Party of One
By Carl Tait
Brody couldn’t remember why he’d come to the cocktail party.
He hated cocktail parties. He hated parties in general. The one he was attending this evening included all the worst features of the species, as if a sadist with special knowledge of his distastes had been working from a deranged checklist.
Monotonous, deafening music. Too much shouting and raucous laughter. Too many people.
Too many strangers.
How was it possible to feel so alone in the midst of so much revelry? Brody rubbed his eyes with his forefingers and wondered if it would be impolite to leave.
When he opened his eyes, a grinning man was standing in front of him.
“Brody!” the man said. “How long has it been?”
Brody searched his memory while suppressing his panic. He did not recognize this man.
“I’m not sure,” Brody said. “What was the occasion?”
The man rattled the ice in his lowball glass. “Probably one of Jackie and Ben’s parties in college,” he answered.
Jackie and Ben. Brody remembered them vaguely. They were always hosting parties. Brody hated them. The parties, not Jackie and Ben. He hadn’t known the couple well enough to hate them.
The man chuckled. “Jackie was always saying to me, ‘Paxton, you have to bring Brody to the next party, too! He’s so much fun!’”
Okay, the mystery man’s name was Paxton. Brody felt he could bluff adequately, given the frivolous and irrelevant nature of cocktail-party conversations.
“Good to see you, Paxton. How have you been?”
The music suddenly got louder and Brody couldn’t hear Paxton’s answer, so he just nodded. Paxton’s mouth stopped moving and he seemed to be waiting for an answer.
“I’m doing fine,” Brody said. “Same old same old. You know.” He laughed.
His companion said something else. Brody couldn’t hear the words, but Paxton was making large windy gestures with his arms, like a bird with defective wings. An ice cube flew out of his glass.
Brody raised a finger. “Excuse me,” he said. “I need to use the restroom.”
Paxton nodded. “See you in a minute,” he mouthed.
Brody left the room, and the house.
* * *
The sidewalks were crowded. Little clots of people everywhere. Talking, nodding, giggling. Some of them were from the party Brody had just left. Others seemed to have spilled out of other houses along the way. Saturday night. Everyone was throwing a party.
Brody trudged home. He lived only a few blocks away, in a shabby apartment building next to a gas station. As he walked up the cracked, uneven pathway to the main entrance, he was annoyed to see still more people huddled together in groups, chattering away. He elbowed them aside and entered the dimly lit vestibule of his building. He was happy to find it empty.
Brody walked up the stairs to his third-floor apartment and let himself in. He plopped down into the battered recliner he had inherited from his father and reached for the TV remote. He pressed the power button.
Nothing.
He jabbed the button more firmly, as if that would restore power to the dead batteries. Still nothing. He thought about turning on the TV without using the remote but he didn’t remember how.
Brody reluctantly arose from his mushy chair, went to the kitchen, and began to hunt under the sink for spare batteries. The sink dripped badly and the plop-plop-plop of water made him angry. The dripping water began to sound like people talking in another room.
Wait. There were indeed people talking in the next apartment. The walls were thin.
Too many people, Brody thought. How many were in that apartment next door?
He pulled his head out from under the sink and listened intently.
The talking people weren’t in the next apartment. They were in the hallway outside. His front door was as thin and cheap as his walls.
Brody went back to looking for batteries. They continued to elude him.
The talking got louder. Brody gave up on the batteries and stood up. How many people were out there? He thought about looking through the peephole, but he had heard that bad people sometimes stuck an ice pick through a peephole when they saw someone looking out. He had seen that once in a movie. Or read it in a book. He couldn’t remember which.
The chatter rose to a roar. Howling laughter. Pounding. Pounding on his door. It burst open. People poured in.
Brody backed away in dismay as strangers flowed into his apartment like a filthy river. He retreated to his recliner and pulled a blanket up to his neck.
His apartment was full of people. They ignored him as they continued their shrieking conversations.
A familiar face emerged from the crowd. An arm flapped in greeting.
“Ah, there you are!” said Paxton. “Now, where were we?”
Carl Tait is a software engineer and author of two books for older children: Tales from Valdemere Castle and Lavinia’s Ghosts. His work for adults has appeared or is forthcoming in the Eunoia Review, the Oddville Press, SPANK the CARP, After Dinner Conversation and others. Carl grew up in Atlanta and currently lives in New York City with his wife and twin daughters.