"Opposite the Party" by Jocelyn Richardson
A good friend was throwing a party. She was the kind of friend who provided champagne and champagne coupes, each glass tinted a different pastel hue so that, if you could remember the colour you picked, you would know which glass was yours for the rest of the night. She made hors d’oeuvres with trout and soused onion, and desserts with praline and quince. She lived in a narrow terrace house with exposed brick walls and stained-glass doors. It was tidy and well lit, and full of things like natural fibre throws and handmade slippers. She spent money on things that warmed her heart and her feet. Like champagne.
Elsa and Evan arrived at eleven and took a glass each, but Elsa ended up drinking Evan’s and then forgetting the colour of both glasses—purple and orange—and taking a third—green. It wasn’t an excuse for anything that happened next and Elsa said as much in the morning. But she was initially so impressed at her own ability to balance the champagne coupe, little finger extended, that she began to like the feeling of it as she went around the party and eventually found she couldn’t be without one. ‘These are some tight bubbles,’ she told the host. Partly it was the breast-shaped glass weighted between her thumb and forefinger. Partly it was the buzz of drinking and being with her friends, all of them laughing at her, all of them so cheeky and up-for-anything.
‘You’ve got to try the trout,’ she said to Evan at one point. He said he’d had five. She kissed his mouth and it was true, it was fishy. She got the idea then, that they should really be having sex right now—not at the party, but somewhere close, so that she could enjoy the best of all her worlds: her lover and her friends (chatting about she had no idea what, but she was sure it was funny). There was a do-you-feel-it-too feeling she wanted to share.
Even as she thought it, she knew it was impossible to make everything overlap in a way that satisfied her.
‘Come with me,’ she said to Evan.
‘Now?’ he said as he followed her out the front door.
He noted where she put the green coupe—on a car roof—and took her hand as they crossed the road.
Opposite the party, in the middle of an oval, in the middle of the night, for some reason it felt safe to be undressing. They had a clear view of the terrain. Even so, she only took one leg out of her pants and he slipped his pants just past his thighs, enough so that she could straddle him from above.
The tallest point on the field became her head, which was sometimes still, sometimes thrown back.
And it felt very close to what she wanted. At one point, it was probably exactly what she wanted. It was after that she wondered if this was what Evan wanted, too. She couldn’t see him very well in the dark.
After he’d leaned to the side and come on the grass, she tried to see his face more clearly. He looked awake. And that seemed like a good sign.
Dew was falling on them from the open sky. In the morning she would notice the grass stains on her knees. Right now, she knew it was cold, but she didn’t feel cold. She also knew something was missing, or someone. Or maybe she was being missed.
When she lay beside Evan on the grass, she could hear voices and rhythmic bass coming through the ground. Far away, as though she were sleeping through the party.
‘Should we go back?’ Evan said.
No one knows we’re out here, she thought. No one can see us.
She lay for a moment longer while Evan buttoned his fly.
‘All good?’
On their way back to the house, Evan picked up the green coupe. He took it to the kitchen, rinsed it under warm water and left it to dry on a dish rack.
Jocelyn Richardson is writer from Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. She was a founding editor of Chart Collective. She has been shortlisted for the Peter Carey Short Story Award and the Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize. Her work has appeared in Kill Your Darlings, Ricochet and Meanjin.
