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The room starts to fill with more people, and our table is quickly overrun. All of them acknowledge Sia with an overly nice smile and phony hello. They know who to play to, and it's not me.
I get a couple nods, but I'm barely acknowledged at all.
They all begin to chat about things from their inner circle. The newest teacher at their children's prep school, the biggest rumor about some guy named Todd Gentry who supposedly bought his last wife online, and a scandal about a woman named Bethany Greene, who the woman beside me claims she knows killed her eighty-eight year old husband, seeing as he was twice Bethany's senior.
I sit quietly, keeping to myself as the banquet hall buzzes with a million conversations all at once. Every once in a while I feel someone looking at me and find a dozen people staring at me from all directions.
Sia became more and more stiff as the morning goes on. She moves like a robot. Her joints locking and her muscles skipping. She's gone from a glowing beacon of light to a shadow of the girl who took my breath away.
“So, Siobhan, you haven't introduced us to your friend here. What's your name, son?” the older man across from me asks.
A pair of thin rimmed glasses frame his eyes. His hair is lacking on the top, so he's brushed far more from the left side to the right to compensate. His suit is buttoned up to his gills, with a pastel green tie and matching handkerchief in his breast pocket.
With rail thin fingers, he reaches out and lifts the glass flute to sip his mimosa. He pinches the delicate stem between the frail pads of his fingers, his eyes never leaving mine.
“Mark Werlin.” Sitting pencil straight, I'm struck with this feeling of being judged. Like a child sitting at the adult table for the first time.
“Werlin. . .” he says my last name, pausing and looking up at the ceiling. He's thinking. Shifting through memories in his head. “Werlin. . . It doesn't ring a bell.”
Everyone else around me is looking me up and down. Some have a curiosity in their eyes, while others are just looking down their nose at me. It's as if they can smell the fact I'm not one of them.
“That's because I'm not from around here and neither is my family.”
Sia kindly tries to help, moving the conversation along. “He's from New Hampshire, and here on business, Mr. Fayette. My mother didn't tell you?”
He swallows another sip of his drink, setting the glass down gently, being sure to center it on the small cocktail napkin. “She mentioned something. I've been told you're a mechanical engineer. What's your specialty?”
“Tractors, farm equipment, things like that.”
There's an audible gasp at the table, like the air was just sucked from the room. The woman next me places a hand on her chest, glaring at me with such disdain.
I'm not going to lie. There's no point to it. One lie will turn into another, and they'll just keep building until I can't keep track anymore. I'm not doing it.
Sia's entire body goes stiff as her hands squeeze the outside of her chair. Her lips fall, turning paper thin as her eyes move around the table.
“Farm equipment,” Mr. Fayette says.
“Yes, Sir. I can take apart and rebuild a carburetor in fifteen minutes flat. See this?” I ask, holding my hand over the table so he can see the scar running across the top. He nods reluctantly. “Got my hand caught in the engine of a corn husker, darn thing kicked on and sliced me almost to the bone. If I hadn't been paying attention, I probably would have lost it completely. Eighteen stitches on the outside, and eleven on the inside.”
No one says a word. I don't think any of these people have ever been around someone who isn't a millionaire.
Pulling my hand away, I clear my throat. “What about you, Sir? What do you do?”
“I'm a gastrologist.” The way he says it makes Sia shrink in her seat.
“Oh,” I say as a waiter comes by and places a basket of warm rolls on the table. Grabbing one, I take a big bite. “Mm,” I say with a mouth full of bread. “I have a great doctor joke. Guy goes to the doctor dressed in nothing but bubble wrap. He says, ‘Doctor can you help me?’ The doctor says, ‘No, I can clearly see your nuts.’” Chuckling hard, it takes a second for me to realize that no one else is laughing along.
Swallowing hard, I stuff the rest of the roll in my mouth and run my hands up and down my thighs. This is awkward.
“Sia, your mother tells me you'll be applying to medical school for the next year.”
“Yeah, a few more months and I'll be trading dresses and heels for scrubs.”
The woman shivers as she closes her eyes. “I remember those days. They were awful.”
“I'm happy I get to go to work in jeans and a t-shirt. Nothing fancy, and I don't care if it gets dirty,” I add to the conversation.
“Mm hm,” the woman mumbles uninterested. “I'm sure it's just lovely,” she says. “All that dirt and lord knows what else.”
