If one were to turn my life into a pie chart, the largest segment would be cocktail parties.

As a young woman I viewed them with excitement. Would Mr. Right be there? Would I see or hear something wonderful?

As I matured, cocktail parties became stages where one would display clothing, personalities, searching for the juicy bit of gossip while engaged in a continuous comparison; do I look younger than ___ is my husband making more money than ___ is my dress more expensive than ___ grading one’s evening on pluses and minuses.

As I sailed into middle age I experienced cocktail parties as battlegrounds in which one took the field as strong as able, and carefully watched the ‘enemies’ judging their dress, their jewelry, their conversation.

 As most debs,  I had married an older man. At twenty one the fact he was forty was not insurmountable. When I was a young forty five that he was sixty four was still tolerable. Now that I’m fifty five he is a feeble seventy four, so I attend these obligatory social events alone.

I know almost everyone, almost everyone knows me. I pretend to enjoy cocktail parties, just as I pretend to enjoy my wasted life. For it is wasted. Sometimes, as I am driven through New York I envy the working girls with their futures ahead of them. Many will ‘be’, not marry someone who “is”. Many will create an adventurous life where things change. It is not that I romanticize poverty or labour, it is that I have done nothing with my life except attend cocktail parties. I pose, posture perfect, as the manicure, the hair do, the gown, the jewelry, the remarks, and I see the Cat among the pigeons.

It is not every function to which the Cat arrives and he is not the same Cat today he was twenty years or twenty months ago, but he is the same Cat among Pigeons.

I know what he is here for.

He is here for a woman like me. An older rich woman who will pay dearly for a night of his lies and keep paying. He will find an older woman who will buy him enough to please his young girlfriend. An older woman who will keep buying until she learns of his young girlfriend.

She, who has jeopardised her marriage, her social standing, her existence for his fraudulent passion will become schizophrenic, forced to perform her social gestures as if her heart hadn’t become a lead weight sinking into her stomach.

Cat will shake off his loss and find another older woman, perhaps another young girlfriend, until he is no longer young. If he’s bright enough, just before he turns rancid, he will trap a rich widow, not impossibly older, who will marry him.

Cat is staring at me. This one is tall, as most are, blond as perhaps half of them are, thin as all of them are. Thin and hungry for a life he doesn’t deserve for he is not willing or capable of working for it. I wonder if this one will be a dancer or an actor or a painter or writer, some nebulous sort of career which permits huge chunks of free time especially when the husband of the pigeon is out.

I wonder if he will have an accent, French or Greek or Other to give an exotic flair. I turn away a look of contempt on my face. He should be astute enough to read my mien to know I am not interested in beautiful young men and find another pigeon. I pretend to listen to Marianne’s description of her new villa. She is a decade younger than I, a recent divorcee, who believes in Ivanna Trump’s philosophy. She babbles about her villa in some Caribbean paradise where she could ensconce a gigolo like our Cat, and pretend he cares about her, not the clothes she buys him, the food she feeds him, the places she takes him, on and on.

My Cat is speaking to Cynthia Dupont. He’s wasting his time. She has a lover; a well known actor she took from the gutter who is married to a simpering actress. I laugh, surprising Marianne, who smiles foolishly, trying to imagine what she has said which was faintly amusing, but I am thinking of Cat, thinking of walking across the floor to where he is flattering Cynthia and inform him, “You’re wasting your time.” Of course I do not move.

Marianne and I are joined by the Severins. They’ve just returned from somewhere and need to impress us. He’s an affable drunkard, she saved from obscurity by the marriage. She clings to him as if he would run away; perhaps he would if she let go. Her eyes trace the room, ah, she’s seen Cat. Is that lust on her face? Does she remember what it was like when sex was important? She turns back to Severin, measuring him, wondering if she should gamble, decides not. Coward.

The waiter offers canapes, I take to be polite, know Cat is hungry and will try to unobtrusively clean the platter. I wonder who invited him.

A Charge D’Affairs speaks to me in French; it is not his nor my first language, but we are both fluent. We speak of nothing and everything until his silly wife appears. She suspects me; well she may, but has never given us a chance. How kind. Men of fifty look so much better with their clothes on. I prefer to imagine a sleek body, not unlike Cat’s, instead of the flabby pink flesh which my D’Affairs would no doubt expose. He leaves with his wife, a sharp plain woman who does not realise that yellow is not a proper colour for all but the most dark of skin.

Cat is on the prowl. Has Cynthia made it clear she has filled the position? Or has she left to meet her lover? Cat turns towards me, I call the Auerbachs, giving Cat the nape of my neck, and move to sit in an alcove where I can no longer see him.

I have spent two hours of my life at this cocktail party, it is time to leave. I ring my driver on the cell phone, giving him a few minutes to insure his composure. Marianne walks with me to the door, I air kiss the host and hostess and they hand me off to security who escorts me the short distance to my car.

“Foster, who was that young interloper I saw?”

“He was invited by the Ericsons, he’s their houseguest.”

“Oh, I thought he’d crashed.”

“Mrs. Lambert! I’m not the only guard on duty!”

“Just joking Foster.”

“Here you are Mrs. Lambert.” He says giving me over to my driver.

“Goodnight Foster.” “Goodnight Mrs. Lambert.”

My driver is a very quiet gentleman about my age. He was hired when my previous chauffeur was murdered. It was quite a scandal when it happened. Most have forgotten it, or at least do not mention it, but I carry a small firearm, my driver a larger one.

Of course the murder has nothing to do with driving me about. John Braket was shot one night on a beach in Queens during the cold early spring.

John Braket had never been late to work. I had an appointment, he was not there. My husband rang Braket, no response, so took me in his car. How kind.

When I arrived home by taxi my husband told me he had bad news and poured me a sherry. “I know how fond you were of Braket,” he began, to which I made a quizzical face. “He was found dead.”

“Dead?” I asked, for men of thirty aren’t often found dead. My husband explained he had been murdered at Bay 1 of Riis Park. Bay 1, I was told, was a known “gay” strip.

“I didn’t know that about him.” I muse.

“Obviously he was discreet.”

“Yes, he was.” I agreed.

There was no reason for me to carry a gun, after all, the death of my Cat had nothing to do with his driving. Yet I liked the feel of the pistol and kept it as a reminder.