Jen is at her makeup table, curling her hair to get ready, when Jace sidles up behind her and slides his arms around to the front, pulling open her silk kimono.
“Careful, I’m wielding a hot curling iron,” Jen says, releasing the ringlet to hold the iron a little further away. The scabs on her arms are healing nicely, but she doesn’t need further injuries for Alby’s wedding, which is now just a week away. He nuzzles Jen’s neck and looks up at their reflection in the mirror.
“I thought it was a good time for a pre-game-girls-night-out warm-up,” he said, tracing lines down her now-exposed chest.
“You’re supposed to be watching Chris,” she reminds him, half sighing, and not really wanting to be even later than she already is.
“He’s watching the news,” Jace says, intent on luring her to bed.
Jen shakes her head and removes his hands gently, getting up to go check on Chris.
“Come back, I’m just kidding, he’s watching Baby Einstein, I know he’s not allowed to watch the news,” Jace follows her out of the room and down the stairs.
When Jen gets to the living room, she sees that Chris is truly watching Baby Einstein, of which she’s not especially fond, but if Jace is minding him, she usually doesn’t pitch a fit over it. Her goal has been to let Chris’s personality fully form before he watches ANYTHING, but not everyone can stand having the TV off the way Jen can. She thinks the silence gets to Jace.
“Hey pumpkin!” she says, catching him mash the candle he’s playing with further into the tiled coffee table while holding himself up with the other hand. He turns his head and grins. Jen sees he’s actually been trying to EAT the candle. It’s natural beeswax, not fatal, but not to be encouraged either.
“No no, give mommy the candle. That’s a ‘no touch,’” Jen says, taking it out of his hand. His little face crumples as if he’s going to cry but after Jen sets the candle back she sweeps him up for a hug and he doesn’t actually cry. He’s getting better at taking the ‘no.’His father, on the other hand, joins their embrace, and it’s pretty clear to Jen he’s hell-bent for leather.
He leans in toward Chris and says “Your mommy won’t make any more Chrises with Daddy! Bad mommy!”
Jen half laughs, though Chris is getting pretty good with words and she’d prefer he not repeat this statement at some inopportune time.
“Not true, Daddy is exaggerating,” she says, kissing Chris’s cheek. He squeals and squirms a little and seems like he might be equally content unraveling the contents of the living room, so Jen sets him back down on the floor. He immediately pulls himself up and does the “couch-walk” over to his basket of toys. There, he plucks a fabric book out of the basket and scoots up onto the couch, opening it and babbling to himself as if he can actually read it.
“He is truly his mother’s son,” says Jace.
“Yes, he’s also equally clever, so mind your comments about not making Chrises and the like. He’s apt to take that the wrong way,” Jen says.
“I was half-kidding,” Jace says, “Although it’s true,” he says, lowering his voice to a whisper.
Jen steps back toward the kitchen, hoping to be out of earshot, and pulls Jace with her.
“What do you mean,” she says. She thinks she knows where this is going, but she’d like to hear him own it.
“Well, I mentioned it the other night, about having a brother or sister for him, and you said with the studio opening, it wasn’t the right time. I’m just wondering when will be the right time and still have them close enough together in age to have a good relationship,” Jace said. He’s flushing a little, which is strange.
“I don’t know the right time, but I know it’s not now, when Alby has created this fantastic studio and environment for me to work in AND still be near Chris. I just really need to work for a while until going through it all again,” Jen says.
It’s true. She has so barely begun to feel herself again. The idea of having another, the hormones, the raw irrationality, the inability to focus, frankly, it horrifies her.
“There’s no reason you can’t work pregnant,” Jace says
“That’s not true. Do you know what kind of chemicals I work with when I’m sculpting? If I’m in clay, glaze is full of lead. When I’m working metal, I’m soldering all damned day. I use two-part epoxy by the gallon. The fumes alone would make me retch when I’m pregnant. Trust me. This is not suitable work for the pregnant!”
“If it’s bad for you when you’re pregnant, then it’s bad for you period,” Jace says.
“I get it, okay? I get that you’re worried about me going back to work. But you have it backwards. The time to worry was when I didn’t feel like working. Trust me on this, okay? I need you in my court,” she says, leaning into him. He mumbles an ascent and she breaks away to finish getting ready.
The girls are well into their cups by the time Jen get to the ENC Club. They’ve taken over a section of the pub that’s on risers about two feet higher than the surrounding area and overlooks the adjacent dance floor. Everyone is wearing silly tiaras, and Alby is wearing a short veil. The waiter is en route with a tray laden with shooters. There’s a blur of faces that are half-familiar to Jen from the art scene days, and she’s feeling far too quiet to have to talk to so many half-strangers. At the far end of the table is Alice, who’d been with Saint that first day back at Comfy’s. Of course, she’d be here; she’s one of Alby’s employees. Jen just doesn’t like the Saint connection, the notion that Alice will report back. She realizes it is irrational.
“Ooooh, hey, look who finally made it, my matron-in-waiting,” Alby says, jumping up to give Jen a hug.
It’s great to see her having fun. Jen thought she was nuts to have her girl’s night here when she herself can’t drink, but as usual, Alby’s energy doesn’t seem to require the degree of alcoholic fueling that Jen’s sometimes does.
“You must have a tiara!” Alby says, crowning Jen with a fake kiddie hair accouterment. “Because we are all Wild Succulent Princesses tonight!’ A cheer goes up from the table.
Alby and Rosemary have saved Jen a seat between them and she is grateful because she’s feeling strangely shy and would like to just fade into the background tonight. Alby shouts over the music in an attempt to introduce Jen to the various associates and employee gal pals who’ve collected to help her celebrate her farewell to single life. Jen nods and waves and can’t really hear a thing being said to her. She orders a rusty nail, puts her arm around Rosemary, and settles in.
“It is so good to see you, woman,” she says to Rosemary, and it is. She too looks happy and whole tonight. A few weeks ago, Rosemary and Paul started talking things out, and took a little sail together last weekend between two of his charters. Rosemary was now sporting the freshly-fucked glow that suited her much better than the ‘spinster strain.’
“So what is this I hear about a boy,” Jen says, leaning in.
“Mhmmm, got me a lovely boy. You know, the 35-year-old kind, not the pining student kind,” she whispers.
“And will this boy be accompanying you to the nuptials?” Jen asks.
“Indeed, he will, not that we want him getting any ideas,” she says.
“Then keep him away from Jace,” Jen says.
Rosemary has a funny look on her face. Jen realizes that Paul has never met Jace, but of course knows she had an affair with his pal Peter. Jen chews on this for a minute but decides it will be fine so long as she doesn’t mentally implode.
“This will be kind of weird, won’t it,” she says.
“Naw, Paul will be fine. He’d never say a word, you know. I’m more worried about Jace trying to marry us off than anything else,” she laughs.
“Oh, he’s onto advocating other life milestones these days, such as keeping one’s woman barefoot and pregnant, it would seem,” Jen says.
“Really? Chris is hardly a year old! When did this start?” Rosemary wants to know.
“Just the last few weeks. It’s kind of odd to me,” Jen says.
“You mean, just since Mikolaj’s been hanging around, and just since the studio was being renovated, and just since it dawned on him that you might have a life again?”
“Pretty much,” Jen says, grinning since she put it like that.
“I propose a toast to the inexhaustible and inimitable machinations of chest-thumping, mating men,” says Rosemary, raising her glass.
Alby hears her and loves the toast so much she stands up and shouts it to her entire gal posse, who meet the toast with hoots and cheers.
To the rest of the people in the bar, the cheer back of “to Men” causes them to look their way, to drink in their glittery and highly hormonal, sexualized selves against the heavy bass backdrop and throbbing lights. At least, it causes the men to look their way. Jen realizes you could divide the room up into two camps in terms of the types of men: those who will now fear them or will follow them all night.
Before the crowd is finished drinking them in, Alby leads her posse to the dance floor to go tribal to a favorite song. As the beat thrums through Jen she thinks back to so many nights, seemingly long ago, that she lost herself to the frenzy, the music, the clubs, the drink, and she realizes it is the act of celebration she has always craved. Not destruction. Celebration.
And tonight, even though she’s quiet inside, she will join the dance, because the dance is all there is.