“In New York everyone’s above them. You’re embarrassed to order them. Pinot grigio would be acceptable, if it didn’t give you a headache. Sadly it does.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” God, he sounded like a complete ass. And even worse, he felt the same way he had the first time he laid eyes on her. He had to get away from her. He couldn’t move. Alison accepted her tumbler of white wine from the humorless barkeeper girl and then, scooting to get away from the crushing hordes of desperate alcoholics behind her, she slid to her right, holding the drink up high so that it didn’t get bumped. She looked backward as she did—either to keep a lookout for who was pushing her, or so that she didn’t have to meet his eyes again—but the maneuver sent her unguarded chest within inches of his. He could smell her.
“Sorry,” she said with a tight, polite little smile, as she landed herself on the opposite side of him, where the crowd was less crushing. “I can’t believe how many people are here. It looks like Dennis invited half of Cincinnati. And I of course know no one!”
“Yeah, I’m surprised to see you here,” Kyle said. She looked at him sharply, like that was the wrong thing to say. Was it? His brain was in hyperdrive but it felt like all the gears had locked up and so the whole operation was just spinning uselessly. Every word he uttered sounded thin, small and phony, while as usual Alison just seemed larger than life. Even though she was tossing off social nothings with no content whatsoever, they sounded like so much more. Her glances all looked like so much more. They looked like the glances of someone with a soul. He told himself once again that it wasn’t that she was a deeper person; it was just that she was an actress. A notoriously shallow and unstable breed. Famous throughout the centuries for bringing men to wreck and ruin. That was all she was, and all she had ever been. An actress with green eyes. She was just an actress with sensational green eyes.
“You look tired,” she informed him.
Those long years of passion and disaster moved through him as if they were happening now. How could he be expected to even say hello to her if just seeing her in the middle of a crowd did this to him?
“The holidays are always a little stressful.”
“Oh yes.”
“How’s your family?”
“Everyone’s great. The house is packed. Megan’s about to pop, it looks like.”
“Yes, I heard she was pregnant. When’s she due?”
“Of course you would ask that. And of course I have no idea.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. You and she were so close, I just thought . . .”
“No, you’re right, you’re totally right. I have been shockingly narcissistic with regard to these babies. Maybe I’m jealous of them. Wow, maybe I am.” An edge of painful admission had crept into her tone.
“Of them, not her?”
“No, of them. They have her now.”
“This is her first pregnancy?”
“Yeah. It’s two, even. Twins!” It was a little loud by the bar, and Alison was now studying her plastic cup full of white wine with distracted determination. He wished she would look up at him and tell him that he looked tired again, and ask him why, and let the slightest air of her tenderness breathe on him, even though there was no place for it. “She’s one of them now, I guess,” Alison said, glancing away, suddenly opting for a lighter tone.
“Excuse me?”
“Megan. She’s one of the people who have children and, you know. Turn into zombies.”
“I hardly think children turn adults into zombies.” He meant to adopt a careless tone, like hers, but it came out sounding superior. He sounded like a superior prig.
“No, no, that’s not— Well, it is what I said. I didn’t mean— I just meant, at least over at our house, it’s all kids all the time, and it kind of distorts. You say, I need a car tonight, and it turns into an endless circular discussion about whether or not some child might need ferrying somewhere in the most abstract and bizarre system of logic imaginable, you know, everything is just kind of . . . You would know better. You’re a pediatrician, you would know, I wouldn’t know,” Alison said, breezing right by the edge of his tone with an easy forgiveness. A forgiveness of what? Of everything? If she forgave him everything, he would go home and hang himself. “Wow. It’s great to see you, Kyle,” she finished, unexpectedly. “I’m going to see if I can find the bathroom.” She swiveled and paused, facing the daunting necessity of somehow plunging herself into that teeming hive of alcoholics, and turned sideways. He could see again, now, how thin she was. She downed the rest of her wine, dropped the cup on the bar, and worked her way into the crowd with a determination which did not look back.
She had made her escape just in time. As he watched her go, someone tapped him on the shoulder. “Is that for me?” Van asked, flirtatiously imperious. She poked her head around and reached for the now-exhausted cup of club soda which he held clenched in his fist. “I didn’t know where you went!”
“Sorry, it’s so crowded,” he started. And then, “I bumped into Alison.”
“So I saw.”