Five

Three steps inside the double doors, Dee half screamed in my ear, “Just like old times, huh?”

“Whoo-eee,” I hollered in amazed response, “wish I’d worn my formal.”

First off, there were the gilt-and-crystal chandeliers. Then there was the wallpaper, painted scenes of pre-Marie Antoinette France, with lots of fluffy sheep tended by buxom shepherdesses falling out of low-cut dresses. Mylar balloons, each inscribed with Dee’s Change Up album logo, covered the ceiling, trailing gold ribbon tails. The band must have taken a break; the music was DJ-driven rock, three times as loud as a jackhammer. Guests had to shout to be heard.

Then there was the central fountain, which, I swear to God, dispensed champagne. Not that we had to race over and lap it up. A waiter materialized with a silver tray, and Dee and I had glasses in our hands before I could sort out a single face in the crowd.

I turned to say something to Dee, but she was surrounded, engulfed. I shrugged. This mob seemed less threatening than the one in the park.

Waiters kept zooming by with little bits of this and that, and I seized on the strategy of grabbing two of everything, wrapping the doings in cocktail napkins, and thrusting them unobtrusively into my handbag. Dee, her back against a door, champagne in one hand, and a constant parade of well-wishers squeezing the other, never had a chance to snatch so much as a crabmeat-stuffed mushroom.

I’m not a cocktail-party whiz. I hate affairs where you’re supposed to stand around in high heels and look like you’re enjoying yourself. I could hear Mimi’s stoned giggle off to my left, but she didn’t seem like someone I wanted to get to know better. I looked for the bass player, but couldn’t spot her in the crush.

I saw faces I recognized from TV: local newscasters, sports heroes, and gossip columnists. A few others looked familiar, but I couldn’t place them; I thought they might be musicians, hard to identify without their instruments and microphones.

There were men who gave the impression that they’d stepped out of ads in GQ, with perfect women on their arms, ladies who looked like they rented by the hour. Then there were the deliberately funky statement-makers, like Mimi in her well-filled black lace bra, and a woman in a skintight catsuit with silver bangle bracelets at wrist and ankles. There were even a few rhinestone cowboys. All in all, a pretty good sideshow.

On the pocket-sized dance floor, couples—sometimes trios and singles—were doing everything from dignified fox-trots to moves that looked pornographic standing up.

I dumped my empty champagne glass on a passing tray and was rewarded with a full one and a hundred-watt smile from a waiter who looked like he was auditioning for a toothpaste commercial. The smile was wasted on me, but it made me realize the kind of music industry power that must be in the room.

I found myself humming that Joni Mitchell song about “Stoking the starmaker machin’ry behind the popular song.” I could have sung it full-volume and nobody would have heard a word.

It looked like Dee would be handshaking forever. I was checking around for a place to sit when I saw a long linen-covered table filled with goodies of every variety, tiny china plates, dainty silver forks. The plates seemed like a better way to stock up for Dee, so I shoved through the crowd and tried to see how many shrimps I could fit in a six-inch circle.

“Nice party, huh?”

Busily spearing shrimp with toothpicks, I didn’t realize the tall man in the tuxedo was speaking to me.

“Okay,” I yelled. He seemed vaguely familiar. Big. Beefy. I never watch football or wrestling; if he was a celeb from either field, I wouldn’t have seen him play, but I might have caught a news photo if he got injured or caught doing dope.

“There’s no place to sit,” he observed. Something about the matter-of-fact way he continued the conversation made me wonder if he knew me. I gave him the once-over as subtly as possible. There was a time in my life when I dated a lot of guys, did a bit of indiscriminate one-night-standing, to tell the truth.

“Yeah,” I said, agreeing with his comment about the lack of chairs so he wouldn’t think I was being deliberately rude. I’d already filled one plate to overflowing. I quickly drank the rest of the champagne, set the glass down, and started loading a second plate. The huddle surrounding Dee was moving back toward the door. I thought she might be attempting an escape.

“You with somebody?” the guy said.

“Huh?”

“You here with somebody? I don’t want any guy thinking I’m trying to cut in, you know?”

“I’m a friend of the bride,” I said.

He smiled. “I know the groom. We were altar boys together. I’m Mickey, remember?”

Next to me, an angry man in torn jeans and a yellowed T-shirt screamed, “Honey, don’t talk to me about royalties. Royalties, hah!”

“Well,” a plump black-clad woman responded, “at least you’re getting your mechanicals.”

Huh? I thought. “Mechanicals” and a guy I couldn’t remember. Great party so far.

A woman in tight black slacks, a fuchsia shirt, and batgirl makeup shrieked, “Oh, God, I love it!” in my right ear.

I turned to face her, rarely having heard anyone wax so enthusiastic over shrimp. She was leaning close to a skinny man with a seamed face, a bald pate, and a fringe of long hair. He looked like a member of some group I’d liked a long time ago. He seemed to be singing into her ear.

“You know who that is?” the football player hollered at me.

“Can’t say I do.”

“Used to be with the Uncle Wigglies. Jimmy Ranger. A regular top-ten hit machine. Produced this album for Willis.”

We went on shouting idle party-chatter. I kept hoping he’d mention where we’d met before. If he was hitting on me, he was pretty low-key about it.

“So how’s Sam?” he said during a lull in the pounding music.

I only know one Sam: Sam Gianelli, my part-time employer and sometime lover. So I placed the guy then. And I wondered what a man I’d last seen at a Gianelli family funeral—the kind of funeral where the FBI records all the license plate numbers—was doing at a bash in honor of Dee Willis.