52stories

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My father always used to say that early morning was the best part of the day. I doubt that he would have thought so if he’d had the kind of night I just did. I’m grateful for the quiet, mind you, I just think that twelve hours from now I’ll probably be feeling a lot better than I am right now. At least, I hope so. I’m not sure the same can be said for everyone at that party last night. It’s hard to believe that this serene patio was the scene of such chaos not very many hours ago.

I supposed it is the revenge of the wallflower to be the least hung over the morning after a party like that. It was a wedding, of course – the invasion of the stylish WASP twenty-somethings from Long Island. It was Jay Gatsby’s mosh pit. My not-too-subtle detective work unveiled that the bride is an architect, the groom an investment banker.

I am just passing through town, so I really didn’t have that much invested in successfully crashing the party. Still, I’m usually considered fun company, so it really chapped me that I couldn’t finesse my way into a juicy conversation, much less a hot dance with one of the eligible (or at least eligible-acting) bachelor guests. It was such a cliquish gathering of the beau monde.

So, I sulked through most of the evening, uninvited, yet unwilling to leave for more promising pursuits. I sipped my gin and tonic through a straw, perched at the bar, crossing and uncrossing my legs conspicuously, trying to get noticed.

I blew the one chance I had to insert myself into the action. Things were still pretty tame at that point. Couples danced on the patio and out in the yard under the tents. The pool was elegantly lit and candles floated on those little fake lily pads. It was as stylish as the guests. I sipped that gin and tonic – the first of several – and gazed out over the crowd playing my self-defeating game of “how much money does she make,” when two slick dudes in suits sat down on either side of me.

I was startled, but smiled reflexively. They were cute, after all.

“Hi. Nice party,” I blurted. Wow. Lame.

The blonde guy on my right smiled revealing perfect white teeth. Okay, maybe I wasn’t so lame.

“Are you the one we’re looking for?” His voice was a rich baritone, and his blue eyes sparkled in the candle light.

The boldness of his come-on intimidated me, but it made gooseflesh ripple down my spine, all the same. I felt my mojo returning.

I cocked my head and gazed up at him, batting my eyelashes once slowly for effect.

“Well,” I drawled, taking a long drag of my drink, “it’s possible.”

The stylishly scruffy redhead on my left moved his arm behind me and signaled the bartender.

“Scotch. Neat. Two, please.” He looked at me without smiling. “Ready for another one of those?”

“Sure. Gin and tonic.”

The drinks came and we sipped. The blonde rested his arm around my shoulder and whispered in my ear.

“You and I will dance, and then the three of us will find it.”

“Huh?” I knew that I’d blown it as the exclamation flew off my tongue.

He glanced over my head at the redhead. The redhead spoke to me, looking at the other guy the whole time.

“You weren’t invited to this wedding reception, were you?”

“Me? Well, uh. No. But I’m a guest at the hotel. There’s no reason …”

“That’s what we thought. So you are the one we are looking for, correct?”

My mojo was fading. I wasn’t sure where this conversation was going, but it was clear that getting into the swing of the party was not in the cards.

They must have read the puzzled look on my face because after the drinks came there was maybe one more minute of small talk and then they rose and left, wandering off to the other side of the patio. After a minute I could read their body language as they used the same approach on another single woman. Bastards.

My heart sank. I tried to resurrect my self-esteem by doing the leg-crossing, drink-sipping thing again for a few minutes. Finally, I drained my drink and feigned a casual stroll back up to my room.

I must have dozed off on the stylish but uncomfortable sofa in my room, because I awoke about two hours later to the sound of a crash and splash. I rubbed my eyes and walked to the window, quickly realizing that the party bar had been raised several notches in my absence. An umbrella table full of drinks was lying on its side and the first of several lounge chairs was in the deep end of the pool.

My resolve returned. This was just getting too interesting to miss. I slipped back into my shoes, ran a comb through my hair and headed back down to the party.

Music blared and two bridesmaids were dancing in the fountain as I strode through the art deco glass doors that led from the hotel onto the patio. Where was the hotel staff? Who were these people and what kind of a deposit had they put down to have such undisturbed free reign over the property?

I stopped by the bar just long enough to pick up a gin and tonic, and then decided to make a sweep of the crowd. I figured that maybe their cliquishness had loosened as much as their behavior had. I wandered through the crowd, danced a few minutes with a handsome man with a corsage in his teeth, and then joined two more of the bridesmaids in a brief table dance for the groom. I’d gone from outcast to the inner sanctum; I was quite pleased.

Quite pleased until I noticed the blonde and scruffy redhead huddled in the corner whispering to each other and watching me dance. Normally this would have meant redemption for me. They rejected me and now they obviously couldn’t take their eyes off of me. But there was something about the look in their eyes that scared the bejesus out of me.

After the song was over, I slid quickly into the crowd and weaved my way as far away from those two guys as I could get. I picked up one last gin and tonic at the bar, then slipped quietly into the hotel, hurrying up a side staircase back to my room. I finished my drink in the dark quiet of my room, peeking out of the drapes only occasionally.

Just as sleep was going to overtake me, I looked out one last time, which was when I saw it – the dark shape at the bottom of the pool, wedged under a table and topped off with a lounge chair floating slowly in a bizarre whirligig motion. It had the form and color of the woman they talked to after me. It laid still, dark hair drifting with the currents of the pool.

There was a scream, and then the music stopped. Yells pierced the night. Flashing lights arrived in discreet silence and an EMS team tried to revive her, but it was no good – she had been down there, weighted under one of those tables way too long. The pair of men from earlier in the evening had disappeared from the party, but I was too afraid to leave my room.

I spent a sleepless few hours pacing my room and watching the efficient cleanup effort. There was no forensic team.

I don’t know who those people were, but I know that I’m on my way out of here. Vomanos muchachos. Gone. Yesterday’s news. I’m leaving before they decide I really was the one they were looking for.