Before I could renege, Kirstin had already confirmed my RSVP to her Christmas party in her apartment, upstairs from mine.
Can’t wait to see you! So excited you’re coming, yay! Xoxo. ❤️
Her text message flashed across the screen of my Fitbit, just long enough for me to surmise her exuberance and to ponder how someone who hardly knew me could be so excited about my prospective arrival at her party.
Me: What time does your party start?
Kirstin: At 7…ish. 😀
I told myself I would only stay for about thirty minutes before politely finding an excuse to leave.
7:30pm
I made my way upstairs to her apartment. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t even know her apartment number. But when I reached the third floor, I saw a large Christmas tree, thick with pine needles and sparsely adorned with silver bulbs standing guard at the end of a hallway trimmed with tea lights. A polyphony of conversations drifted down the hall, guiding me to the party.
A tall red-headed woman in a red cocktail dress and stilettos greeted me at the door. This was the hostess: Kirstin.
“Hi! I’m so happy you’re here! Thank you for coming!”
In her heels, she stood a little over six feet. I stood a little over 5’3 in my flats and felt underdressed in my purple corduroy skinny pants and black tank-top.
“You’ve met my daughter, Emily, haven’t you?” Clad in a Mrs. Clause inspired dress with a puffy white collar and cuffs, Emily appeared from the kitchen carrying a platter of cookies. She is nine and reminds me of precocious children in movies, the kind of kids that are always wiser and more perspicacious than their age.
“Oh, hi!” She put down the cookies and extended her hand toward me. “I’m Emily.”
I shook her hand, and we stood, smiling at each other awkwardly as the Chipmunk Song played over the loud sounds of traffic coming through the windows. “Would you like some popcorn?” She gestured toward a small end table covered with small white paper bags wrapped in red ribbon.
“Yes. Thank you,” I said.
7:45pm
“So how’s the apartment treating you?” Charles, who lives a few doors down from Kirstin, wore a penguin onesie complete with a beaked hood. Like her, he is tall and red-headed, except he has more hair in his beard than on his head.
“It’s okay. I want to move further into downtown, like Little Tokyo,” I said.
“You must really like LA.”
“You don’t?”
“I’m ready to move back to Minnesota; that’s where I’m from. I’m burnt out on LA. I moved out here about ten years ago because I had a girlfriend who wanted to move out here. We were living together in Chicago at the time, and I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ I’ve been here ever since. But LA is just so…LA.”
8:50pm
The apartment was now sweltering hot. People were standing everywhere — in the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom, the hallway. By this time I had had conversations with a hairdresser who owned a salon in downtown, a former police offer-cum-firearms teacher from Huntington Beach, and a Chicago transplant who moved to LA in the hopes of becoming an actor before a landing a career in real estate. I had been awkwardly holding my bag of popcorn and a small plastic cup of wine that I found too bitter to finish. And several times during my conversations, I had accidentally dipped my fingers into the wine instead of the popcorn.
My forehead and collarbone were moist, and my armpits were sticky. I needed some fresh air and stepped out into the hall where it was cool. Emily was seated on the floor at the end of the corridor, holding a cordless phone, observing it with wide eyes.
“I’m waiting for my friend Jeanette to call,” she said. “She should be here at nine. Are you leaving?”
“No, I’m just hot and need some air. Mind if I join you?”
“Not at all.”
I sat down on the stained carpet and leaned back against the cold wall.
Emily checked the time on her phone. “Two more minutes!”
9:15pm
“So this is where the real party is!” Kirstin stepped out the apartment to find me, Emily, Charles, and a young lady with an art history degree sitting on the floor, talking about Wilshire Boulevard and gentrification and tattoos and our dream jobs.
“We needed some air,” said Charles.
“I know, I’m so sorry.”
“No worries,” I said.
“I’m still waiting on Jeanette, mom,” said Emily.
“Okay. You know you can’t leave the building by yourself, right?”
“I know.”
I don’t know if Jeanette ever showed up. I left around 9:30— an hour and a half longer than I had planned. I was glad that I didn’t flake.
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