Chapter 9
PAIGE
Paige stands in her dark kitchen opening a can of tuna fish for Christopher, who dances around on his hind legs impatiently. She’s teetering on spiky high heels in a too-tight skirt she can barely walk in, and he almost knocks her over with his excited jumps.
“Take a pill, Christopher,” she says, nudging him off her leg and leaning down to feed him the tuna, which he eats in two bites.
She has to hold the side of the sink to stand back up, in the stupid getup she’s forced to wear.
She hates dressing up. Adults should not dress up for Halloween.
Period. She hates theme parties where she’s required to come as a flapper girl or in some grass skirt for a backyard luau.
Guess what, Brian? Adding pineapple to your burger on your shitty backyard grill and throwing some plastic leis around for decoration does not a luau make.
This might not be a costume, but it feels like one.
The Sapphire Hotel is decorated with sparkly paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling and balloons floating in between them.
There are little bar carts set up around the enormous room.
Well, more like folding tables with black tablecloths over them, and some bottles of booze and plastic cups scattered about, but it will do.
Giant double doors stand open and lead into a few other rooms, one where a live jazz band is playing and a decent crowd of people are out on the makeshift dance floor already.
The other banquet room has round tables set up around the plush, carpeted space, holding hors d’oeuvres, like deviled eggs and crab puffs.
There’s an ice sculpture of what she thinks was probably a swan but now has melted a bit and looks more like a demented pigeon.
Grant points out Cora and Finn standing in a circle of conversation with a few couples near one of the bar tables.
They make their way over and exchange pleasantries with everyone.
She avoids eye contact with Finn. She’s not sure what her face might give away in front of the others.
She’s not accustomed to making out with married men, so she isn’t certain she’d mask her guilt well on the spot. She needs a minute.
“What the hell is that?” Paige says, pointing to Cora’s drink, which looks like a snow cone.
“A Blue Lagoon,” she says.
“Is that a gummy bear?” she asks. Not waiting for an answer, she takes it from Cora and sips, then makes an exaggerated face of disgust and hands it back. She feels Finn’s eyes on her.
“Well, don’t you two look like a Disney couple,” she says, reluctantly meeting his gaze and then quickly giving her attention to Cora, who gives a giggle and little mock curtsy, although, really, her outfit makes Paige wonder if Cora has realized this is not her quinceanera.
“I need a martini with a blue-cheese-stuffed olive immediately.” Paige pulls Cora over to the bar with her, having asked the group to excuse them. Paige pokes at the olive in her drink with a toothpick as they glance around the party together.
“God, Harry Kilgore’s breath just comes right at ya, doesn’t it?” Paige asks, looking back over at the growing circle their husbands are still standing in.
“I had to sit in a car with him once for a PTA thing. I had to throw my coat out after. The dry cleaner couldn’t get the smell out. Poor guy has no idea,” Cora says.
“I feel like someone should tell him,” Paige says, and Cora looks to her as if she’s clearly the only person capable of such bluntness.
“Someone close to him. Not me. Hey, who’s that?” Paige asks, pointing to a couple newcomers to the husbands’ conversation.
“Oh, Charlotte and Tony,” Cora says. “Very cool couple. She’s like an art teacher, you know the kind where you paint real naked people, and he works with Finn.
He’s in a band. Well, you know, like a garage sort of thing on the weekends, but I think he’s the drummer.
I should tell you next time we have them over.
You’d like them.” Paige doesn’t have to give Cora a look that says meeting new people and attending dinner parties are the furthest thing from her mind.
Cora just tacks on, “I mean, at some point. We don’t see them too often, anyway. ”
“Right.” Paige smiles, wondering if Charlotte is the Drinks with C woman Cora told her about.
“I guess nothing yet or you would have told me,” Cora says, fidgeting nervously with her straw and dunking her vodka-soaked gummy bears into the blue depths of her drink.
“Not yet, sorry,” Paige says, avoiding her eye, feeling a muscle in her cheek twitch. Cora nods and gives her a tight smile.
“I figured last weekend when you didn’t come to the restaurant for the event that night, maybe you... I don’t know.”
“Yeah, I followed him a bit here and there and haven’t seen anything, you know, red-flaggy yet. I’m trying to be careful so he doesn’t catch on, of course. But I’ll keep trying,” Paige says. She notices Cora looking longingly over at Finn. “If you want me to,” she adds.
“Yeah. No, I mean, I think so. But that’s good, right?
He is where he says he is, so that’s a good sign.
Maybe I am being psycho doing this. That’s what he would call it if he ever found out.
I mean, we’d be over. Shit. What if you come on to him and he.
..says no. I hadn’t even thought about how forever awkward that would be between all of us.
Then, what if he suspects I put you up to it?
God, I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.
” She blows out a heavy breath and stares into her drink.
“He won’t say no,” Paige says, curtly.
“What?”
“I just mean, I’ll make sure I’m getting the right signals. I’m not just gonna lunge at him. I’ll, you know, make sure I know he’s gonna take the bait,” she says. Cora looks at the floor and swallows hard.
“Yeah,” she says.
“He might not, Cor,” she says more softly. Cora blinks back tears and gestures to a few moms she knows from Mia’s school across the way.
“I should go say hello,” Cora says, painting a smile across her face and moving through the crowd of people, bumping folks in the backs of the knees with her giant feathered skirt.
Paige watches as Vanessa Hammon’s knees buckle and she reaches her hand out so her drink spills on the floor and not on her dress.
Cora is clueless of the domino effect of spills she’s caused and the glares she leaves in her wake.
Paige would usually be delighted by this, but instead she feels tiny pricks of heat spread across her chest, creating blotchy red marks.
Is it guilt or excitement? She can’t tell.
People start to get messy after a couple hours.
Grant sits with Paige at a table in the banquet room with the band.
They passively listen to the music and watch Cora and Finn and a few of their friends dance.
Charlotte is out there, seemingly drunk and a little handsy.
Paige has learned she goes by Char like Cher but with an a, so Paige has made sure to pronounce it Char as in charbroiled and pretends not to hear when someone corrects her.
Char is doing that thing where she drops it low or twerks or whatever the hell and then tries to share a laugh, insecurely, like she was just kidding, just pretending to do a silly move, but is secretly trying to push sexual boundaries to see what kind of attention she can get.
Grant pops a white Laffy Taffy into his mouth and chuckles.
“What?” Paige asks.
“I think Sequin Dress over there forgot to wear underwear,” he says. She doesn’t have to look to know the only one in a skintight sequined dress is Char.
“Dinner and a show,” she says jokingly.
They’re sitting at a table with a three-tiered glass dessert-stand centerpiece that is filled with all-white candy for some strange reason. Paige has collected meringue drops, rock-candy sticks, and gumdrops and piled them on a plate in front of her.
“Did you even know they made white M&Ms?” she asks, pushing one into his mouth.
“Whoa, I got a taffy goin’ on here. That doesn’t go,” he says, spitting it into a napkin.
“What the hell flavor is white taffy?”
“Eggnog?” he says with a shrug. She looks at the wrapper.
“Macadamia. You can’t tell the difference between eggnog and macadamia. Both of which go with chocolate, FYI.” She pushes another M&M at him, and he smiles, keeping hold of her hand a moment. She smiles back. After a beat, she pulls away and continues her meaningless observations.
“And why would they choose the rarest color of candy for this thing? Is that how they spend their money? It’s a charity event. Maybe their candy budget could have gone to, I don’t know, the sponsored charity.”
He looks at her plateful and gives her a look that says If you say so.
“What’s the charity, again?”
“A Child’s Wish Foundation,” he says.
“Jesus,” she scoffs. “Sorry we can’t help your child’s dying wish come true. We had to buy a storage unit full of...” she examines the candy in front of her “...pina colada jelly beans. Our bad!”
Cora comes over and plops down, exhausted, at their table. She takes off her heels and dabs at a bit of sweat on her brow with a napkin.
“Almond bark?” Paige offers up her plate.
“Oh, I shouldn’t,” she says but continues to look at it. Paige hates Cora’s fat complex. She’s a perfectly curvy, average-size person, and she needs to get over herself. She looks great.
“How’s the piano stuff going? Grant told me, and I forgot to say anything,” Paige says and watches Cora’s cheeks go red and a shy smile spread across her face.
“Haven’t started quite yet, but it will be good. Really fun.”
“Can I get you a refill?” Grant asks, standing.
“Oh, no, I’ve had too much. Thanks, though,” Cora says with a giggle as Paige simultaneously holds out her glass and says, “Martini. Extra olives.”
Cora gets shy and apologetic. “Oh, God, sorry, I thought you were talking to me. Us. Never mi—Of course you were asking her. Ha ha! Sorry.”