I. Seven O'Clock, Central Time
The balloons were the problem. They were silver foil, each one the size of a sofa cushion, and they had come from the party store on Clark Street already inflated and already sulking, so that the 1 kept turning its back on the room and the second 9 drooped like it had heard bad news. Delia Marsh stood on the wooden step stool her grandfather had built in 1958 and tried to make them behave.
"You are a year," she told the 6. "Act like one."
Outside the big front windows, Clark Street was doing its last-night-of-the-year business. Snow had come down all afternoon and the plows had pushed it into gray ridges along the curb, and under the streetlights people were carrying bags and bottles and children wrapped up like parcels. Across the street the Swedish bakery had a hand-lettered sign in the window that said CLOSED JAN 1 — GOTT NYTT ÅR.
Inside, the apartment was warm enough that the windows had fogged at the corners. Delia had strung white lights along the top of the bookshelves and across the radiator cover and around the doorframe to the kitchen. There were more balloons on the floor, ordinary latex ones in gold and black, drifting against the baseboards whenever the heat kicked on. On the table by the window sat a champagne bottle in a dented ice bucket, two six-packs of Coca-Cola still in their plastic rings, and three bowls of chips she had already eaten from enough to make it look like someone else had started.
She was reaching for the last thumbtack when the front door opened without a knock, because he had never knocked, not since the second year.
Sam Brennan came in sideways, the way a man does when he is carrying two brown paper grocery bags and has learned that doorframes are not his friends. Snow on his shoulders. Snow in his dark hair, which he still parted in the middle as if it were 1987 and nobody had told him. He wore the cream cable-knit sweater his mother sent him every few Christmases in a slightly different shade of cream, and dark trousers that had been ironed, which meant he had thought about tonight.
He set the bags down on the floor by the table, straightened, and looked up at her on the stool.
"I brought ice, soda, and whatever you meant by something festive."
"I meant festive," Delia said. She stepped down one rung, kept her hand on the garland, and leaned over to look into the nearer bag. Two bags of ice, sweating. A case of ginger ale. A jar of cocktail onions. A box of Triscuits.
"That," she said, "is a crime."
"There's more." He reached in, past the ice, and with great ceremony drew out a single shiny gold cone party hat. It had an elastic string and a little tuft of gold foil at the point, and it caught the string lights and threw them back.
"It was the last one," Sam said.
"At which store?"
"At the third store."