Dates from Hell(67)

As a bevy of serving staff rushed in to clean up, I apologized one last time, and he smiled, his last reassurance as sincere as his first, but his gaze grown distant, as if he’d mentally already moved on and, in five minutes, would forget me altogether…which, under the circumstances, I didn’t mind at all.

As I walked back to Douglas, the working Big Ben replica clock in the middle of the room chimed the hour. Ten o’clock? Already? No, that made sense—with Douglas being almost an hour late for dinner, we hadn’t arrived at the gala until past nine.

I hurried over to him. “There’s a—”

He cut me short with a discreet nod toward my bodice.

“You have a spot,” he whispered.

I looked down to see a dime-sized blob of marinara sauce beside my left breast. Fallout from the buffet table debacle. Naturally. If food flew, I’d catch some, and in the worst possible place.

I thanked him and tried to blot it with my napkin. It grew from a dime to a quarter, and I stretched my purse strap to cover it.

“I was going to say there’s a special behind-the-scenes tour of the new exhibit starting now,” I said. “I’d love to see it, and it would be a great way to meet people, mingle…”…save me from another two hours of your corporate war stories.

“Speaking of mingling, did you see who’s here?” He directed my attention to a group of middle-aged couples wedged between a bronze urn and a terracotta bull.

“Robert Baird,” he whispered reverently.

He paused, as if waiting for me to drop and touch my forehead to the floor.

“CEO of Baird Enterprises?” he said.

“Oh, well, if you know him, I guess we could—”

“I don’t, but I’m sure you do…not directly maybe, but his wife and your mother both serve on the Ryerson Foundation board, and—”

“You thought I could introduce you.”

“You would? Thanks, Hope. You’re a gem.”

“Sure, right after the tour—”

Too late. He was already heading for the Bairds. I sighed, adjusted my purse strap, and followed.





2


T hirty minutes later, the tour was over, the attendees were returning, gushing over the new exhibit…and I was still stuck with Douglas and the Bairds. Now that I’d won him an audience, he wasn’t leaving until they did.

I began to wonder whether he’d notice if I left. Maybe I could slip away, conduct a little self-guided tour…

Douglas put his arm around my waist and leaned into me, as if to take some of the weight off his feet. I bit back a growl of frustration, fixed on my best “gosh, this is all so interesting” smile, and did what I’m sure every other significant other in the group had done an hour ago: turned off and tuned out.

While every other partner’s mind slid to mundanities like juggling the children’s schedules, planning next weekend’s dinner party, or contemplating the report he or she had to write for work, mine went straight to the dark realm of human suffering, evil, and chaos. I can’t help it. The moment I let my mind wander, it turns into a dedicated chaos receiver, picking up every nearby trouble frequency.

Unlike the buffet table vision, these weren’t mental blackouts. More like semi-dozing, that state right before sleep where you’re still conscious, but the dream world starts to encroach on reality. The first thing I saw was a woman sitting at Mrs. Baird’s feet, her knees pulled up under her party dress, her makeup running, her shoulders heaving with silent sobs.

As the apparition vanished, I felt my gaze slide to the left, and I knew somewhere down a hall, I’d find a woman, huddled and sobbing in some quiet place. Maybe someone had called with bad news, or maybe she’d seen her husband’s hand snake onto another woman’s thigh. I never knew the causes, only the outcomes.

“Tonight,” a man’s voice hissed at my ear. “He had to do it tonight, while the offices are empty.”

I didn’t bother looking beside me. Instead I let my subconscious draw my attention across the room to two men near the door. One was shaking his head. The other’s face was taut as he talked quickly.

The voices faded, and others took their place—angry words, accusations, whimpers, sobs, a Babel of voices joined in the common tongue of chaos. Images flashed, superimposed on reality, burning themselves onto my retinas, an unending parade of chaos in every conceivable form, from grief to rage to sorrow to jealousy to hate. I saw, heard, felt, experienced it all. And the worst of it? Even as my brain rebelled, throwing up every proper reaction: horror, sympathy, and anger, my soul drank it in like the finest champagne, reveling in the sweet taste and the bubbles popping against my tongue and the delicious caress of giddy light-headedness.