Kate Racculia - Tuesday Mooney Wore Black

“Are you going to spend the night drinking morosely in the corner?” she asked.

Dex tried to hide the start she’d given him.

“But I excel,” he said, “at morose corner drinking.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “About Patrick.”

Dex shrugged.

“You should try the shrimp,” Tuesday said. “Did you see them? They’re grotesque. They’re the biggest shrimp I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s an oxymoron.” Dex drained his glass.

“Though I overheard people complaining that they didn’t have much flavor.” Tuesday walked with him out of the ballroom and back toward the bar and the food. “They’re too big.”

“Metaphor alert.” Dex nabbed a small plate from the end of the buffet. “Those are the biggest shrimps I’ve ever seen. They’re obscene.”

“The chicken satay thingies are always good,” she said. “And the dessert course here is usually phenomenal. Save room for the cake pops.”

“Cake Pops and Bourbon.”

“Title of your autobiography?”

“My darkly confessional, poorly received sophomore album.”

That got a twitch of a grin. Dex loved it. He knew that people looked at Tuesday and saw, in order, her height, her shoulders, her pale darkness. They heard her clumping around corners, occasionally tripping over her own feet; they saw her all-black wardrobe, her shelf of bangs, and her un-made-up face, and in their heads they thought, Grown-ass Wednesday Addams, one day of the week earlier . Dex actually knew this; their former coworkers, before Dex fully defected to Team Tuesday, once asked him what the deal was with that bizarro know-it-all tall girl. The guys thought she was hiding a great body – I mean, no wonder she was so clumsy; she was topheavy – under black sackcloth. The girls thought her face only needed a little, like, lipstick, or eyeliner, or something. If they even bothered, they imagined that she spent all her free time watching horror movies (true), listening to The Cure (occasionally true), and writing goth fan fiction (not true, but not outside the realm of possibility).

The truth was this: Dex genuinely believed Tuesday didn’t give a shit what people thought when they looked at her. But the truth was also: he spent a fair amount of his free time with her – when he wasn’t with a future ex-boyfriend – and he didn’t really know what the deal was with her either. He knew how she was. He knew she cared about him, though he also knew he cared more about her. She kept him outside. After all these years, after all this time, he knew her without really knowing her at all.

He didn’t know, for example, where she came from other than geographically. He had never met her parents, or learned anything about them other than factual details: they owned a souvenir shop in Salem. She had a brother, he thought. He knew what she loved, aesthetically – the weird and macabre – but he didn’t know what she feared. Or wanted. Or worried about. He didn’t know where she was most tender, or why, and anytime he poked in the general direction of where her underbelly might be, she solidified, invulnerable as granite. There was something Tennessee Williams tragic about her intimacy issues that, if he was being honest with his most melodramatic self, increased her appeal. Since she wouldn’t take him into her confidence, he could only romanticize her. He could only imagine how she’d managed to get her great heart squashed.

Not that anyone would ever be able to tell. A squashed heart still beat, and Tuesday categorically Had Her Shit Together. She was quick. She was bright. But Dex knew a thing or two about armor – this suit and tie he was wearing right now was a shell over his own tenderest parts – and he knew every suit of armor has a weak spot that can only be found by systematic poking. Every time Dex succeeded in making Tuesday smile, it was like seeing a rainbow over a haunted house.

He took his heaped plate of satay and shrimp back into the ballroom, and only then noticed Tuesday was plateless. He nodded toward the food. She picked up a skewer. Then another skewer. She had nothing if not an appetite. They chewed, Tuesday surreptitiously, and loitered by the rear wall. Tuesday’s next responsibility was helping with the auction as a runner. If anyone sitting in her quadrant of the room won an item, she had to dash out and collect their pertinents: name, address, credit card number. The auction itself, she explained, would be pretty exciting – the auctioneer was a professional, brought in for the night; the cause was good; the crowd was well heeled, well sponsored, and well lubricated.

“We have VIP meet-and-greet tickets for the New Kids on the Block reunion concert,” she said. “My money’s on that for bidding war of the night.”

“Really?” said Dex. He took in the room, ivory-draped tables and rows of maroon seats filling. “Big NKOTB fans here in the land of ancient corporate white dudes?”

“You’d be surprised. Hometown pride. Plus, there are a lot of parents bidding for their kids.” She pulled the last bite of satay off her skewer with her teeth. “You should take a seat. I have to grab my clipboard.”

“Want me to drive up the bid on the New Kids?”

“You can bid on anything you want.” She raised her brows. “So long as you pay for it.”

After Tuesday was gone, Dex, alone again, and embracing the reality that no one was going to hit on him tonight – this crowd was too old, too straight, too married, too professional – scanned for someone fun to sit beside, someone who might feel as out of place as he did.

“Is this seat taken?” he asked, placing one hand lightly on the back of a chair at the front of the room.

The woman sitting beside it looked up and smiled. No one else was sitting at the table but her. Dex would have guessed she was in her late thirties or early forties. Her skin was dark, her black hair fringed and pulled back; she was gloriously round, and rocking the holy hell out of a one-sleeved teal dress. On her ring finger was a yellow diamond big enough to put out a man’s eye.

“Not at all,” she said. “Have a seat! My husband bought this table as a sponsorship, but then we didn’t invite anyone, so it’s sort of a table for lost souls.”

“Absolutely perfect,” Dex said, and sat down. “Dex Howard.” He offered his hand. “Professional lost soul.”

“Lila Korrapati Pryce,” she said, shaking it. “English teacher – former English teacher. Professional wife.”

“You looked very lonely over here,” Dex said. “A lonely little island.”

“Crap,” she said. “Lonely? Really? I was aiming for glamorously aloof, keeping my distance from the hoi polloi. International star, maybe. Bollywood queen.”

“Ambassador’s wife.”

“Ambassador,” she said.

“Heir to a diamond mine.” He pointed at her ring. “Owner of a cursed jewel.”

Lila laughed. She had a magnificent laugh. It was warm and hearty, like a drunk but high-functioning sailor’s. “Professional mysterious woman,” she said, “and the only brown person in this corner of the ballroom.”

“Well, I did notice that,” said Dex. “Kind of hard not to.”

“You’d be surprised what people don’t notice,” said Lila. “I don’t mind, honestly. I mean, I mind it in the larger socioeconomic sense, but in the personal sense, I like being a little on the outside. Keeps me sharp.” She cracked her neck. “You have to laugh.”

“Or drink,” said Dex. “You could drink.”

“Oh, I do that too,” said Lila. “And I forget that I’m not supposed to talk about uncomfortable things, especially with strangers. You’d think I hadn’t lived in Cambridge my whole life.”