“I don’t have time for this shit.” Hazard turned to go.
“I’ll put my hand in the cake.”
Hazard froze. He turned back slowly. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Right in the middle. And I’ll scoop out a huge chunk and throw it right on the floor. Little Evic will never get her birthday cake.”
“You’re a fucking monster.”
Grinning, Somers closed the refrigerator. Then he wrapped his arms around Hazard, stretching up to kiss him lightly on the lips. When he’d dropped back onto his heels, Somers said, “Here’s what I want to tell you.”
Hazard rolled his shoulder, trying to look like he wasn’t wiggling free.
“The thing about birthday parties,” Somers said, tightening his grip, “especially toddler birthday parties, is that they’re supposed to be fun.”
“I know that.”
“Uh huh.”
“Will you get off me?”
“Everybody’s going to be here soon. You’ve got about two minutes to get the crazy out of your system.”
Hazard drew away, all the old walls coming up, the old shields back in place. But Somers didn’t let go. And then, even though it was hard, even though Hazard couldn’t bring himself to look Somers in the face, he said, “It’s . . . it’s my first one.”
“And you don’t want to mess it up.”
Hazard shrugged.
“You won’t,” Somers said, kissing him again. “You’re great. You’ve planned everything to perfection. Evie is going to love it.”
As though her name had been a signal, Hazard heard the front door open, and then a long shrieking hello as Evie sprinted down the hallway to find them. Cora came a few steps later, thin and dark-haired and beautiful as ever, and she wrinkled her nose when she saw Somers.
“I was going to get dressed,” Somers said, “but Emery kept bothering me.”
Hazard opened his mouth.
Before he could say anything, Cora pointed at Evie and said, “Language.”
II
SEPTEMBER 7
FRIDAY
4:14 PM
THE PARTY GOT OFF to a decent start. In a matter of minutes, toddlers filled the house, followed by a string of parents, all of them chatting and smiling and shaking hands. Somers’s parents were there as well, Glennworth and Grace Elaine Somerset. They kept their distance from the rest of the guests, turning in towards each other, drinks in hand, speaking in whispers.
The more the guests talked to each other, the faster the kids ran and the louder they screamed. The louder the kids screamed, the louder the parents talked. Somers moved among the crowd, laughing, talking, mixing drinks for the adults, passing out beers. Hazard stayed near the fireplace in the family room, a Guinness in one hand, and put on his best party face.
“Parties are supposed to be fun,” Somers whispered as he passed Hazard in another trip to the kitchen. “You’re not supposed to look like you’re having an anal fissure examined.”
“I don’t look like I’m—”
“Try a smile.”
Hazard imagined biting Somers. Hard. He bared his teeth.
“Not even close,” Somers muttered and continued into the kitchen.
Two of the dads tried to approach Hazard, but both times the men seemed to reconsider and made sharp turns, veering back towards the safety of the herd. Hazard watched them go and felt some satisfaction. Maybe Somers was right. Maybe birthday parties really were supposed to be fun.
For the next hour, as the kids ran and screamed and chased and shouted, in between forays to pillage the food that Hazard had set out for them, Hazard spent his time studying the children. Children were, for the most part, a mystery to him. At first glance, they were just miniature adults, but he knew enough developmental psychology to realize that wasn’t true. They seemed to inhabit a world totally foreign to Hazard. What he remembered of his childhood had involved, for the most part, books and puzzles and intellectually-stimulating toys. He didn’t remember running around like he was in a gang of vandals.
Most of the children, Hazard decided, seemed like appropriate playmates for Evie. All of the children participated in various forms of social reckoning and maneuvering, but they still played well together. Three of the children, though, bore watching: a stout, dark-haired boy who liked to take things away from other kids; a skinny boy, tall for his age, who liked to crash into groups of kids and ruin whatever they were doing; and a girl with dark pigtails who was a biter. She’d already marked half the kids. Three budding psychopaths, in Hazard’s book.
When Somers came by again, Hazard caught his arm. “How are these children screened?”
“What?”
“Did you interview the parents before inviting them? Or did you accept the preschool’s psychological profiles?”
“God, being with you is a magical carousel of pathology, isn’t it? What are you talking about?”
“How did you pick which kids to invite?”
“They’re Evie’s friends.”
“That’s ridiculous. Children can’t have friends. They don’t have the emotional and intellectual development for the Aristotelian model of—”
Somers wiped tiredly at his face, kissed Hazard’s cheek, and left while Hazard was still speaking.
“—friendship,” Hazard finished, staring after his boyfriend and wondering why Somers was dodging his question.
He didn’t have time to ask again, though, because a few minutes later, Somers directed everyone into the front room. Hazard watched the banner to make sure none of the adults accidentally knocked it loose, and then he waded into the herd of children to adjust party hats. Pigtails took advantage of his distraction to latch onto Hazard’s hand like she was trying to chew through bone.
“I am so sorry,” a sloe-eyed woman said, breathing heavily through her mouth as she pried her daughter off of Hazard. “No, no, Letitia. That’s not nice.”
Letitia promptly turned around and chomped down on her mother’s first two fingers. The mother did a lot of squealing and mouth-breathing before extricating herself and retreating to the far side of the room.
This was America’s future, Hazard thought.
Somers got the kids involved in some sort of organized game that, the more Hazard studied it, seemed like a juvenile training program for exactly the kind of capitalist failings that Marx
