Ilsa, bless her, is trying to aid me. Unfortunately, her aid is coming in the form of sartorial suggestion.
“Why aren’t you wearing your black velvet? They’ll be here any moment. You’re still in jeans.”
I am not wearing my black velvet because the lemon tart requires a dusting of confectioners’ sugar in about two minutes. It will take about two minutes to explain this to Ilsa, so I try to shoo her from the kitchen instead, telling her that she should make sure the dinner party playlist is to her liking. My mood is all Glass, and if she wants to add swing to the thing, it’s better for her to do it now than to make a scratch mid-song.
My stress gets more level when I am alone in the kitchen. I like being alone in the kitchen. My thoughts fit well into the sound of bubbling, boiling, and refrigeration. I can be the conductor of this minor orchestra.
It’s only when other people get involved that the conducting becomes unwieldy, and arrangements get messy.
I don’t know who Ilsa’s invited, although I suspect that, despite her denial, KK will soon besmirk our doorway with her usual gusts of privilege. Ilsa can’t resist KK—she’s the fashion plate my sister eats off of, her droll model. I personally can’t fathom how a girl so rich can also be so rich with complaint. But she’s never wanted me or anyone else to like her. I guess there’s some power that comes from that. Only I’m not really sure what you can use that power for.
My guest list is, I hope, a little more amenable to amiability.
First, there’s my best friend, Parker, since even though Ilsa placed him on the Banished Guest List, I am not having this last dinner party without him. Ilsa claims he broke her heart, but she needs to get over it. Mostly because the breakup was totally her fault, and nearly ended my friendship with him, which wasn’t fair.
Next up is Jason. I figured if I was inviting one of Ilsa’s exes, I should balance it out with one of mine. Although it’s not really the same, since Jason and I managed to stay friends. He’d had this whole I’m-going-to-Tufts-and-you’re-going-to-Berklee! plan, and when I decided to stay in Manhattan, it was like I’d slapped his future, which in turn said oh-no-you-didn’t and stormed out the door. This left the present standing in the middle of the room, slight and awkward. Jason withdrew his application for soul mate, and we went from there. Still looking for true love, but not with each other.
Which maybe leads me to my wild card: Subway Boy. I’ve been seeing him on the 1 train for the past few months. And around the city, especially around Lincoln Center. Sometimes he’s carrying a violin case. I have mapped more fantasies out onto Subway Boy than I care to admit. And after a while, I saw that he was recognizing me as much as I was recognizing him.
Still, I didn’t want to ruin it by talking to him. Until, last week, he was right there when I got on board the train, and it was like the party invitation in my pocket began to vibrate. Before I could tell myself to halt, halt, halt, I was handing it to him and telling him he should come.
“There’s no RSVP,” he said when he finished reading it.
He didn’t look at me like I was bad crazy. He looked at me like I was good crazy. Bold crazy. Romantic crazy.
“Regrets only,” I told him.
“Well,” he said with a smile, “I can’t say I have any regrets.”
As we hit his stop, I ventured a “See you later?”
“Absolutely,” he replied.
And that, it seemed, was that. I haven’t seen him since. I’m not even sure he’ll show up. I’m afraid that, if he does, Ilsa will ask me his name.
I have no idea what his name is.
Nor, for that matter, do I know if he’s vegan. Or only eats meat. Or is lactose intolerant. Gluten agnostic. Kale monogamous. So I’m making a little of everything, which adds up to way too much.
“You do realize we’re only having six guests?” Ilsa, back in the kitchen, asks as I bedevil an egg. The flapper dress she has on would make even Clara Bow fall silent in respect. “And none of them, at least on my list, eats this much.”
I can never keep my sister out of the kitchen for that long, not when we’re the only two people home. It’s not that she likes watching me cook. And it’s certainly not that she likes assisting. She just hates being in a room by herself.
“I’ve invited Rudolph Tate,” I say. “He requires at least six servings.”
This is mean. Rudolph Tate eats like a bird and looks like a bird and flew the coop after two chirpy dates with me. Ilsa had set us up, and since it was only the latest in a mess of maladroit matches, I asked her to never, ever set me up again. It was getting to be that when a male at Ilsa’s school came out of the closet, the first thing he found was my sister standing by the closet door, saying she had someone he should really, really meet.
“If you’d invited Rudy, I would have heard about it,” Ilsa says, her faith in gossip unwavering. “He’s the apple of #Stantastic’s rebounding eye now. And #Stantastic tweets anything that makes him jealous.”
My date with #Stantastic had been even worse than my date with Rudolph. As we were talking over dinner, he kept typing it all down on his phone. I tried not to give him any material, and as a result ended up being called #sleepyandhollow
