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I know words are cheap, but why do hers affect me so much?
“Hey, Logan!” Leslie finds me in my quiet space. “We’re about to start thanking the donors. You should be on stage!”
I look at him with exasperation, but he doesn’t budge. After one last sip of champagne I say, resigned, “I’m going, I’m going!”
“It is really good to see you here,” he places a hand on my shoulder and begins to guide me back inside. “Remember, it’s a night for celebration, my friend!”
I massage the bridge of my nose as we walk back inside.
I place the empty flute on another waiter’s tray and resist the temptation to grab another one. Leslie, on the other hand, takes a full glass; he would take two if he could. By the end of the night, he will have drunk more than a fish.
He sees someone ahead and leaves me alone for the time being. I gaze around the room, looking for Anna, and find her with Jane, Joyce, and Mrs. Ritz. Mrs. Ritz is also a fan of the champagne flutes, and it looks like she is entertaining the girls. Even Anna is entranced by her. They’re all sitting around a table engaged in animated conversation.
“Are the ladies having fun?” I ask, praying they’d ignore my sour face.
“Joyce taught me how to dance!” Anna leaps up, ecstatic.
I look at Joyce, then at Anna, then at Joyce again, cursing the little bandit for robbing me of that milestone with my daughter.
“Alright then,” I offer Anna my hand, “show me.”
Anna jumps at the opportunity, coming to dance with boundless energy and excitement. And she does great, despite the fact that she completely ignores the tempo of the music in favor of making me twirl her three dozen times per minute.
“Okay, okay, enough!” I take her in my arms and sit down with her on my lap.
“She’s a great dancer, isn’t she?” Joyce says with a grin, as if daring me to say otherwise.
“Oh, she is!” I take a seat between Jane and Mrs. Ritz, which leaves me with Joyce sitting right across me.
“Learns really fast,” Jane teases.
“As opposed to you, who wasn’t a fast learner at all,” I tease back.
“Logan!” Jane yelps, offended.
“You say what you want, you hear what you don’t want,” Mrs. Ritz says with her good humor.
The woman has known me since I was a kid, and I’ve never seen her sad a single moment in my life. Sometimes she annoys me too.
“Mrs. Ritz, tell me something,” I start, “I know I should know the answer to this, but the truth is I can’t remember. Who are we honoring tonight?”
She points to a man who looks to be around the same age as me, late thirties. He is very tall and imposing, but the quality of his suit clashes with everyone else’s, and he looks like a fish out of water.
“What’s so special about him?” Jane asks, curious.
“That’s Geoffrey Benson, president of the neighborhood association that’s getting benefited this year,” Mrs. Ritz explains, “Tonight is his night, so we all pay our respects to him.”
“It’s kind of sad, isn’t it?” Jane frowns. “That his biggest accomplishment is getting a check from rich people?”
“How are the neighborhoods chosen?” Joyce asks, genuinely curious. “Scouting? Chance?”
“The representatives of each place submit pictures, a written letter, and the draft of a project they plan to implement in their neighborhood showing what they’d do with the money. Then each company who donates money gets a vote and the neighborhood with the most votes wins,” I say.
“Then it’s not sad; it is an accomplishment!” Joyce says, fist bumping the air. “He worked hard for it, God only know how hard papers are to write for school, let alone a full-blown project for the place you live!”
“You should enroll your neighborhood next year, Joyce,” Jane says, sounding boastful.
“Maybe I will!” and she laughs, a crystalline, beautiful, loud and annoying sound all in one. “But seriously, how would I go about doing that?”
