The Night of the Party
February 1, 2023
12:55 a.m.
Tyler was looking at me with the most bashful, boyish grin. I had never had a problem getting men to like me, but something about it tickled me now, it was so sweet.
He shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“I hung back. I was trying to work up the nerve to knock on your door and ask if you wanted another drink. But then you walked out.” He kicked a bit of gravel with one foot. “Guess I never did work up the nerve.”
His face flushed red in the moonlight. It was still snowing lightly, and a flake landed on his nose. I had the most absurd desire to kiss it off.
“Anyway,” he said. “Do you? Want another drink?”
I felt a smile spread across my face. “Sure,” I said. “Why the hell not? Is wine okay? I don’t have it in me to shake any more cocktails.”
Tyler nodded. “Anything’s okay.”
I dipped back into Siobhan’s room. I looked around for a place to put the camera, but there were drinks and paraphernalia everywhere. I didn’t want her to bumble around and knock it over—or, worse, spill something on it—so I tucked it under the bed right where she was sleeping, then grabbed a wine tool and an unopened bottle from the stash. A dark and smoky merlot that I’d spent more than I should have on.
Back outside, I led Tyler to the room next door, mine for the past couple of weeks. “We can’t make a mess,” I said as I slipped the key in the lock, twisting it to the right, then opened the door, flicked on the overhead light.
Tyler followed me in, tracking snow and mud against the hardwoods.
“I mean it,” I said, setting the wine on a small table and reaching down to tug off my boots. “Shoes off. We cleaned the room already, and I’m crashing at Siobhan’s tonight so we don’t have to take care of two in the morning. And we’ll have plenty to do, because we’ve got to go to the impound lot.” I raised an eyebrow. “Tell your mom thanks, by the way.”
Tyler winced. “I tried to dissuade her, but I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”
“Well, you’ll just have to make it up to me, then,” I said, letting the innuendo hang in the air, turning Tyler’s face even redder. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
I turned from him, grabbing the bottle and the corkscrew, maneuvering the thing out in a few effortless turns, something I’d gotten good at while waiting tables on and off over the years. I fluttered over to the cabinet, pinched a pair of glasses I’d have to remember to wash in the morning, then served us each generous pours and plopped myself on top of the comforter on the bed. I patted the space next to me, and Tyler dutifully came over, sitting by my side.
I pressed the glass into his hand, and we each took a gulp.
“So why did you want to talk to me?” I asked.
He looked down, then looked up again, took another sip of wine. “You know,” he said.
“Do I?”
He set down his glass on the nightstand. I leaned over, did the same.
Then his eyes met mine. “Can I kiss you?”
I felt my lips turn up at the edge. I hadn’t been asked that in so very long. The men I met, producers, actors, they just took, like it was their right. Like inviting someone into a room was a promise to be cashed in.
I gazed at Tyler, nodded, and he leaned forward, still hesitant, but then, our lips were pressed together, my mouth was open, his tongue soft against mine, my body leaning on his. He was too young for me, of course, but something about the wine sloshing around in my head, the cotton of the duvet that I could feel beneath my hand, it made me feel like I was back in the dorm in college, sneaking kisses with Chris, the devout Christian who wouldn’t do anything more than make out. There had been something so simple and pure in those ultra-long kissing sessions. Hours devoted only to the sensations, the feelings in your lips, on your tongue, the blood pumping in your veins.
Tyler’s hands found the back of my head, pulling me even closer, and as our chests pressed together, I could feel the beating of his heart, and suddenly, I wasn’t on the futon of Chris’s dorm. Suddenly, I was right here, and I reached for Tyler’s belt buckle, and he didn’t stop me—of course he didn’t stop me—and he was looking at me with this joy, like he’d won the lottery, struck gold. He said something about not having a condom, and I mentioned my IUD, and then it was happening, and it was sweet and quick and he was so young, so naive. And I loved that, I did.
“Wow,” Tyler said, crashing into me, our clothes still on. “Just. Wow.”
And then, in a flash, I didn’t want it. It felt like I was chasing something that was impossible to grasp. Being young again, with a fresh start, fresh dreams. Not having tried and gotten so close and ultimately not made it.
I sat up, wriggled my underwear back in place, antsy to move, to halt the intimacy of this moment. I couldn’t just ask him to leave; it would break his heart. “You want a cigarette? I’d kill for a cigarette right now.”
I could tell he was a little hurt, that he would have preferred to cuddle, but he forced a smile. “Sure.”
“You get the glasses,” I said, needing, suddenly, to drink off the fact that I’d just slept with someone so much younger than me in an attempt to somehow…what? Soak up youth by proxy? “There’s a pack of Parliaments in Siobhan’s room. I’ll pop over there and grab them.”
Siobhan was still fully passed out when I went for the cigarettes. Back outside, Tyler and I found ourselves on the back lawn of the motel, where the stones of a natural fire pit formed a small circle, us sitting on the edge, the night cold but pleasant, snow falling lightly.
“You have a lighter?” I asked. “The one in my room was empty, so I threw it out, and I couldn’t find one in Siobhan’s. No matches, either.”
“No,” Tyler said. “But there’s a camping lighter in the boiler room. You got the keys?”
I nodded, handing the ring over to him.
In a minute, he was back, an extra-long lighter in his hand.
“You left the door open,” I said, nodding back to where I could barely see the edge of the outbuilding.
“Right,” Tyler said. “It will remind me to go back and return this. It’s the only one in that room, and I need it to light the pilot when I work on it. But for now—” He flicked his thumb, and the light illuminated his face. “A light, my lady?”
I grinned, then grabbed a cigarette, propped it between my lips. I leaned into the light, sucked hard, then took another, lit it, too, handed it to Tyler, who inhaled way too much, coughed up a storm.
I took a drag, then smiled at him, his features illuminated in the moonlight. “I take it you don’t smoke.”
He shook his head. “Do you?”
“When I’m working, yeah. Well, and drinking,” I said. “It’s a nasty habit, I know. But especially at the end of a long shoot, when a director calls five, and you know you’re going to have to do about a million more takes until you get one just right, I don’t know, it gives you that boost you need. Like a burst of liquid courage.”
“A vice,” Tyler said.
“Yeah,” I said, taking another drag. “A vice.”
“One that pays off,” he said. “Some vices aren’t all bad. Not if they get the juices flowing.”
I recognized the phrase, paused, my eyes narrowing. “Did you—”
Tyler nodded eagerly.
“You read my newsletter?” I asked. It had been one of my weekly themes—things that were bad for your body but (occasionally) good for your creativity. The right vice can get the juices flowing was how I’d put it. Or something like that.
“Religiously,” he said with a grin. “Have since you started it. I mean, you’ve got one of the top creative newsletters on Substack.” He cleared his throat. “What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?”
“Mary Oliver,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said, holding back a laugh as I reached for the glass of wine. “Anyway, I’m surprised. I mean, I know you said you wanted to write, but I never would have guessed you’d know about the newsletter.”
His eyes were suddenly sharp. “We’re not all idiots, just because we don’t live in the city, you know.”
I stiffened just the tiniest bit. “Of course not. I didn’t mean—”
“You don’t have a corner on creativity,” he said. “From your newsletters, I never got the idea that you thought you did.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m sorry. It’s just…you’re so young, is all.”
His face softened. “I’m not that young. Hemingway published The Sun Also Rises when he was twenty-seven.”
You’re no Hemingway. The thought came unbidden. Thankfully, I didn’t voice it.
“So it’s fiction, right?” I asked.
Tyler nodded eagerly, taking a gulp of wine. He shifted his weight from foot to foot then, steadying himself, and I realized he really was drunk. Shaky. Off-balance. Hell, so was I.
“I’ve been working on a short story for a couple of years.”
A couple of years for one short story? Again, I didn’t voice it. Just gulped back more wine and nodded like I cared.
Tyler was staring at me, eager as a puppy, and I realized then that I was supposed to say something else. “What’s it about?”
His face lit up. “It’s kind of like early Bret Easton Ellis meets Stephen King meets Faulkner.”
I raised my eyebrows, but he didn’t catch my derision.
“It’s about this man who lives alone in the woods—you know, a type of guy like Jeremy—rich and keeps to himself, and he, you know, he hurts women, as a way of feeling something. He’s got this family past—I guess it’s kind of based on my dad, too. Like, a lot of men on my dad’s side of the family were physically violent, but I’m not like that, you know. So the story is about this guy who is trying to, you know, find meaning, by, like, collecting kills.”
I took another sip of my wine. If there was one thing that was getting killed, it was my buzz.
“I want to submit it to The New Yorker,” he said.
Of course you do, I thought. Of fucking course.
“I really only think it works for their audience.”
“They do love a brilliant tale of male violence,” I said, but Tyler didn’t even catch my sarcasm.
I took another drag of my cigarette, hoping this conversation was almost over.
“Do you want to read it?”
“Sure.” Already, I was imagining deleting the email, tossing the attachment into the proverbial bin.
But Tyler was throwing his cigarette into the snow, reaching into his jacket pocket.
“Wait?” I asked. “Now?”
The boy was pulling out pages folded in quarters, pressing them into my hands.
“It’s not that long. Come on,” he said. “I think you’ll like it. You’re a creative person. You’ll—you’ll get it.”
I glanced at the title. “Beneath Her Skin,” by Tyler Colton Rice.
Holy fuck did this boy take himself way too seriously. I downed the rest of my wine, knelt to set the glass on the edge of one of the rocks, then straightened back up, preparing for the inevitable cringe-iness, flipped a page.
My eyes scanned over the first few paragraphs.
It was the feel of her supple neck between his thick fingers, fingers that had worked, really worked, to build something that was supposed to be real but never really felt like it was.
It got worse from there. A mess of adjectives, purply prose. Death entered pungently…His heart as empty and vile as a kettle of soup gone bad…The slick, lubricious feeling of life slipping through fingers.
And then something happened, something I hadn’t expected. I started laughing.
Softly at first, and then whole hog; it was spilling out of me.
“Hey,” Tyler said. “Hey, what’s your problem? It’s not funny. It’s not supposed to be funny.”
I could barely breathe, and when I looked up at him, his face red with anger, it only made me laugh harder. Like when my cousin and I had dropped the offering basket at church, could not stop giggling all through the Lord’s Prayer.
I was laughing so hard my cheeks were hurting, the wine sloshing around in my gut.
Bret Easton Ellis! Faulkner! Only The New Yorker will do!
“Stop laughing,” Tyler said. He reached out, grabbed the pages from me, snatching them away.
His anger only made me laugh harder. That I was out here, sharing wine and cigarettes with this…this child…this…buffoon. That moments before, I’d let him cum inside me, something he’d probably spend years working into a damn story, write some revenge porn about me. This man who thought there was nothing more interesting in the whole fucking world than male violence, than his own sob story: “Oh, my dad wasn’t such a great guy, you know, but I’m different.”
“Stop fucking laughing!”
And he was getting so angry, because he’d actually thought—this boy had actually thought—that I was going to read these bad fucking pages and declare him some kind of literary god, call in every favor I had to get him in The New Yorker.
When the truth was, you could be brilliant, you could work and work and work for it, and still have so little to show.
That was the creative life. Not this. Not this trash.
I looked up at him, and I only laughed harder.
But then he stepped forward, and, snow swirling around us now, I knew I had fucked up.
“I told you to stop. Fucking. Laughing.”
Then his hands were up, and they were shoving forward, against my shoulders, one great push, and I felt my body rear back.
And that was it.