Dinner Party

Bethany Paige had beautiful huge round wine glasses. They were fish bowls with stems. Not only were they enormous, but there were so many of them. There had to be twenty-five people stuffed into her Williamsburg loft and every guest held one of these goblets. Plus there were a few dozen more perfectly arranged in a square on the butcher block topped island in her kitchen.

It was a weird thing to get hung up on, but I often got hung up on weird things. Did she rent these glasses? Did she buy them all at once?

I swirled the blood red wine in my glass and wondered what level of adulthood one had to attain to make a glassware purchase of that magnitude.

The wine was good. Someone said it was a juice Super Tuscan. Separately I knew what those words meant, together I wasn't so sure.

"Henry!" a shrill voice called from across the room.

It was Bethany's husband. A man who called himself Charlie. He was tall and ginger and bearded and the kind of person who would prefer Charlie over Charles.

His nasal voice mixed with the tannins in the wine was enough to start me on the way to a serious headache. That was until I saw who Charlie was dragging over to meet me.

She was about the same height as me or at least she was in heels, but she had the presence of someone taller. She wore a simple, but very well made, black slip dress with a white peter pan collar and short sleeves that were capped in white as well. She had that split-endless expensive looking hair. The color of single origin chocolate, that was at least 94% cocoa. It was short with side swept fringe. Her eyeliner was winged and her lips were matte red.

"Gretchen, this is Henry. He writes for food magazines, just like you!"

We flashed the brief smiles of the introduced and then started comparing resumes. It always disturbed me when worlds collided. I liked being the only magazine writer in the room.

She had a slightly breathy voice though it wasn't to the point of affect.

She was slightly younger and slightly better educated than me, but we had written for some of the same books. Food