830 PM Richie
At half past eight Adam said they should play a game.
It was still storming, and there wasn’t much else to do.
The television had seven different remote controls, and no one could figure out which one turned on the screen, and everyone was afraid of getting electrocuted by lightning if they went swimming in the pool.
A game seemed like their best and only option.
“What kind of game,” Richie asked him.
“What about Monopoly? I think I saw it in the study earlier.”
“There are too many people. Also, it’s a nightmare playing Monopoly with people who went to business school.”
They were standing in the kitchen. Richie had offered to help Adam with the dishes, hoping that it might give them an opportunity to talk, though every time he thought about what he wanted to say he began to feel faint.
Adam was drunk, and therefore more garrulous; Richie found himself trying to following the conversational rhythms that he set, and then becoming slightly irritated when they abruptly changed.
A towel was draped over his shoulder. Richie’s hands were covered in suds.
“Okay, then what about Scrabble?” Adam suggested.
Richie shook his head. “I didn’t see any Scrabble.”
They decided on Celebrity. Adam found a large metal mixing bowl, and cut three sheets of paper into thin strips with a pair of cooking shears. Richie divided the party into two roughly equal teams.
Adam said, “We should make a rule where couples aren’t allowed to be on the same team.”
“Yeah, that’s good.” Richie chewed for a second on the end of his pen, deciding if he should say what he wanted to say. In the end, he did. “So what do I do with us?”
Adam laughed. He shut off the sink and dried his hands.
“We aren’t a couple anymore. I think we’re allowed to be on the same team.”
In the living room people were having atomized conversations about things like the Mueller investigation and Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi ad. Sasha sat on one of two sofas, flipping through a large coffee table book about architecture in the Hamptons that she had balanced on her knees.
“Okay.” Adam clapped his hands once. “I’ve made an executive decision with the birthday boy. We’re playing Celebrity.”
Nina placed her glass of wine on the coffee table. Her bracelets rattled.
She said, “Oh, I kill at Celebrity.”
Lev lifted his eyes from his phone. He was wearing a pair of thin wire-framed glasses, set halfway down his nose.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Emily laughed. “You’ve never played Celebrity?”
“I have not.”
“Okay, well, it’s a game, obviously.” Adam proceeded to explain the rules.
“You write down the names of three famous people onto these scraps of paper, and put them into the bowl. There are two teams. When it’s your turn, you stand up and try to get your teammates to guess the name of the famous person you’ve drawn.
The goal is to get as many correct as possible, over the course of three rounds.
For the first round, you can do and say whatever you want, so long as you don’t say the celebrity’s name.
For the second round, you can do whatever you want, but you can only use one word.
For the third round, you can’t use any words, only actions. Okay?”
“Sounds easy enough.”
Lev went back to tapping on his phone. On the other side of the living room, Theo opened another bottle of wine, the cork releasing with a quiet pop.
Adam read off the teams. Pointing to one side of the coffee table, he said, “So, on this side will be me, Sasha, Rami, Marco, and Mia. Over there, we’ll have Richie, Theo, Emily, Lev, Mitch, and Nina.”
Mitch raised a hand.
“Yes, Mitch?”
“I’d like to propose a trade.”
“There aren’t any trades.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Here’s the paper and some pens. Remember, everyone has to come up with three names.”
For the next five minutes they wrote, folding each of the strips of paper in half before placing them in the metal mixing bowl.
Because it was Richie’s birthday, it was decided that his team would go first. Adam set a timer for one minute.
Emily stood, smoothed down her shirt, and drew the first name.
Frowning, she said, “I actually don’t know who this is.”
“Okay,” Nina said, a little too excitedly. “So just pass and go to the next one.”
She drew another name.
“Oh, okay, yeah.” She began moving one hand in a circular motion. “She’s an actress. She might also be a singer, but she’s definitely an actress.”
“Jennifer Lopez?”
“No. Hm.” Her cheeks began to turn red. “I’m trying to think of how else to describe her.”
Lev asked, “Is she alive or dead?”
“No questions,” Adam said. “That’s against the rules.”
Emily chewed on the edge of her thumb. “She was in that movie with Tom Hanks.”
An alarm rang. Adam said, “Time.”
Placing the slip of paper back into the bowl, Emily turned to face Richie, and then looked at Marco. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m really bad at this.”
The next two rounds went more smoothly. Sasha won seven points, and Nina six.
Each of them at one point drew a name that she squinted at, before shaking her head with an exasperated sigh and returning it to the bowl.
Eventually Lev said, “He was the British home secretary under Margaret Thatcher,” and Sasha replied, “Yeah, that doesn’t really help.
” Outside the rain had lightened to a steady drizzle, and four floor lamps cast the room in a yellow glow.
Mitch poured himself a glass of wine from the bottle that Theo had opened, and he and Sasha shared a strange glance that Richie saw though failed to interpret.
He was sitting on the floor, with his legs stretched out in front of him and his back propped up against the leg of an easy chair.
Across from him, on the other side of the coffee table, Adam sat beside Rami on the couch.
Occasionally their knees touched, and each time that happened Richie immediately looked away, as if he had seen something that wasn’t meant for him.
But then he looked back again—he couldn’t stop looking back—and a sinking feeling took root in his stomach.
Then from somewhere behind him he heard Emily say, “Marco, I think it’s your turn.”
Rising from the floor, Marco cracked his neck once on each side. He positioned the bowl so it was directly in front of him on the table, then reached his hand into it, leaving it poised among the papers. He looked at Adam, who tapped the screen on his phone as he said, “Go.”
Marco unfolded the first piece of paper.
“Bodyg—” he began to say, and at nearly the exact same moment Mia said, very calmly, “Whitney Houston.”
“Correct.” He reached for another slip of paper. “Left the Shire to—”
“Bilbo Baggins.”
“Yes.” His hand went back to the bowl. “Who’s the—”
“Judith Light.”
“He plays for the Yankees and dated—”
“Alex Rodriguez.”
“Ally McBeal but not Ally Mc—”
“Lucy Liu.”
“I Know Why the—”
“Maya Angelou.”
“Has a fetish for bird—”
“Jonathan Franzen.”
“The dwarf I could never—”
“Bashful.”
“Famous antisemi—”
“Mel Gibson.”
“The Spice Girl we saw at JF—”
“Mel B.”
The round ended a couple names later. Sasha announced that she tallied up sixteen points, and people began laughing.
Mitch said, “That’s fucking wild,” and Richie glanced over at Emily.
She was smiling, her hands set on her knees, but otherwise she was staying very still; there was a glass of white wine on the floor at her feet, though she had hardly drunk from it.
Richie’s right leg began to ache. He bent it toward him, then stretched it out again.
Marco and Mia high-fived each other, then began talking in unison, tripping over their words to tell the story of when they saw Mel B waiting in line at a Shake Shack in terminal four of JFK.
Emily laughed again, but a few seconds too late.
Lev went next. His cheeks were red from the wine, and even though he was physically no bigger than Theo or even Richie, he seemed to take up much more space.
He clapped his hands before the round started, and half crouched into a fighting stance.
When Adam started the timer he reached for a slip, read it, and said, “Wait a second, is this someone you all know?” On the couch, Mitch grinned.
He shouted, “Courtney Paulson! That’s mine,” and Lev, a little surprised, nodded and placed the piece of paper on the table.
Behind Richie, Nina whispered, “Fuck you, Mitch,” in a voice that betrayed a level of hurt that caused him to be embarrassed for her, and also angry.
He wanted to tell her to stop making it so easy.
Lev received three points—he stumbled over Ariana Grande, and his round ended.
When finally it was Richie’s turn only a few slips remained.
He finished what was left of the seltzer he’d brought with him from the kitchen, then pulled himself to his feet.
The timer started. He reached into the bowl and unfolded a scrap that said Shirley MacLaine.
It was a very easy clue, particularly given the context of Lev’s story from dinner, but as he prepared to speak he noticed that Rami’s arm was now around Adam’s shoulders, and that the space between them had diminished.
There was a fluttering at the base of his throat—he felt himself becoming flustered.
“Um,” he said, “I’m sorry, give me a second to think.”