I.
Alan and Virginia walk through the cold, wrapped tight in their winter coats, making their way for a friend's apartment for a New Year's party. They walk without speaking, their feet clicking on the frozen sidewalk. They reach the building, ring the buzzer, and find themselves in a mass of friends from the past, many of whom they have lost contact. Alan looks at Virginia and smiles, content for the first time in weeks. She smiles back with some effort, and he feels the anxiety release his heart. Just then, a face previously lost to history surfaces and approaches Alan, gripping his shoulder.
"Alan Harrison, my man," he says, holding out his hand.
"Ken," Alan says, shaking his friend's hand. "You remember my fiancée, Virginia?"
"How could I forget?" Ken says, grinning. "How are you?" he asks Virginia, holding his hand out for her.
"Fine," she says, accepting his hand.
"Hey, Natasha," he says into the crowd, over the surround sound stereo of the apartment, waving a woman over from the other side of the room.
A woman in her early thirties, tall and slender with a shapely body, strawberry blonde and attractive, sees Ken and smiles, excusing herself from her conversation with three hipster editors from New York's most popular magazines before walking over, smiling excitedly.
"Natasha, this is my old friend, Alan Harrison," Ken says with an arm around her waist. "I'm not sure if I ever mentioned him, but we went to school together."
"You have, actually," Natasha says in a thick Russian accent, flashing a smile at Alan as she extends her hand. "How do you do?"
"Good, good," Alan says modestly.
"This is Alan's fiancée, Virginia. We all went to school together, actually," Ken explains.
"It's been a long time," Virginia says.
"Not too long," Ken says, smiling.
"Ken is very fond of his college years," Natasha says, lifting a champagne flute to her lips and drinking its contents.
"Well," Alan says, clapping his hands together, "A New Year's spent in celebration of our history."
"Good man," Ken says, patting Alan on the back.
They all laugh as the owner of the apartment enters the group.
"Mr. Harrison," he says, opening his arms for a hug.
"Michael," Alan says joyously, embracing his friend. "We just got in."
"I see that," Michael says, releasing him. "Mrs. to-be Harrison," he says, shifting his attention to Virginia and opening his arms for another hug.
"Hello, Michael," she says, pressured into a hug that he obviously enjoys more, pulling her tight and holding on to her. "Nice to see you," he says casually when he pulls away.
"Likewise," she says, distant.
Michael shows the group around the apartment and they all catch up on each other's lives since the Grad school years. Ken has published three best selling successes, his first while still in school, and is working on his fourth. Natasha is a highly sought after model with increasing appearances in magazines and at fashion shows. Virginia admits her unemployment. Alan tells of his position at Garden High, which he suddenly reflects with regret, feeling a notch above unemployed. Throughout the night, they consume much alcohol and behave accordingly. Alan is too drawn into his company to notice Virginia's nervous stare, removed to the point of being undetectable. Alan listens to tales of Ken's publishing experiences with admiration, though contempt burns beneath his skin. Natasha is a perfect accessory for Ken, as she stands beside him with a pleasant, permanent smile, a contrast to Virginia that no one seems to notice. Excitement gathers in the apartment when the ball is about to drop, and the crowd explodes when it does. In the midst of the commotion, Natasha gives Alan a supposed celebratory kiss on the lips, and Ken pulls Virginia in for an embrace, clutching her buttocks. This happens so instantly and unexpectedly that neither Alan or Virginia know how to react, but the energy of the party and flow of champagne drain away the need for a reaction in the first place.
II.
Alan studies Ken's living room with awe, having been persuaded by Ken and Natasha at the end of Michael's party to accompany them by taxi to their new house in Valley Rise, as both he and Virginia are well over the legal blood alcohol limit for driving. He has heard countless tales of success tonight among his old peers, which has made him question the worth of his own career, which is leagues below the level of his dreams, a level of which Ken has attained with seemingly no effort. He has thought very little of Natasha's modeling success, however, finding little respect for high public response over attractive faces, which makes Virginia's unemployment, her lack of use for her Master's degree in psychology, seem less tedious, especially since Natasha's beauty does not outshine that of Virginia, his own fiancée. Alan finishes scanning entire walls' worth of bookshelves and sets his attention on Ken, who sits across from him at the glass
table, each of their significant others at their respective sides.
"This place is amazing," Alan says. "Things have really worked out for you, Ken," he adds, nodding respectfully.
"I just wouldn't take 'no,'" Ken says. "That's all there is to it."
"Why have you not published something of your own?" Natasha asks. "As I recall, Ken has said wonderful things about your work since the school days. He claimed he really had a run for his money."
"I could never catch up," Alan confesses. "I used to write short stories here and there, but I never finished any big work."
"I'm telling you, you have it in you," Ken assures him.
"You know," Alan begins, laughing, "There was this one idea I had. If I followed through with it, I wouldn't be teaching high school students, but I also might have gone insane."
"What?" Ken says, narrowing in on Alan. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, I don't know. To me, books are ideas that require a human mind to unearth and embody. Some ideas are too strong for an individual to handle, and it gets lost. That's what happened to me and my unborn career."
"I think you just need to relax," Ken says. "You stand too close to your own personal morals and fear going across the grain. You've always been conscious of how you feel people will perceive your work, the reflection of your mind. You can't tell me that you weren't hungry before. And where would that hunger go?"
Alan sits silently in his chair and sips from a glass of ice water resting on the table in front of him.
"May I use the restroom?" he says, rising from his chair.
