Chapter 19
At Katherine’s relentless insistence, Annie had brought exactly one costume.
She’d been sure she wouldn’t even put it on, but now that she knew how hardcore everyone was, Annie was glad she’d thought to pack something.
Katherine was the one who did costumes and had never met a theme party she didn’t love.
Sometimes Annie wondered if there were any older sisters in the world who were fun, or if they were all like her, studious and dutiful and boring.
It was actually one of the things she’d liked about Shawn when she was a kid—they were both older siblings.
He wore it better than she did, loosely, like he just happened to be holding everything together, not straining the way Annie did to make sure that no ball ever got dropped.
“I’ve had like thirteen drinks already today. If I die,” the woman in the towel said, mouth a straight, solemn line through a thick layer of white goop, “you can have Shawn.”
The Bangle closed her eyes and put her hand over her heart, her thick black eyeliner underlining the seriousness of the proclamation. “Thank you.”
Annie looked out the back of the elevator just as they passed the giant, larger-than-life heads of Boy Talk. A clump of women standing on the fifth floor were clearly trying to detach Corey’s banner, and Annie watched as they took turning trying to undo the zip ties holding the vinyl in place.
Upstairs, DJ Pancake was playing the top hits of the ’80s, and the Talkers were in heaven.
She wondered what he looked like. He was the Wizard of Oz of the American Fantasy, playing all the music and staying entirely out of sight.
What if he was young and handsome, and that’s why Boy Talk was keeping him hidden, to maintain their own supremacy of beauty?
Annie clocked lots of costumes she recognized as she made her way through the crowd toward the tiki bar: Robert Palmer and a fleet of video vixens in black minidresses and lipstick; a half dozen Thriller-jacketed Michael Jacksons; a Rhythm Nation Janet Jackson with a key dangling from her hoop earring; Annie’s reflection in several other Virgin-era Madonnas, as well as a few “Vogue”-era Madonnas; four women dressed as naked Red Hot Chili Peppers, complete with prosthetic sock penises; Britney Spears with a stuffed snake slung around her neck; Britney in her “…Baby One More Time” schoolgirl pigtails; several Bruce Springsteens with white T-shirts and red bandanas; George Michael with eyebrow-pencil stubble; Salt-N-Pepa; Stevie Nicks in a gauzy dress, holding aloft a stuffed bird; the Jamaican bobsled team; John Lennon, who seemed to have wandered onto the wrong cruise ship; the little girl dressed as a bee from the Blind Melon video; a lonely member of KISS, which (thank god) was the only actual black face paint visible.
It felt like a three-dimensional walk through her youth.
Maira was in their spot, but someone else had claimed the barstool next to her.
People had been doing it earlier and earlier—that afternoon, Annie had seen several Talkers stretched out on towels, napping in the spots they wanted to claim for the party that night, asleep in the full, direct sun.
Maira crossed her arms and shook her head, furious, but Annie shrugged.
“It’s fine!” she said. “I’ll find a spot!” Annie paused before she moved on. “I wanted to ask—I know this sounds certifiably insane, but I was just curious—are they all married?”
Maira leaned back and let out an enormous laugh.
“Welcome to the club, baby!” She raised a hand for a high five and then ticked off the statistics on her fingers.
“Terrence, yes, newly remarried, very happy, they’re always licking each other’s faces on socials.
Scotty has a boyfriend. Shawn’s very happily married.
Keith’s married too, and there’s a lot of speculation because Steffani doesn’t go to shows or come on the cruises, but I think she just is a private person, and that’s fine, we can respect that.
To each her own, you know? Corey, who knows?
Certainly will be divorced if it isn’t official already.
I could have told you that wasn’t going to last. But you’re not asking about Corey, are you? ”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was just curious in a sort of general way.” Annie was grateful that no one could see her blush in the dark.
“If you say so!” Maira raised her glass, and Annie tapped her knuckles against it. “Come find me later!”
“I will,” Annie said, and looked around for a hole in the sea of people big enough for her to stand in.
Mr. Beer Pong was standing in the shallow end of the pool again.
He was dressed as Freddie Mercury, with a black wig and a mustache, but his body language was unmistakable.
This time he was dancing with two women dressed as nurses.
He didn’t seem to be with them, the same way he hadn’t seemed really with the playing cards, but he did seem to know a lot of people.
DJ Pancake was playing hits, and the Talkers were in good spirits.
A woman on the upper deck was waving a sign that said My divorce was finalized today!
and Annie watched her dance with her friends, waving the sign back and forth.
When her divorce was finalized, Annie had sat on a bench in Central Park and cried so much that a woman pushing a stroller had thrust a handful of baby wipes at her.
“I don’t have tissues,” the woman had said in apology and then kept walking toward the playground. That had made Annie cry even more.
Annie walked to the back of the lido deck, where there were stairs leading up to the balcony.
The breeze was strong, and her bow flapped against the back of her head like clumsy wings.
A clump of white women wearing thick gold chains and big hoop earrings leaned over the railing, and Annie inserted herself into the small empty space next to them.
A tall blonde in a leather jacket said, “And it’s like, no, Chuck, the grass is never greener!
The grass is always fucking brown!” and her friends cheered.
Annie wondered how many of them there were who had just gotten divorced, if someone asked, if half the boat would raise their hands.
She would like to see it. There were probably support groups—on the internet, there was everything—but it seemed so silly to need support.
She was healthy, she was stable, she was fine.
Before the divorce, Annie had sometimes wondered if she was doomed to be miserable forever.
Miserable was too strong a word—unhappy.
Less happy than she might have been with someone else.
But now that she and Chris were divorced, Annie wondered if being alone was better or worse than being unhappy. Some days, she wasn’t sure.
The jumbotron above the balcony began to flash, and the crowd snapped to attention.
Shawn’s voice came over the loudspeaker.
“I see there are a lot of virgins in the crowd tonight,” he said.
“Or at least, like-a-virgins…” The women next to Annie squealed and pointed at her.
The guys appeared one at a time, just like always.
Were they tired of being introduced? It was hard to argue with the accumulation of screams.
Terrence appeared first. He was in a Creamsicle-colored suit and a black-and-white bow tie with a huge blond wig and a captain’s hat.
Annie didn’t recognize who he was supposed to be, but she clapped anyway.
Scotty toddled out next to him with star-shaped sunglasses and then hoisted one of his legs onto the railing to show off his bedazzled platform shoes.
“Elton John!” another Elton John screamed from the crowd.
Keith came out next, dressed as a young Bob Dylan, with a cloud of dark hair and a harmonica around his neck.
Did Keith like Bob Dylan? Annie didn’t know—she wanted to text her sister and ask.
Scotty held a microphone in front of Keith’s face, and he blew, producing a more or less harmonious chord.
Everyone threw their hands in the air. Corey sauntered out next, his top hat and long black curls instantly recognizable as Slash.
His sleeveless arms had been decorated with fake tattoos on his real muscles.
Finally, Shawn emerged, microphone in hand and a wall clock around his neck swinging back and forth.
“Let’s party like it’s 1980!” Shawn said.
Everyone was ready and told him so. DJ Pancake put on “Yes or No,” one of Boy Talk’s biggest hits, and the guys jogged down the stairs to the stage.
Annie was close to the stairs, and the guys were only a few feet from her as they made their way down.
Keith looked up and made eye contact with Annie and looked momentarily startled.
He pointed at her and then gave a little thumbs-up and waited for her to respond.
She gave a little thumbs-up back, and Keith nodded, satisfied.
He looked more relaxed as Bob Dylan, better than he’d been that morning.
The women next to Annie turned to stare at her, their leather jackets squeaky and new.
“That was unreal,” one of them said. Her door-knocker earrings were so big that they rested on her shoulders.
“We met earlier,” Annie said, by way of explanation, even though he’d met all of them earlier—literally everyone. She thought of her time in bed that afternoon and felt warm with both shame and arousal. He was an actual person. She’d seen proof. Whatever just happened meant that he’d seen her back.
“I’m a Keith girl,” the woman said, and put her hand over her heart.
“Yes or no, don’t tell me to go,” a teenage Keith sang over the loudspeakers.
Annie and everyone else turned to watch as Bob Dylan played along on the harmonica.
The wind blew Annie’s ponytail straight up into the sky.
It didn’t matter if he was really playing or not; the crowd loved it, and they wouldn’t have been able to hear it anyway.
Even on the upper balcony, the crowd was so loud that Annie’s ears were ringing.
Shawn didn’t seem to mind and had leapt from the stage into the crowd, where he was jumping up and down, the clock around his neck slamming against his chest over and over again.