Chris Adrian - The Great Night

She held up both her hands, curling in her right thumb, then her pinky, then putting the thumb out again. She peered at her fingers, seeming to be fascinated by them.

“Maybe you should eat something,” Will said, and proceeded to fix her a little plate, thinking it would help to make her less drunk. It was part of his sympathetic feeling toward her, that he didn’t want her to make a spectacle of herself, and he sensed that was where she was headed — sentimental reminiscence would lead to more maudlin reflection, and shortly she would be crying.

“Stop!” Henry said. “Everybody stop eating!” His mouth was full, and even as he yelled at people to stop eating he took another bite of turkey. Will ignored him, and took up the plate in front of him, topmost and smallest of three stacked on top of one another. It was so light and thin he was almost afraid to burden it with anything heavier than pastry, but it held up under a brick of chocolate and a dense piece of something that looked like meat loaf but smelled like licorice.

“This is really good china,” Molly said when she took the plate.

“I think it’s edible,” Will said, which made her roll her eyes.

“We are all in terrible danger,” said Henry, holding up a spare rib and looking at it as if it might attack him. The three faeries — Will decided he was just going to call them that, and stop thinking about whether or not they were something else, occult species of man or aliens or something else for which there was no proper name — had huddled around Oak’s chair and were muttering together. Then they were quiet for a moment, and they each threw out a hand into the center of their circle in a way that made it look like they were playing Rock, Paper, Scissors. They made three throws, and Fell gave a little cheer. Lyon boosted him up on the table.

“Listen, listen!” Fell said, stepping among the apples and the pork. “Listen, mortals! One thousand years ago our Master bound the Beast, and every year since we mark the day and night with a feast.”

“Our Lady helped!” said Oak. “Our Lady helped to bind him too!”

“She helped some ,” said Lyon.

“Every year some honored faerie gets to sing the tale, already known to all, of that battle, to remind us of the struggle, and of what was almost lost, and remind us to cherish what’s left to us, even if our kingdom is circumscribed by boredom, even if we are grown small in ways that have nothing to do with our size.” He took a deep breath and stood straighter on the table and started to sing in a language that was not English.

“Is that French?” Molly asked. She had opened her new bottle without Will noticing; her lips were wet with wine. “I don’t even know French. How can it be French?”

“I don’t think that’s French,” Will said. It was musical and nasal and lispy and lilting. He would have recognized French, or Dutch, or even Chinese. This was something else. Every few verses it seemed that the man stopped singing, but his mouth still moved, and Will knew the singing was beyond the range of his hearing. Henry was covering his ears and singing “La! La! La!” to himself. Molly drank more wine and closed her eyes and seemed to sing along, except Will could swear she was singing “Jesus Jesus Jesus.” He seemed to remember from his childhood, which was relatively impoverished of stories, someone — maybe a nun — telling him about Irish peasants who scared faeries away from their mischief by shouting out the names of saints, but she didn’t seem to be frightening any of these faeries. Lyon and Oak had begun to eat in earnest. It seemed rude to the singer, to eat so voraciously and noisily, but Fell did not seem to mind, or even notice, how the others were stuffing. Molly was eating and shaking her head. Henry was eating in a weird, hesitating frenzy, pulling egg noodles hand over hand and shoving them in his mouth, and yet he took long pauses in between mouthfuls. Will was more reserved. He took the wine in sips, and the meat in carefully cut morsels, took time to appreciate what he was tasting, and took a few things for Carolina, a handful of nuts and a petit four filled with what he could only describe as intensely flavored air, a tiny saltshaker in the form of a sparrow, and a knife, the hilt of which was shaped like a woman with three breasts, which he put in his remaining shoe.

The song continued through Will’s first glass of wine, and he became better disposed toward it as he finished the glass. In fact, he became better disposed toward the singer, too, and to the rest of his company at the table, and to the whole situation. “It’s all going to be all right,” he said, mostly to himself, because he suddenly believed that they were going to find the nether door and outrun or outsmart that lady (and the wine made Will think he had mistaken her identity; it couldn’t be that lady after all) and escape the park, and they would all — it occurred to him as he looked first at Molly and then at Henry through the glass he had just refilled and sipped from again — become good friends. They would meet for lunch once a month down the street at Café Flore and reminisce about this strange night, about the wonders already come and gone and the wonders they had yet to experience. “Everything is going to be all right,” he said, to Molly this time. And then he turned and shouted it at Henry. “It’s all going to be fine!” It was strange, he thought, that he hadn’t noticed already how nice-looking the man was. He looked back at Molly and was a little surprised by how pretty she was. And catching a glimpse of himself in a silver pitcher, he noticed that even his warped reflection was pretty good-looking, and with his shirt off he felt handsome, not fat. Without at all understanding why he was doing it, he raised his arms and flexed his biceps, watching in the pitcher while his distorted twin did the same thing. He smiled at Henry, who was staring at him, still with a fearful expression on his face. “Don’t worry, buddy,” Will said, and then something hit him in the side of the head. Fell had pelted him with a piece of rare beef.

“I am singing ,” he said, and then nimbly ducked a saucer-shaped pastry, which Molly threw.

“Who cares?” she said. “You’re not even real! You’re that time my mother said I was a slut!” She stood up and pointed at Lyon. “And you’re the time my parents forgot my birthday.” Swiveling in place, arm and finger still outstretched, she turned to Oak. “And you … what are you?”

“Hey,” Will said. “Calm down. It’s okay.” He leaned toward her chair and put a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged him off.

“You think that just because you look normal you’re any more real than those freaks? You’re just a little piece of neurosis. That’s all. That’s all !” She had risen from her chair, the bottle of wine clutched in one hand and a pastry crushed in the other. Will rose too, then leaned forward and kissed her. It was necessary to kiss her, because she was so pretty, and because she was angry, and because it made sense, in that moment, that he might pass along a little of the hopeful peace the magic wine was causing him to feel. It was cheating, he thought — the first time he had cheated on Carolina since she broke up with him — and yet he didn’t stop.

“Maybe we should skip right to the toast,” said Oak. Without taking his lips away from Molly’s, Will peered to his right and saw Oak climb on his chair and raise his glass. Molly was not kissing Will back, but she wasn’t pushing him away, either. “To kisses!” said Oak.

“To death!” said Lyon.

“To the Great Night!” said Fell, standing on the table with two glasses raised. He kicked food at Molly and Will, and though an éclair hit them in their joined face, neither of them pulled away until Henry, with a resonant groan, threw his chair over the table. It fell on the grassy floor with a muted thud. Will was almost afraid again when he saw the look on Henry’s face — it was such a despairing face. But still he thought, How handsome and He needs a hug.