Afterparty(73)

All right, I want to.

I say, “Okay, I just have to tell Siobhan.”

Kimmy says, “Try upstairs. It’s pretty insane up there.”

? ? ?

Siobhan is on the landing with her shirt mostly unbuttoned, barefoot on the deep pile of the Persian runner, deep blues and jewel greens and wet spots. I only find her because I hear her laughing, louder and louder and louder.

I call her, but she doesn’t turn around. I touch her and she’s shivering, but her skin feels hot.

I say, “Sib, we need to go.”

“But Mommy, we just got here.”

“Yeah, but I’m sober and Arif needs a ride. He’s sick.”

She looks over the banister at the party below, teetering over the railing. She says, “Who elected you nanny?”

I say, “Come on, he’s really sick. Kimmy can’t take him because she’s plowed.”

“Oh no!” Siobhan says. “Not Kimmy! Maybe you should go try to button up her shirt and take her home too. Or you could stay and get some check marks. Don’t you want some cocoa-puffs? Little bitty blow? You know you do.”

“Sib, we’re going. I can’t play with this stuff: bad genes.”

She gives me a little-kid-pout face. “You’re already half her. Don’t you even want to know what would happen?”

A completely trashed boy I don’t know comes out of a bedroom and says he’ll take Siobhan home.

“Fuck off,” she says. “Like this is taking me home? You go, I’ll taxi. It’s not like I never went to a party and got home fine without you before.”

She looks like the girl who gets into a taxi and is never seen again, not the girl who is going to get home just fine.

At this point, Charlene Perry, who appears never to drink but does a damn good impersonation of a totally drunk girl, comes down the hall. “I’ll take her home. I’m not, you know, incapacitated.”

Siobhan is already heading into another bedroom, leaning on the guy’s bigger, cuter friend.

Charlene says, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of her. This is a Winston party. I have pepper spray.”

Someone is making noise about flamethrowers. I say, “What’s that?” And Charlene says, “Cigarettes with smack sprinkles. These people have everything,” as she heads downstairs. “And I won’t forget Siobhan, get out of here.”

? ? ?

The walk from the party house to my car is completely silent except for Arif groaning and thanking me. The drive to his house is silent except for the voice of my GPS lady taking us into the stratosphere of Bel Air. I am hyperaware of Dylan sitting next to me, of the proximity of his elbow, but he might as well be a crash dummy.

Arif’s house is a giant concrete fortress, built into a hillside, looking out at the city. We are at the gated end of a long driveway flanked by rows of conical trees.

I say, “It’s so modern.”

Dylan, slightly slurred, says, “You were expecting minarets?”

Arif moans for Dylan to shut up, and rests his head against the window.

Dylan says, “Reef, where’s your key?”

“Didn’t need it,” Arif says. “My car opens the gate.”

There is a very serious fence. “Great security,” I say.

“Just buzz,” Arif says.

Just buzzing doesn’ t seem like that great an alternative. I have a vision of my dad’s face if some unknown person in an ancient Volvo unloaded me in that kind of shape, but I can’t think of any other way to get Arif into his house.

I punch the buzzer, the shortest buzz humanly possible, and drive in as the gate swings open.

Arif’s dad is at the front door in pajamas and a striped bathrobe. He looks upset, but not homicidal. This is good. I don’t want to be responsible for Arif being the object of parental rage.

Dylan does the drunk equivalent of helping Arif exit the backseat, and I sit there feeling useless and still worried I’m about to witness Arif getting creamed.

But his dad, fumbling around with his glasses, just kind of hugs him and looks concerned as Arif tells him about the bad nachos.

And then Arif’s dad says to Dylan, “Have you been drinking, D.K.?”

Dylan says, “Not Arif. He’s sick.”

“I can see that,” Arif’s dad says. “What about you?”

“I have a designated driver,” Dylan says. “I’ll be fine. She’s driving me home.”

Arif’s dad peers in at me. He says to Dylan, “There’s a young lady in that car.”

Mr. Saad leans down toward me. “I’d be happy to drive both of you, and you could come get your car in the morning.” He pushes his glasses along the bridge of his nose, as if he’s trying to get a better look at me. “Or Mrs. Saad could drive you.”

Mr. Saad looks approximately as happy as my dad would be with the idea of me driving a drunk guy around in the middle of the night. The Saads and my dad and the Donnellys are no doubt all in a secret support group for the militantly overprotective. But the last thing in the world I want to have happen—just before being struck by giant bolts of lightning—is to lose the opportunity to be alone with Dylan.

I say, “Thank you so much, but I told my dad I needed to drop two friends off”—lie, lie, lie, even Arif seems to be jolted out of his nauseated, half-dead state by my creativity—“so I’ll be fine. But thank you. That’s very nice of you.”