Thank God the party was finally underway.
I'd been preparing for weeks. I had this
vision of a huge event people would talk
about for months afterward, so I invited all
kinds of people, even people I barely
knew. I knew most of them, though, and
owed most of them some sort of return
invitation. People had stopped asking me
over for dinner lately, or to their parties,
and I knew I had to have at least some
token reciprocation.
The time for the party came and went and
I was still alone in the house. Of course,
nobody on earth--especially none of the
cool people I invited--would dream of
showing up to a party on time. If I knew
them, they'd still be trickling in hours late.
That was fine . . . I was sort of even
hoping it would turn into one of those
all-night parties. That is, if I didn't get any
noise complaints.
I took the extra time to race around the
house and make sure everything was in
order. I even took the bowl of condoms
out of my bedroom drawer and put it in
the bathroom. Who knew . . . maybe it
would turn into one of THOSE kinds of
parties. God, I hoped so. I hadn't been to
a good orgy in years.
Finally, people started to arrive an hour
late. I was unpleasantly surprised to
notice that Doug was one of the first
people to show up. God, why did I invite
him, anyway? I must have been drunk that
night I saw him on the street and told him
about it. Oh, well. I pretended to welcome
him while at the same time trying to
banish the disastrous sex we'd had two
years ago from my mind.
More and more people started to show
up, so I was busy, but I kept catch sight of
Doug, mooning around with a strange
look on his face. He looked both nervous
and superior . . . it was such a strange
attitude that few people seemed to want
to deal with him.
Well, I didn't, either, but . . .