I'm Glad About You(33)

Cincinnati people are nice, Alison thought, and for the first time in a long time, the word “nice” carried no negative connotations. “Nice” didn’t mean “stupid.” It meant friendly, and easygoing, and easily moved to happiness. It meant relaxing. It meant sane.

But the nice hidden party in the bedroom upstairs couldn’t be expected to go on forever. The kindly drunken Cincinnati strangers started drifting away, and Alison was searching through the empty bottles for one which might have a few last inches of wine left in the bottom, by the time Kyle came looking for her.

He had in fact been looking for a while, as carelessly as he possibly could. As the evening wore on and he traded light chat with the few people he knew there, he would occasionally let his eyes sweep the crowd swiftly, hoping to search her out without giving any indication to Van that Alison’s presence was of the least concern to him. He had followed Alison’s coat as well. Dennis had taken it off her, just as she said hello to Van, and then carried it on his arm for several minutes before draping it over the banister of the stairway near the door. At one point it slipped off, or someone knocked it off, and from then on it lay in a heap in a corner by the door, where people kept kicking it aside until someone finally picked it up and folded it nicely before setting it on the steps. It was just a black wool coat, relatively indistinguishable from any number of other coats, but he had been tracking it since the moment he saw it on Dennis’s arm, so he knew that it was hers. All night the coat was there but Alison wasn’t—this contradiction went on for so long, at one point he wondered if she had left without it.

“It looks like your friend didn’t stay very long. I haven’t seen her since we got here,” Van finally observed.

“No.” Van of course would not have been tracking the coat. She would just be aware of Alison’s presence, or absence.

“That’s too bad. I really wanted to get to know her! We hardly had a chance to say hello.” Van issued this announcement with a sweet, good-natured sincerity that was so believable it frightened him. Did she mean this? Just hours ago she was spitting venom because he had spoken to Alison briefly about nothing. Now she wanted to get to know her? Her earnest hope to make friends with Alison struck him as the most dangerous and chilling possibility yet presented.

“I guess she did leave,” Kyle said.

“Well, that’s a shame. Dennis! We haven’t seen Alison for hours! Did she leave?”

Standing as they were near the front doorway, Van could easily intercept him on his endless ramble back to the bar. “Alison?” he asked. “No, haven’t seen her since she got here.” Dennis was steady on his feet, but Kyle had known him long enough to recognize the profound alcoholic glitter in his too-steady gaze. His words were hyperarticulated with a heaviness that indicated the coming blackout was maybe fifteen minutes away. “Fled, apparently. You scared her off, Van.”

“I didn’t!”

“You’re formidable. And gorgeous. Kyle always gets the best girls.”

“You’re terrible.”

“I could be much worse, Van; keep an open mind.”

“That’s enough of that.” Kyle draped his arm around Van’s shoulder and pulled her back to him. “She’s mine.” This made Dennis raise his eyebrows and Van blush with pleasure. She loved flirting with Dennis and seemed to have no idea that he was not fully kidding. Or did she? Maybe she was hoping to stir some sort of mysterious plot between the two of them. He didn’t know and less did he care, for he knew from years of experience that as soon as Dennis passed out, the party would dissipate quickly. If he was going to get a chance to speak to Alison alone for even one minute, he had to go looking for her now. “I’m starving,” Kyle suddenly announced. “Is there anything to eat around here? Ever?”

“Food is overrated,” Dennis informed him with a laconic grace.

“Funny, they didn’t teach us much about that in med school. I wonder why. I’m going to go find some crackers. Behave yourself,” he warned Van. She laughed and glowed at him with the charming radiance of a high school girl whose crush had just smiled at her on the way to class. Is that really all it took? Did she want so little, was that the secret? Most of the time it felt like she wanted far, far too much.

He knew the layout of the house well, as he had been there often. Down a short hallway, past a leathery den in which several people were playing a computer game on an enormous flat-screen television. Just past the den the hallway turned into the kitchen, a butcher block, stainless steel cavern which always looked like it should be crawling with minions and never was. One of those chilly bartender girls was at the sink, rinsing glassware; it was later in the evening than he thought. Up the back stairs, into a deserted passage which led to the bedrooms before curving around toward another, much larger space which Felicia had dubbed the “screening room.” If Alison was hiding out on the second floor, that was doubtless where he would find her. The floor was coated with a plush white wall-to-wall substance which he knew must be wool, but always seemed like snow to him. It silenced all footsteps.

Which was how, after thinking about her all night, he almost missed her. His approach was silent, and she was not where he expected. In fact he had passed the door to the master bedroom without even glancing in. It wasn’t till he was three steps farther on that he heard the clink of a glass and the whisper of clothing, someone moving on the bed in the room behind him. He turned simply out of instinct.