Don't Ask Don't Tell

 

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Set-Up

Mrs. Beatrice Fallon
    She hangs up the phone, disturbed by what Patricia has all but come out and said just now, and thinks for several long minutes before deciding that this phone call, like most problems in Beatrice's life, can be fixed with a strong cup of earl grey tea, a slice of lemon and a strategic social call. Tea in hand she rings her daughter in law.
    “Leah, are you having one of your little get togethers tonight?”
    “Yes, it is Friday, it’s a tradition of mine.”
    “Lovely, I was thinking I’d pop round to see you and David and the girls. It’s been too long, don’t you think?”
    “Mhmmm.”
    “7:30?”
    “I’ll look forward to it.”
    “Tah.”
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Dave
    A  man sits behind an over sized mahogany desk leaning too far forward with his elbows on the blotter wrinkling a charcoal grey suit that clearly cost at least $1,000 and matches his salt and pepper hair perfectly. He appears to be somewhere in his mid to late 40s, and seems confident but tired.
    Saha, his very capable secretary - no wait, assistant - buzzes through to the main office “Dave, Mr. Kellog is on line 3 about the Teroll brief. I told him you were in a meeting, but this is the third time this week he’s called, and, well…”
    “Don’t worry about it Sasha, tell him I’ll get back to him before the close of business today. And thank you.”
    “Of course.”
    The Terroll brief was really Marty’s mess and he needed to go find Marty before anything was said to anyone outside the firm, so Dave left his office and headed to the 32nd floor.
    Marty was, of course, “in a meeting” so Dave was left to either deal with the mess and its fallout himself, wait around like one of Marty’s Junior team member’s, or put Kellog off yet again despite his promise to Sasha. Not a promising start to a Friday afternoon.
    Dave did not like being bullied or backed into a corner, and while he knew it was simply not a done thing to sell another partner out, he was just sick of this whole mess. He was seconds away from calling Kellog back and flipping on Marty, when a tiny voice of rationality intervened, and he picked up the phone to dial Peter’s extension and see if he could take his old friend to lunch and maybe get some much needed advice.

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Peter
    Having missed his usual train and gotten into the office late this morning Peter was subsequently still playing catchup six hours later. He was in a foul mood, made even worse by the fact that he had managed to spill coffee on his shirt and looked a fright. Needless to say, by the time Evan called him at the office he was more than a bit frazzled.
    “What!” Peter bit off, not quite thinking about who was on the other end of the line.
    “And it’s nice to hear you’re voice too darling,” his husband said in measured tones.
    “Evan, I’m sorry, bad day - what did you need, love?”
    “I wanted to make sure you remembered about Dave and Leah's tonight. You haven’t exactly been home on time lately, and Leah doesn’t take well to her dinner party guests tricking in at all hours.”
    “Right, I remember” Peter says, clearly lying. I’ll be home at 6:30 “we can catch a cab over together. Sound good?”
    “Perfect.”
    Peter hears the click of the phone, and contemplates calling Ethan himself, but in the end decides he can’t handle another emotionally charged conversation, so calls his secretary; asking her to ring Ethan and cancel their dinner plans. He feels a bit like a weasel, but this is becoming an increasingly familiar feeling, and the more familiar something is the easier Peter finds it to ignore.
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Leah
    “I can’t stay past the half hour today” Leah said settling onto the white leather couch in the somewhat cool office. Her therapist simply raises his eyes. “It’s just family tonight” she continues, “and I want it to be perfect.”
    “You look bright today.” Dr. Allen says tonelessly by way of reply. Or perhaps it’s a question, hard to tell with therapists. Leah has been coming here every Friday at 2:10 for nearly a year now, and still isn’t even sure if Allen is  a first or last name. She also isn’t sure if it’s helping. But one has to at least try, as her mom always says, so Leah starts talking.
    “I love the Friday nights when it’s just family. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud that my little dinner invites have become this coveted thing throughout the Upper West Side, and I certainly get a kick out of my reputation as this generation’s ‘premier salon hostess’, but I started all that as a ploy to keep my ‘quaint down home traditions’, as Peter calls them, alive and well in Manhattan.  So once every few months I send out no outside invitations, and it’s always those nights that make me the happiest. Well, not the nights themselves, I guess. Family is stressful. And you know them so well that you hardly ever find yourself truly engrossed in conversations the way one might with a new acquaintance. But prepping for them, and knowing that a piece of who I was back home really can thrive in this world, that makes me happier than any dinner guest could.”
    “Do you miss her? This person you were back home?”
    “Doesn’t every forty year old woman miss the girl she was at seventeen?”
    “Not everyone was happy at 17.”
    “I actually was. Not that I’d go back if I could.”
    “If you could go back home, or if you could go back to 17?”
    “Either I guess. I meant back home. The thing is I can’t think what else to call Virginia, but this is my home now. And I love New York. I wouldn’t change that part of my life for anything.”
    “What would you change?”
    And there, Leah thought, was her problem. She didn’t know. She just knew that she wanted something to change. And that she really needed to get out of this office and start on dinner. 
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Fran
    A young(ish) woman in a white baby-doll tee, stylish gingham pants, and ugly shoes stands in front of a classroom toying with the end of the chenille scarf wrapped around her neck.
    “El gato”
    “El gato…”
    “El gato es blanco”
    “El gato es blanco…”
    “El gato blanco está-“
    The door opens.  “-Excuse me, Ms. Mitchell?”
    “Yes?”
    “Can we see Annie in the office?”
    “Sure. Annie?”
    “Coming.”
    The door closes behind Annie and the office aide.
    “El gato blanco está comiendo”
    “El gato blanco está comiendo…”

    Fran continues the lesson on autopilot.  Honestly, Fran can’t imagine anything more boring than diction lessons.  Especially high school diction lessons.  She usually spends this class period daydreaming about teaching modern Spanish literature to university students, or being a translator on the floor of the UN, or even just going home at night and starting that novel she always meant to write.  It’s not that Fran dislikes her life, or regrets her choices and the places they’ve led, it’s just that daydreaming is actually a hobby of Fran’s.  Some people like knitting, some like para-sailing, some like napping, and Fran likes imagining.

    All the way home Fran imagines this evening. She plays through imagined conversations with Jeremy’s sister in law, then plays them again, each time with the slightest variants. Fran knows if she told anyone about this they would assume she was just nervous about meeting his family tonight which, of course, she is, but the imagined conversation thing is really just a quirky habit of hers, it’s what she does while driving. Periodically Fran convinces herself that this is unhealthy and vows to listen to NPR as she commutes, or to at least sing along to the radio, but these resolutions never stick, and tonight she falls back into the old habit without a second thought.
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Leah
    Leah liked perfection in small, achievable doses. Doses she could build from the ground up. This is probably why she loved her dinner parties; there were a lot of details, but no not so many that you couldn’t control each and every one.
    Tonight she would start with the bare mahogany rectangular tabletop. Then: gold chargers, white plates, black napkins, gold napkins rings, low-cut fresh greenery in heavy crystal for centerpieces, crystal water and wine glasses.
    Unfortunately Dave’s mother had called at the last minute to say she was coming, which made nine. Leah hated doing settings for uneven numbers, but it was too late to invite anyone else so they would just have to make the best of it.
    She always set the table herself. It gave her a sense of pleasure? Control? She wasn’t sure but she’d always done it that way.
    Now she just needed to go over the lighting, the menu and the music one more time with the staff - these were things she certainly did not do herself. She was thinking the wall sconces for dinner, they were reminiscent of candlelight, similarly soft, but brighter, more actual light, and they didn’t take up any room on the table.
    As for the menu: Someone needed to make sure the liquor cart was stocked. For hours d’ oeuvre they would have the lobster puffs and the artichoke tarts that Dave’s brother made suck a big deal about, it was repetitive, but with just the family one could afford to be, and she was sort of famous for them. Since it was the height of fall and was finally appropriately chilly she’d included a soup course instead of a fish course, she’d come upon a recipe for a celery and pear bisque that seemed seasonally appropriate. Salads she left up to her chef, he always made something slightly different and divine to go with the menu each week. The entree was to be Cornish hens stuffed with mixed nuts, ancient grains, raisins and pumpkin. Dessert was some type of chocolate rum custard, the dish that still needed a name. She was terrible at that sort of thing, maybe her chef could name it for her? And after dessert, as usual, there was to be a fruit and cheese plate along with coffee and cognac. Leah liked her cheese the English way (after dessert) instead of the far more fashionable French way of serving it after the main course but before dessert with greens, bread and wine, so one of the things her dinner parties were known for was ending with cheeses, fruits and coffee.

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Evan
    Evan looks around Brandy Library one last time before locking up behind him. Ostensibly he’d come in to make some final notes on tonight’s menu since he wouldn’t be around himself, but truthfully, the rest of the kitchen staff was superb, and had filled in for him without supervision before on multiple occasions. Really, he was here because this place was his sanctuary. He and Jake had talked about it for so many years, back in college, and after. He’d never thought it would actually happen. Seeing it built and furnished and stocked with liquor was such a rush. Lately, for Evan these moments even beat seeing it filled with people, because when the place was empty, he was completely in control.
    And now for something completely out of his control, Evan turned back toward their apartment wondering if he hoped Peter would actually be there at 6:30 as promised, or if he hoped Peter would forget and give him one more resonate add to the growing list of reasons why he was angry.
    The list had started three weeks ago when he called the law firm and got Peter’s secretary who had mistakenly thought he was someone named Ethan (Ethan and Evan do sound similar, he supposed) and spilled the beans about a weekend trip Peter has planned for the two of them. She sounded petrified when she figured out who was actually on the phone. Evan had managed to calm her down, and for some reason he hadn’t said anything to Peter yet, or to anyone else. He wasn't entirely sure what he was waiting for.
    When Evan unlocked the front door he heard the shower running and the stereo playing quietly from the bedroom and despite himself, he smiled. No matter how mad he got, domestic life with Peter always had made him happy.
    When Evan heard the water turn off he wandered to the bathroom to take his own shower. In a way getting ready for them was the best part of Dave and Leah’s dinner parties, and Evan was determined to get out of his own head a bit and enjoy himself tonight.
    He passed Peter by without a word as Peter stepped out of the shower and Evan stepped in. Evan let the hot water roll down his neck and back and thought about what he was going to wear tonight, what he was going to drink, what had happened at work since the last time he was at one of these things, what he wanted to tell people. By the time he got out of the shower and headed back to the bedroom to get dressed he was relaxed enough to chat with his husband as if he really wasn’t mad, as if they really were just a couple off to have a nice evening with friends.

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Jeremy
    Jeremy Fallon throws his iPhone onto the white shag carpet of his home office - he knows from experience that this act will neither break the phone, nor make him feel any better about the call he just received. Another producer rejected his manuscript. He should probably move to LA and start over, he thinks to himself, but he loves NY and wants to see his words acted out on stage not under the orange glow of TV lights even if he doesn't really have the right temperament to fit into the Manhattan theater community he keeps trying to make it work here. But he can’t think about that tonight - tonight is about his family, and Fran.
    By 6:45 Jeremy, dressed all in perfectly fitted black, rings the buzzer to Fran’s apartment, but gets no answer so he lets himself in with the key she gave him a few weeks back. Stepping over piles of discarded clothes he finds her running late, still in the shower.
    “Baby, are you almost done in there?”
    “Yeah, gimme me like 15 minutes. Fix yourself a drink or something.”
    Jeremy is annoyed, but amused, and wanders off to fix a vodka martini and put on some music. 20 minutes later Fran appears in front of him in the kitchen in 4 inch heels, designer jeans, a bebe t-shirt, navy suit jacket diamond earrings and dark smoky makeup. He just looks at her and swallows the last of his drink, suddenly even more nervous about bringing her to dinner.
“Shall we?” Jeremy asks holding an arm out for her, and the two of them head downstairs to hail a cab.

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Annie
    Annie bangs through the front door of the apartment muttering under her breath about people who involve themselves in maters that don’t concern them. The principal had agreed not to call her parents at this particular juncture, but she could tell he was taking her Bio teacher’s accusations or ‘concerns’ as she called them seriously, and that her days of sliding easily just under the radar were over for a while.
    “Is that you dear?”
    “Yes, mom.”
    “Come in here for a moment-“
    Annie swallowed a sigh and followed her mother’s voice back to the kitchen. She looked up expectantly but said nothing.
    “How was school today, dear?"
    “Fine”
    “Where have you been? It’s late.”
    “Just out for a walk.”
    “For three hours?” Her mother’s voice began to rise slightly desperately. 
    Annie nodded. “Yeah.” No one said anything for a beat.
    “Yes, well, your grandmother’s coming to dinner tonight. Run upstairs- you’ll barely have time to change. And do something with your hair.”
    “Which one?”
    “Beatrice.”
    Her father’s mother, great.
    “And make sure your sister isn’t wearing anything with a safety pin in it!” Her mother turned back to the stove and Annie nodded to no one in particular and turned toward the stairs.
    Poking her head into her sister’s room she started “Jane, Mom says- wait, why do you look so nice?” Her thirteen year old sister who was usually garbed in jeans and tight black t-shirts held together with rows of safety pins anytime she was allowed out of her school uniform, was wearing three inch heels, a tight ankle length black crushed velvet skirt and a loose of the shoulder cashmere cream sweater. You could still see the black nail polish peeking out past the sleeves of her sweater, but her hair was in a neat ponytail, and her makeup was tastefully done with light natural eyeshadow and berry red lip gloss. She actually looked great, and older than her years.
    “Seriously? Did you see mom? She’s extra on edge tonight. Just doing my part so she doesn't have a coronary or anything.”
    Annie smiled. “Loose the gum. And I’d better go get pretty like you. I’ll see you down there.” Annie saw her sister roll her eyes just as she pulled the door shut behind her

    In her own room Annie kicked off her shoes and began throwing the pieces of her school uniform on the closet floor. Perversely, she left her bra in the pile of dirty clothes and pulled a black designer slip dress that her mother hated, always claiming it ‘looked like underwear’, off the hanger. The dress hit her at mid calf. She toed on a pair of black sandals, shrugged into a gauzy transparent cropped black sweater, and pulled her hair up into an artfully messy twist. Just as she started in on her face, she heard the doorbell downstairs.

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Jane
    After her sister shut the door Jane opened the middle drawer to her vanity and pulled out the paper she’d hastily stuffed in there. She read it again, but it still said the same thing:


Dear Mr. and Mrs. Fallon,


We regret to inform you that your daughter, Jane, is falling behind in several classes and will fail this semester if she does not bring her grades up immediately. Our suggestion at this time is that Jane work with a private tutor to identify and correct the problems with her schoolwork immediately before they impede her chances of securing admittance to the high school of her choice. If you require a list of private tutors please contact the counseling office at 212-643-4839.


Sincerely,


Virginia Woodlawn, Headmistress


    And she was supposed to bring this back on Monday signed, no, there was no way. She took the other sheet of paper out of her vanity, practiced her mother’s signature one more time, then took a deep breath and scrawled it confidently across the bottom of the letter. Now she just needed to stuff the letter in her schoolbag and the practice sheet of loosely in the shredder in her Dad’s office.

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Hours d’ oeuvre


Annie
    This being an informal family thing the girls were sent to the kitchen to fetch the hours d’ oeuvre themselves and the platters of mini pastries or tarts or whatever these things were classified as were served in the front room as the guests finished their cocktails, instead of at the table.
    As Annie wandered around with her serving platter and a stack of cocktail napkins, she tried to eavesdrop unobtrusively on everyone’s conversations.
    It used to be that Annie agreed with her mother - these family only nights were easy. Sure now that she was 17 she’d rather be elsewhere for the evening, but she used to love them, and they still felt like somewhere she could let her hair down; unlike the rest of the society packed Friday night dinner parties her mom threw - those were formal and stressful invitation only events that Annie had to attend and look perfect at, make small talk, charm the parents and co-workers and friends of people she hardly knew. Tonight, though, tonight was different. Tonight felt dangerous. Family, she was beginning to realize, posed a much sharper threat than strangers. Almost everyone in this room knew something about her they shouldn’t - there was Ms. Mitchell and now Grandma with her little statement, and if she really thought about it Jane and Uncle Jeremy knew plenty of things about her she wouldn’t particularly want repeated, and Uncle Evan and Uncle Peter were staring at her really oddly before did they know about her?
    Unfortunately, eavesdropping unobtrusively was Jane’s strong suit, not her’s, and every time she walked toward a conversation it stopped awkwardly and someone turned and said “Hi Annie” or something equally inane and she’d smile and wander away.
    Annie heard her phone ring faintly from upstairs. She’d left the ringer on high because there was nowhere to hide the phone in this outfit. She slipped into the kitchen with her nearly empty serving tray, abandoned it on a counter, and slipped up the back staircase to her room.  
    Checking to see that the missed call was from who she thought (only one person was set to play Secret Lovers when they called her phone - not subtle, but neither her friends nor her parents were 80s R&B fans so she doubted anyone would get the reference from a 30 second clip) Annie pressed call.
    “Is something wrong, you know I’m never free on Friday nights.”
    “No, yes, it’s just, I didn’t get it.”
    “Get what?”
    “The scholarship. To the summer soccer thing.”
    “God Mel! Look I’m really sorry, I know how much you wanted that, but it’s November, okay? You have like a million years to figure out what you’re going to do this summer instead, and I’m having a really weird evening, Ms. Mitchell is here, and -“
    “Wait why is Ms. Mitchell there?”
    “Because apparently she’s dating my Uncle Jeremy - Look the point is I can’t talk right now. I have to get back down there before they notice I’m gone. I’ll call you tonight and we’ll figure things out, okay?”
    “Yeah, sure”
    “Don’t be like that, I love you Mel, I’m sorry my family is screwed up.”
    “Everyone’s family is screwed up, I love you too. Call me when they’re gone?”
    “Always. Bye.”
    “Bye.”
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Jane
    Jane and Annie were once again sent off to fetch hours d’ oeuvre. When do you outgrow this chore? Jane wondered. When she was 11 and had been set the task the first time she was so excited, she had never felt so grown up! Now she looked at her sister and thought at 18 will she be able to sit with the adults? At 21? As a college student? When she’s married? At 13 Jane was already resentful of this task. There were people in the kitchen being, she assumed, well paid to do this, and instead she had to.
    When she brought her tray over to a big group of her uncles, Evan took one without looking at her and said, “Oh, look Peter, shredded pastry dough, I was thinking of trying something with this at the Library.” Evan smiled, and Jane remembered that he always did have a mean sense of humor, Peter just sort of stared at him because the comment had nothing to do with their conversation.
    Jane decided to be brave, I mean how much more trouble could she really get into? she figured. “I don’t think you should” she piped up, “shredded pastry dough is extremely greasy, after all. If you start serving it, your customers will leave fingerprints all over their brandy glasses. It will just ruin the whole ambiance. I think it would be a terrible idea.”
    At this point her other uncles were staring at them open mouthed, clearly confounded as to why this conversation was taking place and what on earth it meant, but Evan was grinning from ear to ear, so Jane decided to make an exit as quickly as possible and scooted toward relative safety, offering her mother some pastries.
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Mrs. Beatrice Fallon
    Beatrice sat back, sipped her martini, David did make excellent martinis, and watched the fallout from her initial announcement unfold. Beatrice was a woman after Bacon and Jeffersons’ own hearts, but she believes that it is information, more than knowledge, that gives you power. Back when Beatrice first became Mrs. Fallon she didn’t do much with the information she gathered. She just liked knowing which neighbor spent too much at the grocery, or which of Jeremy Sr’s colleague’s wives was having an affair with the gardner. She felt that when armed with more information on others than they had on her she could walk into any any room with her head held just a bit higher. Over time Beatrice rose to the top of the who’s who in society list and figured out just how to use her, now vast, trove of information to apply pressure in all the right places. Everyone is now a bit terrified of her, even her family, and that is how just Beatrice  likes it. What she never lets on is that family is a bit of a weakness for her. She’s hoping that just her presence here will be intimidation enough to sort out the rumors she’s been hearing and set her family members back on track, but if not she can always get more involved - her family is a bit of a weakness, not a crippling one.
    As she looks around the room Beatrice sees the girls handing out food, David and Leah talking to Fran by the liquor cart, and Peter, Evan and Jeremy standing about in the middle of the room chatting animatedly. It’s all very lovely domestic, and on the surface no one looks tense but Beatrice is better at reading people than that. Everyone in this room is tense. Fine, not unusual, the question is how tense and why.
The phone call Beatrice got this morning was about Leah, but David and Peter have this connection tonight that Beatrice hones in on right away. They won’t look at each other, but at the same time are hyper-aware of where the other is. In another pair it would be sexual tension, but knowing David as well as she does, this is obviously work related. Beatrice knows she’ll get more details by talking to Peter than to David should she need details later. And Jane has been acting overly saccharine and solicitous toward both Beatrice and Leah tonight. 13 year old girls don’t just do that because they’re overcome with spontaneous bouts of sweetness. As long as she’s here, Beatrice figures, she might as well sort out the other obvious issues in the room tonight as well. __________________________________________________________


Evan
    “What was that all about?” Peter asked his husband as Jane scampered away.
    “Nothing, just having a spot of fun.”
    “Spot of fun? Are we British now?”
    “Relax” Evan cajoled, “I’ll make you another drink. Something dry. Jane’s right, these things really are greasy.” The last bit Evan spoke half to himself. He’d always maintained that Leah’s reputation as the premier Manhattan hostess was due to her ability to create divine guest lists that always seemed somehow both fresh and complimentary. It certainly wasn’t due to the food; Leah’s chef was mediocre at best. Evan, being a chef himself, may have been overly exacting in his standards here. Truthfully, Leah’s chef was excellent, just no more so than any other private chef in a Manhattan home. Over the years Evan had slipped her the number of a few friends of his who needed work and truly were amazing, but as far as Evan knew, Leah had never called any of them, and they wouldn’t have wanted to stay in the private sector for long anyway so maybe it was all for the best.
    When Evan returned with the drinks Peter and Jeremy were deeply engrossed in a discussion of what seemed to be some obscure cartoon taken off the air 5 years before Evan was old enough to have cared. At least Peter always let his guard down around Jeremy. Evan smiled, kissed his husband lightly, handed him his drink and wandered off.
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Fran
    I am dressed completely wrong, Fran though as she sipped at a glass of French white she couldn’t quite pronounce. Can you actually be outclassed by one of your 17 year old students she wondered, trying to follow what Jeremy’s in-laws were saying. It was something about the Federal Reserve and, truthfully, at 24 Fran cared about as much about the Federal Reserve as most of her freshman cared about her intro Spanish class, but she smiled and nodded and managed to say “really?” a few times.
    Annie wandered by with a tray of something else in French that Fran couldn’t pronounce, but she was pretty sure these were the lobster/artichoke things that are like heaven when you’re high that Jeremy had promised her so she snags one of each which is a little awkward when Annie is actually trying not to meet her eye.
    Fran had been startled as well when she’d first walked in and seen one of her students. Manhattan is a big city and you don’t really expect to run into people, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Her ex was a mathematician and he used to bore her to death with these statistics and probability lectures in instances just like this.
    She wonders why Annie is quite so skittish. Does she think Fran will say something about her getting called to the office this morning? She doesn’t even know why they wanted to see the girl! Maybe it’s something else. She wishes there were an opportunity to just pull her aside and ask, but Fran can already sense that this is not that kind of setting so she eats her lobster/artichoke things (which are like heaven but now she’s sick awkwardly holding a cocktail napkin. How did everyone else get rid of theirs?) and pretends she knows something about finance, or is the Federal reserve politics? Crap!
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Dave
    God, Jeremy’s girlfriend looks like a deer trapped in the headlights! He knows he’s boring her to death but for some reason he can’t stop. She’s so pretty, and so young, and her eyes are so big, and he doesn’t get to mess with Jeremy all that often… Maybe he’s just taking his really bad day out on this poor sweet girl, letting the bratty older brother in him come out and bait a complete stranger.
    He continues his conversation with his wife and Fran on autopilot, and thinks back to his lunch with Peter. All of a sudden he has second thoughts about having confided in the man. Peter is Leah’s best friend, what if he tells her? No, Dave reassures himself, there’s still a code between guys that Peter won’t break. And he’d gotten good advice: Go to the CFO and tell the truth. The money’s all there and that’s his bottom line, plus Barney likes you. Let him go to the COO, because ultimately it’s Bill who needs to mediate between you and Marty, and it’s probably Bill who’s going to want to talk to Kellog. And this whole damn mess better be resolved before Barry hears about it, and you know that the CEOs assistant hears nearly everything so you’d better talk to Barney on Monday. It’s a little shady, going outside his direct chain of command to deal with a problem, but what they’d done to create the problem was certainly shady enough, and Peter was right - this was definitely the way to resolve it.
    “Finnish schools have this incredibly relaxed atmosphere, short days, a lot of personal freedom for the students, and still outperform many of the top countries in standard tests.” Leah was saying when Dave tuned back in. Education was probably Leah’s greatest passion even though she never finished her degree. She was the one who had this master plan that both the girls would go to very creative alternative schools for the elementary grades, all-girls schools for middle-school, and college prep schools for high school. Dave always figured that was her domain, and let her enroll them where she liked, (pleased that by the time they were teenagers and his colleagues started asking after them they attended respectable institutions). Figuring she and Fran would have plenty to talk about and he, nothing to contribute, he excused himself to go fix a second scotch neat.
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Jeremy
    At least Dad isn’t here, Jeremy thinks as he tries to savor his last lobster puff. Tonight was turning out to be a real trial. Hmm, maybe he should wright a play about a trial. Like an ancient Grecian thing with masks, focus! Jeremy scolds himself. Fran was right, I should never have gotten stoned here. Jeremy ducks into the kitchen in search of a glass of ice water to clear his head and finds Annie, out of breath, running down the back stairs.
    “And where have we been, miss?”
    “No where” she says rolling her eyes, “I just needed to grab something from my room.”
    “Uhuh, because I was born yesterday,” Jeremy says indulgently, making the kitchen staff very uncomfortable     “and I’ve never met your mother.”
    “Well, you don’t tell her I was upstairs, and I won’t tell mom you’re stoned.” Annie counters.
    “Your mother already knows, she has this annoying habit of always being able to tell.”
    “Which you’ve apparently inherited.” He added as an afterthought.
    “Yes,” Annie said matter of factly, “but I won’t tell her.”
    “Hmmm.” Jeremy said after a long while, “I guess you are your father’s daughter. Very well, lets go.”
    And they left the kitchen arm-in-arm, plastic smiles on their faces, ice water forgotten.
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Peter
    The conversation around Peter had mostly evaporated, and when Jeremy ducked into the kitchen Peter was left alone. He wandered over to a corner where he could think relatively uninterupted: about the double date Evan had proposed, the fact he can’t remember the last time they’d done something that sounded that fun and spontaneous, the mess Dave was in, the fact that Peter was now lying to Leah as well as everyone else in his life.
    Peter hated lying to Leah. She was possibly his oldest friend. They’d actually met through Dave, when he and Peter were at Yale Law together and Leah was undergrad at Vassar. Leah and Peter had gone to dinner a few times (they didn’t ever quite call them dates) before he managed to come out to her - she was the first person he came out to. She helped him come out to parents and other friends, and he helped her settle into life in NYC. He supposed it was probably all very cliche, but he loved her, and Dave had really better come clean with her soon because he was putting Peter in an awfully awkward position.
    Suddenly a thought occurred to Peter, was he setting Leah up to be in that same position? She may have been his friend first but that didn’t mean she didn’t care about Evan. If everything came out -
Peter’s cell buzzed. He pulled it out of his breast pocket and looked at it. Ethan. 3 missed calls. He hit ignore.  
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Leah
    With a distinctly unladylike swallow Leah finished off her third glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc and set the glass down on a side table. She felt out of sorts. Her session with Dr. Allen had put her in a strange mood, Beatrice had her rattled, Annie was no where to be seen which Leah was not happy about, she was pretty sure Jeremy was stoned again, his new girlfriend couldn’t be more than 23 or 24, and Evan was in a strange mood.  
    Leah decided the best thing to do was to confront her fears head on. Her mother had always said something about taking the bull by the horns which sounded like a really great way to get dismembered, but Leah didn’t have a better plan at the moment so she went and sat next to Beatrice trying to mimic her mother-in-law’s perfect posture.
    “I’m so glad you decided to join us tonight.”
    “Are you?”
    “Yes. It makes family dinner seem grander, more festive. We don’t usually get you as a guest.”
    “Well, then I’m glad to be here dear. Tell me, do you know Tony Harris?”
    “Tony Harris?”
    “Yes, his father is on the board of the Botanical Gardens with me. I believe Tony is a visiting artist at Jane’s school. His name came up in connection with yours recently.”
    “I don’t think I do, what kind of art does he do?”
    “Sculpture, installation, murals? I don’t know.”
    “He sounds interesting, I’d like to meet him.”
    As the conversation progressed Leah brightened, getting genuinely interested and loosing her constant low-level fear of Beatrice, and Beatrice frowned, not getting the answers and reactions she expected.
All of a sudden Leah looked at her watch. “I think it’s time to call people in for dinner, excuse me.”

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Cocktails

Leah

    “Beatrice, come in, please.” Leah said, kissing the air by her mother in law’s porcelain cheek. “Dave will be home any minute, Can I get you a drink?”
    “Gin martini.” Beatrice said dryly to her daughter in law. “Girls!”  She crooned, turning toward the figures on the stairs.
    “Grandma” Chorused her daughters, doing a passable imitation of enthusiasm.
    Leah turned toward the bar, passing her daughters on their way to greet their grandmother she said under her breath “Annie, get into the kitchen and finish up while I see to your grandmother, she’s early.”
    By the time Leah turned back armed with Beatrice’s drink and a second for herself, Annie was no where to be seen and Jane was ensconced on the sofa chatting with Beatrice. She handed Beatrice the drink, the silver pearls on her wrist falling harshly against the base of the glass. Her hand shook slightly as she retreated from her mother in law. No matter how many years passed she would never feel comfortable in this woman’s presence.
    Leah wanted nothing more than to ignore the woman before her, storm into the kitchen, and yell at her teenaged daughter; she’d recognized the slightly glassy look in Annie’s eyes as she’d passed her at the base of the stairs, but that wasn’t how things were done around here. Sometimes Leah hated this life, but she also hated hypocrites, and as much as it pained her to admit it, her daughter wasn’t the only one who’d felt the need to take something before tonight’s dinner, so what right did she really have to revert to her childhood values and scream at her daughter for this transgression?
    Just then the doorbell rang again, and Leah let her internal war recede as she headed to answer it.
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Dave
    Dave let himself in and made a beeline for the liquor cart, shaking the rain off his overcoat and leaving it and his briefcase in a discreet pile near the door. Only with a scotch neat in hand did he take a breath and look around to see that his mother and several friends had already arrived, and that his girls were dressed and downstairs.

    Apparently he would be dining in his work clothes tonight. Dave wandered around the room kissing cheeks and shaking hands, offering drinks to those whose hands or glasses were empty. He wasn’t much of a host, and was starting to get rather annoyed at Leah’s conspicuous absence from the room just when she returned from the foyer with his brother and a twenty something in jeans in tow, and Dave vaguely registered that the door had rung a moment before.
    “Jeremy!” He said clapping his younger brother on the shoulder and leading him off to the side of the room to fix him a drink. “What is this offering you have brought us tonight?”
    Jeremy beckoned her over, “Dave, Fran - Fran, my big brother, Dave.”
    “Pleasure to meet you,” she held out her hand with a smile.
    “Likewise,” Dave returned the handshake, “my brother always was a lucky man.”
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Annie
    When Annie saw who Uncle Jeremy had brought to dinner she almost squeaked so much air caught in her throat - this is the new girlfriend! Not who she’d imagined and potentially not good for Annie. This “Fran” was none other than Ms. Mitchell her 4th period Spanish teacher. Forget her being called out of class today, Ms. Mitchell has seen enough in the hallways of the school to cause real problems for Annie. What if she says something tonight? What if she’s already said something to Uncle Jeremy? No - she couldn't have, Annie tried to reassure herself, after all if she hadn’t know that Fran was Ms. Mitchell before tonight then there’s no reason to assume Ms. Mitchell knew who she was either. It’s not as if her’s is the only family in Manhattan named Fallon. So she’s going to take a deep breath, and forget about what Ms. Mitchell may or may not have told Uncle Jeremy before tonight, and concentrate on how to keep her from spilling any secrets during this little dinner party. And she’s going to go find a drink so her heart stops racing so much, something clear, like vodka. Yes, perfect plan.
__________________________________________________________


Jane
    Jane turns around to slip out of her Dad’s office with the sound of the shredder still grinding away at the page behind her when she nearly runs straight into Uncle Evan leaning casually in the dark door frame. He is actually wearing a brimmed cap, and the whole moment feels ridiculously film noir, but she manages not to giggle, realizing she may actually be in a great deal of trouble.
    “How long have you been standing there?”
    “Long enough to figure out that you would have turned a light on if you were either allowed in here or shredding something that wouldn’t get you into a whole mess of trouble.”
    “So?” Jane challenges.
    “Well, you know, I’ve been keeping a lot of secrets lately, how about you tell me yours and then I’ll decide what we should do?”
    “I - It’s nothing. I failed a test, and I didn’t want to get it signed, so I shredded it so mom and dad wouldn’t find out. I’ll tell the school I lost the test paper, and as long as I do okay next time no one will say anything.”
She looks at Evan sort of defiantly and sort of hopefully. She’s pretty sure he has no idea whether she’s lying or not. He looks tired and kind of sad, and she thinks maybe, given a plausible out, he’ll leave it to her to sort out her own mess.
    Evan nods once and walks away.
    Jane is at a loss as to what that actually signifies, but decides whatever Uncle Evan is going to do it's best she not to get caught loitering in this part of the apartment, so she scampers back to the front room to chat with her Grandmother some more.
__________________________________________________________


Jeremy
    The martini Jeremy accepts from Dave is his 4th of the evening (as long as we’re being liberal about the definition of evening, but Jeremy’s always been a liberal sort of guy), and he wonders if it shows. From the way his mother’s eyes narrow he suspects it does, then again, maybe critical is just her neutral resting expression and if you personalize it that’s on you, Jeremy muses eating cocktail olives rather delicately for such a tall guy.
    He watches Fran as she chats with his sister in law and his mother, too quietly for him to actually hear the subject of their conversation, but it all looks very pleasant and very female Jeremy thinks to himself.
    His older niece comes up to him with a request he doesn’t completely tune into. Sweet requests from Annie usually start with something offbeat like her asking to play a hand of cards and end up with Jeremy getting her a drink from the bar. He’s a bit on edge tonight with Fran here (it’s been almost a year since he brought a girlfriend to one of these things, and he hadn’t actually planned on Mother being here at this one) so he figures he’ll just skip to he end. He hand’s Annie his martini glass without really looking at her. She looks a bit surprised, but shrugs, and downs half the drink in one swallow then hands it back to her uncle and wanders away.
__________________________________________________________


Fran
    “So dear, what do you do for a living?” Mrs. Fallon asked sweetly.
    “I teach.”
    “Where?” Leah Prompted.
    “At the Horace Mann School, I teach Spanish.”
    “Spanish, how - useful.” Was Mrs. Fallon still being sweet? Her tone sounded the same, but…
    “Well we send the advanced Junior class to Spain for two weeks, so…”
    “Really, Annie never told me about that program,” Leah mused.
    “Er, well, she’s not in the advanced class.”
    “She takes honors Spanish. I saw her schedule.”
    “Yes, but honors and advanced are separate tracks, the lingo is confusing and somewhat arbitrary.”
    “You’re very young-“ Mrs. Fallon changed the subject somewhat abruptly. Fran just blinked at her “I mean how many years can you have been teaching?”
    “This is my only second year. It’s all still very new and exciting for me.” Just then Fran looked back toward Jeremy and he came over to their little circle, apparently deciding she’d been left alone with his mother and sister-in-law long enough.


    “Mind if I steal her away for a minute?” He asked, sliding his arm around her waist.

    Jeremy pulled the side door shut behind them. It was cold and damp in the late fall without their coats and Fran hoped they hadn’t just locked themselves out - Jeremy wasn’t always practical, but he did supposedly spend a lot of time in this apartment.
    He leaned against the terrace railing and pulled her to lean against him. He pulled a small straight pipe out of his pocket and lit it.
“Jeremy! I’m not going to get stoned in the shadows the first night I meet your family. They’ll smell it on us.”
“Baby, I had a crappy day and I just need to relax. And besides Leah makes these little lobster/artichoke puff pastry things that are weird when you’re straight but are like heaven when your high.”
    At this Fran burst out laughing. This was why she was with Jeremy. His logic made no sense, and yet sometimes it made perfect sense. She reached back for the pipe figuring, hey, it’s his family. __________________________________________________________


Peter
    There was a drink in his hand almost before he’d taken his coat off, and Peter wasn’t entirely sure who had put it there or if he’d even asked for it. He smiled wryly. He’d always had a love/hate relationship with these Friday night dinner parties. Leah may have been one of his best friends in the entire world, but these affairs were really more Evan’s thing than his. Speaking of which, he was determined that Evan have a good time tonight, he’d seemed upset this afternoon, so instead of rushing off somewhere he sat down on the love-seat with Evan who seemed to be talking to Leah’s eldest daughter about the gay marriage initiative.

    “2010/2011 was such a big turning point for NY state, things started to happen all at once but other parts of the country got there faster, or haven’t even caught up yet, and it’s still going to be a while before there’s any constitutional protection on a national level.” She was saying. This was actually surprisingly well informed and concerned for a teenager, Peter noticed. Unless she had a personal stake in the subject matter. He took a closer look at Annie and then glanced inquiringly at Ethan who sort of shrugged and nodded in that way of his that meant I think so?

    At this, Peter decided he and Evan ought to spend more time getting to know Annie, but really he knew nothing about teenaged girls. What did one ask them? Luckily he was saved from himself by Evan who, being much more sociable than Peter himself, had somehow started the two of them talking about his work and was saying, “Well, you can’t actually patronize the library until you’re 25, but I can bring you by sometime before it’s open so you can check the place out.”

    “Yeah, that would be killer! Could I like, bring a friend?” Annie asked shyly, “It’s just that people, they talk about your place, and it would be cool to show it off…”
    “For you my dear, anything.” Evan answered, like the perfect uncle. “We should make a day of it. How about next weekend? Sunday brunch? Before the club opens? You and me, Annie and her friend? A double date, I’ll cook.”
    Annie looked a little alarmed, but pleased. “I’m there.”
    They both looked expectantly at Peter, “Well you don’t get an offer like that every day, I’d love to.”
Peter really meant it too. In addition to the fact that he couldn’t remember the last time he and Evan had done anything like that, Peter felt very close to Leah’s girls. He was an only child, and they rarely saw Evan’s nieces and nephews and if they weren’t really the girl’s uncles they were their godparents.
    “So” Peter asks, “do I get to know the name of this friend you’re introducing us to?”
    “I think not,” Annie tells him, “it’ll have to be a surprise.”
    “But I hate surprises.” Peter groans.
    “I know, Uncle Peter.” Annie says, teasing.

__________________________________________________________


Evan
    Evan glances across the room at Fran and thinks back to the first one of these things Peter brought him to 10 years ago. He’d been terrified. Like Fran, he’d been in his 20s, dating a much older guy essentially coming home to meet the family. Okay, so he’d been a few years older than she probably is right now, and this isn’t actually Peter’s family like it is Jeremy’s, but that first night still felt terrifying. Now he loves this family like it’s his own. He’ll he’s probably scaring the hell out of Fran himself. That thought certainly made Evan smile.
    A lot had changed for him and Peter in 10 years. Scratch that, a lot had changed in 10 years. Like Leah, Evan wasn’t raised as part of the upper crust. Back when he first got together with Peter, Evan had felt like he had to hide himself away to hang out with these people. He’d tried to be sort of, demure - could guys even be demure? He wasn’t sure. But in the last year or two He’d had this sense that he was starting to understand the rules and figure out how to be Evan on the Upper West Side.
    Part of his vow to have fun tonight was to cut loose a little and be himself at one of Leah’s dinner parties. Now, Evan didn’t plan to dance on any tabletops, but it felt great to play with Jane a little, and to try and reach out to Annie, and not to cut Peter any slack just because they’re in public. He wonders just how far he can push this before he veers into the realm of dancing on tabletops, because, really, Eric is a grown man, and well he may be a bit tipsy and a bit angry, he has no wish to embarrass himself or Leah and Dave. __________________________________________________________


Mrs. Beatrice Fallon
    Beatrice returned to her seat on the couch, spine straight, ankles crossed and tucked just under and off to the side, head held just too high. She might not cut exactly the same figure she had 30 years ago, but she could damn well have exactly the same posture.
    “David,” Mrs. Beatrice Fallon was the only person alive who called her eldest son David, and probably the only person who could get away with it, “another gin martini please, more ice this time if you don’t mind. The one Leah made me was a bit overly warm.”
    “Yes, Mother. Right away.”
    “So, what brings you to these parts anyway, Mother?” These parts being the West Side.
    “Oh this and that.”
    “Well that’s awfully cryptic,” Dave said, handing his mother her extra cold gin martini.
    “Well you know, I’ve been hearing bits and pieces of this, and bits and pieces of that, and I thought I’d better come by and see for myself what things were about.”
    At that Dave, Leah, Jeremy, Annie, and Jane all went stiff and slightly pale. Peter and Evan, being only honorary family, were exempt from the wrath of Beatrice and calmly sipped their drinks, and Fran, having heard only a bit about Jeremy’s mother was mostly just baffled by the whole exchange.
    “Leah,” Beatrice continued as if she hadn’t just completely intimidated 5 people, “I think I smell something simply divine from the kitchen. What has your chef prepared for the hours d’ oeuvre course?”

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