Why am I spending my time with these people? I run my gaze over the group currently gabbing at my face, and all I see are entitled, self-absorbed faces honking like geese about their entitled, self-absorbed lives. I feel the same wave of discomfort I felt earlier with Valdman, but even stronger this time.
I don’t like this, I realize, and the realization is like a leviathan circling my raft. I don’t like these people and I don’t like this life.
It’s a terrifying thing to consider, because I’ve spent every year since graduating college working to be here. Working for the money and the parties and the hilarious-but-disgusting nights with guys like Double Condom Mike. I thought it was what I wanted; I thought it made me strong; I derided anyone too weak to see the world for what it really is, which is a fish tank of angry eels. But now I want out of the tank, and I really, really want away from the eels.
I want what Zenny has. And Tyler and my mom and everyone else in my life who’s actually good and not a human dumpster fire.
It’s while I’m processing this that I register a lull in the conversation, and I see that everyone in the group is looking at me. Well, not actually at me, but at someone behind me. I catch a blessed glimpse of seafoam chiffon and a crown of scrolled, luscious curls, and turn, ready to yank Zenny to my side and nuzzle her some more. Or maybe I’ll simply take her hand and lead her back to the car, because now I can’t even remember why I thought this would be a fun idea. Her parents are so involved with Kansas City society that surely she’s been to enough of these in her life to be bored by one, and I’m definitely bored here, and this was a dumb idea.
Yep. I’ve decided. I’m going to lace my fingers through her slender, perfect ones and then we are going to my car, and then we are going home and I’m going to let her claim my body the way she’s been aching to claim it all this time.
I get as far as reaching for Zenny’s hand and finding it, which is then that Sophia (or Hayley, I’m not sure which) says casually, “I’ll have another glass of champagne.”
There’s a silence, and I’m completely lost as to why the hell Sophia (or Hayley) is telling us this, and then she adds, “Actually, make it two. And you can take this one.” She holds out an empty champagne glass into equally empty air, as if she expects someone to take it.
As if she expects Zenny to take it.
Zenny’s hand feels carved from rigid stone inside of my own, and the world seems to slow down, time accordioning out, as the absurdity of what Sophia or Hayley is saying starts sifting through my mind. Because of course Zenny isn’t going to take the glass, of course she doesn’t work here—obviously she’s dressed as a guest, obviously I know her because we’re holding fucking hands—and then everything sifts lower and oh my God, this isn’t just Sophia or Hayley being stupid (well, yes, she’s also being stupid) but it’s something else on top of that, something worse—
“No, no,” one of the guys interrupts. “That’s Jeremiah Iverson’s daughter.” There’s a resounding chorus of oh yeses! where it becomes clear that she must be Dr. Iverson’s daughter and it also becomes clear that nobody knows her name but it’s definitely, definitely his daughter and they all love Dr. Iverson and the Honorable Letitia Iverson and does everybody remember that time Judge Iverson pardoned Hayley’s parking ticket, because Hayley does, Hayley remembers it.
They’re talking about Zenny like she’s not even here, and there’s a small intake of breath from next to me, and I realize I’m squeezing her hand too hard. I give her a gentle pump in apology, and then turn back to the group of garbage geese people ready to rip them apart.
Which happens right as Sophia or Hayley says one last terrible thing. “Oh, so you’re a guest here!” she says, reaching out to give Zenny a playful tweak on the shoulder. “You should have said something!”
“Get your hands the fuck off her,” I say, in what I think is an admirably calm voice, given the situation. Because it’s finally become clear to me exactly what dynamic is at play, and I’m beyond angry, I’m beyond furious, I’m something else altogether. I’m biblical, I’m Jehovah finding Israel worshipping false gods, and I’m going to smite these motherfuckers, I’m going to unleash plagues on them and watch their bodies be eaten alive by sores and fires and famine.
And locusts. I’m going to kill them with locusts too.
“Um, what?” Sophia/Hayley laughs nervously, thinking surely she misheard. Surely.
“I said,” I say (again, in a voice that I think is graciously calm, given the circumstances), “get your hands the fuck off my date. And don’t you ever fucking insinuate she doesn’t belong somewhere ever the fuck again.”
The silence that follows is appropriately deep, and I straighten up a bit, feeling slightly better, although still very smitey, and then Sophia/Hayley laughs. “Oh my God, Sean! You are so funny!” And her friends laugh along with her, bleating, oblivious idiots, and I’m so confused.
Unless…
Unless it makes more sense to them that I’d be joking, pulling one over, rather than actually telling them not to insult the girl holding my hand. A girl who happens to be black.
And that—well, that makes me want to breathe fucking fire.
The hell of it is that if you’d asked me just this morning what racism was, I’d have given you an answer that involved slurs and bus seats and throwing rocks, I would have said that I’d never personally seen racism, I might have even said something about how we live in a post-racial world and racism is over.
And the extra hell of it is that, based on words alone, you could almost make a case that everything was fine, that this was just an awkward misunderstanding. But it wasn’t. Because I was here, and I heard the subtle condescension in that woman’s tone, I heard the layers and layers of assumptions she was making about Zenny in just a handful of careless words. It’s dangerous because of how subtle it was, how insinuating. Almost hard to pin down, and then once you have it stabbed wriggling and wormy to a board to examine, it tries to morph, it tries to shapeshift, it tries to hide in plain sight.
And the extra, extra hell of it? There’s this gross, almost instinctive part of me that wants to make some kind of excuse for Sophia/Hayley, that wants to justify or defend her, and as soon as I recognize that impulse for what it is, self-loathing roils violently in my gut.
I open my mouth to say more, to set these people the fuck straight, but before I can get a word out, Zenny is flashing a smile at everyone and tugging me away. “So sorry, I need to have a word with Sean, one second.”
And before I know it, I’m in some strange giant hallway outside the ballroom, tucked behind a plant where I can’t smite anyone. Before Zenny even says anything, my eyes are on the ballroom doors, because I’ll be patient and let her tell me whatever it is that’s so urgent, but then I’m going back in there and I’m killing everyone, killing them and then stomping their corpses into the parquet floor until they’re flat enough for Zenny and me to dance on.
Then I’ll calm down, I decide. Once I’m waltzing on their corpses.
“Stop being an asshole,” Zenny says, and it’s not at all what I expected her to say, and also over the past week I’ve become painfully attuned to that word—asshole—latching onto it as our safe word of sorts and marking it in my mind as a signal to back off.