The Party
by L. Inman
Elisabeth wandered through the party, drink in hand, her nice black skirt flowing around her ankles, watching people laugh and call to one another. This was not necessarily her idea of a good time: lights both dimmed and too bright at once; a cataract of voices, Niagara-like in volume; too many perfumes, too many drinks left lying on odd surfaces. Bodies, richly clothed and carrying an aura of effortless opulence, something Elisabeth felt she'd never been able to project. But perhaps she was riding herself too harshly; how was she to know how she looked to the casual observer?
A black-suited man cannoned into her sideways as he looked back to shout something to his friend, nearly spilling her drink. "Oh, sorry," he said, and edged swiftly around her, making for the gallery's restroom.
Invisible, Elisabeth decided. That was how she looked. Ah well. She took a fortifying sip of her gin-and-tonic and stood back, out of the way of traffic, to do a little casual observing of her own.
As gallery parties went, this seemed to be quite a successful one, if you gauged success by large numbers of people all getting cheerfully and noisily drunk and, incidentally, buying expensive pieces of art. She caught sight of Olivia working a group of people, teasing them all into laughter with her wicked smile. Elisabeth recognized the looks on their faces: the look of people about to get out their chequebooks. Yes, this was a good night for the gallery. Elisabeth edged away from the bar and closer to the art. Much of it was the sort of avant-garde that brought pangs to her Pre-Raphaelite soul; but some of it was both "challenging" and pleasant to look at. She hung close to these pieces, sipping her drink and praying nobody would ask her to make small talk about them.
"There you are," Olivia said. "C'mere, I want you to meet some people."
Elisabeth masked a grimace for Olivia's sake. "Okay," she said brightly, and followed her new friend through the crush to where a new group of people stood waiting. These people looked slightly more fun to know; they looked like they knew what it meant to have cares, like they understood the delightful consequences of being wicked. Thank God, Elisabeth thought.
"Preston," Olivia was saying, "Katrina, I want you to meet Elisabeth Bowen."
Preston raised his eyebrows. "No relation to the novelist?"
Elisabeth's own eyebrows went up: this was certainly a first. "Not that I know of," she said with the first hint of a real smile. "My name's spelt with an 's'." (God, how stupid that still sounded.)
"She's rooming with me for a little while till she gets a foothold in London," Olivia said.
"Oh," Katrina said. "Sounds like you're a glutton for punishment."
Olivia's laughter was professional; so, Elisabeth thought, she likes Katrina for Preston's sake. Katrina was certainly younger than her partner.
"So how do you know Olivia then?" Preston asked her, breaking off Elisabeth's speculative train of thought. She blinked for a moment.
"Rupert Giles," Olivia said dryly.
"Oh God," Preston said. "What's he doing nowadays?"
"Living in California."
"Probably too hot to hold him. Is he still raising hell?"
"Or it's raising him. I never could tell." Elisabeth hadn't known Olivia long, but behind her dry smile it seemed she was anxious to change the subject. Lord knew Elisabeth was. They had ironed all that out when she first arrived in London ("Rupert so owes you big time for this," Elisabeth had said within ten minutes of getting off the plane), but that didn't mean it was fun to discuss their complicated relationship at a gallery party, even with sympathetic older men who knew who Elizabeth Bowen was.
Preston seemed to take the hint. "So what do you do?" he asked Elisabeth.
"Oh, well," Elisabeth said, "I flip around. I've been a librarian and a bookseller, and sometimes both at once."
"Ah," Preston said.
Elisabeth endured a few minutes more of small talk with Preston and Katrina before Olivia excused them both to refresh their drinks and continue working the crowd.
Elisabeth didn't need to refresh her drink, but she went with Olivia to the bar. "How'm I doing?" she asked through the din.
"You're fine," Olivia assured her. "And, you look great." She winked.
Elisabeth looked down and brushed the silken ruffles of the fuchsia dress shirt her new roommate had lent her for the occasion. "I've never worn fuchsia before. It's—kinda fun." But her tone was uncertain.
"We've been through that," Olivia said with a snort. "A double g-and-t, please—that's what you're having, right?"
"Well, minus the double," Elisabeth said.
"I'm going to need it," Olivia said fervently. "Oh, God, there're the Harrisons. I have to talk to them before they leave." She snatched up her drink almost before the barman had finished making it. "You go mingle," she said to Elisabeth over her shoulder. "It's a party."
Elisabeth arched her eyebrows. "Oookay," she murmured, like Nicolas Cage watching Sean Connery walking away with an ambiguous thumbs-up over his shoulder. "Okay," she said to herself again, drawing herself up with a breath. "Mingling. Extraversion. Sexxx." She brushed a hand through her hair (newly cut and styled in a gentle flip that cunningly concealed the remaining stitches over her left temple), resettled her new light black-frame glasses over her nose, and set off for a corner of the room she hadn't stood in before. Trouble was, once she got there, there was nothing to do but continue to stand, looking around at the crowd, watching the minglers drink and talk and laugh. It's like a Frida Kahlo painting, Elisabeth thought, without the fun.
"I don't believe I've seen you around here before," said a voice.
Elisabeth turned and found a man at her elbow. He was reasonably good-looking, suave in his dark jacket, and looking directly at her. Elisabeth's eyebrows went up.
"I mean," he said, "I know all the pretty girls who come to these parties. What's your name, love?"
Elisabeth continued to stare at the man as his type and MO clicked into place. Just her luck. Her usual MO in these situations was to be kind and sweet, to murmur um-humm, and try to find some delicate manner of escape. But at the moment all she'd found herself able to do was stare. She decided to play it that way: the entranced child watching the alien grownup and trying to decipher the funny sounds coming out of its mouth.
The man laughed nervously. "It's really funny, you know," he said, "the number of people who come here to schmooze. It'd be much more fun if there were some music to dance to. You like dancing?"
Elisabeth kept staring up at him, making her eyes wide and vacant.
He kept doggedly on. "I mean, clearly you like drinking," he said, gesturing at her glass.
Elisabeth made her eyes even wider. She leaned close to speak to him, in a distressed whisper that carried even through the hubbub. "The flowers are angry," she said. "They don't like it. They're going to pull their rooty feet out of the ground and stomp on us all."
"Er, yes," the man babbled, "er, yes, I see."
"We have to go now and cut their roots off," Elisabeth said urgently.
"...ah. Yes, I see."
"Their rooty roots," Elisabeth murmured dreamily.
"Quite," the man said. "Er—you know—I think I'd better go and refresh my drink. I'll, er, look you up in a few minutes, shall I?" He dodged gracefully around a large man in a tailcoat and disappeared.
Elisabeth rolled her eyes and took another sip of her gin and tonic, but nevertheless she felt quite pleased with herself, though what Rupert would have said if he'd seen her impersonating Drusilla—
She caught sight of a young man looking her way, a hint of amusement on his face, and realized he had observed the whole exchange. Their eyes met briefly; he snatched his gaze away politely and took a sip of his drink, looking lazily at the crowd.
Elisabeth looked down at her gin and tonic. She was tired of it, and she didn't even really like gin. She decided to see if the barman had any Grand Marnier, then take the new drink to an unoccupied table if she could find one, and sit and nurse it quietly for the rest of the evening.
The harried barman, it turned out, did have just enough Grand Marnier left to give her a glass of it straight; she turned to carry out the second phase of her plan and find a table, when a sound cut across the din and chatter—a wild shout of laughter.
Elisabeth lifted her eyes to the ceiling: of course people were beginning to get thoroughly drunk.
Except that the wild shout of laughter was followed by a new shriek of even higher volume, and another, and another. People were beginning to pause in their conversations to look around, and the hubbub in the room decreased.
Elisabeth pushed forward through the crowd, who were now craning their necks to look for the source of the maniacal screaming laughter. She had a sudden fair idea of who was doing it; and sure enough, when she cleared the last knot of people she could see the young man who had been amused at her Drusilla impression, fallen back in his chair red-faced, head thrown back, screaming gleefully like a mad scientist about to pull the Earth Destruction Lever. He had an impressive set of lungs for this sort of thing, she thought, but it was clear that he was nearing the top of his bent. Just as the whole room fell to a stunned silence, he cut off the laughter mid-scream, sat up calmly in his chair, and sipped delicately at his drink as if nothing had happened.
Around her the people began to turn away, rolling their eyes, making sickened looks, and muttering. Elisabeth, however, went to where he sat, plunked her drink down on the table, and sat down across from him. "Hi," she said.
"Hi," he said.
"I can tell you're a kindred spirit," she said.
He nodded gravely, as if she had just announced that he'd made the Queen's List. "Quite," he said. He stuck out his hand. "Brian Whitaker."
She shook it. "Elisabeth Bowen."
"Pleasure. I've seen your work."
She gave a regal nod of her own.
"So why are you here?" she asked.
"Because I like to chase the chickens," he replied. "Why are you here?"
"Because my roommate owns this gallery," she said. His eyebrows went up, and he began to form a reply, when said roommate charged up to the table.
"Brian, what the hell are you playing at?" she demanded.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Brian said, eyes wide. "I'm just sitting here."
Olivia gave him a look. "Nobody else in London or Oxford does that infernal laugh. And I want to know—why here? Why now, of all times?"
"Oh, come on, Olivia," Brian wheedled. "It's the perfect venue. You couldn't ask for a better time and place for a maniacal laugh."
"Yes, well, this happens to be my livelihood," Olivia said severely, though Elisabeth could detect a twinkle in her eye.
"Your livelihood needs livening up, love," Brian said.
"As we languish locked in L," Elisabeth murmured.
Brian pointed at her. "Exactly. She speaks wisdom."
Olivia turned to her. "You've found the one bad egg in the lot," she said, in the same severe tone, but her smile was quite evident now.
Elisabeth smiled back. "I'm mingling," she said. "It's a party."
"So," Brian said to her when Olivia had gone. "You scare off lounge lizards and quote Dunnett. What sort of animal are you?"
Elisabeth was swirling her Grand Marnier in the glass appreciatively before taking her first sip. "Maverick academic, librarian, and bookseller. Bounced all over the U.S. of A. for a while, then bounced here. Staying with Olivia till I find myself a new line of work. You?"
"Don," Brian said. "History."
"A pretty young don, aren't you?"
"I do all right. Managed to find the right funding at the right time."
"Meaning," Elisabeth interpreted, "that you're probably a pure-d genius with a string of scholarships." She smirked.
"Well, I don't like to boast." He smirked back and took a sip of his drink. "You should visit Oxford. Lot of books there."
"It's on my list," Elisabeth said earnestly.
"You said you were an academic. What's your field?"
"English lit. Specializing in the Romantics and the Victorians."
"Ahh, the nineteenth century. Good times, good times."
"What kind of history do you do?"
"Medieval. Of course." He grinned. "But I also write on civil wars and insurgencies of various types. So I wind up bouncing around a lot myself."
"So," she said, "what are your other specialties, besides medieval history and maniacal laughs?"
"Hmmm...." He tapped his chin, thinking. "Well, I tend to specialize in whatever practical joking is called for. Once," he grinned, "there was this teacher—absolute bastard—and I loaded up his car with snakes."
"Snakes? You mean, real ones?"
"Oh yes. He never could prove it was me." Brian leaned back in his chair and took a reminiscent sip of his drink. "Oh, those were the days. I feel so stultified in my College sometimes, being a figure of authority and all. It's all I can do to get away with a maniacal laugh nowadays."
Elisabeth put her chin in her hand and her elbow on the table, thinking to herself. It had been a long time since she had pulled any pranks herself; of course, she hadn't really had a good target, not in months. Certainly not at all since changing dimensional addresses.
Brian was watching her. "Are you trying to think of someone into whose automobile I can introduce some herpetological friends?"
Elisabeth was going to say no, but all at once— No. She had determined not to rock the boat, and this would definitely rock the boat. Unless they were never caught. Her lips twitched into the beginning of a smile. She took her gaze out of the distance and looked at her new friend.
"I can think of someone. It'd take a good deal of maneuvering."
Once the plotting was done, they talked inconsequentially of medieval history and English literature, the history of weaponry (Elisabeth surprised Brian with the amount she had to say about crossbows), fairy painting, W.B. Yeats, the Golden Age of anarchism, G.K. Chesterton, Lord Peter Wimsey, vintage automobiles, and British varieties of garden snakes. They had far from exhausted their store of topics when the party began to close down, and Olivia appeared to collect Elisabeth to go home. They parted on amicable terms; Brian left with Quentin Travers's name on a slip of paper in his wallet, Elisabeth with her head teeming with ideas, not to mention a growing conviction that she held quietly within herself, like a child cupping a small captured bird in its hands.
It was quite late. Elisabeth and Olivia rode home in silence, both too exhausted to speak. Immediately they got home Elisabeth changed into flannel pajamas and returned Olivia's fuchsia shirt. "So you had fun," Olivia said with a sardonic smile.
"It was the shirt," Elisabeth said, grinning slyly. "It did yeoman's service."
Olivia snorted.
Elisabeth went to her room, ostensibly to go to bed; but instead wound up pacing the floor silently, thinking, half-wondering whether to suppress the idea that had come to her while talking with Brian Whitaker. A small well of frustration was growing in her, and it took her a while to figure out why.
She wanted to talk to Rupert about it. But Rupert was far away, and far too immersed in his own and Buffy's concerns. And rightly so, Elisabeth reminded herself; they had agreed it was for the best that they not be in touch except for necessary business. For her sake as well as for his. "And anyway," she had said, "I'm such a bad correspondent that we may as well plan it." "That," he had said, "makes two of us."
But it was occurring to Elisabeth that she was going to need, if not his help, then at least Willow's talent for forgery and computer hackery. It was this consideration that nerved her to go and ask Olivia for permission to make the international call. She sat on her bed, drew a deep breath, and dialed.
It rang once, twice. No answer yet. Three times. Probably he wasn't home.
The line clicked open. "Hello?"
"Hello—Rupert?"
She had clearly startled him: he began stammering. "Oh—yes? Yes, this is Rupert Gi—"
"It's me, Elisabeth."
"Oh! Oh, yes, yes of course. You—you're still in London, aren't you?"
"Yes, I'm calling from London."
"It must be quite late there—nothing's wrong, is it?"
"No," she hastened to assure him, "nothing's wrong for a change. I—we were at a gallery party and just got home."
"Ah. I see."
Elisabeth thought she had better get to her business before he got any more confused. But before she could speak she heard Xander's voice in the background: "Is that Elisabeth?"
Rupert's voice went slightly muffled as he said to him, "Yes, it's Elisabeth."
He was clearly moving away from Xander, by the fading sound of Xander's eager voice: "Tell her about the snot monsters from outer space." Rupert made a little sound, as of a stifled groan of annoyance.
"Sorry. Xander's here researching with me."
"Snot monsters from outer space?" Elisabeth said with a smile.
"Yes...er, no. We're done researching those. We're working on...other things now." He paused, and she had a mental image of him trying to decide whether it was worthwhile to shoot Xander a glare. "You did say there was nothing wrong?"
"Nothing wrong," she assured him again.
"And I take it you're well?"
She sighed. "Yeah, pretty good. Some days are easier than others. I got a job at a bookshop not too far from here."
"Oh, excellent," he said. But she could still hear the uncertainty in his voice, and decided to speed things up a bit.
"And I made a friend this evening."
"Oh, very good," he said.
"An Oxford don," she said. "And that's why I called. I had an idea, talking to him, and..." —she took the plunge— "I thought it might be time for me to get back into the academic life."
He didn't answer right away, but when he did it was with a smile in his voice. "I was wondering when that'd occur to you."
"Don't be such a smartass," Elisabeth said, grinning with sudden relief.
"So you want to further your education at Oxford, do you?"
She smirked teasingly, though he couldn't see it. "Or, I don't know, possibly at Cambridge."
"Such jokes are in poor taste," Rupert said repressively, and she giggled.
"Well," he said, "you'll need paperwork proving your degrees in America...I suppose we'd better put Willow onto it. Let me...I can give you her telephone number."
"Yes, and you can give her my email. I have an email address now."
She could practically hear him rolling his eyes. "Yes. Of course, email. How could I forget."
"Very easily, you lovable luddite," she said. Languish locked in L....
"I'll have you know that I actually contemplated buying a mobile the other day, with all the bells and whistles."
"Ooh, a cellphone. Moving up in the world, are we?"
"Oh shut up. Here—I've got pen and paper; have you?"
"Yes." They exchanged information, and Elisabeth said briskly, "Well, that's my whole agenda, pretty much. I should let you get back to your research on the...thing."
"Yes," he said, awkwardly.
"Yes," she repeated.
There was a small pause, then he said: "I'm glad to hear you're well." This at least he could say with ease.
"Yeah," she said. "Thanks. And thanks for your help with my, um, new plan."
"Yes, well," he said, "my help is limited. I haven't much pull at Oxford, and what I have goes through the Council, and, well...."
"Say no more," Elisabeth said wryly. A shaft of hilarity went through her, and she briefly considered spilling her plans with Brian to him, but she realized in time how disastrous that might be, and successfully held her tongue. "Take care of yourself," she said finally.
"I will. And you."
"Naturally," she said.
"Good night," he said softly.
"Good night, Rupert."
Elisabeth shut off the cordless phone and fell back wearily onto the bed. Another dizzying turn of the wheel.
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