of what she hoped would sound like a sardonic hopelessness. “I love Chardonnay. A nice California Chardonnay, I don’t know why people make fun of them, I love them.”
“Do people make fun of them?”