Snakewoman of Little Egypt: A Novel by Robert Hellenga

Author:Robert Hellenga [Hellenga, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 1608192628
Publisher: Walker Books
Published: 2010-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

13

Millennium Party

I was excited on the night of the party—my first time appearing in public as Jackson’s … What? Mistress? Friend? Lover? Significant other? Who cared? Nobody. I was excited nonetheless.

Despite my protests Jackson had invited my professors: Madame Arnot; Cramer; Professor Henry, who taught Western Civ. I’d refused to convey the invitations in person, but Jackson had called them.

I was the hostess. Jackson didn’t seem to understand my fears. “It’s a potluck, that’s all, just like a church supper.” Jackson and I had fixed a large cassoulet, with venison and venison sausage, which had taken all day, and cooked a venison roast on the grill. A dozen wine bottles stood at attention on the kitchen table. Two cases of beer were keeping cold on the deck. Jackson said that people would bring lots of stuff. I pictured casseroles, fried chicken, meatloaf, catfish.

We’d built a huge bonfire down by the stream. I kept looking at it from different windows.

I didn’t put on my outfit till after the first guests had arrived. When I did, it seemed to emit light, like the bonfire. The light washed over me. I could feel the earth turning beneath my feet.

Everyone brought food and wine and hard liquor too, and everyone was having a good time. It really was like a church supper, but with better food. Claude’s big French table was loaded down with shrimp, pasta salads, guacamole, cheeses, all arranged around the big cassoulet, which we had cooked in a terra-cotta pot. Claire had put her special New York Chocolate Cheesecake out on the deck to keep cold.

Everyone was very agreeable. Not just agreeable, but making it clear that they were happy to be here and not somewhere else. And these were the people Earl would consign to Hell.

Even the good-natured argument about when one millennium ended and another began didn’t upset the apple cart. I listened with pleasure. Cramer maintained that the old millennium wasn’t over till the year 2000 had been completed. “When are you ten years old? At the end of your tenth year, not at the beginning.”

“In China,” someone said, “you’re one year old the day you’re born.”

I didn’t see how it made a difference.

“A millennium is a thousand years,” Claire said, agreeing with Cramer. “A thousand years won’t be up—completed, finished—until the end of the year 2000.”

Someone else said, “But there was no year zero.”

Cramer was getting annoyed. “Stephen Jay Gould made that point on television the other night,” he said, “but so what? Of course there was no zero. There’s no zero year in a human life. You go from zero to one, and at the end of your first year, you’re one year old.”

Claire, who had already moved into the apartment over the garage to work on her novel, had to leave because her husband was celebrating a special New Year’s Eve mass at nine o’clock. “I’ll be back,” she said. “Ray’s coming too.”

I walked her out to her car. “That argument about the millennium,” I said, “makes about as much sense as the debate about which way to put the roll of toilet paper.

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