Dan Wakefield - Starting Over - A Novel

“Here’s to the New Year,” Marilyn said, “in which both of us will find fulfillment beyond our wildest dreams.”

“Nothing can go wrong,” Potter said.

They giggled, and drank.

To further insure their having a good time while ushering in the New Year, Marilyn brought out a tiny white round pill for each of them.

“What is it?” Potter asked.

“It’s the latest thing Dr. Shamleigh prescribed. To make me feel better.”

“I mean what’s it called?”

“Ritalin. It’s an upper.”

“That’s a new one on me. There used to be a lot of Dex around in New York, PR people, show people. But I kind of got off it.”

“It’s hard to get now. They just passed some kind of law making it harder to get any kind of amphetamine.”

“What’s in this stuff, then?”

“God knows. All I know is, it’s supposed to be the latest thing.”

“The latest thing in uppers.”

“Yeah.”

“How do they make you feel?”

“Nervous,” Marilyn said, “but nice.”

“Anything with ‘nice’ in it, I’ll try.”

They each took a pill, and washed it down with champagne.

There was only punch at Dean Hardy’s party. Potter was pissed off that there wasn’t any real, untainted liquor. A hell of a note for New Year’s Eve. Marilyn made him eat a lot of cheese fondue, even though he whispered to her he didn’t like the stuff.

“It’ll line your stomach,” she hissed back forcefully. “Just eat it.”

So Potter downed the runny goo trying to think positively: I am lining my stomach .

The party itself was—desultory. Mostly faculty members who had nowhere else to go. None of the Cambridge-Boston luminaries, not even the grunting Harvard history professor. Guy Hardy kept saying he was sure the Bertelsens would be there later on. Potter wondered if they might stay away to avoid a confrontation with him and Marva.

Communications Chairman Don R. Sample was there, in his ubiquitous blue serge suit, casting his arid aura over everything. Potter spoke but tried to avoid getting entangled in conversation with him. He chatted for a while with Monica Thistlewaite, a large round lady who worked as a secretary in Admissions. She was of indeterminate age, though surely older than the sort of Alice-in-Wonderland outfits she always wore, with hair ribbons and fuzzy sweaters and plaid jumpers. She was friendly in a desperate sort of way that Potter found both appealing and frightening.

“The punch doesn’t have much punch,” she said.

“I’m afraid not. And tonight’s the time it’s most needed.”

“It’s always needed,” Monica said, then gave a high, wild kind of giggle. Potter smiled. It was New Year’s Eve all right; everyone on the edge of cracking.

The highlight of the occasion was Harriet Hardy spilling a meticulously arranged bowl of fruit salad. Harriet was obviously smashed, though it couldn’t have been from the innocuous punch, pinkishly sweet and laden with bobbing strawberries.

Potter joined a few other gentlemen who had fallen to their knees in a gallant attempt to retrieve the pieces of fruit that had flown about the room, splaying over the carpet in what seemed to Potter marvelous abstract designs. He found himself grinning as he pushed himself to and fro on his knees, plucking stray chunks of grapefruit from the rug.

The Ritalin was working.

Harriet’s condition made it even more delicate a bit of diplomacy for Potter to explain that they had to leave and go on to the party of a friend of Marilyn’s who lived out in Lexington.

“It’s not even time to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne,’” Harriet protested when Potter said they had to be getting on, much as they wanted to stay.

“It’s not New Year’s Eve if you don’t sing it,” Harriet insisted.

Potter proposed they sing it right then. He could see no other way out.

“Oh, Jesus,” Marilyn whispered.

“Should old acquaintance be forgot …”

Potter started, but no one joined him. Harriet began to cry. “It’s too early,” she sobbed.

“I’m sorry,” Potter said.

Guy Hardy came to the rescue with bluff gregariousness, helping lead Potter and Marilyn to their coats, trying to avoid another crisis, holding Potter hard on the elbow, squeezing it in knowing camaraderie, wishing him a fine and prosperous New Year.

Walking down the block to the car, Potter and Marilyn heard the first isolated blasts of holiday horns.

“Oh, God,” Marilyn sighed, “it’s beginning.”

“Courage,” said Potter.

The car was like a freezing compartment. The fan that would eventually warm them blew arctic air in their faces when Potter turned the engine.

Marilyn’s teeth started chattering. “Fuck,” she said.

“Courage.”

“Where the hell did you get all this sudden courage?”

“If I had to make a wild guess, I’d say it just might be your Ritalin.”

“Yeah. That helps.”

Potter had been determined to drive, in order to practice navigating the Boston suburbs, but he hadn’t yet mastered their intertwining mysteries. He got lost on the way to Lexington, and couldn’t find a gas station open. Finally he came to a streetcorner phonebooth, and Marilyn, shivering and cursing under her breath, called her friend to get further directions.

They finally got to the party a little past eleven-thirty.

At least it was warm inside, and there was real booze. There were crêpe paper streamers of many hues, and bright red paper bells. In the living room a monster-sized TV showed Guy Lombardo emanating from his traditional stand at the Waldorf Astoria. The dining room had been cleared of furniture, and darkened for dancing, with Frank Sinatra crooning from a stereo. Potter smiled at everyone, and got a huge tumbler of Scotch for himself, and gin for Marilyn.

Couples gathered around the television to laugh at the couples shown dancing to Guy Lombardo in the Waldorf ballroom. It seemed to Potter that if the cameras were reversed, the couples at the Waldorf might as justifiably turn and laugh at the couples in this suburban living room who were laughing at them.

The great moment came. Midnight. The end of the year. Beginning of a new one. Potter looked around for Marilyn, and saw she was being expertly kissed by a tall, balding man of distinction. Potter shrugged, and started to sing, joining his voice with the others who weren’t still kissing.

“… I’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet, for—”

He felt a tap on his right shoulder.

He turned and saw a blonde woman smiling at him. Her eyes were wide and glazed.

“Happy New Year,” she said.

Before Potter could return the greeting, the woman reached her hands up and clasped them behind his neck, her eyes closing as she moved her mouth onto his. Her tongue licked out and explored his teeth. After a moment, Potter pulled away and looked at the woman, to make sure whether he had ever seen her before. Maybe she was some long lost girl of his youth whom fate had catapulted into his arms as a special treat for this New Year’s Eve.

“Hi,” she said.

He had never seen her in his life.

“Hello. I’m Phil Potter.”

She shook his hand. “Let’s dance, Phil.”

She led him into the darkened dining room. The host had rigged up a kind of homemade light show for the dancing room, and balls of different colors floated across the walls. Potter and the woman clasped one another and began tilting to the music, not really dancing, just swaying in place. Potter had a full-fledged erection. He nibbled at the lady’s ear lobe, and said, “I didn’t catch your name.”

“I didn’t say it.”

“Is it a secret?”

“It’s Carol.”

“Carol.”

She pressed into him harder, swaying, and whisper-singing along with the music, “I get along without you verree well …”