This Close to Okay(60)

Since he’d left his phone at Tallie’s, Emmett had no access to his emails, but he was still thinking about them. It was all he could think about when he met Lionel for the first time upstairs. It was all he could think about when Zora welcomed them in. On sight, Emmett had decided that Lionel wasn’t a douchey finance bro or an asshole. He was generous and kind, not worried about his house and expensive art collection getting trashed by drunken people in elaborate costumes. Emmett had liked him immediately, and Lionel and Tallie really did seem to click on and glow around each other.

The party was catered, but partygoers had also brought a bounty of cakes, cookies, pies, fruit. It wasn’t quite bacchanalian, or at least not yet, but the atmosphere whished, as if anything could happen. Everything in excess—the wine, the food, the house that grew before Emmett’s eyes anytime he moved around inside the wide expanse of it.

(Costumed people fill the kitchen, milling in and out of the three pairs of tall glass doors leading to open air. Drinking. Dancing. Mingling. Eating. Revelers swig bubbly gin with tropical-green wedges of lime. Clink bourbon. Chug beers. Slush their glasses full of red or white from the wine spheres, bob for apples in the sink. A rotating cast of bodies octopussing—arms reaching out for marshmallow-chocolate squares, salted nuts, stinky cheese, and figs. Limp hands made alive and desirous over and over like The Creation of Adam.)

He and Tallie filled their plates with spicy chicken wings and steak kebabs with green peppers, tomatoes, and mushrooms. Fries, jalape?o poppers, and sweet piquant peppers. Olives stuffed with herbed goat cheese. A man in a yellow hat carrying a copper bucket of champagne bottles scooted past them with a white-faced capuchin monkey on his shoulder. The monkey squeaked, looked Emmett in the eyes, opened his little mouth wide; Emmett stared back at it, opened his mouth, too.

“Hey, man,” he said, smiling at the monkey before he disappeared.

“Dang it. I totally forgot to tell you about the Man with the Yellow Hat and his Curious George! He’s here every year,” Tallie said. She laughed and held her hand over her mouth, finished chewing before motioning across the room. “I want you to meet my dad and stepmom,” she said, lifting her hand at the couple walking toward them dressed as Shaft and Foxy Brown. “Hi, Daddy,” she said, hugging him. “Glory, you look so pretty.”

“Thank you, Tallie,” Glory said, stepping back to give her a spin.

“Y’all, this is my friend Emmett. Emmett, this is my dad, Gus, and my stepmom, Glory,” Tallie said, nudging him forward.

Emmett said hi to them, shaking their hands.

“You two really do look great. The Shaft theme song should’ve started playing when you walked over,” he said.

Gus nodded and laughed. “It was definitely playing in my mind, hence the swagger.”

“Who are y’all?” Glory asked, leaning forward to see Tallie’s FBI badge. “Oh, the alien show that scares me,” she said, recognizing it. “Even the theme song creeps me out.”

“I’m Scully; he’s Mulder.”

Emmett drank from his almost-empty beer bottle and didn’t even mind the small talk with Tallie’s family. She was so happy, talking to everyone. He told Gus and Glory where he was from and that Tallie was the reason he was in Louisville, the same thing he’d told Judith that morning. Although it was a lie, it didn’t feel like one anymore. Now he couldn’t imagine Louisville without Tallie and didn’t want to. Gus and Glory talked about being born and raised in Louisville and how much they loved to travel. They’d recently returned from Greece and had plans to visit again the following spring.

“Where’s my son?” Gus asked, looking around.

“He was upstairs in a Bigfoot costume, but don’t tell him I told you,” Tallie said.

“Deal. We’ll find him and scoot. You know I’m an early bird,” Glory said, before touching Tallie’s face and saying, “You look so pretty. And it was nice to meet you, Emmett.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” Emmett said before they walked away.

*



He and Tallie finished their plump little beers. Zora and some women were dancing nearby on the patio to a Tears for Fears song blaring from the outside speakers, and Tallie stepped out to join them. Donnie Darko had ended and restarted, playing silently on the projection screen by the pool. Emmett had seen the movie many times before, oddly comforted by how it was funny, unsettling, and so like a comic book all at once. He walked closer to the doors, leaned over to see the screen. Straight ahead, Tallie was talking to three women dressed in sequined frocks—the Supremes. Their dresses caught the light, sent it scattering onto the other costumes and flashing across the window glass.

He spotted Bigfoot in the distance, shadowing across the leaves, walking alone with smooth, long strides before disappearing into the trees. Having lost sight of Lionel, Emmett refocused on Tallie talking to her friends. His Scully, delighted and popping glossy olives from her plate. He adjusted his tie, his FBI badge, took another bite of his food. Watched the projection screen—Jake Gyllenhaal and Jena Malone in a darkened theater next to the metal-faced rabbit. He glanced inside the house at the couch in the living room and saw a woman in an intense red dress with her eyes closed, slack as a dying rose. He stared to make sure she was breathing. She wasn’t. Emmett’s adrenaline flared hot, and he walked toward her. As soon as he got there, her eyes opened. She shot up, laughing loudly and pointing at someone across the room, never giving Emmett a thought. A balloon pop went off like a gunshot in the kitchen, startling him again.