25

As I drew closer to the party I entered the light that fell from the windows. I had never felt so sure I knew so many people. It was like one of those dreams, a homecoming, grandparents and uncles, a longed-for Thanksgiving.

I was a sailor home from a war, a man after years of wandering. I had been away too long. This place belonged to me, this house, these people. I was dazzled by an insight I knew was an illusion, like a man boosted by cocaine into a clarity and optimism he had never experienced before.

I looked down at my clothes, my hands, and I was amazed at the transformation. The patina of mildew on my jacket sleeves, that foxing on my skin, was gone. I knew the danger, but I could not stay away a moment longer.

I entered the house.

They’ll know at once, I warned myself. It will only take one look.

As I passed people they fell silent, and turned my way. People followed me with their eyes. This was the worst place I could be. This was madness. But I could not separate myself from all these human beings. I wanted to be close to this crowd of faces, feel the heat of their bodies. Surely someone would recognize me. Surely one of them would turn out to be a landlord or a county supervisor, someone I had dismantled in court. Surely someone will look at me and know where I had been for so many months.

“I’m so glad you could come,” said a voice.

He took my hand. He was a tall man who had lost weight recently, the flesh on him loose, his smile bright but something unsteady in him. He wore a suit that was new, and tailored, I guessed, to fit his new, gaunt frame. I knew what he had been through. I could see it in his eyes, breathe it, his memories suddenly my own, the severed ribs, the weakness, the welcome visits of friends to his hospital bed.

“How could I possibly stay away?” I heard myself ask.

“You look terrific,” said my host, shaking my hand, not wanting to release me.

“I have a cut,” I said. “I hope I didn’t get blood on your new suit.”

The cut in my finger was bleeding, slightly, and he looked at it with the wonder of a worshiper touching the tears of a marble statue.

“No problem,” he said with a laugh. My touch, perhaps even something about that tiny kiss of blood on his wrist, seemed to give him strength. “No problem at all. I’m really embarrassed. I know we’ve met, but I can’t place you.”

“I just had to drop by,” I said.

“I’m so glad you did,” he said. He leaned into me, one hand on my shoulder. “You know, I wasn’t sure I should even have a party.”

“They can be a strain, meeting so many wonderful people at once.”

“Well, it wasn’t just that. So soon after my operation, I wasn’t sure I was up to it.”

“Your heart.”

“Do you know how many people are walking around with pig valves? But when it happens to you, well, I keep thinking I shouldn’t be alive.” He held a nearly full glass of sparkling wine, but it was not alcohol that brought out this desire to confide. It was something about me.

“It’s a miracle,” my host was saying. “But you know there’s a dark side to it.” He paused, perhaps surprised at his sudden desire to be frank, to hunt for words to describe feelings he would ordinarily never admit. “There is a problem with depression after an operation like that.”

“It’s more of a struggle than people realize,” I said.

He squeezed my shoulder, delighted to find someone who understood him. “Something’s been altered inside,” he said, taking his large hand away from my shoulder and placing his fist over the place where his heart was beating, that other fist, inside, kneading life. “And your body knows it.”

“Of course it does,” I said, dazzled by the power I had over this man.

“You know, I really am surprised that you could make it—” This was the place in the conversation when I would supply my name, or give him some idea where we had met.

The young man from outside joined us. He was breathing hard. “I can’t find Maura.”

“Forget Maura,” said the host with a cheerful dismissiveness.

“I got her some Excedrin,” said the young man. He held them in his hand, two white pills. “And some coffee.”

“She probably went out to look at the stars,” said our host. “You can see them if you get far enough away from the houses, away from all this light.”

“I can’t see Maura actually going out to look at the stars,” said the young man.

“I wouldn’t worry,” I said.

The young man toyed with the pills in the palm of his hand, slightly annoyed by them, as though they might dissolve. He slipped them into his pocket, meeting my eyes. He smiled cautiously. “I’m anxious about everything. I haven’t been able to sleep very well. I’m starting a new job.” Then his eyes narrowed, as though he recognized me. Or as though he mistrusted something about me, something about my appearance, my voice.

“I’m surprised she could stand to leave such a wonderful gathering,” I said.

Relax. Everything is fine. Like a county-fair charlatan, a stage hypnotist, I worked at his doubt, steaming it away. He was more vigorous physically, and less clouded by inner fears than my convalescent host. He gave me a slight frown, and I could see him wondering at what he saw, like a man looking at a wax dummy, or a work of art that wasn’t quite right.

Then he gave the smile of a sufferer when the painkiller takes effect. “She likes being unhappy.”

“She wants too much,” I said.

“I want to introduce you to each other, and here I am—” My host was making an effort to catch my name once again. Both of you will stay happy. You will not worry, and you will not wonder who I am.

The young man turned to the host. “We should all play some sort of game. Or—do something instead of stand around like this. Look at all of us. You’d think we were all—sick. Or old. People just stand around drinking and what we should be doing is—” But I could sense his vocabulary, and his range of ideas, falter. Raised on television, maintained by financial reports and computer screens, he could not describe the sort of Saturnalia his spirit required.

I left them. I moved through the room like a politician working a crowd, a successful leader, a statesman, one people have been longing to meet.

“There comes a time,” a man was saying.

“But the poor thing,” said the woman.

I joined the man and woman, standing over a cat half asleep on the apron of the fireplace. The white cat was emaciated, the fur around its mouth dirty. The cat stirred, purring at my touch. I could feel her ribs, the sharp point of her haunch.

I let the cat nose my cut, and lick the blood, the teasing rasp of her tongue delightful on my finger.

“You want nature to take its course,” said the man. “You don’t want to have to put an animal to sleep.”

“It’s such a euphemism,” said the woman. “Such a way of not saying what it really is.”

“I suppose you could call it putting her down,” said her companion. “Or destroying her.”

I sensed that it was my presence that made them glow and kept their conversation circling around the subject of mortality. “What do you think?” said the woman, clinging to me, hanging on to me, giving me a look I could not mistake.

“Isn’t it a kind of sleep, after all?” I said.

“Yes, of course it is,” said the woman.

Just then there was a cry from out in the darkness, out beyond the edge of the property, beyond the place where any of the party-goers had any business wandering. A cry. And not a cry of delight. And not of pain, either. It was a phrase, repeated.

Someone had found one of Maura’s shoes. There was laughter, out by the mossy reaches of the garden. And another shoe. Someone was calling, “I bet she’s running around naked out there.” The party was flowing outside, now, into the garden, despite the chilly evening. Who could stay indoors on a night like this?

“Need some help?”

I ignored the querying voice. I held a car key in my hand. The streetlight shined off the row of cars. The emblem on the key ring was hard for me to make out, but I reassured myself that it was just a matter of trying a few locks.

“Sir, can I help you?” The parking attendant, rented for the occasion, wore a blue jacket with the parking company’s logo on the pocket. Something about my manner bothered him. I was not hurrying to a car for cigarettes, and I wasn’t getting into a car and driving away.

This was one of those pricey, hilly neighborhoods. Cars were parked everywhere, barely leaving room between them for the car that might want to leave. A pinecone lay in the middle of the street. I used to pretend these were hand grenades as a boy. I stooped, bounced the pinecone in my hand once or twice, and then threw it hard, high into the air.

He sounded apologetic now. “Sir, let me get your car.”

I never heard the pinecone hit the ground. Something brushed my pantleg, stroking my ankle. It was the white cat.

The same white cat that had been so emaciated was beautiful, sleek and purring. Wanting to lean against me, wanting to close her eyes and possess me, in that affectionate claim of ownership cats make, insisting that she had found what she wanted, and would keep it. One taste of my blood. Just one taste.

I could imagine what Rebecca would say about all this. What do you think you’re doing, Richard? I found a car door that the key fit, and opened it.

How long will it be before they find her body?

I had a memory that didn’t make perfect sense—the young woman flung high into the sky, cartwheeling, into the trees. I couldn’t do that, I told myself with a laugh.

It was impossible.

And what, Rebecca would ask, are you doing now?