The party was my idea. I had been “a good boy” for four months and thought something celebratory was deserved. But since lavish Halloween parties had been a part of my past (the past that Jayne wanted to deny and erase) we fought about this “bash” (my word; Jayne used the term “bacchanal”) amiably, even playfully, until—surprise—she gave in. I credited this to the distraction of the upcoming reshoots for a movie she thought she had finished in April but that the studio wanted to tweak after audience testing proved clarifications were needed to simplify a totally ludicrous big-budget thriller that was impossible to follow. I had seen a rough cut in New York the month before and was secretly appalled but in the limo ride back to the Mercer I raved about the thing until Jayne, seething and staring straight ahead, said, “Shut your mouth now, please.” In the limo that night I realized Jayne was essentially a simple, private person, a woman who had lucked into a career that seemed fast and baffling to her and that this worry about the reshoots was at the heart of why she relented and allowed me to throw the party on the evening of the thirtieth (trick-or-treating would take up the following night). The invitations had been e-mailed to a smattering of my friends (Jay, who was in town on his book tour; David Duchovny; a few cast members from last season’s Survivor; my Hollywood agent, Bill Block; Kate Betts, who was here covering something for the New York Times Style section; and students from my writing workshop) and also, unfortunately, to a couple of Jayne’s acquaintances (mostly parents of Robby’s and Sarah’s friends, whom she couldn’t stand either but had invited in a moment of passive aggression; I kept my mouth shut). Jayne’s second way of protesting the party: no costume, just black Tuleh slacks and a white Gucci blouse. “Nothing accessorized with straw and no apple bobbing” were further demands, and when I complained during the planning stages that Jayne was lacking in Halloween spirit, her concession was to hire an expensive catering company from town. The kids were forewarned that this would be an adult party; they’d be allowed to mingle for the first hour and then it was up to bed since it was a Thursday and hence a school night. In one last-ditch effort Jayne suggested it should be a school night for me as well, that maybe my time would be better spent working instead of throwing a party. But Jayne never understood that the Party had been my workplace. It was my open market, my battleground, it was where friends were made, lovers were met, deals were struck. Parties seemed frivolous and random and formless but in fact were intricately patterned, highly choreographed events. In the world in which I came of age the Party was the surface on which daily life took place. When I tried explaining this in earnest, Jayne just stared at me as if I had suddenly become retarded.
I removed the sombrero and looked at myself in the multitude of mirrors in Jayne’s bathroom (we each had our own), checking my hair from various angles. I’d had it colored the day before to cover the gray on the sides but was afraid I was slowly losing it, like my father had, even though Joelle, my hairdresser, kept stressing that hair loss was represented by the mother’s side of the family. For some reason, “the golden autumnal night” was a phrase that kept repeating itself in my mind as I looked at my hair, and I liked it so much that I decided to incorporate it into my new novel once I sat down the next day to go over the outline. Behind me was a walk-in steam shower with multiple showerheads and a huge tub made from Italian marble that I stared at admiringly whenever I was in Jayne’s bathroom; its extravagance touched something in me, defined in some way who I was now, what I had become even as it was also evolving into a symbol of my precariousness in this world. Hair inspection completed, I left the bathroom and ran my hands across the Frette sheets that hugged our massive bed before turning off the lights.
As I made my way down the grand, curving staircase the cell phone in my back pocket rang. After glancing at my Tank watch I checked the incoming number. It was Kentucky Pete, my dealer, and when I answered the phone he said he was en route.
Note to reader: Yes, I was no longer technically clean. I had mildly relapsed. It hadn’t taken long. A student party on campus during the third week of September, to be somewhat exact. A geek from the graduate program offered me a line—and then another—in a dingy dormitory bathroom, and then I guzzled twenty beers tapped from a keg while students huddled around me as I regaled them with stories about my former successes. Jayne was hardly oblivious but there were certain waves of information she could not bring herself to ride. If her faith in me had been vaguely faltering since the beginning of October—a sense that taking me back was turning into a mistake—it had not yet hit a crisis point. Though I could tell she was fearful, it was contained and hadn’t bloomed out of control. I felt I had time to redeem myself. But not on Halloween.