Everything Changes

Vivian.
    “Is that what that was? I thought it was more like mauling.”
    “Oh, come on,” she says, giving me a light shove. “He’s very charming, in his own way.”
    “I will never understand women,” I say. Hope squeezes my hand.
    “This place is something else,” Norm tells Jack, shaking his hand and nodding appreciatively as he surveys the apartment. “What is it, twelve thousand square feet?”
    “I don’t know exactly,” Jack says, looking somewhere over Norm’s shoulder.
    “I can see where Hope gets her beauty from,” Norm says, taking Vivian’s hand in both of his.
    “Thank you,” Vivian says graciously.
    “Thank
you,
” Norm says flirtatiously, raising her hand to his lips. Vivian laughs nervously and seems relieved when her hand is released.
    Lela is altogether more reserved, greeting the Seacords with a stiff, rehearsed elegance. “Your house is lovely,” she says.
    I introduce Pete to the Seacords, who both shake his hand obsequiously, but when he launches himself at Hope for a long hug, Jack looks agitated, wondering if he’ll need to call security. Pete has brought a little address book, and he asks Hope for her number, which he scribbles into it. “I’ll see you later,” he says to me before wandering into the crowd. We watch him approach one woman and then another, asking for their numbers and e-mail addresses.
    “What’s he doing?” Hope asks me.
    “It’s okay,” I say. “It’s how he deals with crowds. He collects numbers from all the women.”
    “Does he ever call them?” Vivian asks, prepared to be mortified.
    “No. He can’t read his own handwriting.”
    “Oh. Okay, then.”
    When he gets comfortable, if he follows his usual MO, he’ll start asking the women to kiss him, but I don’t see any reason to worry Vivian with that information.
    We’re interrupted by the arrival of a gaggle of Hope’s girlfriends, who descend upon us in a flurry of shrieks and kisses. In the confusion, Lela slips away to keep an eye on Pete while Norm attacks the buffet. He doesn’t take a plate, but simply picks pieces of food off the platters with his hand and places them into his mouth whole, working his way down the table, to the guarded consternation of the other guests. Hope frowns as she watches him, then, when she sees me watching her, shrugs and offers a wan smile.
    “Charming,” I say.
    “In his own way,” Hope says.
    “I could use another drink.”
    “I think we both could.”
    I take the scenic route to the bar, stopping in the guest lavatory to splash some water on my face, which feels hot to the touch. I realize that I didn’t think to ask Norm about drinking alcohol while on Viagra. Too late now, I suppose. I get an apricot sour for Hope and another rum and Coke for myself, leaning against the bar for support. The bartender, a girl in her mid-twenties with intelligent eyes and a diamond stud in her nose, hands me the drinks with a smile. “It’s your party, right?”
    “And I’ll cry if I want to,” I say. She laughs, and I immediately envy her the presumed simplicity of her own life. She’ll go home after this, to her apartment downtown, maybe to a boyfriend or maybe to a cat and a DVD, will lie back on her couch with a mug of tea and phone a girlfriend, talking lazily as they make plans for a late brunch. I want to cut out with her, find a nearby bar, and tell her my whole, sad story, see if she can help me figure things out. I’m sure she’ll understand.
    “Congratulations,” she says, handing me the drinks.
    “Thanks.”
    I turn around just in time to see Tamara tentatively enter the room, dressed in the little black dress she bought on our Bloomingdale’s outing, her hair blow-dried straight, her face uncharacteristically made up with lipstick and blush. Standing slightly pigeon-toed in her heels, eyes casting about nervously in search of a friendly face, she looks exposed and vulnerable, and I have to forcibly restrain the impulse to charge over to her and throw my arms around her. Instead, I chug my drink—my fourth or fifth of the evening—in four quick swallows and ask the bartender for another. I watch as Hope greets Tamara, the two women smiling and speaking animatedly to each other, and suddenly I’m missing Rael so intensely that it stops me in my tracks, overwhelming me with a momentary vision of where life was headed before the accident sent it careening in a new direction. Rael is right there, walking in with Tamara,