All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi. I don’t think I’ve seen you around before.”

“No, I don’t go out much.”

“You should.” He slipped his hand inside her sleeve to touch her bare arm. His fingers were warm, tracing hypnotic patterns.

She felt dizzy and nauseated. The bass line thundered in the bottom of her stomach.

“Excuse me, is there—where’s the powder room?”

“Just right on down that hallway, second door on the left.”

“Thank you.”

Lisa was already turning to go, but the man bent over and kissed her hand with a grin. Although she never trusted those kinds of men, there was something tempting about him. A handsome stranger on a lonely night. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

Wobbling in her strappy sandals, Lisa worked her way through the party to the bathroom, where she broke down crying again. Mascara dribbled down her cheeks and left gray splotches on her pale blue blouse. She had to stop thinking about John Lennon bleeding to death on the sidewalk. If she’d been in Hartford, she could have taken the train into New York and laid flowers at the Dakota, or gone to the vigil in Central Park. She could have shared her grief, instead of tamping it down in some hillbilly drug dealer’s bathroom. When someone rattled the door, Lisa tore off some toilet paper and cleaned up her mascara as best she could.

After giving up the bathroom to a woman in a fringed cowgirl shirt and a raccoon’s mask of eye makeup, Lisa couldn’t face the party again. She worked her way down the hall, using the wall as support, and ducked into the kitchen.

In the middle of the room, stood a blond woman wearing short shorts and a halter top. She looked like nothing so much as a redneck Marilyn Monroe. In her hands she held a Rubik’s Cube that she was twisting furiously. Not trying to solve it, but scrambling it.

Liam Quinn sat at the kitchen table, taking a drag off a joint. So much for not running into any students’ parents. If anything, he was bigger, uglier, and greasier than he had been the day Lisa met him.

“Okay, okay,” the blonde said. She held out the cube and Mr. Quinn traded her the joint for it. Since he hadn’t seen her yet, Lisa was about to turn around and leave but the blonde caught her by the arm and said, “Have you seen this? You have to see this. It’s crazy.”

The Rubik’s Cube, Lisa assumed.

“My brother has one,” she said. “He had to take it apart and put it back together to solve it.”

“No, no, look. He can totally do it. Look!” The blonde pointed excitedly.

Lisa looked. The first thing that struck her was how ridiculously small the Rubik’s Cube was in Mr. Quinn’s hands. Then she realized he was actually solving the stupid thing. He had two sides done and was gaining on a third. Lisa and the blonde stood in rapt attention as he worked through it.

When he finished, he raised his head and blushed.

“Hey, Miss DeGrassi,” he mumbled.

“Hi.”

“Oh, you guys know each other?” the blonde said.

Lisa still hoped she could escape without being identified, but Mr. Quinn said, “This is Miss DeGrassi. She was Wavy’s teacher in third grade.”

“You can just call me Lisa. Since we’re not in school.”

The blonde giggled and said, “Oh how fun! I’m glad you came. Too bad Wavy’s not here.”

Presented with that horrific idea, Lisa stared at the blonde, trying to figure out if she should know her. There was no way she was Wavy’s mother. All the hair bleach in the world couldn’t bring about that kind of transformation.

“Okay, okay, you try it now,” the blonde said. She took the cube out of Mr. Quinn’s hand and gave it to Lisa.

For a moment, Lisa stared at it, feeling strangely disconnected from her own hands. Was that the marijuana? Because the blonde looked at her expectantly, Lisa turned the cube’s squares into random order. When she had it as mixed up as much as she could, she put it back in Mr. Quinn’s hands. It wasn’t a fluke. He solved the puzzle again in just a few minutes.

“Oh my god,” the blonde said. “I can’t believe how you do that.”

Against her natural instincts, Lisa was impressed, too. She’d spent hours on her brother’s at Thanksgiving and never managed to solve more than one side at a time. Just as she reached for the Rubik’s Cube, wanting to see Mr. Quinn solve it again, she heard the opening bars of “Bungalow Bill.”

A second later she was crying in a stranger’s kitchen.

She turned to leave, but bumped into someone in the doorway. Whoever he was caught her by the arms and said, “Hey, are you okay?”

“I just want to go home. I want to go home,” she said.

Abruptly, “Bungalow Bill” cut out and was replaced by the opening bars of “Another One Bites the Dust” at full volume, for the tenth time that night.

She plunged into the party, tears pouring down her face. If Stacy was there, Lisa couldn’t see her or her zebra-patterned off-the-shoulder blouse. It seemed like everyone had the same tall, frosted hair. Lisa turned a slow circle, scanning the room, until Mr. Quinn touched her elbow and said, “I’ll take you home.”

He held her arm all the way across the gravel drive. Two hours before, the tall strappy sandals had just been silly. Now that Lisa was drunk, high, and crying again, they were dangerous. The car he took her to was boxed in on all sides by other cars. She squeezed the bridge of her nose hard to cut off more tears.