A lot's happened in the last fourteen months. Last year, in June, my son graduated from high school. Jake was accepted to a good college and better yet he was awarded a full scholarship. Holly and I wanted to show how proud we were of his hard work so we threw a big house party. He invited all of his friends. The whole house was open. In hindsight I suppose I should have limited the number of guests. The day of the party, it appeared that everyone in his graduating class was in my house or in my backyard. Two days ago I received my signed divorce papers in the mail.
From the onset, I was stationed at the grill. Occasionally I got as far as the drink table and, thank God, the bathroom but mostly I was surrounded by eighteen year olds swilling down sodas and eating burgers and franks like they hadn't eaten since Junior High. We limited the drink selection to cans. My thought was that with no punch bowl there was no punch to spike. That was a tactic that seemed to work very well. For most of the early evening all I saw were cans of soda, tea and juice.
I shut down the grill at eight thirty. By nine o'clock I was lighting the torches around the perimeter of the yard. Jake started up the music. We live in a neighborhood where the yards are big and normally very quiet, I'd already alerted the neighbors to the potential for loud music and that's exactly what it was, loud with a thick hard driving beat.
At first, no one ventured out to dance. Then Holly started it all. She made her way into the yard pulling a reluctant young man out of the crowd. I had seen her occasionally all evening but she looked different now. I remember the skirt and top being bigger and looking more proper on her when I first saw her dressing that afternoon. As she pulled her reluctant dance partner behind her, she looked downright hot. The skirt was short and form fitting. The top was tight and two buttons too many were left unfastened, revealing plenty of cleavage. She had black sandals with four inch heels that completed her ensemble. All in all, she was displaying plenty of her perfectly shaped legs and wonderful breasts. She flitted in and around the groups of graduates like a bee in a garden. In the yard with the dance music throbbing, the guy she had dragged into the middle of the yard lost his inhibitions and danced with Holly. He danced with my wife like she was one of the graduates. He freely grabbed her waist twirled her and pulled her in close for a quick dip. They circled around each other while keeping constant bodily contact. There was a collective gasp from my side of the crowd. I looked up from the sound equipment just as Holly was playfully pushing her young partner away from her. A girl in front of me whispered to her portly friend, "Did you see that? He totally just dry humped her." Just as I was going to say something the yard was inundated with dancing high school graduates. I lost sight of Holly.
The morning of the party I planted a tall PVC pole in the center of the yard. On top of it a put a pulley, a pan and several flashlights. By pulling a cord I could position the pan up or down along the pole and spin it. A remote control on the lights let me turn them on or off. After the first song, only a few minutes after Holly's exhibition, I announced "Here's how it works folks, I have no control over the lights. They're going to spin and when they stop, its your spotlight. Use it to do whatever you want. Keep it real but keep it PG!" I then turned on the lights and spun the pan. The light stopped on a couple of girls. They looked around then broke out into some fast moves that looked more like a zumba routine than dance steps. Applause and wolf whistles filled the air as the song came to an end.
Over the loud speaker I announced, "Okay, everyone understands idea. It's your spotlight, use it!" Then I turned off the lights and gave the pan a spin. As it was coming slowly to a stop I flicked on the lights and watched as they landed on a black couple at the edge of the yard. They broke out into some great robotic moves. Again, the applause was nearly deafening. The third couple looked to be a perfect match. Both were very overweight with pale pasty skin. Immediately they broke out into complimenting dance moves. He was making worshipping movements around her. Then as if pantomiming a story she seemed to notice him for the first time and they danced together as a couple. It had to have been a practiced routine. It didn't matter to the crowd, they loved it. I continued to work the lights and the intercom. I didn't notice the time going by. Everyone was having a great time and without any of them knowing it, I had managed to keep all of the dancing clean. I felt proud of myself.
A little after midnight I gave the light duties to Theo; a close friend of Jake's. By that time, the crowd had thinned and I had to announce to the remaining diehards that the party would be ending in forty five minutes. The house wasn't wall to wall graduates as it had been earlier; the ones that remained were bunched into groups. I heard snatches of things said such as "I'm leaving for boot camp in six weeks" and "classes start in August. My folks want me to get a summer job until then." Occasionally one or another of the grads would thank me for the party. None of them slurred their speech or had an unsteady gait. Mission accomplished. Everything was going great. I just had to find Jake and Holly so we could make the concerted announcement that the party was coming to its official end. After that, well, I had all weekend to clean up the mess. I had thought ahead and rented a steam cleaner for the carpet, but, it looked like I didn't need it. Things were looking great and I was feeling good.
It took me a while to find Jake. Never being the social butterfly that his mother is, he was on the front porch talking with a mix of friends; some I knew and recognized from football games and PTA meetings, others I'd never seen. Jake introduced me to them all. Most of them were heading off to college with two of the bigger guys going into the Marines. "Have you seen your mom?" I asked Jake as a start to my farewell.
"The last time I saw her, she was getting some tea from the frig. But that's been a little while ago. She's probably out back dancing; a couple of the guys from the basketball team were trying to get her to dance. One of the girls sitting on the porch swing piped up "Yeah I saw her by the bushes in the back, kind of dancing by herself. James and Kevin were talking to her."
"The bushes?" I asked while trying to envision the yard. We didn't have any 'bushes' in the back. All of the arboreta were in the front yard. Answering my unspoken question Jake offered, "The azaleas mom planted near the pine tree." I snapped my fingers and thanked the girl as I went back into the house. Walking through the dining room I reveled on how well the party had gone. For weeks Holly warned that so many happy graduates would only mean a drunken mess. She pushed for celebrating Jake's college graduation instead. I stopped and talked to a couple of boys in the kitchen and drank in my wife's wrongful assumptions.
Holly was nowhere near the bushes. I walked around the yard and didn't find her anywhere on the property. The crowd of dancers was dwindling. For the first time I could see the neighbor's car without having to stand on the garden wall to look over the crowd. I went back into the house through the sliding glass doors in the kitchen. There was a tall black youth at the sink filling a cup. He was filling it from a small glass bottle. He didn't seem to notice me until I opened the basement door. Then he turned just as I was heading down the stairs. "Hey man, they're meeting down there..." I turned around and looked up. He shot me a look of pure terror then disappeared as if fleeing a crime scene. I could have gone upstairs and looked for him. But, just as I was weighing that option, I heard my wife's slurred speech. "Now, that wasn't part of the deal. No touching mister." Between bursts of giggles she said "Now you know we shouldn't be doing this. I'm married. And you're...?"
A stern male voice replied, "I'm eighteen, we is all old enough. Now come on bitch. You know you want it." "No I don't want it." Holly didn't sound very stern and the giggle that followed betrayed her protest.
I stood on the steps not daring to move, but instead, tried to hear more than just my heart beat. I was worried that whoever was down there with Holly could hear my breathing. I took a couple more steps. I was nearly at the bottom. The basement is divided into two equal sized parts. The side to my right was where the laundry, water heater and furnace were located. On my left was the entertainment room. It has a pool table, foosball table and big screen TV. The steps are walled on both sides.
I was standing on the last step going down. The light over the pool table was spilling onto the landing in front of me. As if on cue, the light dimmed. I stepped onto the landing and turned to see my wife leaning over the pool table. Her head was down and she was facing the green felt. Her skirt was bunched up around her waist. There were several plastic cups sitting on the window ledge.
