The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Silent Night: Difference between revisions

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 “So, this is the guy, eh?” he said. “The lucky guy.”
 I folded my hands in my lap, a gesture that calmed me. “Paul,” I said, “this is Matt.”
+“His father graduated college the same year as me,” Cassandra said, and I saw she wasn’t as pathetic as I’d thought, and her sobriety lent her a cer- tain ruthlessness. Matt was drunk. He’d been drunk the other day at work, too, when we’d all been given silver gift boxes of Canadian Club and he had cracked his open and we’d swallowed it straight from paper cups.
+“Still drinking the Canadian Club?” I said.
+“Thought I’d keep the roll going,” he said. “The ball rolling. Whatever.”
+He seemed unsure, flustered. I felt that my bringing Paul to the party had
+changed his opinion of me—not the new little receptionist but a woman with a man, his arm thrown over her shoulder. Matt gripped his glass and shook the ice, and the sound reminded me of an afternoon playing Yahtzee with an old friend in middle school, her beagle asleep by the fire, the snow falling beyond the sliding glass doors onto the railings of her back deck. The contrast was disorienting. I didn’t know which scene I fit.