Cheer Up, Mr. Widdicombe by Evan James

Author:Evan James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

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The hour before any party typically limps along; so it did for Carol. Frank, Marvelous, and Bradford—that prodigal rogue—all worked in the kitchen (Men in the Kitchen, Women in the Woods). Christopher showered for what must have been the first time in many days. Gracie, taken with a sudden fit of inspiration, ran off for a last-minute walk through the woods, saying, “I’ll be right back—I’ve just had a thought about tree communication that can’t be ignored!” Michelle changed, declaring that it would be unsuitable to put anything but her best foot forward after spending so much time coordinating the event. (There was more to this story: she could not believe she had to see Bradford there after he had admitted to hooking up with someone in Portland. BRADFORD: “I thought we were on a break.” MICHELLE: “We are now!”) Carol’s young assistant had thrown herself into the task with such zeal, in fact, that it left Carol little to do with the day now arrived. The urgent need to straighten rows of tchotchkes and to smooth out buckles in the Persian rugs no longer possessed her, and with her home’s interior ready for its close-up, a malaise settled in. What was her life that she had come to this point of sitting in her salon and waiting for her guests to arrive? Had she no cute little rope bridge of a purpose over which she could teeter, could cross this deadly hour? Then she might not have to deal with such morbid thoughts, might not feel so weak and frayed.

She turned to her phone for solace, holding the thing in her lap. The sun coming through the window behind her revealed streaked fingerprints on the screen, and in those, aggravating dust motes, like flies trapped in honey. At once these flecks went from aggravating to depressing: no amount of industry, all-purpose cleaner, or rubbing of plastic displays against blouse sleeves could free her or anybody else from the ubiquity of motes, dander, debris. (The fabric technique often only pushed the offending particles into that fine, dark fissure around the screen that set it into the body of the phone, that feature being like a crack in the earth that led to hell.) Disquieted further by the impossibility of a mote-free existence, she stared at the device for all the world as though it might provide a way to move through time without this ache of despair. Instead, as she idly (but importantly) pressed down on the directional nub that guided her through her address book, highlighted names jumped out at her without meaning, appearing first at the bottom of the screen and then floating up into oblivion as others arrived to replace it, a silent waterfall of acquaintance rushing in reverse:

Abbey Jenson

Adam Park

Alexander Wu

Anne Keeling

Anthony (Salon)

Ava Liebowitz

. . .

Hal Caruthers

Hanna Sacco

Harry Worrell

Helen Down

Hiro Kawasaki

As the names moved past, she played a macabre game with herself: who could she call if she was thinking about jumping off a

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