V. Eleven O'Clock, Central Time
The last party in the apartment was December 31, 1996, and the balloons said 1997, and they behaved perfectly, which felt like a betrayal.
There were boxes along the walls. The futon was already gone to Ronnie's cousin. The NYE box was not packed; it was open in the middle of the floor, and the tinsel went up on the curtain rod one last time, and the lights went all the way around.
Everyone came. Nell and Ronnie, who were looking at a two-bedroom together in Rogers Park and had told their mother in Peoria in September, an afternoon Nell described only as "survivable, barely, with spoons." Faye, pager on her waistband. The Golds, with rye and a Bundt cake and a list of Milwaukee bakeries Annette had compiled by calling Wisconsin directory assistance. Sam drove down that afternoon with two bags of ice and a case of Coca-Cola and, in a third bag, forty gold cone party hats, which he set on the table without comment.
"Where did you even," Delia said.
"I bought them in July," he said. "I'm a planner now. I own a business."
And at nine-thirty, after a long polite buzz, Anton Ferrante came up the stairs with a man in a red scarf who introduced himself as Gil and shook everyone's hand with great formality, and stopped on the landing, and looked at the door.
Delia had written to him in November to tell him this would be the last one. She had not invited him. She had only said that it would be, and that he would be welcome if he wanted, and that she understood if he didn't. He hadn't written back.
He stood in the doorway for a long time. Then he walked in, slowly, and looked at the lights on the bookshelves and the radiator and the tinsel and the yellow kitchen through the doorway, and Marty Gold got up out of the armchair and crossed the room and put his arms around him without a word, and the two of them stood like that while Gil looked politely at the window and Nell, very quietly, turned the music down.
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Evelyn did not come. She had broken her wrist on her front steps in December, a clean break, nothing dramatic, and her doctor had forbidden airplanes, and she had said on the phone, with immense dignity, that she was not sorry, because it was not her party.
At eleven o'clock Central Time, the room fell quiet without anyone deciding it should. On the little television, the ball was dropping in New York.
The phone rang.
Delia was standing nearest. She looked at the white phone on the wall, the long cord, the old bell. Then she looked across the room at Anton, who was standing by the bookshelf with a cup of champagne he hadn't touched, and who had gone very still.
She didn't say anything. She just stepped back from the phone.