“Well, that’s a shame. Dennis! We haven’t seen Alison for hours! Did she leave?”
Standing as they were near the front doorway, Van could easily intercept him on his endless ramble back to the bar. “Alison?” he asked. “No, haven’t seen her since she got here.” Dennis was steady on his feet, but Kyle had known him long enough to recognize the profound alcoholic glitter in his too-steady gaze. His words were hyperarticulated with a heaviness that indicated the coming blackout was maybe fifteen minutes away. “Fled, apparently. You scared her off, Van.”
“I didn’t!”
“You’re formidable. And gorgeous. Kyle always gets the best girls.”
“You’re terrible.”
“I could be much worse, Van; keep an open mind.”
“That’s enough of that.” Kyle draped his arm around Van’s shoulder and pulled her back to him. “She’s mine.” This made Dennis raise his eyebrows and Van blush with pleasure. She loved flirting with Dennis and seemed to have no idea that he was not fully kidding. Or did she? Maybe she was hoping to stir some sort of mysterious plot between the two of them. He didn’t know and less did he care, for he knew from years of experience that as soon as Dennis passed out, the party would dissipate quickly. If he was going to get a chance to speak to Alison alone for even one minute, he had to go looking for her now. “I’m starving,” Kyle suddenly announced. “Is there anything to eat around here? Ever?”
“Food is overrated,” Dennis informed him with a laconic grace.
“Funny, they didn’t teach us much about that in med school. I wonder why. I’m going to go find some crackers. Behave yourself,” he warned Van. She laughed and glowed at him with the charming radiance of a high school girl whose crush had just smiled at her on the way to class. Is that really all it took? Did she want so little, was that the secret? Most of the time it felt like she wanted far, far too much.
He knew the layout of the house well, as he had been there often. Down a short hallway, past a leathery den in which several people were playing a computer game on an enormous flat-screen television. Just past the den the hallway turned into the kitchen, a butcher block, stainless steel cavern which always looked like it should be crawling with minions and never was. One of those chilly bartender girls was at the sink, rinsing glassware; it was later in the evening than he thought. Up the back stairs, into a deserted passage which led to the bedrooms before curving around toward another, much larger space which Felicia had dubbed the “screening room.” If Alison was hiding out on the second floor, that was doubtless where he would find her. The floor was coated with a plush white wall-to-wall substance which he knew must be wool, but always seemed like snow to him. It silenced all footsteps.
Which was how, after thinking about her all night, he almost missed her. His approach was silent, and she was not where he expected. In fact he had passed the door to the master bedroom without even glancing in. It wasn’t till he was three steps farther on that he heard the clink of a glass and the whisper of clothing, someone moving on the bed in the room behind him. He turned simply out of instinct.
They stared at each other through the open doorway. Alison was on her stomach, on the bed, her head lifted in surprise, a half-empty bottle of wine in her hand. She had clearly just retrieved it from the floor, where a half dozen other bottles lay scattered on the snowy carpet; there, a long dark line of red wine drops wound away from her like an accusation. “Oh, God,” she said, looking up at him helplessly. “I didn’t do it! It was some guy who snuck down into the kitchen and brought the red up. Which I told him not to; he clearly just went into the secret stash of Christmas presents, this stuff was probably worth a fortune.”
He took two steps toward the door, toward her. Suddenly appalled at herself, she couldn’t bear to look at him.
“Shit, look at this, it’s a disaster,” she said, biting her lip. This was a disaster, indeed. She looked adorable.
“I’m sure they can have it cleaned.”
“Right, I know, that’s right. Red wine on white wool, I’m sure that will be the easiest thing to just, make go away.”
“It looks like you had quite a party in here.” He hated the sound of his own voice around her; it sounded unfeeling and distant, and angry. She caught it too, with a quick glance that let him know she heard the wounded possessiveness behind the words. Well, what was she doing up here, hiding in the master bedroom with a bunch of guys? Is that in fact what she had been doing?