Two hours and four drinks later, the party in the bedroom was in full swing. The kid—her name was Donna—eventually got dragged off by her sister, who needed to meet some people in Mount Adams, but by then Alison had lots of new friends. Every twentysomething who went looking for the upstairs bathroom eventually found a way to the back bedroom. One wily youth snuck down the back stairs into the kitchen, where he snagged a couple of six-packs, several bottles of really good wine—Christmas presents, clearly—and a gourmet gift basket full of cheese, summer sausage, and fancy crackers. Alison observed that this was better fare than Dennis usually served, and everyone agreed so readily that it was established that all present had been guests at his bacchanals more than once.
Cincinnati parties were much better than New York parties, Alison decided. Even the slightly too uptight retro-Catholics in the bunch were major drinkers, and as the evening wore on they grew progressively more jocular. People she had known only vaguely in high school were so impressed by her small shred of New York success that they congratulated her enthusiastically. They asked curious and respectful questions about how television was made, which largely focused on the technical aspects of the process. A few brazenly asked how much money something like that would pay, and she answered with direct specificity, explaining terms like “top of show” and “day player” and how much these definitions might earn you as a neophyte on a SAG contract. Everybody thought that being paid almost three thousand dollars for one week of work—and pretty glamorous work, at that—was impressive. She tried to make the point that she had had to audition for weeks and months on end before she landed that singular job, and all her earnings went into head shots and new clothes for more auditions, but no one found that to be a serious detriment to the whole idea of being an actress. She had done it; she had gotten herself on television; she had arrived. When she tried to make the point that she’d like to continue to do theater as well, no one understood why. None of them had been to a play in years. One girl talked about how she used to go to student matinees in grade school, and how she remembered liking it a lot, but now theater was so expensive and if she had a hundred dollars extra to spend she’d rather go to dinner at a really good restaurant, because that was fun too and the last time she went to see a play it was boring and she felt ripped off. Alison thought about how everyone she knew in New York would make fun of this position, and perhaps even say something unkind about how this girl—who was slightly chubby, truth be told—maybe should take art more seriously than food once in a while. But Alison also thought that the slightly chubby girl was right.
Cincinnati people are nice, Alison thought, and for the first time in a long time, the word “nice” carried no negative connotations. “Nice” didn’t mean “stupid.” It meant friendly, and easygoing, and easily moved to happiness. It meant relaxing. It meant sane.
But the nice hidden party in the bedroom upstairs couldn’t be expected to go on forever. The kindly drunken Cincinnati strangers started drifting away, and Alison was searching through the empty bottles for one which might have a few last inches of wine left in the bottom, by the time Kyle came looking for her.
He had in fact been looking for a while, as carelessly as he possibly could. As the evening wore on and he traded light chat with the few people he knew there, he would occasionally let his eyes sweep the crowd swiftly, hoping to search her out without giving any indication to Van that Alison’s presence was of the least concern to him. He had followed Alison’s coat as well. Dennis had taken it off her, just as she said hello to Van, and then carried it on his arm for several minutes before draping it over the banister of the stairway near the door. At one point it slipped off, or someone knocked it off, and from then on it lay in a heap in a corner by the door, where people kept kicking it aside until someone finally picked it up and folded it nicely before setting it on the steps. It was just a black wool coat, relatively indistinguishable from any number of other coats, but he had been tracking it since the moment he saw it on Dennis’s arm, so he knew that it was hers. All night the coat was there but Alison wasn’t—this contradiction went on for so long, at one point he wondered if she had left without it.
“It looks like your friend didn’t stay very long. I haven’t seen her since we got here,” Van finally observed.
“No.” Van of course would not have been tracking the coat. She would just be aware of Alison’s presence, or absence.
“That’s too bad. I really wanted to get to know her! We hardly had a chance to say hello.” Van issued this announcement with a sweet, good-natured sincerity that was so believable it frightened him. Did she mean this? Just hours ago she was spitting venom because he had spoken to Alison briefly about nothing. Now she wanted to get to know her? Her earnest hope to make friends with Alison struck him as the most dangerous and chilling possibility yet presented.
“I guess she did leave,” Kyle said.