The Way You Look Tonight (2 page)

‘Great party, as usual.'

Deborah Robinson looked at Pete Griffin's reddening cheeks and forehead perspiring below thinning brown hair. She'd thought earlier the room was getting a bit stuffy. Pete's condition proved her right. The roaring fire in the fireplace was adding too much heat. ‘I'm glad you're enjoying it, Pete,' she said, making a mental note to turn down the thermostat and lower the furnace heat. ‘We've never had a party this big.'

‘I feel a little out of place with all these attorneys. Am I the only non-lawyer you and Steve know?'

Deborah laughed and started to say, ‘Of course not.' Then she glanced around the room. Everyone was either a lawyer or accompanying one. ‘It doesn't look like we do, does it? But you know how our Christmas parties usually turn out – gatherings for the people Steve works with in the Prosecutor's office.'

‘Well, it was nice of you to invite me anyway.'

‘We
always
invite you. You're one of Steve's oldest friends.'

Pete grinned. ‘Steve's just hoping I'll start doing his taxes for free.'

‘It's always good to have a CPA on your side, particularly one who owns the largest CPA firm in town. By the way, where's your son?'

‘At fifteen, Adam considers himself too cool for parties like this. He's at a friend's house listening to brain-rattling heavy-metal music and complaining because I won't get him a car.'

‘He doesn't even have a driver's license yet.'

‘Adam considers that a moot point,' Pete said, pulling a droll face. ‘He thinks we should be planning and saving. He wants a Viper.'

‘Just the thing for a new driver.'

‘I agree. A fifteen-year-old with a fifty-thousand-dollar sports car. I get dizzy just thinking about it.'

Deborah laughed. She understood why Pete was Steve's closest friend. Aside from sharing memories dating back to when they were children, Pete was intelligent, unassuming, and always there when you needed him. Deborah had always been particularly fond of him, with his diffident manner which hid a dry humor and iron devotion to the son he'd raised alone after his wife left him three years ago, never even trying to get custody of the child and rarely communicating with him. The last she'd heard, Hope Griffin was in Montana, valiantly working at preserving the environment. ‘Save the wolves and abandon your own son,' Deborah's husband Steve had said sourly. ‘Now there's a woman with her priorities straight.'

‘Personally, I think it would be wonderful to be fifteen and have so many hopes and dreams,' Deborah said, trying to put Pete's concerns over his son's grand ambitions back in perspective. ‘I remember at that age I thought I was going to be the next Karen Carpenter.'

Pete smiled. ‘And I was going to be the next Frank Lloyd Wright.'

‘I didn't know you were interested in architecture.'

‘I wasn't after I found out being able to do some oil paintings my grandmother gushed over didn't mean I had a talent for building design.'

‘I guess our experiences were similar. All it took for me was hearing a tape of myself singing ‘Rainy Days and Mondays” to do the trick. I was horrified. Still, it was fun for a while to believe anything was possible.'

‘Adam is still at that stage. He changes his mind nearly every week about what he wants to do with his life. Last week he saw
Top Gun
again, so now he's going to be a jet pilot. Wait until your little Brian gets to be this age.'

Deborah looked at him in mock horror. ‘He's only five. I hope I have a few more peaceful years.'

Pete glanced at his watch. ‘I really hate to put a damper on the party, although I don't think I'll be missed, but I told Adam I wanted him home at eleven. I like to be there waiting for him, so I should be going.'

‘You could call from here to make sure he's heading home soon.'

‘And humiliate him in front of his friends?' Pete shook his head sadly. ‘Deborah, you have a lot to learn about teenagers. That would bring on several days of sullen silences and looks full of burning resentment. I don't think I'm up to it. No, I'll just be waiting like a huge mound of conscience when he gets in. If he's not on time, I'll be able to deliver my time-worn speech on trust, responsibility, and the consideration he deserves to give other people, particularly his poor old dad.'

‘You're a cruel and heartless man,' Deborah laughed.

‘The worst. It's my greatest joy in life.'

Deborah signaled Steve, who was talking to Evan Kincaid. Steve – rangy and earnest-looking although capable of a rare, boyish grin – hurried to her, his light brown hair damp at the hairline, his own color heightened.

‘So, how're we doing over here?' he asked easily.

‘Pete thinks he should go home to check on Adam.'

‘He's not sick, is he?'

‘No, just out partying with friends.'

‘Is that all? In that case, how about having one drink with me before you go? I think I've got some really good stuff out in the kitchen. Chivas Regal, twelve years old.'

‘That's hard to turn down,' Pete said. ‘But Adam…'

‘Hey, cut the kid some slack, will you? Fifteen minutes isn't such a big deal.'

Pete looked torn, then smiled. ‘All right, a quick one and then I'm on the road.'

‘Can you do without me for a few minutes?' Steve asked Deborah.

‘I'll try to muddle through, but don't you two start talking over the good old high-school days and stay in there for ever.'

‘We'll try not to,' Steve laughed over his shoulder as the two started toward the kitchen.

No, they certainly wouldn't, Deborah thought. Pete was much too concerned about Adam to linger for long. He was overprotective with the boy, and according to Steve, had been ever since his divorce. He'd lost his wife and he was afraid of losing his son, too, which was unlikely because beneath Adam Griffin's teenage bravado, he was deeply attached to his father. Still, she knew that Steve, meaning to be kind in asking to have a private drink with Pete, was merely making the man more nervous about his delayed arrival home.

Deborah sighed and gazed around her large living room which had once been divided into two smaller rooms whose different functions she had never been able to determine. Steve had resisted taking out the wall between them – too much trouble, he said – but Deborah insisted. Now the two small rooms formed one spacious room made airy by a huge front window instead of the four small, paned windows that were impossible to clean. Deborah was pleased with the remodeling and thought Steve was, too, although he never said much about her efforts, obviously hoping not to encourage her to make further changes.

The smell of roast duck, candied yams, and mulled wine wafted over her from the buffet table. Her stomach rumbled maddeningly – she'd been so consumed with fixing food for two days it had lost its aesthetic appeal. Empty stomach or not, she didn't feel she could force down a bite. Besides, she was very tired. It seemed every year the party became more elaborate, and she liked to cook everything, not order from a caterer. She now found the parties more exhausting than fun, and the family ended up eating leftovers for days.

She circled around the room, asking if she could freshen drinks, offering cookies and reminding people about all the apple, pumpkin, and mincemeat pie still sitting on the buffet table. One attorney, whose name Deborah could never remember, was holding forth on a case he'd handled last year while his wife interrupted constantly, correcting everything he said, oblivious to the growing coldness of his eyes and tightening of his jaw. The girlfriend of another was talking loudly to a blue-haired matron about a serial killer luridly named ‘The Dark Alley Strangler' by a local newspaper. ‘It scares me to death to think he struck again just last Saturday night and this time right here in West Virginia,' she was saying. ‘That's seven times in three years. And that last girl. Poor thing. She was a nurse with a little kid. She's still hanging on, but they don't expect her to live.'

Deborah cringed. She supposed it was only natural that the serial killer would be mentioned at the party, but this was supposed to be a festive occasion and the discussion of violent death threw a definite pall over the evening. So much for holiday cheer.

Deborah moved on, turning down the thermostat five degrees and seeing that her guests were comfortable. Few were friends of hers. Most of them came from Steve's world, and she sensed a lot of them thought Steve had married beneath himself. Steve told her she was imagining things, but she felt their distance. Part of it was her own fault, though. She wasn't the life of the party or the confident socialite. In fact, she had come to hate the Christmas parties, which had been a pleasant ritual she and Steve started the first year they were married and over the past seven years had turned into an ordeal. Maybe this one would be the last, Deborah mused. Maybe next year she could talk him into having only a few close friends over before Christmas.

She retreated to a corner of the living room, Campari and soda in hand. Light refracted off the layers of smoke. Even the lights on the Christmas tree seemed muted, as if circled by fog. Her eyes stung beneath her contact lenses and although she had given up smoking two years ago, Deborah now felt an overwhelming desire for a cigarette –
anything
, even if it were one of the reduced tar and nicotine brands she used to hate. She would be tempted to smoke again until the room aired out, which would take a couple of days, she thought unhappily. Thank goodness she and Steve had only one party a year. If the house smelled of smoke too often, she'd never control her urge for nicotine.

She knew she should get out there among the guests and socialize, but her head was starting to hurt, she was dead tired after all her cooking, and she was feeling more and more self-conscious in the white wool dress with scoop neck and gold belt that had drawn Steve's look of censure earlier. ‘Don't you think that's a little…revealing?' he'd asked gently. ‘Why not wear the black velvet – the one I bought you just last year?' How could she tell him the black velvet dress felt bunchy and hot, its sleeves too tight, its skirt too long even for her five-foot-eight frame? Still, she would have changed to please him if the doorbell hadn't rung just then with the arrival of their first guests.

Deborah smiled across the room at Barbara Levine, her friend and Steve's associate in the Prosecutor's office. She'd met Barbara the first year she worked as a secretary in the office. One dreary November Sunday they ran into each other in a video store, both looking for
Dr Zhivago
. Barbara had already found the movie and was paying the rental fee when Deborah went to the desk, asking if it were available. The salesgirl told her they had only one copy. ‘Oh, I guess I'll look for something else,' she said, disappointed, when Barbara suddenly suggested, ‘Why don't you come home with me and watch it?' Stunned at such an invitation from the seemingly all-business, hard-as-nails lawyer who had intimidated her from day one in the office, Deborah had demurred, but Barbara insisted. They watched the movie in Barbara's apartment, eating microwave popcorn (‘the only thing I can cook,' Barbara confided) and by the end of the movie they were both in tears when the handsome Zhivago fell dead in the street while chasing his oblivious, beloved Lara. Later they had gone to an Italian restaurant together, and from that day on, Deborah had lost her fear of Barbara. They'd become friends, both with a deep love of animals, romantic movies, and Agatha Christie novels.

Barbara crossed the room to her side. ‘Has Steve deserted us?'

‘He's in the kitchen having a drink with Pete.' Barbara smiled.

‘Pete's such a nice guy. I wonder why he never remarried.'

‘I suppose because he was so badly burned the first time. And he devotes a lot of time to Adam and the grandmother in Wheeling who raised him after his parents died. She's in her eighties and has a lot of health problems.'

‘None of those reasons seem good enough for him to have cut himself off from a social life,' Barbara said. ‘He needs a girlfriend, someone with some life who'll make him start acting his age.
And
make him get a new wardrobe. His clothes all look too big, not to mention years out of date. I'm no fashion plate myself, but it seems like he's
trying
to look ten years older than he is.'

‘Remarks like that won't earn you a visit from Santa.'

Barbara giggled, her laughter softening her dark, hawk-like features. When she was young, she'd probably been attractive in a chiseled, dramatic way, Deborah often thought. But at thirty-eight, after fifteen years of twelve-hour work days and little in the way of beauty care, she usually looked thin, tense, and slightly weather-beaten with her uncreamed skin and face naked of make-up except for a careless slash of lipstick. Tonight she'd chosen an unflattering bright pink. Right now some of that pink decorated a front tooth, but Deborah had learned how defensive Barbara could be about her appearance.

‘By the way, you look great,' Barbara said. ‘I knew that dress was for you as soon as we spotted it in the store window.'

‘Steve doesn't like it.'

‘No, probably not. He's a sweet man, but he wants you to look a dowdy sixty-year-old instead of a sexy twenty-eight-year-old.'

‘Oh, Barbara, he doesn't.'

‘Yes, he does. He doesn't want you flying the coop into the arms of some other guy.'

‘That's hardly likely. Besides, you think Steve's a lot more Machiavellian than he is.'

‘Says you. You've been brainwashed into thinking you aren't anything special in the looks department. I, on the other hand, am beginning to resemble my mother, and she
is
in her sixties.' She held up a chocolate almond cookie she'd been munching. ‘And these don't help maintain a girlish figure.'