Amanda Filipacchi - The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty

“Punishment,” I reply.

“Oh. Was I bad?”

“No. They were bad.” My new location hides me from his view as I unfold the sheets of plastic.

“What’d they do? They didn’t seem so bad.” As an afterthought, he adds, “Apart from ganging up on me and telling me what a jerk I am.”

I don’t answer.

He says, “Anyway, how is my sitting around this corner their punishment rather than mine?”

I open a drawer, looking for my roll of transparent masking tape. I reply, “I’m depriving them of the sight of you.”

“Is the sight of me that good?” he asks.

“They thrive on it.”

“Perhaps I should just go home, then. That would deprive them of it very effectively,” he says.

“No!” I exclaim.

“Why not?”

I don’t know what to say. I hope my silence will alert Georgia to come to the rescue.

She does, with: “Barb’s kidding. We weren’t bad. This is just a game we like to play called Hide the Guest.”

Still hidden from Strad’s view, I climb on a chair and start taping one end of a plastic sheet to the ceiling, letting the rest hang like a transparent curtain. This creates a dart-proof partition between my friends and the dining table.

While I do this with a few more sheets, until all my friends are behind plastic, Georgia explains the game to Strad: “You have to try to remember what each of us is wearing and what we look like, including eye color, hair color, presence or absence of glasses, etc.”

From behind the corner, he sounds mildly interested in this game. But then she has to ruin it by adding, “The point of the game is to test your level of self-centeredness.”

I kick my socked foot in the direction of her face, intentionally missing her by only an inch, which sobers her up temporarily.

I finish taping the last bit of plastic to the ceiling. Just in time, too, because Strad says, “You know what? I don’t really like the sound of this game. I’m sure I’d be terrible at it, so I’d rather just have a normal remainder of evening with you—”

He stops mid-sentence as he emerges from around the corner and beholds the plastic curtain with my friends watching him through it. And me, still atop my chair.

Stupefied, he asks, “What are you doing ?”

“We’ve entered the phase of the evening called Partitioning,” I say.

“It’s totally creepy-looking,” he says. “It looks like you’re setting up some sort of weird execution.”

“Oh, no, on the contrary. I’m about to serve them seconds. They go so wild for seconds, they often throw their cake.”

We keep the conversation going for another hour. Jack throws most of his cake at the curtain to support my story. Not being a fan of lemon, it’s no big sacrifice for him. The others merely throw large crumbs. No one attempts to shoot darts, thankfully, not that it would matter much with the plastic sheets.

When the cuckoo finally screams twelve times at midnight and the danger is over (according to KAY’s rules), my friends really start acting mad. They cheer and clank their chains, demanding to be freed.

I unlock their handcuffs. They all, except for Lily, shake Strad’s hand, saying, “Congratulations.” Penelope even says, “Congratulations, you’ve made it.”

“Into the group?” Strad asks, his face lighting up. “You know, it did occur to me that this might be some sort of initiation. If you tell me that I have made it into the Knights of Creation, you’ll make me a very happy man.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Penelope says. “I just meant that you made it through this strange evening. There is no such thing as ‘making it into the Knights of Creation.’”

Strad is disappointed though he takes it well. In fact, he doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave, now that everyone is so cheerful and authorized to go to the bathroom unaccompanied. We move to the couch area and Strad says he’d like some more coffee, but asks if he can get his phone back to quickly first check his messages.

I get him his phone. He’s surprised to see he has three new ones.

As he listens to each one, our attention is drawn to his gasps and facial expressions, which become progressively more despondent.

He finally turns off his phone and says, “Barb, you ruined my day, possibly my life, by taking my phone from me. I have to go.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” Lily asks.

He speaks quickly: “First, some chick tells me there’s a fantastic film audition I’d be perfect for, in an alley. She gave me the address. It’s just a few blocks from here. She said she spoke to the casting people about me and they really want to see me, but it has to be soon because they’re closing casting at midnight, no exceptions. She said not to bother coming after that. She left me that message at ten o’clock. It’s now after midnight.”

“In an alley?” I ask faintly.

“Yes.”

I can’t believe what a close call that was. I took Strad’s cell phone into my bedroom right before the cuckoo scared us at ten. If I’d waited another ten minutes, Strad would have answered the call and gone.

Strad glares at me. “The second message was from someone saying there’s a leak from our music store to the basement apartment and that if I don’t get there in the next hour, they’ll have to get a locksmith to force the door open because the super’s not there.”

We don’t comment.

“The third message is from someone who says he’s a friend of my friend Eric, and that they’re both at a party and just met this chick who’s unbelievably beautiful and who wants to meet me because they’ve been talking me up to her, but I’d have to go there right away because she’s only staying ten more minutes and doesn’t want to leave them her number. So he tells me to hurry on over. The message was left an hour ago. That woman might have been my future wife. And now she’s probably gone.”

I’m all too aware that each scenario could have led Strad to a probably deserted place, perfect for slaying him. If we’d accompanied Strad to the location, the killer among us would have committed the act personally by grabbing a weapon that was possibly stashed ahead of time at the scene or along the way. If we’d let Strad go alone, some hired killer might have done the deed.

Strad gets ready to leave, but as he begins putting on his shoes, he cries “Argh!” and withdraws his foot immediately from his loafer. His toes have something gross-looking on them. Hard to tell what. He slides his hand into the shoe to investigate and extricates a smelly mash, which I recognize as sardines from our dinner. There’s no mistaking it, thanks to a little sardine tail sticking up in the air.

“Why is there fish in my shoe?”

No answer from anyone.

“Who did this?” he asks.

I apologize profusely and say, “One of us has a serious mental problem and likes to leave this kind of gift for people he or she likes. Like a cat who brings a dead rat to its owner.”

“Which of you?”

“We don’t know.”

He dumps the sardines in the trash, washes his hands, cleans out the inside of his loafer, and leaves me his dirty sock.

About to plunge his other foot into his other shoe, he thinks the better of it and checks it with his hand. Instead of sardine mash, he pulls out a little piece of paper that he reads aloud: “If I could have, I would have.” Strad looks at us, clearly waiting for an explanation and a quick one.

“God only knows,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m sure it was meant in the nicest possible way. But as I said, serious mental problem.” I circle my temple with my finger, hoping that will be enough to satisfy Strad.

“If I had to guess, I would guess it’s you.” He approaches me, searching my face. “You’ve been acting like a lunatic all evening.”