When she slammed the car door behind her, Sandy noticed for the first time in a while how fragrant the air was. One good thing about all the rain, the way the air always smelled clean and electric here. Even in the dark she could see that the aspen leaves had gone golden while she wasn’t looking and the maple leaves burning scarlet just behind them seemed to color the gray night. For a moment she was convinced she could even smell the sea, feel the fresh salt air, even though it was many miles to the west.
Sandy Holmes felt as alive as she had in months as she boldly strode up the walkway to the neat Victorian house. She punched the doorbell and waited until someone cracked it open it a couple of inches, as far as the chain would allow. She could see only one eye and a deeply black face, topped with wildly spiked blonde hair. There was a dog collar around the man’s neck.
“Yes?” he hissed.
“I…ummm…am Sandy, Linda’s friend,” she answered. He looked like plenty of other twenty-somethings she saw around Seattle, but somehow, this one scared her.
“Linda?”
“Linda Farragut.”
He eyed her up and down through the crack in the door while she wondered if maybe she was at the wrong place after all. She tried to check the house number again without backing off the little porch.
“Yeah, I know Linda. But I don’t know you.”
There was someone else behind him, someone with an easy, friendly voice, soft but still audible over the sound of a party that drifted out from somewhere toward the back of the house.
“Wait a minute, Jason. Where are your manners? Let the little lady in. She says she’s Linda’s friend. That’s good enough for me.”
Jason obeyed immediately, unchaining the door and opening it wide, beckoning her in with a regal sweep of his hand and a demented grin that showed chapped lips and bad teeth.
The disembodied voice behind him turned out to be a young, dark man with big, sad, brown eyes. He had a welcoming demeanor, a handsome smoothness that instantly had her weak-kneed. He took Sandy’s hand, nodded slightly, and welcomed her to his party.
“I’m glad you could make it, ‘Sandy-Linda’s-friend.’ Please, make yourself at home. I’m Carlos…Carlos Ramirez…and I’m delighted to meet you. Come on back and let me show you off to the other guests.”
There was something almost hypnotic about the man. He immediately made her feel as if he was, indeed, profoundly happy that she had come. He held her hand in his, his arm around her shoulders as he gently guided her through the expensively but tastefully decorated home.
Then they reached the source of all the noise. There were at least a hundred other people milling about the big room at the rear of the house, but Carlos seemed to be playing host only to her now. For that moment, the pretty blonde computer programmer from Iowa City was the most important guest at Carlos Ramirez’ party.
As he led her down the steps into the big open room, the other guests fell silent and looked his way.
“Everyone, welcome Sandy!”
They all raised their cocktails to her in a friendly enough gesture. After a polite pause, they resumed their chatter. Sandy couldn’t believe the crowd. It was as if someone had called Central Casting and asked them to send over a hundred “beautiful people” to populate the most glamorous party Sandy Holmes had ever seen.
A drink appeared in her hand from nowhere and she knew nothing else to do but put it to her lips and take a sip. It tasted sweet, strangely cool on her tongue, but warm and spicy as it went down. Carlos ushered her into the midst of the guests and soon she was talking to someone tall and dark-haired and wearing a suit that likely cost as much as her VW Bug.
Thank you, Linda, she thought. Thank you for delivering me right into heaven!
She soon lost track of Carlos Ramirez. He was standing on the party’s fringes, occasionally acknowledging one of his guests, but mostly watching this new arrival with a small smile playing at his lips.