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Two nurses rooming on the third floor were having a party that evening. One of them had slipped a note under my door, bidding me to come and bring my own bottle. And so, shortly after nine o’clock, I climbed the steps carrying my fifth of Jack Daniel’s. The sounds of laughter and badinage reached me as I climbed, and I arrived on the third floor to find the nurses’ door wide open and guests overflowing into the hallway. The party had reached the point of uninhibited conversation. The kitchen was full of people mixing drinks as they talked and blew smoke, and one man eased past me with three drinks in his hands and a filter cigarette stuck in his teeth. Sinatra sang from the hi-fi in the next room. Through the archway, I could see furniture pushed against the wall to make room for dancing, and several couples were already swaying around the floor.
I poured myself a double and sidled into the next room, searching for familiar faces through the haze of cigarette smoke. Most of the young crowd smoked in those days, and few of us gave a damn about staying in shape. I passed a couple standing so close together they were nearly touching noses. The man worked in the office next to mine at good old North Chemical and Photographic. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and spoke in his usual corporate staccato. The woman, lovely and Italian, blinked at his bursts.
I nodded hello to two graduate students from India. One of them was a Sikh, who wore a turban and eventually married one of the nurses and, with her, disappeared into the storied masses of his native land. The other settled in Uganda and later died there in some violent political episode. Standing next to them, and hardly conversing, was Anna.
She and I had gone out together perhaps a year earlier. I remembered how tense she was, how her cigarette trembled in her fingers, how she would glance about as though she expected something to come crashing through the walls. She appeared calmer now as I studied her face. Her smile was genuine, her dark eyes approving.
“Well—Anna,” I said, having forgotten how beautiful she was.
“How are you, Terry?” She had learned the American idiom, but still spoke in the rhythms of her native Hungary.
“Fine, I suppose. This is a busy place.”
“It’s Friday.”
“Still studying?”
“Part-time. I work at the bank.”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
“No—no one in particular.”
“Mind if I call?”
“Go right ahead. Why did you stop calling?”
“I—uh, can I get you a drink?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
Why did I stop calling? Ah, yes—that red-headed nurse had turned my head. We had quite a fling, as people described such affairs of passion and spontaneity. Anna had heard about it, of course, and she was looking at me with a wry grin.
“Still planning on law school?” I asked, changing the subject anyway.
“Yes—someday.”
I eyed the soft tan of her gypsy face and the long dark hair that flowed across her shoulders.
“Are you with anyone?” I asked.
“Not really. I came over with Larry and Andrea.”
“May I see you home?”
“Sure,” she said quietly.
Just then, Larry and Andrea danced near and stopped to chat. Larry Fazio and I golfed and skied together, and Andrea was the secretary for the Director of Purchasing at good old North Chemical and Photographic. Erroll Garner finished a set on the hi-fi. Sinatra returned. Larry decided to change partners and danced away with Anna. I did the same with pretty, blue-eyed Andrea. And so, Anna and I went our separate ways around the room, dancing, drinking, smoking, and talking until we were hoarse.
On one of my trips to my bottle in the kitchen, I noticed some odd-looking newcomers. They were graduate students and among the arty cranks showing up on college campuses. One was fat and wore a dark sweater under his bib overalls. He was laughing over the Bay of Pigs. Another wore baggy corduroy trousers that hadn’t been cleaned recently. He stood hangdog, smoking the foulest cigarette that had ever insulted my nostrils. The woman with them had an ashen face, wore a baggy dress, and was speaking of Zen. I listened for a bit and then retreated to the innocent air of the next room.
Later, the two nurses set out a buffet, and we all gathered to feed ourselves. The three newcomers drifted among us. The fat one began again, this time praising Khrushchev and the Berlin Wall. I think he said the wall was “the boundary between thesis and antithesis.” By then, I was in a fog from my intake of whiskey, but I could still see Anna glaring at him. Her lips began to tremble. She reached for a bowl on the buffet and set it on the palm of her hand as though she were about to put the shot.
“Anna,” I whispered—firmly enough to make her pause. She stayed angry, and I touched her shoulder. “Do you really want to bean that guy with the Swedish meatballs?”
“How I loathe such people,” she said in a fearful Hungarian hiss.
“Remember the nurses—our friends. Don’t make a scene.”
Anna relented. Her fine breasts stopped heaving, and her look softened. She put the bowl back in its proper place. “Maybe I should go now.”
“Yes, and I should, too.”
We found Anna’s coat and said good-bye to the nurses, two good-natured girls from the nearby hospital. They were delighted that Anna and I were leaving together, seeing it, I suppose, as evidence of a successful party.
About Robert Watts Lamon
