Ghost Lights by Lydia Millet (classic fiction txt) 📕

with strange hairdos. He watched TV only at Casey’s instigation—always it was her choice what they watched and she did not watch this particular show—but he knew the program was popular. The sound was not on, which was frustrating at first but finally just as well. He watched slack-jawed, the whiskey dispersing in his bloodstream. Colors in my eyes, he thought, fields and fields . . .

He let the picture blur and then sharpen again, blur and sharpen.

Did this mean he was getting cross-eyed? He tried to see his own eyes in the mirror behind the bar, but there was no room for his reflection between the bright libations.

He did not want to be stumbling drunk at Casey’s so he downed two large glasses of water in a row and drove slowly and carefully the few blocks to her house.

“Sorry. Office birthday party,” he said, when she ushered him in. This would explain his buzz, if it was even noticed. Others sat around in the living room, he saw, but Susan was not among them.

“Where’s your mother?”

“Bathroom,” said Casey, and went into the kitchen.

Of course she might be engaged in a devious activity there—the removal of a diaphragm, say.

Such thoughts were unworthy.

And anyway, they used condoms.

“We’re having a Thai soup,” said Casey. “Chicken coconut. Tom Ka Gai.”

“Sounds delicious.”

“I don’t know. Wait until you taste it.”

While she hovered at the stove he wandered into her living room, greeted her friends. There was a woman named Nancy who was also in a wheelchair and a tall man Casey knew from a class she’d taken at Santa Monica College, thick glasses and a receding hairline though he was only in his mid-twenties. Hal forgot his name every time: Adam? Andy?

“Addison,” said the man, obliging, and shook his hand.

“Can I get you a drink?” asked a voice behind him.

Susan.

Turning to look at her, he was surprised: she looked the same in her features but invisibly separate, as though she was cut off from him by a membrane. Instantly he superimposed the figure of Robert the Paralegal on her image—it happened without premeditation, almost violently, as though the guy had burst into the room.

Then the picture was gone, thankfully.

“Sure,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Just a beer. Already had a double at the office, so—thank you.”

“What was the occasion?”

Behind her Sal was in the doorway in his chair, chewing gum. He blew a large bubble and popped it.

“Linda’s birthday,” mumbled Hal, as Susan turned.

“Sal!” she said warmly, and Hal had a vision of her straddling him.

“Oh,” he said aloud, inadvertently. “Excuse me.”

He went to the bathroom, locked the door and sat down hard on the toilet seat. Grabbed the cool rail next to him and breathed deeply. Ridiculous. He was seeing her everywhere with spread legs. It had to be the whiskey. He was not used to drinking.

When he ventured out again the guests were gathering around the table, pulling chairs out, organizing. Susan was standing near the head of the table—the dark angle of her black sweater, the rusty, autumnal orange of her slacks. He recalled how they clung to the backs of her thighs, which had always had a nice slim curve of muscle . . . it shocked him to think of someone else clutching at them. He was still shocked, when he thought about it—as though surfaces were falsehoods and the vigor inside them, which could never be seen, had a purpose to it, a purpose that was slyly hostile or at least secretive.

It could take a while for the dinner guests to get settled at the table, since several of them were in wheelchairs. The shifting of chairs, the discussion of positions . . . he shrank back past the doorjamb. He could not show Susan he did not wish to sit beside her. On the other hand, he did not wish to sit beside her. It was too soon and too public. He would hang back until others seemed to make the choice for him.

Casey was still in the kitchen; he could help her bring the food in. A pretext. But he would keep hidden till the last moment, even from her, in case the whole crowd had not taken their seats yet.

Lingering in the hallway next to the kitchen, he heard Casey talking to someone and hung back again: the food was not ready. There would be nothing to occupy him. He did not want to hover awkwardly; he would hide here, safely unseen.

He glanced down and picked a framed photograph from a bookshelf, to be doing something in case someone saw him. It was Casey with Stern’s dog, when the dog still had four legs. Must have been taken by Stern, thought Hal, when the two of them were spending time . . . Casey was sitting on the beach in her chair, smiling, and the dog was standing up, her front paws on Casey’s knees. Mostly the dog was featured: you could barely make the person out behind her. Casey did not like pictures of herself.

Nancy was in the kitchen with his daughter. From his hidden position against the wall he could see one of Nancy’s bony shoulders and part of the back of her chair; its netting contained knitting needles and several large, bright skeins of yarn—red, orange, yellow, pink and purple.

A garment fashioned of those colors could only be an abomination.

“You told them telemarketing?” asked Nancy in a stage whisper, and then chortled.

“What else? They know it’s a phone job.”

“But I mean what if they ask you about it? The timeshare thing?”

“I have a spiel. I once actually did try selling timeshares, for like three days. It was hell on earth, I’m not even kidding.”

“And this isn’t?”

“You know what? I kind of like it. I do. Maybe it’s still the novelty, but I like it, Nance. That’s my dirty secret.”

“You slut!”

“I’m a ho. Hand me the oven mitt, would you?”

“I’ll take the rice. I can get it.”

“You sure it’s not too heavy?”

He could not