Page 17 of Book of Night
“If I were you, I wouldn’t get involved in his mess,” Suzie told her. “When people get to a certain age, either they change or they curdle. He’s pushing thirty and wants to live like he’s twenty. Wants to come into work drunk from the night before, gamble, that kind of shit. I’m going on a yoga retreat next weekend. You should come with me instead.”
“Too late,” Charlie said, lifting her plastic cup in a salute. “To wise advice and bad decisions.”
Suzie, who probablyhadplagiarized her paper, raised her glass.
Vince rolled up a half hour later, with orange juice and ice, having received Charlie’s text that the party was low on both.
She went over and hugged him, burying her face in the wool of his coat. It carried the scent of leaves and cold night air. A small smile lifted one corner of his mouth, and she felt a swell of strange, bittersweet longing for someone who was already hers.
Tina, who worked at theHampshire Gazetteand drank like a journalist in a movie, was loudly musing about getting her shadow altered to have a cat tail. “Guys love a tail,” Tina proclaimed, to protests by nearly everyone. Aimee thought Tina shouldn’t consider fetishes along a gender binary. Ian wanted it to be known that he thought it wasdisgusting,and that men did not want tomolest animals. The artist agreed it was kind of hot, but his comic was about saucy mice.
Charlie told Tina that she had maybe misunderstood what “getting some tail” actually meant.
“Mermaids, right?” Vince asked, in such a clueless just-joined-the-conversation tone that it was hard to know if he was joking, or if he’d misheard the earlier part.
It didn’t matter. Everyone laughed. It was funny either way.
As Charlie poured more bourbon—withicethis time—she decided she was glad she’d come. She was just buzzed enough to feel an expansive warmth for the people in the room. See, she was fine being a normal person and doing normal-person things. She ate some cheese that Tina made from the milk of her own goats and which no one had the heart to tell her tasted weird, and smiled for absolutely no reason.
Then she heard Ian, speaking loudly enough to drown out the Sonos. “Hey, Vince. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen at that job of yours?” His tone made it into a challenge.
Vince looked up from the winged armchair where he sat, caught midconversation with Suzie and José. The chair, Charlie noted, looked as though it had been shredded by a cat, and bits of stuffing showed along the arms.
“None of it’s great,” Vince said, clearly attempting to deflect the conversation.
“Yeah, but there must be something. An eyeball in the sink. Hair on the ceiling. Come on.” Ian grinned in an entirely unfriendly way.“Entertain us.”
Charlie had been feeling pretty good until that moment. Her current boyfriend wasn’t sulking in a corner, or saying something obnoxious, or picking a fight, the way that past ones had. Vince was willing to listen and make the sort of encouraging noises that kept people going—catnip to the self-involved. But no matter how much any of her friends were getting along with Vince, the night was about to go bad anyway.
“Ian,” Charlie said, trying to make her voice as stern as Odette wielding a cat-o’-nine-tails in her back office.
He smirked at her, and she was suddenly sure that this wasn’t about being unpleasantly curious. It was about some weird feeling Ian had about Charlie.He wanted to prove something to her, or ruin something for her. “I’m just asking a question. Getting to know the guy. I mean, if you’re fuc—”
Vince interrupted him, pushing himself out of the chair. “Once I saw someone turned entirelyinside out.”
Charlie was used to him hunching a bit, trying not to take up too much space or be too intimidating. Not with his shoulders back, the muscles in his arms tense. His voice sounded as calm as ever, but the hair stood up along her arms. “Bones and organs and fingers and toes. Everything. Like a sock. Inside. Out.”
“Really?” Ian asked, impressed.
“No,” Vince said, stone-faced.
People nearby laughed. Even Charlie laughed, surprised into it.
“Fine, asshole, I won’t ask you about your stupid job,” Ian said, moving in close. Getting up in his face, daring to get hit. When Vince didn’t react, Ian gave him a shove.
Vince let himself be pushed back, but there was a barely restrained glee in his eyes she had never seen there before. “It’s just a lot of picking bits of brain off walls. Nothing much to tell.”
For a moment, the two men stared at one another.
A moment later, Ian blanched and ducked his head. “I didn’t know you’d be so boring,” he muttered.
Vince sat back down with a shrug, as though nothing had happened. As though nothing had been about to happen.
Charlie was heading over to apologize when Suzie Lambton perched herself on the arm of Vince’s chair. She touched Vince’s shoulder as she said something. Tossed her hair. Laughed. Vince smiled in return, one of his real smiles.
Charlie had a sudden and almost overwhelming urge to knock her to the ground.
She drank a slug of bourbon instead.
