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The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Silent Night: Difference between revisions
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Bob’s wife’s name was Cassandra. Paul offered to refresh her drink, and she admitted she was a lightweight. Her watered-down Tom Collins sweated onto its green napkin. She made conversation the way older adults often did by asking questions, and discovered that she’d graduated from Oberlin the same year as Paul’s father. | Bob’s wife’s name was Cassandra. Paul offered to refresh her drink, and she admitted she was a lightweight. Her watered-down Tom Collins sweated onto its green napkin. She made conversation the way older adults often did by asking questions, and discovered that she’d graduated from Oberlin the same year as Paul’s father. | ||
“Oh Christ, I’m old,” she said, and I saw suddenly that she was—the skin around her eyes sagged beneath her make up. Her hands were thick with veins, her head topped with coarse, wiry hairs that stuck up from her page boy haircut. I felt a rush of terror that this was my fate. | |||
“You’re not,” I said, placing my hand onto hers on the table cloth. “Look at you,” she said. “Look at the two of you.” | |||
Paul put on his clever grin—the one he used as acknowledgement when | |||
someone said how good looking he was. He leaned over and gave me a wet kiss on the cheek, grabbed my empty glass and slipped from the table. | |||