Three Stages of Amazement by Carol Edgarian

Author:Carol Edgarian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2011-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

The tent had to disappear by dawn. What took days to construct came down in a few hours. Paige’s crowd hauled one of the banquettes and a bucket of Grey Goose into the street to cheer the demolition. When that got dull, the party moved to the Lyon Street steps, but Paige was no longer with them. She was upstairs in her old room with James, whose hair didn’t look so much like a hat just then. And in the salon, a strange fellow named Griffin, who’d been showing up at the Rusches’ parties since anyone could remember, was playing the piano and singing Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly.”

Artie and Jules Green were the last to go. They had cozied themselves with Ivy on the salmon sofas, their stocking feet propped up on the Ming coffee table.

“Who is that fellow?” Jules asked, her eyes closed.

“Griffin … rum-rum-rum, ” chimed Ivy and Artie in unison.

Jules cocked an eye open and with a sudden burst of energy, stood. “Artie, darling, get up.” She tugged on his arm. He was heavy and drunk, and it was past two in the morning.

“But Ivy promised,” Artie said lazily, “to tell again what the bum said.”

Ivy touched her fingertips to her temples. “Oh, I just had it. I just—Gratitude, forgiveness … I can’t remember!” Ivy also couldn’t remember when she’d had more wine. “Abundance.”

“Well, dear, you have that,” Artie assured her. He wobbled, caught himself, rearranged, and sort of stood. But as he bent to kiss Ivy’s cheek, he fell into the sofa beside her.

“That’s enough,” warned Jules, pulling him upright and leading him forcibly toward the door.

And with them went Paige’s party.

In the kitchen Paulette was wiping the last of the trays. Her son, Jean-Claude, of whom all had been forgiven, was sitting beside her, sipping Cristal.

“Oh, Paulette,” Ivy began.

“Next time less sushi, more pigs en croute,” Paulette announced, and with a sniff she downed her glass of champagne.

Tomorrow the staff would have the day off. Paco, who couldn’t bear to leave his house at loose ends, would be awake most of the night. Even now, he was bringing the dogs up from their banishment. “Ay, Missus, the bum! I can’t believe it!”

“It’s all right, Paco. He didn’t hurt anyone.”

“But where was I?”

Ivy put her hand to his arm, this man who ran their lives, yet who owned neither a cup nor a chair. “You were right where you needed to be. All of you. Thank you.”

Ivy had envelopes with cash for each of them, and a pearl necklace for Paulette, and some shares of stock in Google for Paco. “Do you want the dogs up with you, ma’am?”

Ivy followed the Danes upstairs. The loneliness was coming on her, as it always did after a party, when her eyes were too far out of their sockets and all the friends who had walked through her life had left behind their colors and stories. She needed someone to talk to. But Cal was already asleep, too plowed to have kept a light on for her.

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