TWELFTH NIGHT 2004
BONAPARTE’S RETREAT
We came out of the darkness of the stairs and the landing was wallpapered in garlands of pink roses and lit by a crystal chandelier. Christopher paused next to a rolling rack jammed with coats. Party sounds rumbled behind a set of double doors with polished brass doorknobs. “We don’t have to go in, if you’re not into it,” he said suddenly.
“Are you kidding?” I shoved my bag behind a bunch of fur coats. “I had no idea all this was even here.”
He looked around. His shoulders sagged, and he looked very small and fearful all of a sudden. “I just, I mean, I feel like you should know, there’s a chance Ryan might be here.”
“So you said, that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
He fidgeted with the buttons on his jacket. “Just maybe don’t punch him again, or anything.”
I laughed. Now that we were close to the party, I could hear the sound of inebriation and music and I wanted to be inside. “You don’t have to worry about that. I’m here for you. What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know. I just wanted him to see that I didn’t need him, you know.”
“And you don’t. You’ve got a hot date, or beard, or whatever I’m supposed to be.” He was about to interrupt but I shushed him.
He still hung back. “I’m not sure what to say to him.”
“Don’t say anything. Don’t explain, just act natural. Listen, I’ve had more awkward hookups than I care to admit and the key to getting through the next day is just to bluff it out. Talking will only make things worse.” I could hear champagne corks popping. This guy was going to have to buck up. “Look at me.” I indicated my outfit. “I promise he will be impressed. Men are like that.”
“I thought if you came with me, he would see that it wasn’t a thing, that what happened didn’t need to change anything...” His voice kind of trailed off. “But what if he’s still mad? I really don’t want him to be mad at me.”
“Sometimes friends get mad for their own mysterious reasons and you don’t always have control over it. Come on, Christopher, don’t be a wimp. You promised me booze, let’s go.”
He frowned at me, annoyed, but he opened the door and a cloud of warm air and festive noise burst forth, that distinctive chaos of a party, and it seemed so obvious suddenly. A party. Why had it taken me this long to find a party tonight? In a party, we were all held together, flies in a web of laughter and poor choices and nervous energy. I wasn’t alone. And again, I felt damn grateful to belong to my city. I mean, this was an obscure religious holiday on a Tuesday in January, and this room was absolutely full of people dressed in the most beautiful, outrageous outfits I had ever seen. If one was looking for distraction, it would be hard to imagine a room more desirable. Thank you, St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers and the lost.
I stopped on the threshold watching this current of wild humanity in plumes and masks and capes and armor pass by. A buccaneer in a scarlet coat walked hand in hand with a peacock in feathers and purple-pink sequins. A dragonfly fluttered opalescent wings and pushed up his growling dragon mask. Three Elizabethan jesters jangled, bells on their feet and elbows and knees. It didn’t look real. Things like this happened in movies or maybe in someone’s castle three hundred years ago. I was used to fairly imaginative costumes and a certain amount of flair from the burlesque girls, and Mardi Gras day, of course, always had some impressive efforts, but this was excessive, awesome. Louis XIV walked by and bowed slightly over his gold walking stick and I felt very underdressed. “Holy crap,” I said.
“Yeah,” Christopher agreed. “I told you.”
We started to try to penetrate the elegant scrum, but it was so crowded, it was hard to move. Crystal sconces lit the room in pools of low yellow light and as the figures moved in and out of the brightness, glitter and sequins shattered the reflections, making stars dance across the walls and ceilings. It was hot with the press of drunken bodies and laughter and screams of delight pealing out over the syncopation of a band.
“We should find the bar,” I said because Christopher seemed a little dazed by it all.
“Oh look, honey,” one burly cancan dancer yelled to another. “Someone came as an Amish.” Christopher blushed. “He’s on his pot likker! No, what’s it called, where they go get drunk for a year?” He put a hand on Christopher’s shoulder as he passed. “I love it.”
“No, no, he’s a Reservoir Dog. What were their names again? Mr. Purple! He’s Mr. Purple. The skinny one.” They moved away through the crowd. “Do you remember Bad Lieutenant? That Harvey Keitel is something else.”
We managed, by following in the wake of someone’s papier-mâché shrimp tail, to slide deeper into the room. Julius Caesar roared with laughter and bumped into us, accidentally jabbing Christopher in the eye with a gold laurel wreath. Christopher squinted, and moved aside. The noise in the room was tremendous. A band played old-timey jazz somewhere, but I couldn’t see them from where I was.
“Does this party seem...” I hesitated, looking for the right word “...a little flamboyant?” There were a lot of young men here.
“Yeah, I kind of figured,” he answered, unconcerned.
“This is really where you were planning on having a manly talk with your buddy about being straight?”
He kind of laughed. “When you put it like that.” Then he looked around the room again, and in his strange fragility, pale and sad in his dark suit, he really did look like some kind of religious figure. A mystic or something. “I didn’t think it all through very much. I just wanted to find him. This was where he was supposed to be.”
A beautiful woman in a slinky black evening gown walked by with wings on her back. They met between her shoulder blades in a glittered skull. “Death’s-head hawkmoth,” she said, smiling at me as she passed, then pointed at her companion, who was covered in fragile, fluttering gold foil stars and carried an umbrella. “Asteroid shower,” she said. “I love your outfit. Memento mori, baby.” She reached up to caress one of my ostrich feathers and then turned and drifted away singing “Moonlight Becomes You.”
I heard someone yell my name. A man in purple robes and a three-cornered hat was waving to me. He pushed through the crowd and pulled down a little black domino mask. “Rosie, I didn’t know you moved in high society like this, you’re far too innocent for this crowd.”
I recognized Felix. He was friends with some of the girls and did costumes for the other fancier burlesque shows in town. He hung around the Sugarlick with his boyfriend, and we had formed sort of a friendship out of a shared affinity for Swarovski crystals and historical fashion. He always got my jokes. I let myself be pulled in for a kiss on each cheek. “Someone brought me,” I admitted. “What is this?”
“Oh, you know, just the Quarter scene, my little tassel twirler, where high and low bash into each other.” He brought his hands together violently, spilling a little of what looked like a screwdriver onto his white gloves. “And get into all sorts of trouble. That guy over there dressed like Genghis Khan? That’s going to be the King of Hermes next year, but don’t tell anyone I told you. And that Venetian courtesan over there in the outrageous crepe de chine?” He pointed across the room. “They own Domino Sugar and that dress was literally made for her in Italy, it’s to die for.”
“What about him?” I asked. In the center of the room, a very tall man was wearing mostly silver paint and a crown of towering glow sticks that nearly reached the ceiling.
“Oh, he’s a table dancer at Dick’s. Don’t worry about him. Unless you’re looking for poppers. Are you, dear?” I shook my head. “Well, you can always change your mind.”
“How did you get invited to this?” I shouted to Christopher over the noise, but he was dumbly watching King Neptune trying to disengage his trident from the long braids of a Valkyrie.
“I’m going to find the bar,” Christopher said and disappeared into the crowd.
Just then, someone passed by and handed me a glass of champagne from a tray and I tried to call Christopher back, but he couldn’t hear me.
It was in a real flute. I drank it quickly and the champagne tickled my nose and the tulle of someone’s skirt tickled my arm and I let my eyelids droop just long enough that everything in the room swam in a sparkling haze. What a paradise. Masked figures swirled around me, following the call of their own pleasures. I was lost among a sea of strangers who were all themselves strangers to each other, and I felt gloriously at home. Everyone was no one, cloaked in anonymity, and everyone was beautiful, and everyone was sliding downhill in the rush of alcohol, and nothing could touch us. A bright envelopment of gauze and satin and feathers and velvet protected everyone in here from tomorrow and I felt so lucky to be a part of it. “Felix, this is amazing.”
He accepted this like it was his responsibility. “We throw the best parties, and everyone loves a good party, and these rich folks pay for the drinks. I don’t know—” he shrugged and latched on to the tiny red straw in his drink “—somehow it all just works. If only I could have dreamed of coming somewhere like this when I was a young one in Ocean Springs. The most excitement I could manage there was going with my grandmother to the Knights of Columbus Bingo Hall. Although, some of those old coots were pretty fabulous in their own way. If you want to see some impressive hairstyles and can tolerate some light homophobia, the Knights of Columbus Bingo Hall in Ocean Spring, Mississippi, is the place for you.” He paused for a minute, lost in reminiscences and then finished his drink in one quick swallow. “Good riddance to bad memories,” he said a little brightly and then turned his attention back to me. “And you’re what, a slutty vampire?” Christopher popped up again with a drink in each hand and one cradled against his chest. “No wait, you’re this Mennonite’s moment of temptation? The wet dream of a Holy Roller? Great couple’s idea, you two.”
“Isn’t she amazing?” Christopher handed me a drink, finished his right away and started on the third.
“So,” I said. “How did you get invited to this again?”
“I didn’t,” he answered, still looking around. “Ryan was working at a frame shop on Dauphine and the owner invited him. We meant to come last year but we forgot, you know, who remembers Twelfth Night? And we were so pissed that we’ve been talking about it all year. It’s famous.”
“Oh, that would be Richie,” Felix said. “He’s around here somewhere dressed as the Whore of Babylon.”
“I really thought Ryan wouldn’t miss it.” Christopher put his arm around me in a proprietary way, like we were posing for a photograph.
“I saw another dirty young man milling around somewhere earlier, near the cake. You boys all look so hungry.”
“That’s cool,” Christopher said in a bored tone of voice. Then he apologized to me quickly. “I’m just going to go check.” And he pushed back through the crowd.
“Well, what about you, my dear? Your date seems a little distracted. I think I recognize him. He’s delivered me cigarettes before.”
“He’s all over the place. I think he’s looking for a friend. Or maybe a lover. I can’t tell.”
“Who cares? One and the same. He well might be here, it’s a small town. I’ve got about six exes here tonight, but also, my teller from the Whitney bank, which I would not have guessed. She’s wearing a lamé fish-tail gown. We all have our hidden depths, I suppose.”
A cardinal in velvet robes walked by, leading an altar boy on a leash.
Felix saw me watching. “Not always the best of taste. I’m pretty sure there’s at least three blackamoors here.” He sighed. “It’s the Uptown folks. Some of this old money still doesn’t know they lost the war, but when they pay the fiddler sometimes you have to dance to the tune,” he said with a shrug.
A unicorn in a doublet ducked his head to avoid the chandelier above us. “You missed Nancy,” the unicorn yelled at someone across the room.
“Fuck.” A man lifted a black lace mantilla, so they could link arms. “I think she has my keys.”
Felix began to steer me toward an adjacent room, and I let myself be led away.
The music was louder here and, as we headed for the dance floor, a friend of Felix’s in a dress made of plastic Mardi Gras pearls grabbed us and in a flurry of unspoken signals, pulled us into a corner. He held something concealed in his fist and looked questioningly at me. I nodded and bent over his hands while he cracked something under my nose, and I inhaled deeply. I yelled thank you. A tootling clarinet started playing “If Ever I Cease to Love” and a cheer went up from the crowd. And all my sadness, all the icky feelings, everything exploded in a great wave of effervescence. It was so ridiculous, all these people, all this beauty and ugliness all bouncing to the little bumping rhythm of the jazz band, and I found myself laughing. And laughing. Everyone was singing the nonsense lyrics of the anthem of the royal court of Carnival. “May the fish get legs and the cows lay eggs, if ever I cease to love.” And an irrepressible surge of high giggles poured out of me while the world swirled and melted. “Come on, you.” Felix pushed me toward the dancers, and some parted to make a place for us and then we were all bobbing together in the fox-trot jostle of silent movies. “Why is Dixieland jazz so funny?” I yelled.
He snorted. “You could watch a funeral and think it was funny right now.” But then he giggled too. “I don’t know, because they’re all dressed like they’re on The Love Boat?”
I looked at the band. They were all dressed in black and white with nautical-looking caps and Felix was right, it was funny, and still the trumpet kept going BLAT in hilarious little bursts, and the tuba kept burping its jaunty bass line. I started a Charleston with a velvet lion, whose nap was wearing off, and we were all elbows and knees and impractical hats and capes and masks. I stepped on a tail and apologized. I was poked by a scepter. We moved aside to make room for the train of a kimono. The dress of pearls rattled and clanked. A kind girl with a marabou fan cooled my hot face. I don’t know how long I danced. Everything faded and blurred. I had forgotten the feeling at the pit of my stomach. I had finally achieved it. Here. And it was wonderful. I thought I saw Christopher pass by in the arms of a girl dressed like a swan. Good for him. Good for all of us. I stopped thinking for a while after that.
I’m not sure when exactly I noticed that the party had changed. My feet were starting to hurt and, when I stopped dancing, holding on to the back of a gilt chair to take the weight off for a minute, everything slowed down. People were quieter, pairing off and listening to each other, heads bent in the overattentiveness of deep drunkenness. Spots of bare floor were visible now, elaborate parquet crossed with dirty streamers, lost ribbons, shed feathers, cups, a single shoe. I set off to find Christopher, still humming, a fresh glass of champagne in each hand. I was thinking of him almost proudly. To have brought me, whom he pretty clearly wanted to fuck, to a party to look for his best friend whom he had just put the moves on, and on top of it all to find time to chase some girl dressed like a goose. It was nuts, but it was an escalation of mania that I could relate to.
I passed a man sitting alone in a clump of empty chairs and he had a nasty coughing fit, but he raised one hand and gestured me nearer. I had to stand there and wait until he was done. He was wearing a sort of half-hearted outfit of plush and streamers that maybe looked like a troubadour but mostly looked like dust and thrift stores and reminded me how much I hate hippies. Especially old ones. He had long gray hair and a trilby pushed back on his head and looked like he had been doing smack for forty years. Why had I stopped? He was probably going to hit on me. “Hey, you aren’t Natalie’s kid are you? Natalie Grossman?”
It felt disorienting to hear someone say my mother’s name. Especially here. It sent a weird shiver through me and I had an immediate impulse to run away but I didn’t. “I am,” I said tentatively.
“Damn, you look just like your momma. I could pick you out of any crowd. Just like her, fuck. Just as beautiful and same devil in her eye.” I stood awkwardly while he looked me up and down.
“Do you know my mom?” I finally said, stupidly.
“I sure did. Your mom and I used to paint this town red. She was a wild one, your momma. Damn, I was in love with her.” His eyes were watery, and I realized this person was very, very drunk. “Excuse my manners, sweetheart, I’m James Robineaux. Your mom and I used to run around these parts together. Until she went straight, bless her heart, right about when she had you, I guess.” He held out his hand toward me. His skin was a terrible gray color, the nails almost bluish, and I really didn’t want to take it. I held out my champagne glasses as an excuse. He read it as an offer and took one from me, but when he tried to drink from the narrow glass, his hands were too unsteady and some of it dripped down his chin. He patted it away with the end of a fuchsia scarf. “She used to love this stuff. ‘Only champagne,’ she used to say. It was all she would drink. ‘Bubbles to raise the spirits.’”
He spoke with a specific tone I was very familiar with, that of alcoholics once they get nostalgic and start lying. My mother was also very often full of shit. “She likes vodka now,” I said brusquely.
But he smiled a dumb, satisfied smile that meant he wasn’t listening to me and I noticed his teeth were a mess. “I get no kick from champagne,” he sang, smiling again at me for approval and I looked at his sunken cheeks and general grayness and it occurred to me this person was dying. Not figuratively. This person was literally drinking or smoking or whatever he was doing, he was doing it to himself to death and I felt a wave of revulsion. It’s possible he never even knew my mom. Drunks were such liars. People this far gone would say anything just to keep you there talking to them. He barely knew what he was saying anyway. There was no reason I had to stand here listening to it.
“Excuse me,” I said, because even when I was disgusted, I was still Southern, and then I took advantage of another fit of coughing to leave before he could say anything else. He sounded like a punctured bagpipe, and that cough was familiar.
This room was too full of stale heat and gold chairs and people not getting out of my way. I finally found Christopher in a corner on a love seat with the swan girl. Her wings lay on the ground and she had one black Chinese slipper tucked up underneath her. “I’m so sorry,” she was saying, a hand patting his back. “You poor boy.”
“Hey.” I interrupted them, possibly rudely. “Did you find what’s his name?”
“No.” Christopher seemed unconcerned and very intent on the girl next to him. He was lightly petting a spray of feathers attached to one shoulder of her dress.
“Do you want to leave, then?”
I needed him to make a choice right then, which of us he was pursuing, and to his credit, he raised his head immediately. “Sure.”
“Do I know you?” she asked, squinting at me. “Do you dance at Big Papa’s?”
I shook my head and she lay down in the space left by Christopher standing up. She crossed her hands behind her head and smiled at me. “You’re cute anyway. You both are.”
“Thanks.” How many strippers was Christopher going to throw himself at tonight? Were we all so boring? So predictable?
I was sick of this place. I wanted my hoodie. It felt ridiculous to still be so naked. “I’ll meet you outside,” I told Christopher and left. The foyer felt ten degrees colder and strangely, eerily quiet after the noise and heat of the room. It was easy to find my stuff because most of the coats were gone. I was pulling on my hoodie when Christopher came out. “If you want to try and get with that girl in there, don’t let me stop you,” I said.
“What, Nina? No, she’s just one of my regulars. She likes grilled cheese with tomatoes and a bag of Zapp’s in the middle of her shift. Also Diet Dr. Pepper, which, what? How gross is that?”
“Are you sure? I don’t know where I’m going.”
“I’m sure. I’m going with you.” He just stood there looking at me.
I pulled up my zipper with a brusque thwip. “What?”
He cleared his throat. “You left me in there.” We had to step aside to let a Pierrot pass through. “You disappeared. I was going to find Ryan and when I came back, you had ditched me.”
“It was a party, that’s how parties work.” I considered changing out of my heels but decided it was too much trouble.
“But you were going to be with me when I talked to Ryan.”
“Well, did you? He wasn’t there so what did it matter?” One of my eyelashes was falling off again. “Hey, will you press this back down for me?” I asked him.
He leaned in close and looked at the corner of my lash I was pointing to. “I didn’t want to be alone,” he spoke quietly. He wasn’t helping me with my eyelash. He was instead staring into my eyes in a way that made me want to look away.
“Okay, fine, whatever. I’m leaving. Are you coming with me?”
“Yes.” But he didn’t move.
I ran my finger under the strap of my heel to disentangle it and readjusted the feathers in my hair and then stopped because he was still just staring at me in that ridiculously fragile way. I wanted to warn him and tell him not to look at anyone like that because no one was worth it. “I’m sorry,” I said instead, but it felt strange and made my voice waver. “I’m sorry I left you.”
“It’s okay.” He shrugged and looked at the ground.
I took his hand and it was cold and clammy. “I want you to come with me now. Stay with me, please.”
He smiled, and it turned his face radiant again, radiant and goofy and wonderful all at the same time. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.” He ducked back into the party for a few minutes and then reappeared with something clearly tucked under his jacket. “Okay, let’s go.”