TIM

WHAT WAS I THINKING, TOSSING MY RATTY BLACK OVERCOAT TO THE MAN IN THE tuxedo who opened the door? It was a sudden, arrogant impulse, but it took Kate digging her heel into my shoe for me to realize I’d been rude. “Thank you!” I hurried to say. The Man in the Tuxedo said, “You must be Tim.” Impressive, I thought, for a cater-waiter to know me by my first name. He was a classic cater-waiter type—mostly handsome, well mannered with two perfect racks of large, square white teeth. Then it occurred to me that I might have met this man some years before. Was he perhaps one of those actors Kate had bedded back in Berkeley? I’m not suggesting she had withheld telling me about this man—I sincerely believed she’d simply forgotten him, because he seemed rather much a type: the not-so-bright handsome-guy type who wanted to be famous but, in his quest for fame, developed no quality whatsoever that made him vivid in the long term. Then again, one need only consider the meteoric rise of Jeff Slade, the Jeff Slade, on-the-cover-of-TV Guide Jeff Slade, who, had things been different, easily could have been working this party as a cater-waiter himself, because what is vivid about Jeff Slade? Apart from being the most famous bad television actor in the world, apart from his highly publicized dalliance with that nasty ex-junkie rock star, apart from his recent release from the Betty Ford Center, and apart from the fact that the motherfucker still calls me Tom, guess what’s so vivid that sets Jeff Slade apart from all the other cater-waiters of the world? Jeff Slade is still in love with my wife.

Was this why I had tossed my ratty coat like a hot tamale and shouted, “Catch!” as it sailed through the air? Perhaps. Or maybe I was simply overcompensating for how small I felt. Earlier that evening, as I stood staring into our cluttered closet trying to decide what to wear, I made a decision. I will dress how I dress. I will be me. So I pulled from the closet my well-worn tan corduroy blazer; my scuffed brown loafers; my mohair sweater vest, a bird’s nest of orange and yellow and light green threads of wool; and yes, later from the hall closet, I yanked from a hanger an old favorite article of clothing, my trench coat, purchased my senior year of college for six dollars at the Goodwill store in North Oakland.

When Kate suggested I wear something nicer, I gave my usual knee-jerk response, bastardizing Thoreau: “Beware the occasion that warrants a new suit.” Knowing me to be stubborn when it comes to clothes, Kate didn’t press the issue. I had prevailed.

We were quiet and reflective during our crisp walk across the Heights. Only the click-clack of her black heels underscored the scene. But as we approached the house and saw the chauffeur-driven limousines out front, I regretted my choice. Even before we climbed the bluestone steps to the majestic cream-colored house on Columbia Street, before entering the candlelit vestibule, before hearing the string quartet of recent Juilliard graduates carve the air with Beethoven, Vivaldi, and Bach, as the music floated across the exquisite and polished original parquet floors, bouncing off the walls as thick as buffalo, faintly echoing through all eighteen fireplaces, each cut from the same Italian pink marble; even before I met the other guests—of which there were only six, and before I realized who those six were—and certainly before I realized that the cater-waiter who caught my coat and carried it down the hall as if holding a priceless fur was not a cater-waiter at all but our host, Philip Ashworth, before all this and more became exceedingly clear, I had the wherewithal to sense that while Kate was dressed and ready to impress, we were both in way over our heads.