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I gesture behind me. “She’s in the kitchen. Just make sure she shares.”
Li reaches behind her and pulls out a second bag.
“This is for the rest of us.”
Such a good guest.
She is wearing heels that I sense are a little higher than her usual elevation. So there’s a certain teeter as she angles toward the kitchen, bags in hand. I close the apartment door behind her.
“Parker’s here too,” I tell her. As if to confirm this, there is a crash of breaking glass in the kitchen, and my sister shouting something that sounds demonstrably like ASSHOLE.
“Maybe I’ll hold off,” Li says. “This chocolate is too good to be thrown at someone’s face.”
“This way,” I tell her.
When I get back into the piano room, the sheet music is all stacked in a neat column alongside Johan’s violin case, like an office tower built over the Guggenheim.
“Johan, Li. Li, Johan,” I say.
As Li is shaking his hand, she asks, “And how do you two know each other?”
“Mass transit,” Johan replies, offering no further explanation.
The noise from the kitchen has reached the decibel level known by musicologists as hollering. The doorbell takes this as its cue to ring again.
I assume Ilsa will use this as her excuse to leave the kitchen.
She does not.
“I’ll get it,” I say. As if either Li or Johan could be viable candidates for the task.
I figure it’s going to be Jason, but when I open the door, I find someone who is not even remotely Jason. On the hotness scale, Jason may have been a firecracker . . . but this guy’s the sun. He is wearing clothes, but my body reacts like he isn’t. My gaze rises from his strong shoulders to focus on his face.
“Hello,” I say. And it sounds like hell, because the oh comes out so low.
I see he has one of our invitations in his hand. This has to be one of Ilsa’s guests.
Then his other hand gets my attention.
Because –
It has a sock on it.
A white tube sock with green button eyes.
And a red stitched mouth.
And brown yarn hair.
“I hope we’re in the right place,” the sock says.
It has a disturbingly attractive voice. English as a second language . . . with Sexy Beast being the first.
“Excuse me?” I say. Because nine out of ten times, when you’re confronted with a sock puppet, that is the only valid response.
“This is Ilsa’s party, isn’t it?” the sock continues. I look up at the godlike guy, and his lips aren’t moving.
“It is Ilsa’s party,” I say. I am not talking to the hand. I am talking to the hot guy who is looking at me like his hand isn’t talking to me. “I’m her brother, Sam.”
“Nice to meet you,” the sock says. It holds out its hand. Which is his pinkie. Under a sock.
I look at the guy, as if to say, You can’t be serious.
He looks back at me, as if to say, This is my life choice and you must respect it.
I shake the sock’s hand-pinkie.
“I’m Caspian,” it says. “This is Frederyk. He met Ilsa when he was playing basketball. I am not allowed to accompany him on the court, so I missed the chance to meet her. But I am happy to meet you now.”
“Come in,” I say. “Please.”
I am fairly certain that Ilsa’s wild card is a bit more wild than she imagined.
Or she’s fucking with me.
Which isn’t nice.
She knows how I get.
She knows.
“What a lovely home,” Caspian tells me, looking around with his button eyes.
“Thank you,” I say.
Can she be fucking with me?
No. Yes.
If this is an act, he’s really good at it.
“I must admit that I knew you were Ilsa’s brother. I have heard such lovely things about you.”
No. No no no. That’s too much.
“Did she put you up to this?” I ask Frederyk. “She did, didn’t she? This is going to end up on the Internet, isn’t it? Where’s the camera?”
Frederyk smiles sweetly at me.
No. This is my life choice and you must respect it.
“You’re even cuter than she said you were,” Caspian tells me.
Wild. Card.
I don’t know whether to take them – him – straight to the kitchen or back to the piano room.
“What the hell? ” a voice intones.
Six eyes – two of them buttons – turn to the still-open front door.
“I’ve only been here six seconds, and already I’m bored,” KK bitches.
Hard as it is to believe, she’s wearing a French-maid outfit too.
5
ILSA
“ASSHOLE!” I shriek at Parker after he makes the most provocative and completely absurd request I’ve ever heard from him. I take an icy beer glass from the freezer and lob it directly toward his high-top ’fro head. He quickly ducks. The glass hits the kitchen tile behind Parker’s head and shatters, as it always does. It’s been so long since Parker and I have had this kind of fight, all the old broken beer glasses have been replaced, and I don’t remember where to buy these particular ones anymore. Hopefully Czarina won’t notice we’re down to three German beer glasses in the freezer. Hopefully this level of fight no longer heats me so hard I want to jump Parker’s bones immediately after breaking something.
“Chill. The. Fuck. Out,” Parker tells me, but he’s completely unfazed, which agitates me even more. He walks to the pantry, pulls out the broom and pan, and begins sweeping the broken glass into the broom pan, way too comfortable with this old habit. “Do you want to do it or not?”
“NOT!” I declare, because my pride is speaking for me.
But my heart longs to do it. My body literally aches for it.
“Come on, Ils,” he says, laying on his sweetest voice, which he knows I can never resist. If I was wearing a button-down blouse, the button at my boobs would pop open right now, just from hearing Parker use this particular cajoling tone, which worked so effectively on me in the past. “Once more, for old time’s sake.”
“I don’t remember how,” I lie. It’s so long since I’ve done it. Like, since Parker and I broke up.
There have been other boys since. I even did it with KK once. But none could do it with me like Parker could. And the KK time involved a lot of Jäger shots to get me into position.
Parker dumps the broken glass into the trash, then steps behind me and lightly gyrates his pelvis against my rear. “Of course you remember,” he whispers in my ear. The feel of his breath scorches my neck, and the rest of my body tingles. He places his arms around my waist, so boldly, and I don’t resist. For a moment, I clasp my hands over his to tie him around me. The old rhythm of desire and familiarity returns too easily. I want to believe this is right. I want to believe so badly that this could happen.
But I don’t trust. I remember how much I thought he loved me. I remember how much I knew I loved him.
I pull away from him and turn around. “Why now?”
“I think it’d be fun,” he says, turning the pleading tone up to its highest decibel of smooth sexiness.
“Don’t you have some other girl to do it with?”
“None who move like you. You know that.”
I do know that.
Light bulb! Ding ding ding! I can’t believe I’m even considering this, but I say, “It would have to involve the cats. It –”
“No,” he interrupts. “No cats. They ruin it for me every time.”
Got him.
“Cats,” I say. “Or no Ilsa.”
He exhales deeply. “Okay. Cats.”
“I’ll think about it.”
But I’m already imagining the new moves I’m going to amaze Parker with. Since we broke up, I’ve taken up barre classes, and snoozer yoga (mostly for the nap time at the end, which feels like the only time I ever rest), and even dabbled in some pole-dancing classes. I now have bendy moves in my repertoire that Parker’s never dared dream his partner could do, because his subconscious doesn’t yet know they’re even possible.
“Don’t think about it. Go change now,” Parker suggests, knowing full well I stored my show dresses at Czarina’s and that once I make the change, there’s nothing to think about anymore. I’m totally in.
I will go change. But not for a few minutes yet. I want Parker to yearn and hope and wait. I want him to remember what that feels like. I won’t give him the satisfaction too quickly. Prolonging his wait, making him unsure if he’ll achieve the conquest he so ardently desires, was always my favorite dance with him. But oh, what glorious results.
I look down at my sad sack of a little silver, sparkly flapper dress. An hour ago it seemed so cute. But my dinner party invite was a call to arms for garish, and then the hostess herself didn’t live up to the invitation’s promise. An outfit this boring? It’s like I let Sam pick my attire. What was I thinking? I specified the party was a recess from the humdrum, and then I outfitted myself in humdrum. Obviously I needed Parker here to remind me to unlock the cats from the garment bag where they’ve been hiding in Czarina’s closet since Parker and I broke up. Of course! I get it now. GARISH. Let’s go, Ilsa! The cats are coming out of retirement. Meow for the wow.
Czarina is a great seamstress, and she created a fabulous A-line cocktail dress for me with fabric I found at a cheap fabric-bolt store in the Garment District. The pattern on the off-white fabric is called AccessorCat, and it features pastel-colored illustrations of various cats wearing various accessories: a gray-and-tan-striped tabby cat wearing bright blue eyeglasses, an orange marble cat wearing a debonair purple scarf, a black cat wearing an emerald-green cowboy hat. “If Princess Grace Kelly was a crazy cat lady,” is how Czarina characterized the atrociously awesome dress. It was my favorite to wear when Parker and I competed in ballroom-dancing competitions, until he forbade it, saying just the sight of it had made him allergic to animals. But if he’s bold enough to request that I come out of retirement and be his dance partner once again at some mystery dance-off on the Lower East Side later tonight, surely he’s man enough to handle the cat dress again.
So what if my initial reaction to his request was typically Ilsa knee-jerk rage. I’ll grow out of it at some point, Czarina promises. (We both secretly fear I won’t.) Now I’m seeing the potential. A midnight-hour dance-off downtown, one last spin with my once and never again true love.
YES.
I won’t commit just yet. I’ll let Parker know that I’m in later, after the appetizer course is served.
Parker reaches to the kitchen counter and picks up the steel shaker that Sam had been using to sprinkle powdered sugar over the lemon tart. He shakes a dash of powdered sugar on my hair. “Change now,” Parker requests. “So I know you’re in. Pretty please?” He shakes an extra dash of sugar onto my head, and some of it lands on my eyelids and nose. He presses his index finger to my nose, lifts off some sugar, and then offers his finger to my lips, knowing full well how hungry I am.
I lick the sugar from Parker’s finger – delicious! (the sugar, and the finger) – a ruse to grab the shaker from his other hand at the same time. I dash a dollop of sugar on top of his head as Parker wrestles me to grab the shaker back. We are laughing and fighting for supremacy of the shaker when we hear KK announce her arrival in the kitchen.
“Enough with the food fight!” KK bellows. “People are waiting on beers! Be a proper hostess, bitch!” Parker and I separate, giving KK and her French-maid’s outfit a long stare. It’s not so much garish as full-on slutty. Classic lame-o Halloween, not classic Liberace. KK points at me. “There’s a pudgy girl in the living room also wearing the same outfit. Fix it.” She walks between Parker and me, giving him a cursory nudge. “You again. Ugh.” She reaches the fridge, pulls out a light beer, pops it open, takes a swig, then asks, “Is something burning in here?”
As if he heard her from the other room, Sam comes rushing into the kitchen and opens the oven. “Shit! Some cheese exploded onto the bottom of the oven.”
“Is that lasagna?” KK asks him.
“Yes,” Sam says as he pulls the tray from the oven.
“Obviously you forgot that I’m gluten- and dairy-free,” says KK.
“I didn’t,” says Sam. He looks toward me. “Help!” he pleads.
He means, Get everyone out of the kitchen. Dinner parties have a peculiar habit in which all the guests congregate in the kitchen while Sam is trying to coordinate food preparation, blocking his way and commenting on his concoctions before he’s ready for judgment. “We should just call them kitchen parties,” he’s often lamented.
“Everyone to the living room!” I declare as a faint smell of smoke wafts out from the burnt cheese at the bottom of the oven.
“The sock puppet has arrived,” Sam tells me.
“Huh?” I remember no such Wild Card. Sam must mean Jason Goldstein-Chung has arrived. Jason always has some weird trick up his sleeve – or sock, as the case must be.
“Go see,” Sam says. He pulls some beers from the fridge – a sure sign that he’s starting to stress, if he’s taking direct responsibility for alcohol consumption – and hands them to me. “Go forth and entertain your guests, Ilsa. All of them.”
I start to lead Parker and KK out of the kitchen when I hear a weird sound that’s somewhere between a belch and a puke. I look to Parker, then KK, then Sam, but none of them looks squeamish. The sound grows louder, and we all look around, trying to identify the sound, and then it identifies itself.
A small volcano of bilge erupts from the kitchen sink.
I’m no cook, but I’m pretty sure if our sink is backed up, that will make further food preparation difficult, if not impossible.
“Fuck!” Sam exclaims.
KK says, “Hallelujah! Tell your chef dad to come over and bring a proper meal to replace the one you’ve ruined. Gluten-free, please. We’re not savages!”
Sam says, “Sorry, KK. The folks are at the annual Gluten-Glee Carb Fest in Wheatland, North Dakota, this weekend. Sbarro and Papa John’s are headlining this year. Cap’n Crunch is the opening act!”
KK throws her hands over her ears. “Stop it! I’m getting fatter just listening to the latest lie about your parents.” KK never quite believes our parents exist. They do. They just rarely come to the Stanwyck. Probably because it hurt too much knowing they’d never inherit it. And it would be a compliment to say that KK is their least favorite of my friends. You’d never find my parents trolling opportunities for more KK time.
Sam pops open a beer and takes a hearty swig. He never drinks at our parties. “Stress,” he sighs.
I counter-sigh in support. And triumph.
This is bad.
But could also be excellent.
Finally, my brother may be ready to let loose.
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