“Yeah, she said that you guys met.”
“Dennis introduced us since you wouldn’t.”
“I didn’t even know she was here,” Kyle noted. “Dennis told me she wasn’t coming.”
“And you believed him? I didn’t.”
“I guess you’re smarter than me, then.” He finally took a much-needed sip of his now-watery scotch. It tasted dreadful.
“You didn’t tell me how tall she was. She’s just huge,” Van observed, searching the crowd for another glimpse of her.
“She’s not huge,” Kyle replied. “If anything, she’s thin.” That ought to shut her up, he thought. Although Alison certainly was taller than he remembered. During their brief conversation he had been so disconcerted by so many things, he had not considered that she was now looking him in the eye, which might have been part of the disorienting effect.
“I didn’t mean huge, I meant tall. Which feels huge to me! She’s like a tree, she’s so tall. And you’re right, she is skinny! Well, I guess if you’re an actress you have to worry about all that.”
Kyle didn’t even know how to respond to that one. He took another hit off his scotch and wondered how much time he had to give to this. He knew that they should leave, that even hanging around this dreadful party would be a bad idea, but he also knew that to suggest such a thing within instants of talking to Alison would be incriminating beyond belief. Then there was also the fact that he couldn’t bear to leave. The thought that he might actually bump into her again was humming in every cell of his body. And why shouldn’t he talk to her? He was married now. All that nonsense with Alison was finally, blessedly over. He could talk to her. He could see her, and talk to her.
“So did she have anything to say?” Van asked. He glanced down at her. Her eyes were glittering with an air of exasperation, as if there were simply no reasonable answer to this, but somehow it was his fault that she had been forced to ask.
“She didn’t, really.”
“What about you, you apparently had a lot to say.”
“‘Hello’ was actually pretty much the extent of it.”
“Well, you talked for quite a while, for two people who have nothing to say to each other.”
“Were you watching?”
“I was waiting for my club soda, which took you so long to deliver it’s flat. So yes, I was watching, and you did more than say ‘hello’ to each other.”
Kyle let that one land for a moment before he deigned to respond to it. This harping about Alison was a repeat offense with Van, and sometimes the best way to deal with it was to let her go too far. The silence bloomed, and he took another sip of his watery scotch. He knew how to outwait her. It usually didn’t take very long.
“Well, that’s great,” she said, glancing away with unmasked contempt. “That’s just perfect.” He considered letting that hang out there as well, but they were in public, and there was an unexpected ferocity behind Van’s agitation.
“I don’t know what you’re mad at me for,” he told her. “I didn’t even want to come to this party. That was your idea. As I told you, Dennis said she wasn’t coming, I didn’t fully believe him, just for the record, I’m not an idiot, so I said I thought we should stay home. I said it more than once. You were the one who insisted we come.”
“You knew she would be here.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. That’s— I just told you a moment ago that in fact, I didn’t—”
“You just said—”
“I said I knew there was a chance I was being lied to. But generally I try to assume that I’m not.”
“Whatever—”
“Not whatever. No. I was told she wasn’t going to be here. That is what we both were told.”
“I don’t—”
“In spite of which, you, apparently, at least so you say, knew she would be here, and you wanted to come! Insisted on it, in fact. Which, if logic serves, would indicate that you were the one who wanted to see her, not me.”
“Maybe logic isn’t everything.”
“Clearly it’s failed us tonight. If you don’t want to be here now, we can go home.”
“Why, because you can’t stand to be in the same room with her?”
“Fine, then let’s stay, since we’re both having so much fun.”