Thomas snuggled down into bed, sighing happily. It was an almost lasciviously comfortable bed; his body sank into the cloud-soft mattress, and the satin sheets were as smooth and cool as a woman’s fingertips. He yawned and smacked his lips. He would not be long for this world.
After Emily’s tantrum, the family had slowly dispersed from the table. Dennis was the first to leave, and then Thomas had escaped, borrowing his nephew’s “cleaning up” excuse. In his case, however, he had actually cleaned up a little in the kitchen. Emily’s cooking had left a slew of dirty platters, cutting boards, knives, whisks, and mixing bowls scattered about. Thomas washed and dried a few larger items, and put the smaller things into the already-stuffed dishwasher. He looked around as he wiped his hands on a towel, but he’d only cleaned up about a third of the mess. Shrugging, he went looking for the liquor. There were five other people in the house, and they were more than capable of handling the rest.
The liquor was in the same place it had been for years: in an overhead cabinet by the refrigerator, on the tallest shelf. It was located there to keep it out of a young Dennis’s hands, but Dennis was not so young anymore, and could reach the bottles without much difficulty. (When he did pilfer his parents’ liquor, he only took two or three sips from each bottle at a time, correctly guessing that his parents monitored the levels closely.) Thomas stretched to grab a bottle of whiskey, and poured himself a glass on the rocks. He then tiptoed upstairs and shut himself into his assigned guest room.
Luckily, his room, like nearly every room in the house, including the kitchen, had a television. Thomas propped himself up with the half-dozen fluffy pillows that were splayed out on the bed like women in a harem and flicked on the TV. He was soon channel surfing adroitly. Reggie, that fucker, would have been proud.
After an undetermined length of time, Dan entered the room — without knocking, which the quarter-drunk Thomas pointed out sharply. Dan apologized through clenched teeth, then told his brother-in-law that Emily had decided to “retire for the evening.” Thomas asked what the hell was wrong with her, and then asked why he was being told she’d retired when everyone else had already retired themselves. Dan said she was “dealing with issues,” and he was telling everyone Emily had retired just so everyone knew what was going on. Thomas nodded and turned back to Top Gun. After standing there awkwardly for a few seconds, Dan left, grumbling about the disrespectful attitudes of some members of the Copeland family.
Two whiskeys-on-the-rocks later, Thomas was certain this would be the best Christmas ever. (He thought this every year after guzzling a few drinks.) No one else had bothered him. Whenever he needed to replenish his glass, he’d been able to slip down to the kitchen and then back up to his room without being detained by familial chit-chat. Dennis was likely in his room remorselessly slaughtering people, though it seemed he’d turned down the volume out of consideration for the laughably early bedtimes of the guests. His parents had cleaned up the kitchen, and now they were somewhere on the premises, probably in their room asleep. Dan was probably still trying to decode his wife, while Emily was probably still acting indecipherable.
After his fourth drink, Thomas had decided to call it quits. No point in pushing himself and ending up with a nasty hangover tomorrow. He brushed his teeth, slipped into the nylon shorts and ratty “BIG ROCK BLUE MARLIN TOURNAMENT” t-shirt he used for pajamas, and waited for sleep to take him. He couldn’t wait for the alcohol-fueled dreams. Those were the best: so vivid they felt completely real, yet so wild that the most plot-scorning director in Hollywood would’ve called them far-fetched.
The house was quiet. He was sure everyone else was asleep, or trying to fall asleep, like he was. A light wind stirred the pine trees outside. An owl hooted. Thomas’s eyelids slowly closed…
There was a commotion outside. Two people were yelling. A car door slammed shut and an engine started. Thomas pulled himself from the depths of the mattress and walked to the window, which looked out onto the front lawn. A pajama-clad Dan (and those pajamas looked ridiculously boyish; what were those designs? Sailboats? Dinosaurs?) was standing out on the grass, waving his arms in what looked like an overacted portrayal of hysteria. The sun-like glare of the garage’s security light made him look even more like an actor under the spotlight.
After a few seconds, Thomas saw Emily backing out of the garage in her Jetta. Since Thomas’s Malibu and his parents’ Traverse were parked on the driveway in stagger formation, this prevented a conventional departure. Emily, however, seemed to have the unconventional in mind. She backed the car in a wide arc, ending up halfway on the grass. Her headlights were now pointing at Dan, who continued to wriggle around like a method actor hyped up on some powerful stimulant. She honked the horn, but when Dan didn’t move, she gunned the Jetta’s engine, and blazed across the lawn. Dan jumped aside, and finally stopped having a seizure; nearly getting run over had apparently sobered him. The Jetta bumped over the small ditch by the road, swerved onto the pavement, and then zoomed away into the night.
Dan stood there, a barefoot man in silly pajamas, his shoulders slumped, and stared in the direction the car had disappeared. He finally looked up at the house sadly, and Thomas quickly moved away from the window. He didn’t want Dan to know he’d witnessed this embarrassing moment. Not that it mattered; Emily’s exit had been loud and dramatic, and Thomas was sure others in the house had seen or heard the disturbance.
The question now was: what should he do? The obvious thing would be to walk downstairs and ask what had happened, and then comfort Dan, who looked like he needed a whole household’s worth of comforting. But he was drunk, and that bed was so damn comfortable, and he was tired of dealing with crazy women. He would find out tomorrow, if everyone would let him sleep and not barge upstairs and bother him. Emily would surely be back by dawn, anyway.
He belly-flopped onto the bed and sank down into oblivion. His dreams were exactly like he’d expected: vivid and implausible, though the details would be lost upon waking.
PART TWO
Chapter Twelve
“Happy New Year!”
The collective yell was deafening inside Reggie’s small apartment. Thomas winced, wishing they were out on the beach as he’d suggested. There, they would have space to celebrate, and their laughter and hollering would be blown away by the wind, and washed away by the hissing surf. Here, everyone was all crammed together, and it was more raucousness than Thomas could handle. He counted fifteen people in the apartment, all of them at least halfway drunk, most of them trying to be louder and more outrageous than everyone else.
Reggie had invited him to this New Year’s Eve party a few days ago, fully expecting Thomas to decline, as he usually did. It had surprised the both of them when Thomas said yes, especially since he had to work in the morning. Thomas had suggested they walk out on the beach as the hours moved towards midnight, maybe not at the Atlantic Beach Circle, where there would be a crowd milling around a bonfire and listening to live music, but at some lesser-peopled spot on Bogue Banks. Reggie nixed the idea: he’d had bad experiences with the Park Service, the Atlantic Beach Police, and, it seemed, various other law enforcement/governmental authorities on previous New Year’s Eve celebrations. A younger Reggie would have said “Fuck it! Let’s pour the coals on ’er!” but the Reggie of today was weary of tickets and harassment. He was going to stay inside his apartment where it was safe.