DECEMBER

A keg party in December, people he knew from the newspaper, the editor, the associate editor, the news editor, the features editor, the sports editor, the managing editor, the copy editors, the reporters, some of whom he had classes with, some whose stories he copy-edited, some he barely knew. Lily was there, too, flirting with the fellow she had brought, very tall and angular, another poetry student with whom all the young women were in love. David something. The news editor had been standing over the keg, trying to persuade Ronny to write for the paper; Ronny was sipping the beer from time to time in order to project conviviality. “I like correcting copy, not writing it,” he said.

“Oh, bullshit. I was in class with you, I read your long-form stuff.”

“You’re so full of it. You’re just short-handed.”

The news editor, whom everybody called by his last name, Roberts, shook his thick hair and took a look around the cramped apartment. One of the ad staff had given the party, insisted everybody come, and was walking around now making sure one of the assistant editors (everybody had a title, part of resumé building) was drinking heavily; she probably wanted to take him to bed later. The stereo was loud, the Who earlier, Who’s Next; Pink Floyd at the moment, Ummagumma, and the sound was big enough to shake the walls of the boxy apartment; this was one of the complexes that had sprung up near University Mall, low ceilings, bland carpet, lots of tape on the walls, as if the occupant was constantly changing her mind about where to hang her posters. There were a couple of Diane Arbus prints in frames, stark black and white. The smell of pot and burnt hot dogs. The hostess had made pigs in a blanket.

Ronny was seeing his life as separate spaces, perhaps too completely walled off from one another: the dorm, the newspaper, people he knew from class, and the folk of Goldsboro, into whose bosom he would return for the holidays. He had a feeling that he often read about in literature class, a sense of alienation, of being here in the room and being distant from it at the same time, though that could just be the pot fumes, it was hard to tell. The associate editor was a well known pothead and the sports editor had intimated that one of the reporters brought some Thai stick to the party. A group of people were clustered around the dining table, laying it all out to smoke.

Lily had been dancing a bit near to her poet friend, but he was looking bored against a wall now and flirting with someone else; Lily sipped her scotch and talked to Ronny, giving him a sleepy look. “He’s a complete bastard, that guy. But he writes really well.”

“That’s the way it’s supposed to work, isn’t it? Great writers are great jerks.”

She laughed, shook her hair forward to the music, then flung it back again, trying to make a bit of a show. Art, one of the news writers, was hovering at her elbow, fascinated. Knowing Art, he would stand there for an hour and never say a word, but if he sat at a typewriter he could record their dialogue with substantial accuracy. A good skill for a reporter but a bit creepy at a party. Lily said, “The thing about journalists is they only want to talk to each other.”