𝐒𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 [𝐉𝐚𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫 - 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭]

13 | The Forgotten

J A Y — 1938

            — "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JACKIE BABY—". His step-mother's voice caws out amongst the many, shrill and slurred and full of sugar-sweet love. It's June 21st, 1938 and the New York Times declares, amongst other things, the continued downfall of the American economy, with unemployment rates at a cruel 19%. Organised crime is riding on the coattails of the final dredges of the Prohibition and Johnny Bennet, husband, father, and businessman first and foremost, spends his evening tying up loose ends — picking rats off one by one from the corners of his sons' raucous 17th birthday party. He goes through six pairs of gloves and plays eight rounds of rigged Russian Roulette: in the same timespan, Jack 'Jay' Bennet drinks his weight in dubiously legal liquor, has a quick fumble with a man, falls in the pool, nearly chokes on a string of (fake) pearls, sleeps with a second man (whom he admittedly mistook for the first, not that he complained), and engages in a much less rigged game of Russian Roulette (Pedro, the unlucky player, blew off his own ear but lived). Now, he observes his step-mother, Charlotte, as she leads her drunken choir of hundreds in a poorly sung rendition of the happy birthday tune, waving her arms like a talentless but enthused orchestra conductor. The metal of the art deco balcony railing feels cold through his open shirt. Light from a dozen hoisted chandeliers skitters across the surface of the glass panes like flashes of gold in the black shining setting of the night beyond the vast chamber. All around him, hundred of bodies writhe, the heat leaping off their skin warming the thick, damp air of the Bennet's beautiful solarium. Perfume cloying in the air, sharp drink jumping on tongues, women kicking up see-through skirts, knee deep in the pool. There's patio furniture bobbing in the blue water, streamers caught dangerously close to candles, lighters sparking at cigars, ash cascading into hair and onto crumpled trousers, feet slipping in a lively dance that has long since turned disjointed and sultry.

            A hand creeps across his stomach, slipping into the open fold of Jay's lavender waistcoat and finding his warm, soft underbelly. The world feels indistinguishable, like he's peering at it through cataracts or wet glue.

            "Happy birthday, baby—" Someone nips his jaw, breathes gravelly and crisp in his ear, and as Jay tilts into it he says, "D'y'think she even knows I ain't dow'there?" And he gets a laugh for it, another hand creeping in to grip his thigh and twist it open a little more, to push a leg between his own and press a body against his back, to hide the arousal that digs in his spine.

            "Don't reckon anyone knows you're here, baby," Jay wants to laugh at it, wants to giggle and mock, 'baby, baby!' But he doesn't. He can feel an encroaching cold, even in the tall balcony perch that overlooks the solarium and the interior pool, even though he's up high with all the heat and perfume, with the blue water far below him and his Charlotte descending the staircase into the crowd all the way across the cavernous room. He can see her jewel-studded heels flashing as she stumbles into a group of partygoers, giggling madly, haphazardly clinging onto a cake with sixteen candles — one fell off long ago, stomped out on the puckered marble floor.