Crime of Privilege

In the end, once again, I did nothing.

6

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THE WATER HAD BEEN SHUT OFF AT LAST. THE DOOR HAD BEEN flung open. She had come out of the powder room without looking at me and gone along the line of bookshelves, heading back into the heart of the party.

“Kendrick?”

I ran to head her off. Sprinted. She put her hand out for the door handle and I got there first.

“Get out of my way,” she said. Her green eyes were not as glazed as before. They did not seem to be normal, but it was hard to tell what was going on behind them because they were looking right through me.

I tried to get her to focus on me, dipping my head to get on eye level with her. “You okay?” I asked.

“What do you think?”

What did I think? The theme of the evening. The thing to which I keep coming back, even now.

“I think you probably had a little too much to drink.”

“Fuck you,” said Kendrick Powell, defying me to say anything more.

Her skin was somehow pale beneath her tan. Her hair was slightly wet, but all the signs of sickness had been removed, along with all traces of eyeliner and lipstick. She still looked beautiful, but dangerous, like a jungle cat that could strike out at any time. I wanted to put my hand on her bare arm, tell her everything was going to be all right. But it seemed like such an inappropriate thing to do, to touch her after she had been touched so much.

I got out of her way.

She walked straight out of the library, past Mrs. Martin, who was waiting on the other side of the door with not one but two friends, both older women wearing pale greens and pinks and giant diamonds on their left hands. Was Kendrick’s head held high or was she hanging it in shame? Why do I think now that she was doing both? She took three, maybe four, steps and then her foot slipped, her ankle rolled, and I realized she was barefoot.

Mrs. Martin and her friends went from staring at Kendrick to looking at me in horror. What had I done to the poor girl? Kept her in a closed room with her shoes off? Sent her stumbling out in a stripped-down, almost disheveled, state, trying to be brave, trying not to reveal her abject level of humiliation? Oh, young man, how could you?

I thought to run back into the library to get the shoes. They were little more than sandals, really. Small heels, thin straps, probably didn’t weigh a pound between then. How do I know what they weighed? I never picked them up. I didn’t pick them up before Mrs. Martin gaped disbelievingly at me, and I didn’t pick them up afterward. I followed Kendrick instead, followed her through the sea of people in yellow sport coats and blue blazers and Lilly Pulitzer dresses with patterns of shells that looked like flowers and flowers that looked like shells, followed her all the way to the front door. Where was McFetridge? Where were the Gregory boys? Didn’t Kendrick know anybody at the party? Why was I the only one standing under the portico with her, waiting for her car?

She hadn’t even called for it. She just appeared, stood there barefoot, her arms at her sides, and one of the smiling young black men in white jackets went and got it for her.

“You sure you’re okay to drive?” I said.

“Fuck off,” she said.

Fuck off, fuck you, the last four words she said to me; and she told Mr. Andrews how nice I had been to her?

The Alfa arrived. Its engine throbbed and what might have sounded like music somewhere else was almost unseemly in front of the Gregorys’ front door. The young man leaped out, held the door, and Kendrick, placing her right hand on the trunk for support, hobbled around the back of the car and got in the driver’s seat without so much as looking at him. The valet shut the door gently but firmly; Kendrick put the car in gear and was off, the pebbles in the driveway spattering in every direction.

She drove away and I stood there.

“Can I get you a car, sir?” the smiling man asked. Not “your” car, but “a” car. He seemed astute enough to know I didn’t have one of my own.

I gave him the five bucks that was loose in my pocket and went back inside, where a crowd was gathered around the grand piano. One of the Senator’s buddies, a radio talk-show host up on Cape Cod, was playing and singing “Goodnight, Irene.” But he changed the lyrics, spiced them up, directed them to one of the older ladies, who started to dance, to move her hips, until she realized how risque his version was, and then she called out, “Ohhhh,” in a throaty voice that made everybody laugh as she raised her hand to her face in feigned embarrassment.

Then the Senator himself began to sing, “We were sailing along …” The pianist found the right notes on the keyboard, took up the accompaniment. “… on Moonlight Bay. We could hear the voices ringing, They seem to say, ‘You have stolen her heart, Now don’t go ’way!’ ” The Senator reached out to grab the hand of his sister, the one who was married to the movie actor, and twirled her toward him. The crowd shook their highball glasses appreciatively as she spun in close and twirled back away again, her dress blowing outward, showing off a pair of legs that were quite commendable for a woman her age.

The verse was finished, repeated, and everyone around the piano joined in. A few brown-spotted hands were clapping and bracelets were jingling as the voices sang, “You have stolen her heart …,” and this time when the Senator’s sister spun back to him, it was he who changed the lyrics, his voice booming out in a passable baritone that made all the others drift off, “We were strolling along.…” His right arm slipped around her waist and his left hand took hers and held it chest high as he sang, “On Moonlight Bay.” He looked over his shoulder, gri

The guests roared. Fingers tapped on the heels of palms as the brother-and-sister dance team continued across the floor. It was all great fun, so much so that I almost would have forgotten the incident in the library if it were not for the small ball of cloth in my pocket.

1

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CAPE COD, March 2008

IWENT INTO FOGO’S FOR DINNER. BAD NAME. I’M NOT EVEN SURE how good the food is, but for years I went there three or four times a week. I could eat at the bar, a lovely slice of veneered log in which the natural contours provided cutouts that allowed a man to sit comfortably in whichever of the twelve long-legged, spindle-back chairs happened to be available. I liked that veneered log. I liked the television behind the bar. I liked the post-middle-aged people who worked there and knew just enough about me to ask how things were going without inquiring too deeply.

I suppose certain aspects of my life were obvious. I wasn’t married and I didn’t live with anyone, or I wouldn’t have been in there eating di