Halloween Party, 29 October 1988

Meg can't quite remember how she got talked into letting Olivia and Carrie throw a Halloween party in their tiny apartment.

Especially since Olivia's contributions to planning have mostly been making wildly impractical suggestions and then leaving the details to Carrie and Meg.

But Meg did get talked into it, and so Saturday night finds her in an orange shirt and bat-shaped earrings and a Santa Claus hat.

"Meg?" Olivia asks, coming into Meg's room half an hour before guests are due to arrive. "What are you wearing?"

Olivia is in a very short red dress and has devil horns on a headband. No need to ask her the same question.

"I'm what's wrong with this picture?" Meg says.

"Oh. I guess that's funny, but it's just not really a very sexy look," Olivia tells her.

"That's pretty much the idea. Oddly enough, I wasn't really going for a come hit on me look three days after my boyfriend told me he loved me. Especially since he's off at his cousin's wedding this weekend."

Olivia shrugs, and further conversation is cut off by Carrie's yelling something from the kitchen about chips and sodas.

The party goes about as Meg expected. She spends most of it refilling bowls and putting out more toilet paper and making sure that her bedroom is not being used for . . . well, anything at all.

And then, about two hours into the event, Olivia and Roe-bear break up, at high volume and in front of everyone. As far as Meg can tell, Olivia is upset because she has been flirting like mad with some guy named Jerry who is dressed like a sideshow strongman, and Roe-bear hasn't gotten upset.

Olivia flounces off to her room in tears, Roe-bear flings himself onto the couch. Jerry beats a hasty retreat out the front door.

Meg looks at Carrie. Carrie looks at Meg. "I'll deal with Olivia," Carrie says.

Leaving Roe-bear for Meg.

Great. This is not exactly what Meg thinks of as her forte.

What would Parker do?

"Hi," Meg says, as quietly as she can and still be heard over the music. "Um, do you need anything?"

"No," he says. "I'm fine."

"Okay, well, if you need to talk or anything--"

Apparently, he does. And does. And does. Fifteen minutes later, Roe-bear is still talking. Meg hasn't heard some of it over the noise around them. She hasn't necessarily understood everything she has heard -- Roe-bear is, like a certain learned constable, occasionally too cunning to be understood.

Also, he is far from perfectly sober.

"I thought we had connected on a deeper level, man, you know? Like we had transcended the mundane and we didn't need to posture and all that shit. We'd found a rhythm like, like when a jazz band improvises and attains a perfect level of truth and music. There was veracity and . . . veracity and . . . and all."

"Right," Meg says, though what she means is honestly, I have no idea what you're talking about.

"Anyway, I'm through with her. I'm over it. I don't need her. I don't need anybody, right?"

"I'm sure you'll be fine," Meg says. Eventually.

"Hey, you're really pretty," he says, abruptly.

"Um. Well, thank you."

"And you're nice, too." Roe-bear reaches out and grabs a half-finished beer out of the hand of a guy standing behind the couch and drains it.

Meg looks up to apologize to whomever has just had his beer stolen, and there's Ed Marriner. And that would be absurd enough even if he weren't wearing a cowboy hat and a silver star and a pasted on handlebar mustache.

"Need help?" he mouths, with a nod towards Roe-bear.

Meg hesitates for a fraction of a second and then nods.

"All right, buddy," Ed says, coming over and pulling Roe-bear onto unsteady feet. "I think that's enough."

"She's really pretty," Roe-bear tells him.

"Luminous, even," Ed says, glancing at Meg over the top of Roe-bear's head. "Time to tell her good-bye and thanks, now."

"Good-bye and thanks now," Roe-bear says. "Are we leaving?"

"Yep." Ed looks back at Meg. "I'll get him downstairs; you call a cab." And without waiting for her to answer, he starts steering Roe-bear towards the front door. Meg looks up the number for a cab company, and gets Roe-bear's coat. And finds his wallet in the pocket. There's no way she's paying to send him home, or asking Ed Marriner to, either.

Ten minutes later, they've gotten Roe-bear into the back of a cab, given the driver $40, and watched as Olivia's latest ex-boyfriend is driven off into the night.

"Thank you," Meg says.

"Sure, no problem," Ed tells her.

Meg sighs and looks up at the windows to her apartment.

Ed follows her glance. "You want to, I don't know, walk around the block or something before we go back up there?"

"A break would be nice, yes. It's not really my kind of party."

"So why are you throwing it?"

"It was Olivia's idea. Never again."

"Well, with all due respect to Carrie, I think I'm going to ask her to stop trying to set me up with Olivia."

"She'll probably keep trying until you do," Meg says. "So, if you're not interested--"

"I'm really not," he says.

"Then I'd tell her, yes. Especially since Olivia seems to be back to officially on the market."

"I will," he says. "So," he continues, and his tone is sudden ever-so-carefully casual, "where's your boyfriend?"

"Alain is out of town," Meg says. "His cousin's getting married in Quebec City this weekend."

"Oh," Ed says. "Well, he seemed nice. When I met him."

"He is."

"Maybe a little possessive . . ."

"A little, maybe, but not excessively so." She would say there was a lot of testosterone running close to the surface in that meeting.

"I should change the subject, shouldn't I?"

"Probably," Meg says.

"So why a Santa hat?"

"It's supposed to be what's wrong with this picture," Meg tells him.

Ed shakes his head. "Meg, you tell a guy something like that, and you are just asking him to come back with 'there is nothing wrong with this picture.'" His delivery is over the top and not remotely serious, and Meg laughs. "Which is an exceptionally cheesy line, we know, but it's set up so well, you have to take the opening."

"Oh, I see. I'll remember that."

They've gotten back to the steps to her apartment building, and Meg casts another wary look up at the windows.

"You want to go around the block one more time?" Ed asks her.

"Once more around the block," she agrees.

"Or close the wall up with our English dead," Ed says.

She guesses that was another opening he just had to take.

And there's really only one reply she can possibly make.

"Cry 'God for Harry, England, and St. George,'" Meg says.