The Dinner Party Read online

  “This is very tired routine,” she said, “and not good timing.”

  Upstairs, invisible, they heard the commotion of the ensuing bust. They hurried across an expanse of treeless yard to the front of the apartment complex. Cars washed by on the street. He refused to allow his knee to bother him as he ran beside the girl. He was happy that he had survived to declare his intentions. He had no ulterior motive. What she did with his offer was up to her.

  Soon they were several blocks away. There was no cop or squad car in sight, and he could have stopped. But he didn’t stop, not even when he saw Mrs. Zegerman. She turned away from the road to gape at him as she slowly drove alongside him. She rolled down the window and shouted something he couldn’t hear on account of his heavy breathing. He smiled at her. He let go of the girl’s hand and waved. He wanted to tell her many things, like how sorry he was to have been cruel to her dog, and how surprised even he was at how well his leg was holding up. Or maybe his strength was only an illusion, just as it had been one summer when he was a boy playing baseball, that day he attempted to steal second and was forced to slide as the ball neared the infielder’s glove. The infielder missed, and the ball shot past, and when he saw he was free for a run to third he jumped up and took off, despite the hairline fracture that would make itself known (through the pain that came with a dawning awareness of all that lay in store for him) only later, long after he had passed the third-base coach, gesturing like mad, and made it home, graceful as a dancer, bodiless, ageless, immortal, a boy on a summer’s day with a heart as big as the sun, with all his troubles, his sorrows, his losses, still ahead of him, still unknown, unable on that still-golden field to cast any of their tall, unvanquishable, ever-dimming shadows.

  The Pilot

  Leonard hadn’t heard from Kate Lotvelt in two weeks. Not that he absolutely should’ve necessarily. He and Kate, they weren’t…were they friends? Well, yeah, they were friends. They were acquaintances. They’d met twice, once at the producer Sydney Gleekman’s yearly blowout, and then, a few months later, at the actor’s dinner party.

  Kate’s invitation had come by email. She was considerate, or she was canny, not to include the addresses of the other invitees. She’d sent the message to her husband and bcc’d everyone else.

  From: Kate Lotvelt

  To: Eaton Aiken

  Subject: Death Is a Wrap! Come for the drinks & stay for the pool.

  He’d RSVP’d, but not immediately. Two days after the message came in. Two days plus maybe an hour. And said something like,

  Just can’t wait. Heading to tax-friendly Winston-Salem in a few days to shoot this godawful underarm commercial. Remember that particular station of the cross? Maybe not, probably scrubbed it from memory. But, hell, work’s work. That pilot I told you about is coming along, I think. Gleekman’s enthusiastic, or at least Pleble claims enthusiasm on his behalf. But the sad reality is always reality television. It’s why I so admire Death. It’s a sick little fuck-you every week to the swapped wives and tarantula eaters.

  Reading this back to himself ten minutes later, Leonard would think, God, I do go on and on.

  Congratulations, by the way. Three seasons! Goddamn if that’s not impressive in this climate. But the show…well, do you ever tire of hearing how good it is? And I thought life was over after The Wire. Listen, no need to reply to this long-winded email. You’re wrapping! But can’t wait to see you at the party. Consider this an RSVP. No way I’d miss it. Not a chance in the world. Hooray! Cheers cheers, Lx.

  He didn’t expect a reply. It was a mass email—she couldn’t reply to everyone who replied. She was busy, she was wrapping the third season of her show. He would have liked a reply. After a few days went by, he’d have liked a reply a lot. Was his email too effusive? Was it a mistake to use the word “sick” to describe her show? Or maybe she was just busy shooting the season finale. Yeah, she was just busy shooting the season finale. Why hadn’t he just written back something quick-like? “Thanks for the invitation, Kate. See you then.” Then she might have quick-like hit Reply, with a confirmation, and he’d have it confirmed that she knew he had confirmed. Did she even know she had invited him? Sometimes, with email, some programs, you hit All Contacts or whatever, and suddenly you’re inviting people you never meant to invite. Of course she’d meant to invite him. He just didn’t have any confirmation. That was kind of unnerving. But think about it. Would he then have to confirm her confirmation? That wasn’t really feasible. It was just…Everything was fine. She was just wrapping. He shouldn’t have been so effusive. “Sick little fuck-you”: that might have been—no, it was fine—just a little insulting? No, no, it was fine, who knows, not him.

  At the actor’s dinner party, the night they’d exchanged email addresses, he and Kate had been seated together. Ten minutes passed before his heart would settle. Then they talked about the Guild and its troubles. When he thought she had warmed to him, he peppered her with questions about her show—how she ran a room, what her writing habits were. He tossed hints of his awe but scrupulously avoided rhapsodizing. When, in the past, he had rhapsodized, even to mere cameramen, his first impulse upon returning home had always been to beat the fanboy in him into a permanent coma. After dessert, while the other guests were drinking an expensive port—he’d been dry now sixteen months—Eaton Aiken, to everyone’s delight, took off his shoes and, standing on newspaper, painted a mural on the actor’s dining-room wall with some old house paint and a stiff brush.

  In the days following the invitation, he thought about how different his anticipation of the party would be if he were Eaton Aiken. If he were Eaton, it would be his party. He wouldn’t have to worry about anything but what he already had: a 1920s Mediterranean with a porte cochere, at the top of Griffith Park; an infinity pool laid with Moroccan tile (he had seen pictures in People magazine, against his will, waiting in line to buy gum); money for the booze and the hired hands to serve it; a solo show at the Getty before the age of forty; and, for a life partner, Kate Lotvelt. Eaton Aiken hadn’t just finished shooting a deodorant commercial in tax-friendly Winston-Salem.

  The night of the party arrived, and still Kate had not sent her invitees an email reminder. That was usually part of the protocol: a message saying, “In case you forgot, looking forward to seeing you,” etc. It prompted him to ask: was the party still on? He couldn’t be totally 100 percent sure, not without a reminder, and here it was already the middle of the afternoon. He was in his darkened room—irrepressible L.A. sunlight battering the closed blinds, unwashed bedsheets reeking of tobacco smoke—watching DVR’d TV backlogged since W.-S. and checking-rechecking his email for a reminder email. Of course the party was still on. If you were Kate Lotvelt, would you worry about guests coming, or about proper email protocol? Kate Lotvelt had succeeded beyond the pedestrian sorrows of social anxiety. It was an awesome thing to behold, on her behalf, his inbox with no reminder email in it. For others, like Leonard, it was mighty unsettling. Wasn’t it possible that now that she had wrapped, she’d taken better care to select from her contacts the people she really wanted at the party and sent the reminder email only to them?

  Finally he got a reply from Pleble.

  Yo bro, how’d the shoot go? I’m in Indio. Do not fucking go to fucking Coachella. Time was there were a hundred great bands and ten people in the know. Now it’s a refugee camp for neohippie fuckheads. What exactly are you asking about a reminder email from Kate Lotvelt? She needs to drop that Romanian douche and sign with me. Back on Monday if you need to talk. In the meantime, why not finish that pilot? Your humble Pleeb.

  No help at all. He’d hoped to hear that Pleble was going to the party so that they could go together. Or if they didn’t go together, at least he’d know that he’d know someone there. But maybe Pleble hadn’t been invited. But if he, Leonard, had been invited, Pleble would have been invited. Kate and Eaton knew Pleble better than they knew him. Didn’t they? Now he was thinking that there really must have been a contacts mishap. It
would have been nice if Pleble had confirmed or denied that he’d been invited. But Pleble was shrewd. If he hadn’t been invited, he wouldn’t say, “Kate’s having a party? Why wasn’t I invited?” He’d say just what he’d said. So maybe Pleble was invited, but he was in Indio, which sucked, because it would have been nice to go with someone, or at least know he’d know someone there. Or maybe Pleble wasn’t invited, in which case there must have been a contacts mishap and he shouldn’t have been invited, either. Either way, now things were even more uncertain than before Pleble’s totally unhelpful and possibly calculating email. Maybe he wasn’t even in Indio! He was tempted to write Gleekman and ask him if he’d been invited and if he was going or at least if he’d gotten a reminder email. But he didn’t want to give Gleekman the impression that he was feeling insecure about his place at Kate’s party. That would send the wrong signal. The pilot was but a polish away.

  Kate Lotvelt was the creator of and showrunner for Death in the Family, as well as its head writer and a member of its star cast. The show’s meandering, almost nonexistent plotlines revolved around the Bonfouey family: Connor and Jean, adult son Mike and his wife Sally, teenage daughter Irene, adopted Korean child Koko, dog Revolution, and neighbors the Wilkes-Barres. In every episode, someone died. Connor murdered Jean, or Jean set fire to Sally, or Mike was wrongfully executed, Irene caught a cold, Koko fell into the pool, Revolution was shot, or the Wilkes-Barres were poisoned by Sally’s green-bean casserole. Everything taboo and unpleasant about death was lampooned: disease, hospitals, the squeamish austerity of burn wards, funeral homes, unbearable sadness. And by the next episode, everyone was alive again! Everyone was just swell! No memory of last week’s suffering and no suspicion of the coming doom. The question for the folks at home was: Who will get it this time? And how? The best episodes left him breathless. There was the effectiveness of its satire, but also the stupefying entertainment of its metaphysics. How, week after week, did Kate Lotvelt turn something so gruesome and frightening into the funniest show on television?

  He hoped to do the same thing with Life of the Party, but it needed a polish. It needed a fresh set of eyes. Somebody smart. A pair of eyes like Kate Lotvelt’s. But might it be better, rather than going to Kate’s party, to stay home and polish the pilot so that on Monday he could give it to Pleble, who could give it to Gleekman, so that they could all finally start seriously engaging one another? And if he stayed in to polish the pilot, he could stop worrying about whether he’d been invited to Kate’s party or if he’d know anyone there or why he hadn’t received a reminder email.

  But half of this business was networking. And what was the better option—going to the party of the year, to which he’d been invited, and networking with actors and executives? Or returning home to Atlanta to die? Those, it felt to Leonard, were his choices. So what the protocol for air-kissing hello kept shifting on him? So what he’d never established an easy routine with beautiful people? So what that when he got home from parties like this one, finally removing his sunglasses for the night, he did nothing but play back, soberly and obsessively, all his many insufficiencies? Should he have been more casual? Intense? Fawning? Detached? Happy? Was happy an option?

  He needed a new pair of eyes on his pilot. Someone smart, like Kate Lotvelt. He also needed a new pair of sunglasses. For as long as he could remember, he’d taken refuge behind a pair that had belonged, originally and iconically, to the Suburban Gangster from New Jersey. Actually, more specifically, to the Suburban Gangster’s loser cousin. The would-be-actor cousin who gets it in the show’s last season—his sunglasses. They had disguised Leonard’s drunkenness and, later, dimmed the unbearable glare of the sober world. But then he left those sunglasses behind at the CountryAir Motel in W.-S. and hadn’t been able to locate a replacement pair, the gangster show having concluded seasons ago, and fashion having moved on.

  He was debating inviting his roommate. On the one hand, he’d have someone to go with. On the other hand, his roommate was a musician, and he trembled before the mystical competition of a musician’s nightlife. What if he invited him and he said no? His roommate had something going on nearly every night, always more vibrant and exclusive-sounding than the pale thing he generally had going on, and so he felt it better to withhold the invitation than risk suffering the indignity of rejection, even if that rejection was due to a simple conflict of interest, like preexisting plans, for example. It was hard not to take even preexisting plans personally. Because what if, for instance, his roommate secretly delighted in having preexisting plans because of how little he cared to entertain Leonard’s lesser invitation, even when tonight that “lesser” invitation was a party at Kate Lotvelt’s? If, that is, that invitation still stood. Which he couldn’t be 100 percent sure of. If the invitation did not stand, the last thing he wanted was to show up at Kate’s with his roommate in tow and discover that Kate didn’t remember meeting him at Gleekman’s or at the actor’s dinner party and had no idea why he’d come and brought his roommate—who, no doubt, would have preferred doing something in the subterranean world of musicians. So he decided not to invite him.

  He did, however, ask to borrow his jacket.

  He didn’t like to borrow other people’s clothes, but there was something about that particular jacket that would make arriving at Kate’s party less intimidating. What was it? He wasn’t sure where he got the idea that it was the jacket of a perfect badass, because it wasn’t like he paid a lot of attention to fashion. Maybe he’d seen it on someone. He’d definitely seen it on his musician roommate once, and that guy was totally cool. If he had to show up to Kate Lotvelt’s without his sunglasses, which made social situations easier and served his sobriety like a crutch, but which he’d lost a week earlier in W.-S., at least he’d have on that cool motherfucker of a jacket.

  His roommate was on the sofa, curled over his guitar, shirtless, wearing white rayon gym shorts and a pair of cowboy boots. Above him on the wall hung a buck’s head wreathed with leis and party beads, a steel helmet from the Second World War hooked on the tip of an antler. When he stopped strumming to make notations on the sheet music fanned across the coffee table, Leonard put his head out of the kitchen and said, “Hey, so what do you have going on tonight, Jack?”

  He was still unsure—maybe he should invite him. If he, Leonard, wasn’t invited, it would be comforting, despite whatever embarrassment, to have Jack beside him, someone even less invited than he was. And if it turned out he was invited, it would be nice to have Jack there to eliminate any awkward walking alone through rooms.

  “Giving myself an ultimatum,” was Jack’s reply as he leaned back on the sofa. “Write three new songs by the end of the day or shoot myself in the head.”

  Leonard was not infrequently put to shame by Jack’s work ethic. He watched Jack lean forward again, pick up his little pencil, and make another series of quick notations. His example made Leonard conclude that the only thing to do now was to stay in and put a polish on the pilot. Was there really any other option? What was he thinking, going to a party, even a party like Kate Lotvelt’s, when the pilot, with a little work, could be given to Pleble, and he could maybe say goodbye to tax-friendly backwaters and start taking real meetings with real people at all the big studios around town? So that was settled. Stay in, work on the pilot. Finish the pilot or shoot himself in the head.

  “Why, what’s going on with you?”

  “Oh, there’s this party,” he said, drifting over with his coffee to a lawn chair that served the two roommates as a living-room recliner, “but I don’t know. I think I’m going to stay in and work on the pilot. Do you have any interest in going to a party tonight?”

  “How’s the pilot coming?”

  “It’s close. I’d say real close. Which is why I should stay in. But I don’t know. I was going to ask if I could borrow that jacket of yours, in case I go. Would you like to go?”

  “Hey, man, I’m not joking. If I don’t write three new songs tonight, look for me
in the woods with a bullet in my brain. Fucking L.A.—it’s worse than Nashville! Don’t worry, I won’t do it in the house. What jacket?”

  He described the jacket, and Jack got off the sofa and returned from his room with it. And it fit! He asked Jack how he thought it fit.

  “Fits perfect,” said Jack. “You want it? It’s yours.”

  “You don’t want it?”

  “I never wear it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Not since what’s-his-name started wearing it, and then everyone else started wearing one just like it.”

  “Since who started wearing it?”

  “You know, what’s-his-name. The real-time antiterrorist cop dude. What’s his name?”

  “Oh,” he said as it dawned on him—the cop, the jacket, the show. “Right,” he said. “I know what show you mean. He wears a jacket like this one?”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “It’s a great jacket.”

  Leonard returned to his bedroom, removed the jacket, and set it on the bed. Goddamn it! It fit, too. He was determined not to go to the party now, certainly not in that jacket. Show up at Kate Lotvelt’s dressed like the real-time antiterrorist cop dude? He might as well go dressed as the Fonz! No way. He sat down at his desk. He was going to stay in and put a polish on the pilot. He called up the document on his computer. Finish the pilot or die. Finish it…or live forever in backwaters promoting morning-fresh roll-on with no unattractive residue.

  He was inside the car and debating with himself when his mother called. It was curious timing, and he considered not answering it. The ritual of her call was now so invariably a part of the day that it had moved beyond its initial phase of support and nurture into something self-conscious, liturgical, and annoying. She’d been calling every day for sixteen months—by now their little exchange was entirely formal and meaningless. But was it meaningless this time, right as he was sitting in the parking lot of a bar, debating? The day was almost over in Atlanta. Usually she didn’t wait this long. Wasn’t that a sign? He would have preferred to let her go to voicemail, but tonight he wasn’t so sure. It might be wise to pick up tonight. Maybe she’d say the thing that would get him out of that parking lot and headed in the right direction.