by Christopher Hess

The brittle clank of the doorbell barely broke the noise emanating through the heavy oak door, and Frank stood beating the cold out of his thick wool coat with steady thumping of his gloved hands as Madeline walked slowly in place, marching life back into her feet. The yellow light falling on them from the single uncovered bulb overhead made them frown slightly. Strange, Frank thought, this is a nice building, one of the nicer ones in this part of town -- why wouldn't they have a cover for that bulb? The unmistakable sound of heel-steps reached his ears just as Frank raised his hand to knock again. He returned his hand to the business of pummelling his other arm and the door opened.

"Hiiiiiiiiii! Come come come come come." Selene sidestepped and ushered them in at the same time, and with deft movements of her hands and a stashing under the arm she had both their coats off and was propelling them into the gathering in the living room. Selene was a tall, thin woman with an aqualine nose and active eyes. Her smile was constant and tight, but not forcedly so. She was a born hostess. As she directed Frank and Madeline on the whereabouts of food cocktails beer bathroom and seats she managed to extract a quick assessment of their two children, their jobs, the weather, their holiday plans and everything else that had happened to them in their lives since this time last year at her annual Christmas season cocktail party.

Her immediate familiarity always put Frank on his guard, but Madeline soon slipped into like form and was chatting at the same fevered pitch. This was a relief to Frank, who slipped off to the bar with the understanding that he would soon return Manhattan in hand to bail Madeline out when Selene's conversational stamina proved too much for her -- usually about five minutes.

"Frank goddam it's good to see you made it through another year."

"Wish I could say the same, Murray," he replied, turning from the bar with a thin grin across his lips. "How you doing?"

"Oh, you know," Murray said, shrugging his narrow shoulders and looking sheepish. Murray and Selene were two of a kind -- the most completely vertically inclined couple Frank had ever known. Twin towers, the uprights, the beanpoles, he called them. Frank knew Murray from college, they had been in adjacent dorm rooms their second year and had stayed friends since, though outside this yearly gathering they rarely saw each other. "Can't complain. Until now, that is."

Murray was familiar with Frank's curmudgeonliness. He wasn't always this way. Often he could be jovial and carefree as the next guy, but when he was he relished it and all the conflict and confrontation that went with it. It could be entertaining and harmless and it could be meanspirited, it just depended on the conversation and the amount of bourbon Frank poured into himself over the course of the evening.

"Come on, Frank, it won't be that bad. There are some interesting people here I want you to meet. That couple over there, they just got back from Zambezi, a trip down the Zambia River. They've been everywhere. They're a bit flighty, but they're really nice people." Murray indicated a couple dressed each in the billowy white cotton of medieval peasants and modern day hippies, both encased in some thick wool sweaters and a pair of canvas shoes. Already Frank didn't like them.

"I really need to be focusing my strength on me right now. I have a lot going on in my life, it's really crazy, I don't have a minute to breathe, let alone meditate. I feel so off center I may die."

Frank snatched pieces of conversation as he followed Murray in. The living room was about half-full with people, a nice turnout already.

Slow nods of sympathy were the answers to the complaints. "I know what you mean, sister. I mean, I told you all about Paul right? I really thought we had something special there, like we were really going someplace. He wasn't like every other asshole in this city, he had something really unique, really sensitive without being mushy, you know? I connected with him like I've never connected with anyone-ANYONE. We shared so much, I mean, I gave him my SOUL. And the fucker just spat on it, he didn't even care. For a first date it went so well, and he never even called back. Bastard."

"Bastard."

As Frank turned over his shoulder he saw that the women speaking were both nice looking, tall and thin, typical. Not abnormal. He snorted. He didn't want to be here. Parties were OK and all, it was just difficult.

"Pfff. Yeah, like the word 'postmodern' even means anything anymore. I'm sure." This from a round man of about forty, dressed in a shiny blue shirt and black pants, both of which were a bit small for his bulk. Where the hell did Murray and Selene find these people?

In the kitchen he found relief. Wild Turkey. Thank God, Murray remembered. Frank was afraid he was gonna be stuck swilling Sapphire martinis or gimlets or some such holiday fare. Nope, Wild Turkey. He drained his first glass -- a short one-still facing the opened bottle on the counter.

"I can't even tell you how amazing the return on it was. I looked at the figures and it blew my fucking mind, man!" the man next to Frank was saying. When he noticed that Frank was lingering, he cut his conversation short, feigning politeness with a "Hey, how you doin?"

Frank smiled quick, filled his glass -- a tall one -- and turned toward the living room. The thing about people like these, about parties like these, he thought, was that none of it is real. All these people just put on these faces, turned on these personalities for the evening to create an illusion of happiness, of well-being within a world that wouldn't allow it. As if they had no problems, nothing to worry about beyond high-yield investments or the length of the third act of the play they were not really working on for the past three years. It was hard to identify with them. Frank resented them. At the moment, he hated them.

The clocked ticked slow and the drinks disappeared fast.

Across the room, the adventurous couple were still talking to a group of people, as they had been for the eternity since he arrived. The audience was full of gaping mouths and wide eyes. Seeing that his wife was among them, her arm shaking slowly in the grip of the male pillowcase (apparently she was just introduced), Frank turned away. Don't want to get pulled into that crap, he thought. A woman, about Frank's age, was sitting in a chair by the window opposite where his wife was. Frank turned one-eighty, marched back to the bar and filled his glass. Then he walked over to the window.

"Tired of wading through it, huh?" he asked.

"Excuse me?"

"The great white explorers over there. Laying it on a bit thick, aren't they?"

"You mean my sister and her husband?" she asked, smiling at him as if his zipper was open.

"Hmph." Frank turned, pretending to look out the window, perfunctorily bobbing his head in time with the horrible pop music that Selene insisted on playing at parties.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I'm Frank. You are..."

"Esther," she said. Frank didn't believe her, she was far too attractive for a name like that, but he didn't really care either, so he offered his hand. They shook. She smiled, and he looked away. He imagined himself at this party last year. And the year before. The progression of Franks was surprising in its transformation, and remarkably clear, his posture sliding to a slight stoop, his paunch enlarging as if in a cartoon of the reverse evolution of man to ape. Like flip-book animation the images blended together, becoming more gray and less amused, steadily, until he saw only himself in the window in front of him, a baggy image of the man he was at the beginning of the cartoon.

"I don't envy it or anything."

Frank started. "I'm sorry -- what?"

"They've been all over the world," she said, slowly, "but I don't envy them that. They have nothing here, that's why they go."

Frank was not too sure what she was talking about, but he nodded firm agreement, embarrassed by his lapse. When he offered to refill her drink, she accepted, and Frank made another run to the kitchen. As he filled the second glass (assuming she wanted Wild Turkey, straight), the nearer of the two men still talking business in the kitchen turned to him, noded toward the bottle and said "You should just take that with you. Save the trip," and laughed. A harmless laugh. High and quick, like he may have heard it on TV and was unconsciously imitating it.

Frank just looked at him. Then he laughed. A small laugh, but he did. The other man looked relieved. Frank wasn't a big man, but neither was he a small one. In Frank's assessment of himself, he always considered himself a person who looked "like he could do some damage." He liked that.

As he turned from the smiling idiot, another full one in him, he noticed the pattern in the tile floor going by in a slight blur. Fuzzy around the edges, as Madeline would say. He giggled a little, squared himself and headed back to the window. He was happier now. The whiskey helped, but his mind felt lighter. Nowhere was the presence of Christmases past, of a house full of kids, of his first wife. That was many years ago. Almost as many as this party had seen. They were there, of course, his wife and kids, but they were smiling. As Frank walked toward the woman wth bourbon outstretched, he found that he was too.

"Something funny in there?" she asked.

"No," Frank replied. "Not really."

"Thanks," Esther said as she tipped her glass to Frank and drank, scowling only slightly with the booze. "Sometimes they do piss me off," she went on. "I mean, so they have everything. So what."

As she continued, Frank noticed that the music had changed. It was Lester Young now. He knew it immediately. Murray always went in for the swingin stuff, the hard saxophones. But was that it? It was so low, barely audible, he could be mistaken. He listened closer, reaching for the memory as much as the music.

"Spain is probably more beautiful, but the arid climate of the Eastern border kills me at that time of year."

"Sssshhhh!" Frank heard himself hiss before he knew it. He stopped, looked at her for a moment, then mumbled an apology and strode off through the room, oblivious to the calls of his wife, Madeline, as he went for the bathroom door. He was sudenly a bit disoriented, not drunk, but wobbly. He could handle his liquor better than this, he knew.

As he streamed clear into the toilet, he remembered all the times previous he stood in this same posture. Usually this drunk, often moreso, at least since the accident. He didn't hide in liquor -- he was a productive member of the workforce even as many of his friends left it for their couches, golf courses, or Florida homes. With a short step back to steady himself he zipped his fly, then checked and made sure he did, then opened the door. Immediately Madeline had his arm.

"You simply must talk to them, they're the most interesting people," she was saying as he grumbled his way along behind her.

The strains of "Shoe Shine Boy" reached his ear as if from another room -- it didn't fit. This was a music of another time and place, from when it meant that you better sit back and take notice because the horn was blowing. He and Murray spent many a long and rapt hour in the basement of Charlie's, watching with slitted eyes and mouths agape as Von Freeman or Gene Ammons or some other fierce sax man tore the roof off the place, all those who weren't dancing inevitably off rhythm (for none could keep up) sitting in much the same posture for much the same reason. These nights were well-spent, the minutes were etched into his memory as stone friezes of the-way-things-ought-to-be-all-the-time. Before he was ever married. Before the transformation of his free spirit into a hard-bound sense of responsibility and obligation was complete. Before he ever lost anything. Now, though, all these vapid retards yapping away and absently tapping their toes were barely noticing there was music playing at all.

He was drawn, with not a little pressure on his forearm, into the large circle of people. The woman was holding forth on something or other, talking about acceptance of all facets of life or something. Frank was looking for a way out. The man in the white shirt was looking at him. Frank returned the look blankly, and Madeline stepped in between them. "This is Frank," she whispered so as not to interrupt the man's wife. He smiled, Frank didn't. He was too busy now listening to what the woman was saying. That she'd faced death or something like that. She had his attention.

"If Everette were to die I would be totally at peace with it, as would he," she was saying. "You see, we're both in tune with the fleeting nature of this earthly life; we realize that death is as much a part of it as birth, and to mourn or deny or resent death would be as ludicrous as denying being born or living from day to day."

Frank sort of chuckled involuntarily, genuinely amused, looking into his empty glass and turning to head for the kitchen. He was drunk, but he didn't care. And he didn't need to hear this shit.

"Some do, honey," intoned Everette, obviously very pleased with his wife's soliloquy, his words directed as through a funnel at the side of Frank's head.

"True, dear," Salome replied with a knowing, superior smirk. "Most people will never understand or feel the peace as we do, and it's a very sad -- "

"You're both so full of shit it's unbelievable!" exploded Frank suddenly. "I've never heard such crap ever!" He stood in the center of the circle that had gathered around Everette and Salome when they began the travelogue of their recent trip to Tibet and had remained, even growing slightly, throughout the subsequent tales of trekking through the Andes with only a 'tiny brown guide' and enough food for two days; their narrow espcape from Haiti and their brush with the 'fascist Tonton Macoutes' during some former uprising, their work with 'the poor' in Mexican border towns, and most recently their complete and irrevocable religious transformation in the temples of Nepal. Now, each of these people turned their heads to regard Frank with a look of mild distaste and more than a bit of surprise and interest. "I can't believe what I'm hearing, it's like a marathon of invention, a river of bullshit. It's endless! Do you really believe you would be fine if the other of you were suddenly gone for good? Like 'Oh, it's natural, it was her time, what a good life she led there's nothing to be sorry about.' I can't fucking believe how naive you are. How stupid!"

Everette stood, mouth agape, but Salome stepped up. "I understand that it may be hard for you to relate to what we're saying. But we have spoken with wise men, we have lived under direct tutelage the maharesh Ugodi and he says that man in his mortal state can only -- "

"Oh knock it off. Even if you have succeeded in fooling yourself, it's only temporary. You're from Long Island for fuck's sake, what the hell do you know about enlightenment? The only thing yogi told you was the things he figured you wanted to hear and thank you, pay on your way out. Tell me," he said, turning slowly to face Everette, twirling imaginary bourbon in his glass. "You come home and check your phone messages. Your wife has been found in an alley behind your favorite tandoori house, she was picking up dinner, she was dragged to the alley and raped and murdered. That's OK?"

The tension in the room built in the surprised murmur from the people surrounding Frank. Everette attempted an interruption, a slight frown spreading across his brow, but Frank cut him off. "Or an accident. On the way home tonight another car cuts you off, you swerve off the road and hit a lightpole. Tomorrow you wake up in the hospital; you'll make it, she's already dead. She fought all night but didn't make it. That's OK with you?"

There was silence. As Everette inflated himself for a harsh retaliation against this intrusion of bad taste, clenching hands into fists, Salome stepped in front of him and said in a calm and patronizing voice, "Yes, that's OK with him. Of course there would be grief, we are human after all. But in time grief would give way to understanding, understanding would give way to acceptance, and that in turn to enlightenment. I know this is true."

The slow rush of air leaving the chest of Everette made a smug grin spread across the plane of Salome's face, for she knew they were together on this, though it was stopped short when she added "Maybe you should lay off the bourbon a bit, huh?" "Go fuck yourself," said Frank in the most even tone he could muster. Then he pushed open a thin and somewhat evil smile of his own and held it until the two turned from him and back to a hesitant and no-longer captive audience, where they slowly re-established their discourse on their life-threatening and thrilling trek through the forbidden Himalayas.

Frank stumbled out of the room, waving off the half-hearted protests of his hosts and ignoring Madeline's calls to him. He headed straight for the big front door and went through it, outside into the cold night. The snow was still piling up, and as the closing door muffled the noise from inside he was left in the silence and still of the winter evening. He didn't have his coat or his keys, but he kept walking down the steps and onto the sidewalk, pushing the snow into even trenches with his shuffling progress, sending it swirling around his feet as he rounded the corner and headed for home.