Cheers as everyone eagerly burst out of the solemnity. Thomas looked around, but Cynthia and Orianna had drifted away. Orianna was filling a plate with food, and Cynthia was talking with Eddie, who, like last year, was drunk off of two beers.
Thomas was aware of several younger people around him. They were the night-shift workers he didn’t know well. They looked at him, and he looked back at them, but no one said anything. Finally Thomas slid away, feeling only a little guilty. They’d likely be gone in a few months anyway. No use getting chummy.
He thought he heard snickers behind him as he left the knot of teenagers, but he wasn’t certain.
By the doorway to the conference room, Vernon held his mistletoe aloft and got a chaste kiss from Maureen. He pawed her shoulder and said “Ho ho ho!” Carly passed by, her butt bouncing, but she only smiled at Vernon. Vernon said something that was likely inappropriate, but Carly just laughed, wagged a finger, and shook her head. Noah followed in her wake, a barnacle-covered dinghy desperate to catch up to a glittering cruise ship, but as Carly apparently was heading to the bathroom, he could only follow so far.
Thomas grabbed a paper plate and began loading it up with food. Eldridge’s meatloaf would be supreme, so he sliced off a large chunk of the brown mass. Eddie’s mac n’ cheese looked like it had been pulled straight from a perfectly-produced television commercial, and Thomas spooned some onto his plate. There were several other dishes of unknown craftsmanship which looked tasty: chicken parmesan, airy hush puppies, clam chowder as thick as wet cement. He grabbed some of each. After he had a multicolored mountain of grub, he sat down in one of the Chamber’s high-backed and over-priced chairs and pecked away. Like his family’s Christmas Get-Together, one had to pace themselves when eating at the Party, for the feast was hours long.
He hadn’t been sitting there long before Orianna sat down beside him. She bit into a deviled egg and looked at him.
“You know,” she said, “I never expected you to apologize. It’s not like you really needed to, anyway — it was a pretty minor thing. But still, you did.”
“I felt it was the right thing to do,” Thomas said magnanimously.
“Yeah. Well. We haven’t really talked since… well, since the last time we talked. I hope you understand I didn’t mean to embarrass you by asking you that question. You know the one I mean, I think.”
“All is forgiven,” Thomas said, though he again flushed at her mention of “Are You Interested?” Why did she have to keep bringing it up? Was she pouring salt on the wound, or was she truly trying to make amends? And why was he acting like a little bitch about it? Hadn’t he wanted to talk about it alone with her?
“It was a strange conversation, wasn’t it?” Orianna said in a far-off voice. “Almost like — hmmm — how can I put it? Like — no, I can’t put it into words.”
“C’mon. It can’t be that hard.”
“It is, though. Nevermind.” She ruminated while chewing a strawberry. “What do you think of this?”
“The Party?”
“Yeah.”
“I think it’s great. I look forward to it every year.”
“How many have you been to?”
“Oh — twenty five, I believe.”
“Wow. And I’m only twenty-three.”
Of course, Thomas knew this, but hearing it spoken aloud created an incredible gulf between them. He was middle-aged, no longer as nimble and strong as he once was. He’d made choices, seemingly final, that put him in this place, at this time, choices he didn’t regret. Orianna was young, with serene energy, and any choices she made could be altered or reversed as easily as one chooses a new cereal. In the breeziness of work at Oxendine’s, or in his late-night fantasies, the distance between them was but a quick step. Now, in this setting, when they should have been closer than ever before, they seemed as far apart as two travelers trekking across different continents.
His cheer seemed to drain from him. He didn’t know what to say. Should he act the reminiscing old man and tell her a “when I was your age” story? Should he try to summon up lost youth and pretend that he was the same age as her in spirit? Should he simply ask her to hang out? That’s what all the female advice-givers on television, the internet, and elsewhere said, as if every lummox knew that. (Thomas noted that these decisive women didn’t seem to do much asking themselves, but were always ready to ridicule a man who didn’t swagger up to them as confident as Don Juan.)
Orianna, thankfully, said something, and Thomas beat back his mental hobgoblins.
“Can I ask you for some advice?”
“Sure,” Thomas said, eager to impart the wisdom of the ages, now that Orianna had asked for it.
“I’ve been thinking about going to college, but I’ve read so many negative things…”
“I don’t think you’d like it. It seems like it’s an assembly line nowadays. And unless you go into STEM, or become a doctor or lawyer, you’ll probably be scrambling for a job once you get out.”
“My opinion exactly. And I don’t have a mind for STEM, and I don’t want to train all those years to be a doctor or lawyer.”
“I sense a ‘but’…”
She gave him a half-smile. “But… they kind of force you into it, don’t they? Society, I mean. ‘If you want a nice, well-paying job, you have to go to college.’ All evidence to the contrary, of course.”
“There are plenty of trades worth doing.”
“Yes, that’s true — but — did you ever think about going into a trade? If you don’t mind my asking?”
He did, a little. In the question was the scorn and bewilderment of the many people who had asked him that over the years. The question really meant: “Why do you insist on being poor, when there’s money to be made?” Thomas would try to explain that he, being single and childless, could get along just fine on his wage, but it was like trying to elucidate an esoteric philosophy.
“I thought about it, but I was working here, so… I’m not married and I don’t have kids, so there are two things I don’t have to worry about. A man by himself doesn’t need much money.”
“Yeah. A woman by herself — well, I’m technically by myself — doesn’t need much money, either. I only pay a portion of the utilities for my parents, so I’ve been able to save up a nice little amount. What to do with it, though?”
“You don’t have to do anything with it. But — and I have something saved up myself — a trip abroad would be nice.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I have no responsibilities, right? Europe would be amazing. All that history — like walking through a museum every day.”
“Me, I’d like to go to Australia,” Thomas said. “You know, if I ever went anywhere.”
“That’s a nice choice,” Orianna replied. “Wouldn’t mind going there myself. But really, anywhere sounds good.”
“Yeah, sure does.”
“But I wonder if traveling gets old after a while? Like everything else — you know?”
“Yeah, it probably does. I know I’d miss home at some point.”
“Well, my plate’s empty,” Orianna said abruptly, “so I’m going to go get a second helping.”
Thomas, whose plate had been piled with far more food than Orianna’s, still had a ways to go before he finished.