Man of the Year (Drake Story)

Chapter Nitten

Keziah didn’t suspect anything. When I reached home, my pockets almost empty of all the money I’d carried (the large tip I gave the driver and paying for Amanda’s groceries cleared me out), she was waiting for me with candles lit in the dining room, sitting on the far end of the table with a glass of wine in her hand. I couldn’t tell her that I was tired of wine and didn’t want to sip it over conversation with any other woman for the rest of the day. I sat and drank with her, more than I did with Amanda. We got drunk and made love in the guest room. I didn’t wake up until noon the next day.

She cooked me eggs and bacon for breakfast and we unpacked the rest of our boxes. The home was a bit more idiosyncratic now, with our art and books and other pieces of furniture that we both had before moving in here. There were still some things of ours at Drake’s, but Keziah said that we’d take care of it soon. I didn’t actually know that ‘soon’ meant tonight, but I found out when Keziah hired William to take her back and forth to party stores for food and decorations. We were having the housewarming party.

I’d never had one before. Of course, I had many opportunities for one. My first apartment, my first dorm room, my second dorm room, my first house. But they never appealed to me. There was always something about my new living space that wasn’t worth celebrating, whether it be a noisy radiator or bats or loud sex-freaks next door. Always something that wasn’t warm. I never had anyone to celebrate with, anyway. I wasn’t exactly sure that Keziah or this house were worth celebrating, but I would ride it out for the sake of experience.

I went shopping with her for the last trip to the party store. It was a forty-five minute drive from our home, which gave William and I plenty time to listen to the basketball game being covered on the sports radio station. Keziah demanded that I come inside the store with her to see what kind of decorations she would buy. This was more stressful than anticipated. Not only did my groggy expression appear to frighten everyone I passed by in the store, but Keziah wouldn’t shut up about every baby halloween costume she saw or every actual baby in the store. Just the word made my stomach rumble. I couldn’t even keep up with her at times, trying to keep the vomit down my throat as I thought of Amanda and Makonnen and the way he looked at me and the DNA test we were scheduled to get tomorrow. By the time we left the store, with four huge bags of unneeded decorations and party supplies, my mouth tasted like cement and I couldn’t feel my feet touching the floor.

In an hour it was party time.

“Oh, my goodness!” Madeleine said as she glided into the house, holding tightly to a small orange gift bag. “Aubrey, this house is beautiful!”

She kissed my cheek in the doorway. “You picked it out, didn’t you?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I did. It was the furniture that sealed the deal for me.”

“Your father always had an eye for design,” She winked. “Can I go in?”

“Keziah’s waiting in the living room.”

The rest of the gang walked through the door I held open for them: Haley, the three musketeers (Michael, Joshua and Isaac), William, Alison (the nerd newbie who I’d actually forgotten about), Jeffie, and a few friends that each of them brought with them. In all, there were about twenty people at the house, and only half of them I knew personally. Keziah had a ‘the more the merrier’ attitude about it all, so I didn’t mind. She’d bought more than enough food and drinks for them, anyway.

The first part of the party consisted of the drinking of wine and Scotch, Jeffie telling one of his old stories, and little pockets of us having our own small talk. The musketeers, their friends and I talked about the basketball game that just ended and the weather and the new house and Keziah. They asked questions about her like they were a bunch of middle school boys who never had a girlfriend. They might as well be,anyway. (Though I did have a feeling that Isaac had a thing for Alison.)

The second part of the party, Keziah set up the music and had all of us dance. She forced me to have at least two dances with her, mostly so the rest of our friends could see and admire how cute of a couple we were. Afterward, though, I went upstairs in the bedroom and took a nap until Haley came up to drag me downstairs.

Next, we reached the third section of the party - talking about Belphoebe. We prayed for her, asked that she rest in peace wherever she was, we talked about her and how much she’d like the house - she’d probably like it on the inside but wouldn’t give me the satisfaction of a compliment - and how much we wished she was with us. I could almost cry tears of joy when this part was over, when we transitioned into Madeleine’s own special segment where she cracked open an dusty, gigantic photo album filled with pictures of her family and Drake’s.

I couldn’t believe that Drake’s baby pictures were his. Not that they didn’t look like him; the attributes were the same, but all of them were so happy, such a dramatic contrast to his usual attitude today. The only time Drake appeared happy was when he was faking it, when he wanted you to tell that there was  a catch to his smile. When he had a plan. He looked so genuine and innocent in these pictures.

Then of course, there were precious photos of Madeleine and her sisters, my father (all of which I’d already seen), and there was even one of Haley with her Jewish family. During the photo-watching I came across a picture of Cyrus. He smiled widely in a bathroom tub, covered in bubble bath and water.

“His nose looks so big!” Keziah laughed, moving in closer to see the picture.

“He gets that nose from his father,” Madeleine chuckled. I tensed in my chair. The last conversation I had with Drake was about Cyrus not being his child, and that conversation was probably the reason why he abandoned his household for so long. Did Madeleine know why he left? Was the lie I told Drake actually true?

“Drake doesn’t have that nose,” I said to her. She looked up at me as if I’d caught her stealing cookies, and then suddenly snapped the book closed and stood in her chair.

“Time to open gifts, shall we?” She asked.

“We shall,” Joshua stood. “Open mine first.”

Everyone had this request, so we decided to open them in alphabetical order. They were all things we could use around the house, toilet seat covers or photo collages or framed motivational sayings. Some were money. Some were gift cards. Most of the ones that weren’t for the house were for Keziah, clothes and ribbons and frilly things. The gifts for me were the cliche manly things, underwear and socks and tools. The best gift I received was from Jeffie, though - a two-hour tape recording of him reading the top one-hundred lullabies for children. I didn’t really know whether to thank him or ask why I’d need it, so I just shook his hand and threw it in the pile with the rest of the gifts.

The final part of the party was a combination of the first and second - drinking and dancing. By one o’clock in the morning, they were gone.

“Was that so bad?” Keziah asked me after everyone was gone. She stood before the mirror in the hallway, wearing her underwear and bra, beginning to try on some of the clothes she received.

“No, it wasn’t,” I kissed her neck from behind.

“And don’t you think that parties are something we should do more often?”

“For the sake of wine, yes, I do.” I kissed her again.

“And this one was a good one, right?” She turned around.

“I can’t exactly agree.”

Right after I said it, I could see by the look in Keziah’s eyes - it was Belphoebe. Her presence was somehow here with us, letting us know that she was the reason the party wasn’t good, and she was the reason our lives would never be the same. I was about to ask Keziah how her eyes were doing, if she’d healed from the fight. But a ring at the door stopped me. She scurried away to put on some proper clothes. I lazily strolled to the door; it was probably just one of the guests who’d forgotten something. It was too dark outside for me to see the silhouette who stood on our porch through the peephole. When I opened the door, though, I saw it. The presence, the shadow, the reason I’d been looking over my shoulder. Alive and in the flesh.

Belphoebe.