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The sun had long since disappeared beyond the horizon, but Haymitch Abernathy was still outside, sitting on the concrete floor of the patio, his back against the brick facade of this house, his empty cup sitting between his feet. He hadn’t intended to spend the whole night out here alone. At least he’d limited himself to one drink, he thought, though that was more the result of laziness than self-control.
Boulder was supposed to be a place of change for him—a change of pace, of scenery, of everything, really—but all he’d done was a lot of the same things he’d been doing since he left the army. He slept too much, drank too much, read too much. He spent too much time alone, too. Even at parties, he was alone, and because people tended to drink at parties, they didn’t help much with his drinking problem, either. At least this time he’d had only one beer.
It was a need to pee that finally made him heave himself to his feet and trudge back into the house. He threw his cup away in a bin he saw by the door and joined the line for the bathroom just before a gaggle of young ladies did the same. Behind him, he could hear them talking in loud, exaggerated tones.
A glance over his shoulder revealed the woman at the center of this group to be a skinny little thing with wavy strawberry blonde hair down her back, dressed in the most garish paisley bell bottoms he’d ever seen and an off-white silk blouse with flowing sleeves. Her eyes met his with a level of interest more comparable to the look on someone’s face when they’re walking in the woods and suddenly see a raccoon in the brush. He looked away quickly and moved ahead with the line.
He hadn’t come to this party with anyone. Not really, anyway. He didn’t really know anyone in Boulder yet aside from his roommate, a guy he'd met when he responded to an add on a cafe bulletin board upon his arrival. He picked the town not based on any kind of familiarity, but because it was, in fact, quite different from the small town in West Virginia he’d hailed from and far enough away that he wouldn’t run into anyone he knew. And the thing about seeking out that kind of isolation and working for it the way he had was this: you usually got it, and it was usually lonelier than you ever hoped it would be. Without anything to distract him, he found himself thinking often about the war.
He thought often of Lenore Dove, too, the girl he’d lost almost as soon as he got her back. She’d waited for him while he was gone, and on the afternoon they got back, he went with her for a walk in the park. A protest had broken out—one they hadn’t even been a part of—and it was that day that they learned that Lenore Dove had been allergic to pepper spray. He remembered the pain and the fear in her eyes as she struggled to breathe, the agony in her expression. The stillness of his body when the nurse who ran from the hospital across the street, through lunchtime traffic and the screaming and running and fighting and past the police with their guns, got there just seconds too late. He remembers the taste of the vomit in his mouth more than the act itself, and the way this moment hurt more than all the pain and the fear he’d endured in Vietnam combined.
“You’re the mountain man, right,” a voice said, drawing him back.
“What?” he asked, and turning, saw the girl from the line to the bathroom, her paisley pants somehow more offensive now than they had been earlier.
“You’re the guy from the mountains,” she said. “The hi…” Her voice trailed off and she pressed her lips together.
He wondered if she was about to say hick or hillbilly. He’d heard both since he arrived.
“I mean, I must be, right?” he asked, playing up his accent just enough to make her look away in momentary embarrassment. “Though, I think mountain man is a silly name to give somebody when you folks have mountains, too.”
“You know, that’s probably true,” she said, and took the seat beside him on the couch without asking, pulling one of the throw pillows from behind her and placing it in her lap, in front of her stomach, as she angled her body to face his as she spoke. “How about I just call you your name, then? What might that be?”
“Haymitch,” he said.
“Hamish?”
“I get that a lot,” he said. “But no. Haymitch.”
“Intersting,” she said.
“What’s your name, then?”
“Effie.”
“Effie?” he asked.
“Like Effie Gray,” she said. “The writer and art model.”
“Short for something, I presume?”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes flitting around avoidantly.
“Uh-huh.” He nodded, a grin slowly forming on his face. “Spit it out then.”
She sighed. “It’s short for Euphemia.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. He laughed, and so did she. “See, neither of us has any room to talk.”
“Hm.”
Her eyes trailed over him, just this side of indiscreet. In a blink, they were back on his, but he’d seen that look and it surprised him. She smiled, and he smiled back.
“Do you often go to parties alone in towns you’re new to?” she asked.
“Uh,” he hesitated, shifting in his seat. “I’m not alone,” he said, and he registered the lie and the defensiveness in his tone as soon as he said it. Of course he was alone. His roommate had invited him, but he hadn’t spoken to Johnny since they got here. “That’s my roommate.”
She followed the line he’d drawn out with the beer bottle he was pointing with to his roommate, who was chatting up a circle of people by the door to the kitchen.
“Ah, okay,” she said. “Right.”
“No, he is,” he said. “You know, I think maybe he felt bad for me and this was a pity invite. I don’t mind, though.”
“Because you like drinking bad beer alone at college parties,” she said.
“Exactly.”
“Well, I came with my friends, but they’ve all abandoned me,” she said.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m not,” she said, giving him another smile.