Style and Just a Little Arrogance
an excerpt

By her third glass, Marlene had grown uneasy. The idea of letting Wayne mingle on his own may not have been so smart after all. If he wasn’t clinging to her or otherwise staying within viewing distance, he had to be getting himself into trouble.
“Really,” Erin asked, “how do you like being engaged to a quarterback?”
“It’s a challenge.”
“Do you worry about him cheating?”
“Frankly, no,” Marlene said with a droll smirk. “He sowed all his wild oats before he met me. I don’t worry about him running off with another woman, I do worry about him embarrassing me.”
“How could he, if he’s not cheating on you?”
“You’ve heard him talk. Did you hear him the night he said the Catholic Church allows itself to be used as an ideological enforcement arm for conservative politicians? That’s no way for a professional athlete to talk.”
“True,” Clark said, “They usually brag about hos and bitches and how they roll, you know, the gangsta rap stuff.”
“Peter does sometimes tend to expound on subjects he knows little about,” Marlene said.
“What do you expect?” Clark asked. “He went to Duke. I’m guessing he wasn’t taking Pots for Jocks. He’s a complicated guy. There’s more to his world than pimps and whoring.”
“Clark, you’re missing the point,” Marlene said slowly. “His mouth will do nothing but get him in trouble. He says things like that when I’m trying to get him endorsements. Oh, he can turn on the charm when he meets salespeople and CEOs, but once they hear the things he says, they won’t trust their business with him. I keep trying to tell him that, but he just doesn’t listen, He received a great education, but it’s not reflected in his maturity level.”
“They say any athlete whose reading material goes beyond Forbes and Internet porn is a strange duck,” Erin said, drawing a chuckle from those sitting around them.
In the background, somebody was noodling around on the piano, and there was some laughter from its immediate vicinity. If these people were smart, Marlene thought, they wouldn’t let Wayne anywhere near the piano.
“I need someone, someone I could talk to, someone I’d care to love,” came the exaggerated Sinatra-like voice of someone playing the piano. “Could it be you?” it continued, followed by a softer “Could it be you?”
Barbara returned to the den with another cocktail and a frown.
“He’s at it again, Marlene,” she said disgustedly.
“Peter?”
“Yes. He’s got an audience that’s lapping it up like he was pissing Periginon.”
He got to the piano. Marlene sighed, not wishing to watch.
“He does a killer Sinatra,” Clark said.
“What song?”
“It’s ‘Kiss Off,’ that Violent Femmes song,” Erin said. “That was one of my favorite albums in college.”
“We’re not in college anymore,” Marlene snapped.
“He thinks he’s a karaoke diva,” Barbara added.
“He’s putting more effort into this than he did into the game today,” Marlene said disgustedly as she got up to look.
“I hope you know this will go down on your permanent record,” Wayne huffed in full Sinatra menace, drawing some laughs from those gathered around the piano. Marlene didn’t know most of them; they seemed to be either young associates or their dates who didn’t know how to act on an occasion like this. Wayne continued playing, smiling and nodding as those who knew the words sang along. She struggled to keep silent, not wishing to spoil the party. Here he was, on her turf, acting just as wild and immature as if he was among his own friends. Let him do this with Durand and Hoyle, not here. And he had lost the game – this was selfish self-indulgence he hadn’t earned that day.
Erin danced past Marlene as Wayne began singing numbers, followed by what sounded like reasons to commit suicide. “Stop,” Marlene mouthed to her, while the group around the piano began singing along louder with each number.
“Eight! Eight! Forgot was eight was for! Nine! Nine! Nine! For a lost God! And ten! Ten! Ten! Ten’s for EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING!” It sounded like some kind of punk rock concert by now.
“You can all just kiss off into the air! Behind my back, I see ya stare! They hurt me bad, I don’t mind! They hurt me bad, they do it all the time!”
“Yeah! Yeah!” the chorus behind him shouted.
“They do it all the time!”
“Yeah! Yeah!”
“They do it all the time!”
“Yeah! Yeah!”
“Do it all the time-time-time-time-time….time! time! Time!”
“Do it all the time!” the crowd sang along as he ended the song with a big flourish of final notes, drawing applause and high fives as Marlene watched silently, glowering. He had taken a classy occasion and turned it into another night with his drinking buddies, albeit a new set. She took note of who was around the piano, and was really disappointed to see a young female associate at her firm standing right next to Wayne. He wasn’t grabbing her or macking on her, but that didn’t matter to Marlene. He was a hero to this group. As if he had done something to deserve it.
“Like a goddamned independent crashing a sorority party,” Barbara whispered in Marlene’s ear as Wayne started into another song.
“’Live Forever?’ Yeah, I know that,” Marlene could hear Wayne tell somebody before he began playing again.
“I love Oasis,” Erin whispered into Marlene’s other ear.
“Jesus,” Marlene mumbled.
“Do you really know this guy anymore?” Barbara asked.
“He’s the guy who treats me the way I’ve always wanted to be treated, and he turns out to be an asshole,” Marlene answered, barely audible over about a dozen voices shouting “You and I are gonna live forever!” in sloppy falsetto.
Just then, Wayne noticed Marlene, and quickly beckoned her with his left hand between notes. She shook her head coldly.
“Cut him off, Marlene,” Barbara said.
“As if you had to tell me twice.”
Erin cheerfully said, “If you don’t want him…“
Marlene wanted badly to yell “Forget it!” and get away from Erin, but she could not vent her displeasure at a party. Still, not only was Wayne making a fool of her, he was getting over with most of the room. HER people. He was having a great time and winning them over at her expense. She found herself wishing she had let him go have a good time with her other two Hawk clients so she could enjoy the party in peace. She looked at her watch: 11:43. The year ends in 17 minutes. He would be looking for her. She wanted to rip his head off as badly as any Oakland linebacker had that afternoon. Still, she needed to find some way to cool off – this wasn’t the place for a scene. That would have to wait until they got outside.
Unless she took charge of the situation herself.
“Excuse me,” she told Barbara and Erin before heading over to the piano. She walked over to the front of the piano, eventually found a little room, placed both her hands on it, and stared a hole through Wayne until he looked up at her.
Wayne sat up straight, smiled and asked her, “Are you giving me the stinkeye?”
Calmly, she answered, “I’d rather be giving you something to the right temple, with all deliberate force.”
“Whooooooaaaaaaaaaa!” Several of the people around them oohed in unison.
Wayne smiled, stifling a chuckle, took a breath and said, “In some places, that’s consider a threat. To us, that’s foreplay.”
Marlene could feel a vein bulge in her head as everyone looked at her. Her sense of affrontery demanded an immediate response, but she still would not take the bait to explode on him.
“Music and wit are the two most popular ways for a man to work around his shortcomings. They worked on me for awhile,” she finally said, earning a few aahs herself. Wayne laughed along, then beamed. Was this getting anywhere? She could stand there and trade one-liners with him for the rest of the year, but she’d only be giving him just what he wanted.
“For those of you who don’t know her,” Wayne told the group, “this is Marlene, to whom I am committed and promised sometime in the coming new year.”
“And this is Peter Wayne-Vargas, who should be committed,” she replied, to some laughs.
“This is what true love is about,” Wayne said, getting up from his stool and walking over to Marlene. When he went to take her hands, she pulled them back, straightening the fingers together on her right hand in preparation to slap him if necessary. He was probably getting off on this whole scene. She felt thankful a knife wasn’t within reach.
“Ten minutes!” someone shouted from the kitchen. That was all she needed. Ten minutes to decide whether to allow him to kiss her at midnight. Maybe she’d cool off by then; maybe she wouldn’t. He always counted on her to cool off. He’d play one of his romantic cards, the kind she always fell for. He’d tell her he loved her – after proposing to her, he promised to tell her he loved her every day, and he indeed lived up to it. By now, though, she wasn’t sure he loved him. Why did he have to always be there when she was hurting and at her most vulnerable? Here she was again, still the smart woman making foolish choices. Maybe it came from her mother – after all, she loved Wayne more than any other boyfriend she ever had, and she had a foolish choice of husband to live with, even if Marlene's three stepmothers had made the same stupid mistake.
A large-screen TV was tuned to the countdown from Times Square in New York City, and Wayne guided her into the living room, a hand on her shoulder. She took some deep breaths, struggling to keep herself from being triggered. She thought of a convenient trip to the bathroom, a nice excuse to be away from Wayne when midnight arrived. Too obvious. She’d be hearing about that faux pas for the next 20 years. She’d just have to grit her teeth and deal with it.
As the time neared, Erin ran over to them, put both hands on Wayne’s shoulders and practically sang “One more minute!” If Erin were a stranger, Marlene would’ve told her she could have him. Erin was naturally flirtatious, and Marlene could usually brush off her touchy-feeliness with her men easily. But could it have been more obvious how displeased she was with Wayne’s behavior? And she still thought he was the greatest thing since wireless Internet? She wondered if Erin was a friend anymore – if she tried to confide her misgivings about Wayne to her, Erin would probably be too busy smacking her lips to listen. And she did not want a potential free agent Wayne moving on to anybody she knew socially or professionally.
Wayne took her hand, turned her toward him and told her, “I could marry you right now, if we had anybody here who could do it.”
“I can’t believe you’re thinking about that right now,” she answered, too startled to think about the tone of her answer.
“Hey, I’m the one who’s supposed to be depressed about losing the game.”
Oblivious. Completely, willfully oblivious, Marlene said to herself before the final countdown began. The numbers only reminded her of that stupid song he’d been playing on piano. At two, a spontaneous inspiration: a coughing fit that practically doubled her over when the new year arrived.
Wayne took her around her waist from behind, kissed her bare right shoulder, and licked the back of her neck. There was a time when his tongue on her bare skin brought wordless surrender, as if he knew precisely how to unlock the erotic side of her. She wasn’t biting anymore. When he told her he loved her, she didn’t respond. He tried to make it tougher for her to ignore him, but she wouldn’t bite. She couldn’t very well tell him to stop in a roomful of people, either. She hadn’t felt this way since high school and college, where guys she wasn’t attracted to had had too much to drink and barnacled themselves to her. She had no problem saying “No!” or “Stop!” back then, but she wasn’t engaged to the guy or in a roomful of people who knew it, either. She tried to lose herself in the singing and shouting of others, but couldn’t.
The anger had turned into melancholy. Maybe she couldn’t hold her liquor like she used to. Middle age was lurking down the corridor, after all. Those negative thoughts somehow snapped her out of her funk, and Marlene once again became the gracious, composed party guest. Wayne, meanwhile, looked like fatigue finally caught up with him, finding a couch to plop down on and telling Marlene, “I’m ready to go when you are.”
“Had enough to drink?” Marlene asked, finally feeling a little superior. She had always suspected she could outdrink him if they ever sat down to consume shots.
“I shut myself off awhile ago. I’m gonna need another Motrin before bed, probably.”
Thank God for small favors, Marlene sighed. He did have a sense of how far too far was when it came to pills and alcohol. Not every man she dated had that internal radar. She had a stronger sense of it herself than many women she knew, even the most polished and most professional.
By 12:30, the party was starting to break up, and it was safe to start thinking about a good night’s sleep. She could tolerate the idea of sleeping over at Wayne’s instead of taking a longer cab ride home; sex usually wasn’t happening after a tough game, anyway. In the morning, maybe she’d have to finesse her way through the situation, or maybe even have the talk with him. It wasn’t a good idea to have that talk while alcohol was still coursing through her system. They said their separate goodnights, and were about to head together to await a cab when Barbara pulled her aside.
“Now you’re not letting him off the hook for this, are you?” Barbara asked.
“You know I wouldn’t.”
“Do you have your exit strategy mapped out?”
“I have one before I start dating someone, trust me,” Marlene said as Wayne guided her out the door. She could see the glare Barbara gave him.