Philly Stakes (4 page)

“Where’s your fiction? I’d love to read it.”

The vaguest hint of annoyance tightened his lips. “Oh,” he said, “little magazines. I’m sure you haven’t heard of them.”

“Try me. I’m an English teacher, remember?”

He curled his lips into a smile, or sneer. “Okay—what’s the last time you read Fundies or Mercury Three or Oxlips?”

“Oxlips? Like the animal’s mouth?”

“Like the flower, I think.”

I grinned. “Well, I think my subscription ran out. But still, congratulations.”

He nodded.

“Why this kind of story, then?”

“Man cannot live by Oxlips alone. I make money in real estate, development. Here’s Alexander Clausen, the king of developers, right? Or at least the prince, the heir apparent.” I could almost see the blood speed up in Nick’s veins. He gesticulated, cutting the air with his hand. “He’s interesting, too. A mystery. They say he wants to be mayor, but who knows anything about him? His background? Where he started? How he did it? What’s his secret?”

I certainly didn’t have any of those answers.

“Nobody knows. So why not find out? I heard about this party, knew it’d be an easy way to meet him, set something up and maybe do both of us some good.”

“You mean good for your writing career?”

“Good for my life. I’m being honest. Tonight’s the start of something really big for me. Alexander Clausen and I are going to be important to each other.”

I didn’t understand how, but Nick’s enthusiasm was contagious.

“What sort of real estate is it you’ve been involved with?” I asked, to make conversation.

He shrugged. “This and that. No names you’d recognize. I’m kind of a late bloomer.”

He spoke with enthusiasm, moving quickly and almost constantly in a private charged electrical field. It was a startling, even exotic, up-tempo switch from Mackenzie’s slow Southern beat.

“But—I am finally on the very brink of blooming,” he said, and then he grinned wickedly. He was definitely attractive. “So,” he said, looking around, “how’d you choose your guests?”

“I don’t know where they came from, and it seems rude to ask. Sandy Clausen knew somebody who knew somebody else, and so it went. It’s generous to open his house, but also, maybe…”

“Insensitive?”

I felt a tremor of kinship. “For people with no home, a palace like this could be depressing, I’d think.”

“And how about those miniature quiches they’re passing around?”

The house, or the hors d’oeuvres, or something, did appear to bother a sizeable proportion of the guests, who were solemn, scowling and sometimes muttering. However, it was hard to tell whether they were temporarily disturbed by the party or permanently disturbed by life. Still, it was disorienting watching Santa chuckle his way through a frowning, distracted, almost hostile crowd.

Nick dislodged his long body from the wall he’d rested against. “I’d like to interview you.”

“I don’t know Sandy Clausen.”

“You’ve worked with him. You could give me an impression. I don’t want his PR pap. I want the real stuff. You in the book? Can I call?”

I nodded, and he strode off. It was a story he’d been after, not me. I couldn’t tell whether I was disappointed.

Sasha materialized. “Nice stuff,” she said of the departing Nick. “Good going. Happy holidays.”

“He gave me a cup of punch. Are you perhaps mistaking it for a betrothal?”

“I like him. I talked to him earlier. He’s a better prospect than No-Name.”

Sasha and Mackenzie have developed a mutual disapproval society for reasons that escape me. Sasha refuses to remember what it is Mackenzie does. Mackenzie grumbles about her artsy-fartsy photos.

“Who needs a CIA agent, anyway?” she demanded. Before I could correct her, she spied someone eating a cocktail frank and was off, camera at the ready.

The Inquirer photographer stayed through the first course. Havermeyer lasted eleven minutes less than my estimate. A reporter from the local giveaway rushed in late, flashed bulbs in the faces of our guests, and left. Nick hovered around the tables, pestering everyone about the gifts Santa distributed from his big bag. “Nice,” they answered him, “I like it fine.” He wanted more. He wanted to know the impact the muffler had on this one’s soul, the meaning that one’s cologne held for the future. He wanted cute epigrams, quotes to spark a sensitive narrative, the mark of an Oxlips contributor. He recognized insensitivity in Clausen, but missed it in himself, and so he badgered on.

Eventually, he became bored with grunts and monosyllables and let people eat in peace. The evening lost its rough edges, the guests lost their scowls and suddenly we had the basic, generic holiday party where everyone seemed to be having a moderately good time. I sat next to a man with splayed teeth and a spotty past he appeared proud of. The only homes he’d known had been prisons. He flirted outrageously with a woman whose thin blond hair was pulled like a bad hairnet over her scalp, and she giggled back, covering her mouth with her hand.

Sandy Clausen never settled down. He was everywhere all at once, overacting, patting shoulders, hugging, handing out color-coded gifts.

I realized the party could do very well without my monitoring, excused myself and headed for the powder room, my kidneys desperate to process and purge the pink punch.

En route, I nearly bumped into an elderly man. He stood rigidly, leaning on a cane topped with a metallic duck head, scanning the room as if lost.

“Can I help you?” I asked. He looked disoriented.

He blinked and took some time to focus on me. Both his hands now clutched the top of the cane. After he’d seen what he needed of me, he looked back at the room, all in slow motion. “There,” he finally said in a surprisingly strong voice. “Yes.” He walked off like a wrinkled warrior, full of purpose, moving behind Sandy Clausen, who was talking to a large, ginger-haired woman.

“Alexander Clausen.” His voice, though strong, sounded oddly hollow.

Sandy Clausen frowned slightly and continued his conversation.

“Alexander Clausen.”

It seemed to echo, which was impossible in the crowded, carpeted room.

“Alexander Clausen!” The old man lifted his cane and down came the duck head on a red velvet shoulder.

Clausen turned, annoyance showing through his Santa beard. And then his expression changed to pure astonishment, and the skin of his face became almost as white as the whiskers.

The old man nodded. “Yes,” he said, as if answering Clausen’s unspoken questions. He pointed a finger at his own chest and then at Clausen’s, binding the two of them as surely as if it had been rope passing from one man to the other.

“You’d think he sees a ghost,” a woman near me said. She was gray—hair, skin, dress and shoes.

“Jacob,” Clausen whispered.

“A ghost,” the gray woman repeated.

I felt light-headed, almost faint. I knew A Christmas Carol by heart—at least the part about Marley’s ghost. I could hear it now, over the babble of the party. “In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.” Then I regained my senses. I was caught in a Dickensian time warp that had nothing to do with this little scene. Dickens’ Marley was indeed a ghost. And dead. This old man was very much alive. And Clausen wasn’t Scrooge.

The powder-room door opened and it was my turn. I dawdled in place, although nothing more than pointing and staring appeared to be happening.

“Isn’t this a line?” the gray woman behind me, she who had spoken of ghosts, said. Her priorities were straight, and besides, I couldn’t admit to eavesdropping. I went in. When I emerged a few minutes later, the old man and Clausen were elsewhere, the drama over.

But another scene was beginning with an urgent grasp. “They told me you know him,” a man said. He wore a blue suit older than he seemed to be, a suit so ancient it could break your heart.

“Who?”

“The man who lives here. Who gives away cars. Talk to him.”

Dear God. This was a new level of naivete, believing late-night car ads.

“One,” the man said. “That’s all I need.” He had a gravelly, used-up voice and pitted skin. “One. I’d sleep in it, live in it. Be able to leave this damn city. He has so many, he could easily afford to. I told him.”

I looked for our host. This was his baby. I saw the man with the cane, but not Santa.

“He chuckled, like I was out of my mind. What is he, some kind of a liar? He’s allowed to make promises he don’t mean? On television? In front of everybody?”

Our host wasn’t hard to find. He is one of those people who fills all the available space, and when dressed in red, shouting, “Ho-ho-ho,” he was inescapable.

But Santa wasn’t ho-hoing at the moment. He was fuming, fists clutched and cheeks unpleasantly flushed. Amidst all the bustle and good cheer, he must have failed to notice until now that Peter Shaw, Laura’s presumed boyfriend, was one of the serving folk. You would have thought he’d be impressed by Peter’s altruism. He was not in my tenth-grade class and therefore he alone was not receiving extra credit for his work. Sandy didn’t seem to care. While I watched, S. Claus herded his waitress-daughter into the curve of the staircase.

“Lies!” the gravel-voiced man said to me. “People like him don’t deserve to live, dammit! People like him keep people like me in the gutter!”

“Listen,” I told him, “you two will have to work this out. Meanwhile, I’ll get you some punch.” Okay, it was feeble, but he seemed frighteningly near the edge, and the only other option I could think of was a discussion of advertising ethics, and that didn’t seem appropriate.

He declared that he’d get his own damned drink, unless that had strings on it, too.

I was glad he’d decided to postpone approaching Santa.

Clausen’s face was mottled above the white beard. He shook his head and sliced his hand through the air like a scimitar. Laura looked wispier than usual. I thought I heard the words “slut” and “trash” aimed at her.

Most of the nearby guests were trying, as was I, to act as if they weren’t eavesdropping, weren’t hearing a word. A few watched, openmouthed.

Laura stood immobile, as if paralyzed, but her eyes were frightening. Peter, at a wary distance, looked ready to strike. I tried to disperse the gapers, urging all stragglers back to the tables for dessert.

“The whole reason I came here,” a familiar bumpy voice behind me said, “was I figured Sandy Clausen would give away a car. One lousy car. He says he gives ’em all away on TV.” He tried modifying his rough voice so that it sounded like Clausen’s. “‘You know me,’” he mimicked, “‘I’m Santa Claus! Let me tell you what we’re giving away today!’ Damn,” he said in his normal voice, “I can get a free meal at the shelter. I want a car!”

I turned to the man and made more soothing noises.

“One. Even a subcompact.”

“You know how ads can be…” It was time for Clausen to leave domestic squabbles and deal with truth in advertising and whatever else was erupting out of this man.

“Why shouldn’t I have a piece of the good life? I ask you—why?”

“You should.” I peeked at the hallway. Sandy Clausen had reinvented himself once again. Gone was the irate father. Now he lounged with one arm on the wall, the other chucking his daughter under the chin, patting her shoulder, touching her hair, as if the earlier confrontation had been my hallucination. He leaned over and kissed Laura’s forehead, and took her arm in a courtly gesture, as if to lead her in the grand cotillion.

Laura remained rock eyed, expressionless and mute. The alarm I’d felt reading her paper returned, and I wished in vain that we could find the privacy and time to talk about it now. We definitely would tomorrow.

Abruptly, Laura shook off her father’s arm and pulled away. Her father grabbed her shoulder and turned her back to him, stared at her, then released her as if she were burning his fingers.

She left. He stayed by the stairs, lighting a cigarette and smoking it, dark with anger.

It wasn’t violent, it wasn’t loud, but it was so intense that it was embarrassing to witness.

I’m not sure how long I stood there, worrying over what I’d seen. But Sasha tapped my shoulder and broke into my tangle of thoughts. “You can’t be a wallflower at this kind of party,” she said. “It’s illogical. The action is in the living room, behind you. Give a listen.”

The decibel level finally sank into my consciousness.

“Yeah,” Sasha said. “It’s a party.”

We were finally perking. The cliché of holiday spirit had indeed become fact.

“Gotta go now,” Sasha said. “They’re pretty much finished eating, and I’m in a rush. Thanks for the chance to shoot. I think I got some good stuff.”

“Stay. We haven’t talked yet.”

She ran her fingers through her jet-black hair. “Can’t. Got a date.”

“Shall I ask about him?”

“What’s to say? He’s new, stunning, rich, perfect.”

I shrugged. “Just another guy, is that it?”

She had gone into the hallway, to the back wall where the coatrack stood, and had extracted an ancient, rubbed to the nap, black velvet cape. She put it on and flipped the hood up. Little Black Riding Hood. Or the witch, to mix a fairy tale or two. “That face in there?” she said as she went to the door. “That Nick? He’s got style. My money’s on him. Go for it. “And she left.

Twice married, twice divorced, Sasha nonetheless adored men and they reciprocated. The affairs inevitably came to sad endings, but as bright as she was, she was sexually dyslexic and didn’t learn a single thing from any of the disappointing encounters. And that was half her charm.

I turned my attention back to the party, and found myself actually enjoying it. There were moments that were gifts when the eyes of a Philly Prep student met those of the homeless person he was serving and he stopped and looked, and honestly seemed to take note. To feel. Conversations started, questions were asked on both sides. Students forgot about clearing up and sat down to talk with guests. I wanted the photographer to verify this miracle, but he was long gone. I hoped Nick would write it down for posterity because otherwise it would be too hard to believe.

The tree sparkled, candles twinkled, people bubbled.

I tiptoed, afraid to break the spell with a normal tread. There was a vacant spot on the living room sofa, and I sat down to drink in the vista instead of more punch. I tried, in fact, to dispose discreetly of my cup on the end table, but it was fully occupied by a poinsettia in a red-foiled pot and an ashtray. I had to admire the planning that had so filled the tiny wooden top that nobody could possibly add anything—including water rings. Still, it left me holding the bilious red liquid.