Holiday Party Extravaganza, Part II

The second and final installment of Holiday Party. Now in third person limited.

Holiday Party: Part II

The Mission

Had she taken notes? She certainly couldn't find any notes. But had she really not written anything down at all? That seemed too irresponsible to be true. Perhaps she had counted on storing every moment, every image in her mind, as if memorizing the facets of a well-guarded piece of technology in order to smuggle the design out of the workshop for later reconstruction. Alas, if she had purloined anything useful from that medieval basement, she did not know where she'd put it.

She remembered it had been cold out. She and her good friend Megan had walked down some stairs to an underground area where gathered was a cluster of Megan's co-workers. There was a bar on the left side of the main room, a fireplace straight ahead, and a dining area to the right. She remembered being greeted by a woman who resembled a bowling pin with a reddish-blonde perm. The woman was enormously tall, and both firm-bodied and comfortably corpulent. She was attractive, in a big business, newscaster sort of way. Her date had "totally ditched her," or so she proclaimed loudly several times. In the date's stead, was a pleasant-faced, short woman, who seemed like the type of loyal friend who would fill in for an absentee beau at the last minute. She remembered meeting another gigantic woman, this one, with the shape, and almost the complexion, of an orange traffic cone. Both of the enormous women wore high-heels, or so she recalled. She realized that she didn't know if they were both wearing high-heels, although she had told herself that at least one of them was intermittently threatening to topple over due to precarious shoe-ware. It didn't seem to matter though. She hadn't been there for them.

The story went something like this: her friend Megan had to attend a holiday party. The party was mandatory. Fun needed to be had. Merriment was obligatory. She was to accompany Megan—her attendance, as a guest of Megan, was also non-optional. Smiling, chatting, joking, nodding, mingling. These were the tricks of her trade. The slacks and dress shirt made for a modest disguise, but a disguise nonetheless. She didn't have much of a cover story. Her real name and occupation, she gave freely. The location place of residence, most definitely revealed. But she hadn't told anyone why she was really there. And now, she herself couldn't say why.

She certainly hadn't come for the food. At events like these, she normally ate herself into a cheese and cracker induced torpor. But she hadn't touched the mystery ball of fat and flesh that was the centerpiece of the snack plate. A few pieces of fruit were her only hors d'oeuvres. Later in the evening, she would consume more, but not with her usual exuberance. No, she had certainly not come for the food.

She met a woman squeezed into a blue, sequined dress. That's right. The head honcho. Megan's boss. How could she forget? This seemed to be essential, or was it a red herring? She remembered seeing the back of the famed individual. White-haired head swaying while sage advice was being dispensed to a rapt and impressed audience of two or three. Facing the woman, though, she saw that she was swaying with intoxication. "Aren't you sweet and cute," the woman said had to her, loosely letting her observations curl around to Megan's ears. Associate Director Megan's appearance and demeanor were apparently under surveillance by the Executive Director; later compliments by the latter would also prove to be underhanded criticisms of the former. Such as, "Megan, her haircut is so cute, why don't you get a cute haircut like that?" To which, Megan had responded with rage-filled cries of "I gave her that haircut! That's MY haircut!" In the end though, the flattery toward her seemed to be part of a game, a game for the grooming of a young apprentice. A game that Megan was important enough to be playing, but that she was not. She had done her role well though, and that was the key to winning her own game.

Megan, her boss, her boss' husband, and an older couple with whom they were friends shared the dinner table with her. The man of the older couple friends told some jokes. One went something like this: A man [Megan's boss' husband] goes to the doctor. The doctor says to him, "You have to start eating right, you have to start exercising, and you have to start having sex at least five times a week, or you'll die." The man tells his wife what the doctors says, he explains that he's made up some healthy recipes and found a gym. The wife [Megan's boss] thinks for a moment. Then she says to her husband, "I'm so sorry to hear that you're going to die." Guffaws.

Dinner began with dessert. Why not? Life is short, eat dessert first. And the tempers of hungry holiday-party-goers are even shorter, so you better serve them something if dinner's not ready yet. After the pineapple (or was it lemon?) sorbet, they waited. The whole time, Megan's boss made the others at the table give her their drinks, filling up her empty wine glass out of view of the bartender/server.

Throughout the dinner the boss had quietly delivered spoken messages to Megan's guest. The boss had said something about, well, something that had been hard to decipher. It had involved danger and intrigue. Child molesters? Suspicious people hanging out on the street? But she seemed to remember too that Megan's boss had said something about bagpipes. The comments had been abstruse, but were clearly rich with significance. After a quiet diatribe about the babies or Scotland or the swirl of hope and danger that confronted all of us each day, the boss had turned to her and asked: "Do you think yes or no?" The past middle-aged eyes had beckoned for the right answer. "Yes or no?," the plastered supervisor pleaded again, clearly there could be no equivocating or fence-sitting on this one. "Yes," the guest replied. "Good," said the wino, "thank you."

On the tails of the memory of that conversation, a shrill voice echoed in her head. Yes, a shrill voice had puller her closer. "Don't let her have any more!," the voice had said. "She's had enough." The same voice had screeched, "They're trying to kill me!" when her air supply tube had popped out of the tank. But this was the head honcho of the head honcho. Who, wheelchair bound and tethered to a mechanical oxygen delivery system, served as the ailing godfather (or was she a fairy godmother?) to the whole operation. This older lady was the older sister. She had apparently raised Megan's boss for the first ten years of her pre-Megan's boss existence. A fact that Megan's boss had not forgotten, and which was sweetly recounted at the dinner table. She remembered the boss declaring her profound love for her sister several times. This also seemed important.

The bathroom had been a portal to a separate world. This must have been the ad hoc headquarters where she and Megan could speak and reflect freely on their findings and on their own performances. This was where Megan told her that she had slipped up once—mistaking the crumpled drunkard for a humble and self-reflective soul. This was also where they had swapped analysis on all sorts of social victories and oddities. She didn't have any notes from these meetings, and now the meetings were over. The bowling pin and traffic cone had made it into the headquarters, but they didn't recognize it as such. As soon as alien laughter came through the door, the martini bar, the giggling flappers, the gents at the pool table were all swung to the other side of the rotating wall. They turned it into a warehouse at the drop of a hat, even when Eliot Ness was nowhere in sight.

"Time for the ornament exchange!" The ornament exchange, which followed dinner, was a battle of wits. Pick an ornament, someone steals it. Then someone steals from the thief, and the last thief keeps. She wanted to steal Peter's ornament. That bastard, he deserved it. Spider man, rainbow pinecone, Mickey Mouse, model airplane, springy snowman, homemade Kaluha, Santa crystal, snowflake crystal, abstract crystal. Peter lost, but not to her. With no chips thrown down—Megan had not been on the email list saying to bring an ornament--they left with a snowman, a pinecone, and some booze. Not bad.

The end of the night and some speeches were made. "Remember the elderly. You'll be old too some day! This is the one cause where you're really investing in your own future." Then the shrill voice interjected, "Go home and have great sex!" Some awkward, and perhaps a few knowing, glances were exchanged. The audience of drones had acted accordingly throughout the evening. Megan's boss was passed out on a chair. Later she would be passed out in the front seat as Megan and guest were huddled in the trunk of the car that would take them home. The older sister was most proximate to them, and had requested and received kisses from both. She thought she heard the older sister muttering in a fearful tone when no one else was around, about it being hard, and things of that sort. The older sister was brave.

Back at the house, she and Megan found themselves dizzy with the alcohol that hadn't been pilfered by Megan's boss. "That was awesome." "Couldn't have been better." She remembered the event to be disturbing (because of the automatons) and stirring (because of the more inspired ones). She had been privy to much, but couldn't quite put all the pieces together. Her mission, from what she could gather, had involved several sub-missions. To play it smooth, to collect information, and to see past the clutter. Had she done these things? Perhaps. It was all a jumble of fleeting memories now: some false, some true. All that was left was to write them down.