The line to the admission table outside the party room door moved very quickly so that he only had snatches of the conversation with the woman behind him who initiated it. He was glad he didn't have to stand in front of her a minute longer.
"It's going to be a good one tonight I can just feel it," she said over his shoulder.
"I'm sure it will be," he said as he turned around to find a blond with thick false lashes who carried most of her weight in her front upper half.
"You're new here, aren't you?" she observed with a smile and displaying a set of big front teeth that could use a year-long brace job. "I don't recall ever seeing you here before."
"Yes--' he replied, moving one up the line. "My first time here, ever."
"You'll enjoy it. There's lots of friendly people and--"
"Sounds good. Excuse me." It was his turn at the table. "Member?" asked the girl behind it.
"Uh, no," he replied, glancing at her name tag that bore the name Barbara.
"Name, please?"
"Paul Bennett. That's with two n's and two t's."
"Ah-h, let's see now," she muttered, running a cute finger through a page of the guest list. Paul wished Barbara had been the one standing behind him. "Must be one of J.B.'s. She always brings in all the good-looking ones. Here you are--Bennett, Paul. Ah, you're Frank's guest. How nice of him. I must have a tag here for you."
"Who's J.B.?" Paul asked while she went through a box of ready-made name tags.
"J.B.?" she repeated. "She's one of the party coordinators. Like myself. Here you are...Paul."
She handed him the name tag, the type that peels off at the back.
"Thank you, Barbara."
"Welcome to the Bang Bang Club. Glad to have you with us tonight, Paul. I should mention, in case you haven't been told--nobody's allowed to leave before three."
"Any exceptions?"
"Yes, but hardly," she said with a head full of party air.
"Will you join the party soon?"
"Now that I got you tagged, sooner than I planned."
"See you shortly then,"
"You bet."
The party room greeted him with a reasonably pleasant atmosphere. Only a thin layer of smoke hung below its ten-foot ceiling. The room acoustics contained the social cacophony emanating from, at the moment, around a hundred people quite well.
Over at one side of the rectangular room was the booth where the DJ had a slow song playing at the moment. Across the crowded dance floor area was the bar up against the opposite wall. The end-wall, an assembly of full-height glazing on aluminum, opened to a terrace overlooking the major roads of Crystal City twelve storeys below and the night lights of Washington across the river.
Having casually blended into this atmosphere, Paul Bennett headed towards the bar, exchanging glances with several members of the opposite sex along the way.
There was a light tap on his shoulder as soon as he made it to the back of the line.
"Hello," said a female voice to him as he turned. There was a quiet sense of relief when he saw that she wasn't blond. "A newcomer?"
"How could you tell?" he asked, returning her smile.
"Because I saw you come here from the door without getting this." She held up a ticket to him. "This gets you the drink."
"And where, may I ask, do you get that?"
"Over there." She pointed to the cashier's table away at a corner of the room where there was also a line.
"Thank you--Marianne," he said to her, peering at her name tag. "I will be back as soon as I can."
"You don't have to go there now." She held him with a motion of both hands. "Have one on me," she added, offering him a ticket.
"No, I couldn't--"
"Please. I have another one. In fact, here, whyn't you take them both and get us a drink. Gin and tonic for me, please, with a twist of lemon."
"I'm embarrassed," he said coyly.
"Don't be. I'll let you buy me one later."
Fifteen minutes after he arrived, the party had swollen easily by half of what it was when he came in. They navigated their way from the bar, after Paul negotiated the tickets for a seven and seven and her gin and tonic, towards a clearing near the terrace side of the room.
"I hope you don't think I'm too forward," Marianne said after they staked out a small area by a post. "Also, I don't expect you to spend your whole evening with me."
"The answer to the first one is no, I wouldn't say forward, but straightforward, which I admire in people, especially women. Cuts down on a lot of--"
"Bullshit," she completed.
"Exactly."
He's beginning to feel so much at home already although he hadn't laid eyes on Frank Pilecki yet.
"However," he continued. "How I spend my whole evening or any part of it depends not on what anybody expects but how I choose to."
She smiled at him smartly through a pair of Scandinavian eyes, unmistakably Danish, and let it go at that. "New to the area?" she asked.
"Are four years from Los Angeles new or old?"
"Old, especially for someone from L.A. You took long enough to show up here. To what good fortune do we owe your presence tonight, I wonder?" she said, mocking an expression of deference and, before he could respond, continued: "I know. The papers finally came down and it's final. At last--freedom."
"You lost me there."
"You just got divorced and you're out here tonight celebrating your newly gained... freedom?"
"Don't people usually get married first before they go through all that?" Paul asked, looking awfully silly to Marianne.
"You're not--?" she muttered.
"No. Never."
A short but thick silence.
"How old are you, Paul?"
"Thirty-three. Please, don't be embarrassed," Paul assured when he saw a difficult look on Marianne's round and pretty face. "Just keep talking. That's what we're here for--to meet, socialize, get to know people."
She thanked him and in the span of a few minutes, they had each other's personal background neatly tucked behind them.
"Married at twenty-one, for ten years. Been divorced--" he recounted her part so far.
"Three years," she filled in. "I just turned thirty-four last week."
"Belated happy birthday greetings."
"Thanks."
"I wonder," Paul spoke partly to himself. "What it's like to have lived that long with someone and then finally--stop. No more you and me. Just you there somewhere, wherever, and me here."
Again, she gave him that sweet smile full of understanding.
"It's good and it's bad just like everything else in life. And when the good could no longer keep up with the bad, that's when it happens. It's a gradual process through the last...um... I'd say three and a half years with us."
"Do you think having children might have made a difference?"
"I don't think so, and I'm glad we don't have any," she said thoughtfully. "Thank goodness."
"Ladies' choice," said the DJ, interrupting a slow piece that just began. "C'mon ladies, let's not be bashful and get him out there r-r-right now!"
She took his hand after getting rid of their drinks and led him to the dance floor.
"Have you ever had any serious relationship?" she asked, looking him square in the eye.
"What's that?"
"You know, like--engaged?"
"No. I went out with this girl back in college for a coupla years. Nothing happened there. Then later after college, I got involved with this one who came from 'back east', meaning New York. Actually she's from Connecticut, came to L.A. chasing a dream, looking for that one big break like ten thousand other dream chasers who come to Hollywood regularly."
"Did she sing, or dance, or act?"
"She tried all of them. Meantime, she had me to come home to and anchor her high hopes on after each day's dream-chase on Hollywood and Sunset Boulevard."
"You lived together," she sounded interestedly.
"Lasted a year. It was good while it lasted, for both of us. And it was also good, we both knew, when it ended."
"You think you'll ever want to get married?"
"Sooner or later."
"When the right one comes along," she interjected. "Naturally. You're getting to be more and more of a rare species especially in this kind of town. You'd be quite a catch."
"I've been told that lots of times. And it's beginning to make me feel more and more like a freak."
"Why?" she asked in a loud voice. "I should think you'd be having a ball, taking your time and enjoying your freedom."
"Just about everybody I run into has been married and divorced at least once. Talk about being left out."
"Talk about being smart," Marianne snapped. "You have no idea what it's like to wake up to someone you can't bear to look at anymore in the morning, or any time of the day, or night. And having sex... yuk. You simply have no idea, my good man."