Page 16 of Kill Your Darlings

“Ha, right. I’d be dancing like a maniac, then the heart would stop and I’d hit the floor. It wouldn’t be so bad, fading out to Bernard Sumner’s voice.”

“‘How does it feel?’” Walter quoted the song.

“Oh my God, perfect death lyric. How ’bout you, Walter? What’s your collapse-on-the-dance-floor song?”

Wendy was just about to down her glass of wine in order to give herself an excuse to walk away, but Walter turned to her and said, “Let’s hear Wendy’s first.”

“‘Into the Groove,’” Thom quickly said.

Wendy frowned. “No Madonna. I mean, I love her, but not while I’m dying. I’d say ‘Sinnerman’ by Nina Simone.”

“Oh, good one,” Walter said, then while he was trying to figure out which song he’d like to go out on, Wendy did chug her wine and slide away.

At the bar she realized she was getting tipsy, but instead of that making her decide to order a water she asked for a vodka and soda with a splash of cranberry. Kerry, Marcia and Jim Lever’s youngest daughter, whom they’d hired to bartend, made the drink while Wendy turned to look at the party from this new vantage point. She knew everyone here, this strange hodgepodge of a lifetime’s worthof friends. Daniela was her oldest friend. Who was her most recent? Probably Mike and Louise, that boring couple. Not that Thom and she weren’t their own version of a boring couple. Maybe Mike and Louise had dark secrets of their own.

“Here you go, Mrs.Graves,” Kerry was saying, placing the tall drink on the shellacked surface of the bar.

“Call me Wendy, please,” she said.

As she took her first sip Daniela rushed over from the dance floor. “What are you drinking?”

“I asked for a vodka and soda, but this tastes like a vodka and vodka.”

“Yay. I’m joining you,” Daniela said. “And I need you drunk enough to start dancing.”

Two hours later, Wendywasdrunk, now sitting snugly on a vinyl couch between Daniela and Caroline, her boss at Saltwick. Caroline and Daniela were talking at the same time, which gave her the opportunity to ignore them both and concentrate on how delicious her current cocktail was. It was a concoction delivered to her by Walter, of course, some kind of mule with rye whiskey. She heard Jason say into his microphone that per the bureaucratic regime of the VFW, he was forced to play the last song of the night. “This one’s for you, Mom,” he said, and the rat-a-tat drums of “Sinnerman” began. Wendy laughed, whiskey dribbling down her chin.

“What’s funny?” Daniela said.

“Oh, earlier I said I’d like to die while dancing to this song, so it’s a little eerie that it’s being played.”

“Let’s get up and dance, then.”

She and Daniela began to dance, and Wendy felt twenty again, the room spinning but in a good way, Daniela twenty again too, at least looking like she was. Walter shimmied over, dancing with his elbows locked in close to his sides, and whispered into her ear, “Please stay alive.”

“I know, right?” Wendy said, laughing hard enough that she stopped dancing for a moment. Then she was moving again, wondering where Thom was, surprised he wasn’t back on the dance floor. Then she spotted him leaning up against the bar talking with Ellen Larson. Thom was gesticulating with his hands, Ellen leaning a little back, but she had a relaxed half smile on her face. Just flirting, Wendy told herself, but she kept an eye on them for the next ten minutes. Who even invited Ellen? And hadn’t she had a baby recently? What was she doing out in the middle of the night?

Daniela grabbed her hands and they swung around, the song tailing toward its conclusion, Nina Simone singing “power” again and again. When it finally ended and Daniela and she stood there, breathing hard, sweating, both laughing, Wendy swung her head around to see who was still at the party. Someone turned on the overhead fluorescent lights and the room was bathed in a harsh glow, illuminating the ragged tackiness of the VFW hall and the motley assortment of the party’s remaining guests. Thom was coming toward her, a glass of something in his hand. Ellen was gone all of a sudden.

“Here, drink this,” Thom said.

“Are you crazy?”

“It’s water.”

“Oh.” Wendy drank, the water tasting better than anything she’d consumed that night, even though she was a little annoyed that Thom was trying to take care of her.

They were driven home by Jason and Laura in Jason’s Kia. They sat together in the backseat like two kids while Jason continued to play music from his phone that was somehow coming out of his car speakers. Jason dropped them off then pulled out of the gravel driveway to take Laura to her home on the other side of town.

When they got into the house Thom asked Wendy if she’d like a nightcap in the living room.

“God, no. I need to get into bed.”

She went upstairs, surprised that Thom followed her, talking about the highs and lows of the party.

“Aren’t you drunk?” Wendy said.

Thom laughed. “Strangely, no. I told myself to alternate every alcoholic beverage with a glass of water and then I actually stuck to my own plan, and now I’m completely sober.”

---