The Last Book Party(13)

He was there before me, leaning against a NO PARKING sign, hands deep in the pockets of his black jeans.

“Ready for some preordained spontaneity?” I asked.

“Are we committed to all stops on this party train?”

His frown suggested that he’d accepted the invitation only for professional reasons, as Mary had suggested he might.

“You’re free to do as you please,” I said. “I’m not your minder.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest that,” he said, his voice softening.

He asked about the girls who were hosting, and I told him about the publicity clan, and which of the editorial assistants were likely to show up. I warned him about Ron, who had yet to admit to liking a single book on Malcolm’s list. “He’s skeptical of any novel with a traditional chronology. Or even a clear narrative arc. He claims that his own novel-in-progress is written ‘inside out and backward.’”

“I have no idea what that means,” Jeremy said.

“I’m not sure Ron does either.”

I was tempted to compliment Jeremy on his own novel but decided I didn’t yet want him to know that I’d read it.

When we got off the narrow elevator in Mary’s building, we followed the sounds of the Eurythmics down the hall to apartment 6J. The door opened into a corridor that led to a living room with a single window, a couch covered with an Indian-print bedspread, and a round table filled with bowls of potato chips and onion dip and a platter of brie and crackers. Mary was standing by the table talking to some preppy guys in penny loafers. The room was too bright for a party, which gave it the slight unease of a gathering that had not yet found its flow.

Mary, wearing a thin-strapped yellow sundress, held a glass of white wine. “You came!” she said, punching me and then Jeremy lightly on the arm. I expected him to scowl at her but he smiled and thanked her for the invitation. I walked over to a small table near the windowsill, where Mary had arranged the drinks, and took a bottle of beer. Ron, looking professorial as ever with his round glasses and trimmed beard, was standing by the kitchen alcove, his arm around a girl slightly taller than he was, with short, spiky hair and a row of silver earrings in her left ear. He indicated I should join them and clinked his beer against mine.

“This is Kayla,” he said. Spotting Jeremy talking to Mary by the drinks table, Ron asked, “Your date?”

“Hardly. Mary asked me to invite him.”

Kayla turned to see who we were talking about. “I feel like I know that guy,” she said.

“That’s the guy I’ve told you about,” Ron said. “The ridiculously talented Jeremy Grand, aka God’s gift to lepers.”

“Was that an actual compliment?” I said.

Ron shook his head slowly. “I said he has talent. I didn’t say he had broken new ground.”

Kayla peered behind Ron, squinting toward Jeremy. “That’s Jeremy Greenberg,” she said. “I sat next to him in social studies at Millburn Junior High.”

“He changed his name?” Ron said.

“He’s Jewish?” I said. “From New Jersey?”

Kayla nodded. “Yes, yes, and yes.”

Ron turned toward Kayla. “You’re from New Jersey?”

She gave him a withering stare. I looked at Jeremy, who was laughing at something Mary was saying. I had gotten Jeremy completely wrong. He had no more been born into Franny’s world than I had.

Kayla walked up to Jeremy and, ignoring Mary, held up her hand and waved her fingers at him. He looked at her without recognition, and then as she spoke, pointing at her hair, which probably wasn’t so edgy back in eighth grade, it seemed to dawn on him that he did know her. I tried to hear what they were saying, but Mary, who had been pushed out of the conversation by Kayla, turned toward the rest of us to announce that our estimated time of departure to progress to the next location of the party, at Seventy-First off Third, would be in precisely ten minutes.

I downed my beer, grabbed another, and stood by the door so that I could be one of the first to leave. Jeremy followed. Without waiting for the rest of the group to come downstairs, we started walking west. For about a block, I debated saying anything at all, but then I couldn’t resist. “Nice to meet you, Jeremy Greenberg.”

“I’m not embarrassed by it,” he said. “I mean, it’s not like it’s a secret.”

“Of course not,” I said, thinking that it was exactly like that.

“I changed it after I graduated high school. Grand is a family name.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Wasn’t Greenberg a family name too? The actual family name? I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the name had been changed from Greenberg to Grand at Ellis Island, but it was unusual for someone so young to choose a new name and to switch from an obviously Jewish one to another so devoid of context.

“What did your parents make of that?”

“It was just another thing they didn’t understand about me.”

He didn’t offer up anything else, so I decided not to press him on it. If this night was going to be bearable, he was going to have to lighten up.

Jeremy and I arrived before the others at the next stop, in a new high-rise with a doorman. I couldn’t remember who was hosting this segment of the party, so we settled in on the black leather couches on the side of the lobby to wait. The walls were lined with mirrors, which made me slightly dizzy.