The Stage

This is an unedited version of a short story I wrote while I was in Iowa this summer. Enjoy it if you dare.

Jane Doe smiled at him from the other side of the room. She wiggled her fingers and he caught a flash of light off of the ring on her hand. John Smith rotated back to his drink, scowled into it, and took a swig of the hot, bubbling cider. He hardly ever wore his own wedding ring. It had long since lost its meaning to him. The party had turned sour around when his wife ran of with yet another man. Right now they were rutting in the car outside, screaming at each other and demanding that they do it harder baby, harder, harder. John sniffed his drink again, still convinced that someone had put something in it; he could never be too careful at his wife’s parties.
“Hello.” A voice from behind him broke his reminiscence and he turned to see Jane standing behind him.
“Hi.” John said, shuffling his feet. “How’s it been Jane?”
“Oh you know,” she said, “the usual.” John never felt comfortable around Jane. She wasn’t as bad as some of his wife’s friends, but she had this odd stiff quality about her. Her eyes always seemed a bit murky, and unfocused, and John would constantly lose himself in them. Not to say that she was unattractive. Quite the contrary, some men would kill for a woman like Jane Doe. Sleek hair, sleek lips, sleek body. She was built like a bullet train, fast and ready for boarding. “Where is Mary? I thought I saw her a minute ago.”
“She’s, um, she’s just stepped out for a moment,” harder baby, harder, “she’ll be back in a minute.”
“Oh, well that is okay. I wanted to talk to you.” John swallowed. He was sure someone had put something in the drink now. The last time someone had really wanted to talk to him was to ask if Mary was single. He could feel a little bit of heat rise to his face and he struggled to drive it back down.
“What about?”
“Life, this, who knows?” She said, throwing back the last of her drink. “Does it really matter?” John was about to reply when he heard a laugh and a crash off to the side. He glanced over his shoulder to see a red faced man being helped to his feet by a couple of giggling girls in sparkling blue dresses. One of the potted plants was lying on the floor, and the man was laughing, shouting about how he had thought it was you Titania, what a gas. Turning back to speak, John saw that Jane had disappeared. At first he tried to look for her, but the crowed had filled back in and he couldn’t see where she had gone.

##

John’s hands traveled across the surface of the doll, sliding over the polished wood to check for imperfections and scratches. Outside the party still raged on. When John had retreated to his workshop it was at stage three. Mary’s parties had four stages. Stage one was idle chattering as the drinks were passed out and people decided what boundaries to push. Stage two was staggered tipsiness: men and women talking red-faced and laughing just a little bit too loudly. Stage three was flailing drunkenness. The party really heated up around stage three and John found that he could usually slip out unnoticed. Stage four…
“John?” With a crash John dropped the figured he was working on and looked up at the woman who had just entered. She was wearing an almost skin colored dress and cherry-red heels that gave her at least a few more inches of height. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I… sorry.”
“It’s alright.” John said, picking up the fallen figurine and placing it back on the shelf with the others. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met before Ms….”
“Mrs. actually. My name’s Jill, Jill Collins. I’m a friend of Jane’s.” John fought the urge to steal a quick glance at the ring he presumed would be on her finger. “I’d never met you and she’s said so many nice things about you, John.” All aboard.
“R-really?” Mrs. Collins laughed.
“So, why are you out here in this dreary spot?”
“It’s my workshop.” John said, sweeping his arm across what there was to see in the dark room. A pile of power tools sat in one corner, surrounded by scraps of wood, and a few pieces of discarded furniture. “I come here to relax.” Mrs. Collins strode over to the shelf of wooden dolls.
“May I?” She said, reaching for one before John had time to respond.
“Of course.” He said. John stood there feeling like a child in school showing a cute girl the picture he drew. Mrs. Collins turned to doll over in her hands, staring at all the little details John had fitted into it. The one she was holding was one of John’s first figurines. He made it a few weeks after Mary started cheating on him. It was clumsy, he thought, looking at its cobbled frame, filled with lumps and imperfections. The obsidian arrowheads he had tried to set in as eyes didn’t sit quite right and they gave the figure a slightly manic look in conjunction with the painted on lips, which Mrs. Collins now traced her fingers across. Overall it was a poor example of craftsmanship, showing none of the mastery John had gained in the past few years, and he loved it.
Mrs. Collins smiled and returned the doll to its shelf. She cast a glance around the room before returning her attention to John.
“It was nice finally meeting you John.” She said, and turned out of the door. John started to respond, but she had scurried out before he could say anything. He slumped down into his chair and pulled the doll he had been working on earlier off of the shelf. The drop hadn’t harmed it too much, but the heart he had painted had gotten scratched up on the corner of the table. John sighed, pulled his paint pots out, and got back to work, listening to the sounds of drunken revelry outside.

##

John’s eyes cracked open in the smoked darkness. He wiped a hand that was cold with sweat across his face and rolled over to see Jane lying in the bed next to him. John launched himself backwards, scattering the covers across the room. Jane stirred but remained asleep. Tiptoeing, John moved around to the side of the bed to get a better look at Jane sleeping there. She looked almost dead when she slept, her chest barely moved when she breathed. Satisfied that she wouldn’t wake up any time soon, John pulled the blankets back across her and sat down on the carpet next to the bed to think.
He was about to finish the last layer of paint on the heart when Jane came in. Her dress had slipped slightly, and at first John assumed that she was drunk. The party outside had chugged into stage three and showed no signs of slowing down. They never did. But, Jane had taken his hand softly, and brought him to her. She had whispered something in his ear, but he was too distracted by the feeling of her body to hear what it was. They had kissed, and he didn’t smell alcohol on her breath.
When they reached the guest room she had slid out of dress and torn John’s shirt off before he could even react. As she pushed him towards the bed he had asked her about her ring.
“It stays on.” She said. “It stays on.” John shook himself out of his reverie and stood, seeking his clothing. He found it scattered all about the room. It took him almost ten minutes to retrieve his boxers, which Jane had flung up onto the slowly turning ceiling fan sometime during their romp. John checked his appearance in the mirror, and slipped out of the room once he thought he was presentable.
A wave of noise and alcohol infused smoke fumes struck John as he walked into the main room. Stage three was still in full swing, and John found himself caught in a flurry of inexpert dancers. They pulled him across the room, their laughter and jingling dresses and bangles sparkling in the light from the cheap chandeliers. John managed to wrest some measure of control from the other dancers and pulled himself out of the whirling circle of limbs and flashy-eyed women.
“Quite the show eh.” John looked over to the voice to see the portly, red-faced man he had spotted earlier smashing one of the house’s potted plants. He was wearing a brown pinstripe suit and had a bushy red moustache to make up for his bald head. He adjusted his glasses with a ring less hand, and held out the other for shaking. John shook it before returning it to the man with a nod and a smile. “My name’s Willhem Doe. Your wife throws quite the party Mr. Smith.” John’s jaw almost dropped, his smile faltered a bit, but Willhem didn’t seem to notice.
“Thank you Mr. Doe.”
“Please, please, Willhem. Call me Willhem. No need for formality. It’s a party, not a funeral.” John nodded.
“Sometimes it feels like one Willhem.” The large man threw back his head to laugh, but then he thought better of it. Willhem touched John’s shoulder and John looked up at him.
“I see you don’t wear your ring. Neither do I. I’m sorry about your wife.” John ran a hand through his hair.
“I’m sorry about yours.” The two men stood there for a while, enjoying the solidarity, before the partygoers swept them apart with another wave of dancing.

##

“You whore!” Stage three was reaching its final moments, and the groups of dancers had started to collide and conflict, stripping each other of dignity. The whore in question was splayed out dramatically on the beer stained dance floor being held up by a young man in a cheap sports jacket. The yelling man stood above them shouting various profanities, spittle flying from his dirty black beard.
John stood tucked away in a back corner of the room. After his encounter with Willhem he had felt a strange mix of self-hatred and happiness that he was unused to. It had been a long time since John had had a friend, and sleeping with his new found compatriot’s wife didn’t seem like a great way to keep him. A drunken man slept across a pile of broken folding chairs and a woman stood next to him, berating him for one thing or another.
John thought about telling her that the man she was yelling at probably couldn’t hear her, but thought better of it. Conflicts were common during the waning hours of stage three, and it generally ended with a fight. A couple men scuffled in front of John and he watched them for a moment before deciding to head back to his workshop. He broke away from the various crowds of angry, shouting, men and women and unlocked the tiny side door that led to his workshop. He looked back for a moment. Fragments of confetti, and discarded clothing lay scattered and torn around the room. Bottles and glasses were smashed across the floor, and John thought he saw a splotch of blood. He turned back into his shop and thought about how much he would have to clean up the next day.
The doll he had been painting when Jane came in was still there, but there was a wine stained note tacked to it. John stooped over to read it: Is this different? It was signed ‘Jane’. He sunk into his chair and absently picked at a paint stain on the seat. Shrugging, he pulled the note off of the doll and tossed it into a corner. He pulled out his paints and brushes again with finishing the heart in mind, but he found that he couldn’t focus. His eyes kept straying to the note in the corner and his thoughts kept straying to the guestroom. Eventually he put down his brushes, thinking that he might step outside for a bit to get some air. To his surprise, when he looked down at the doll, the heart was already finished. He must of painted it while he wasn’t thinking about it. The layers of increasingly light red made it look almost like a map. Placing the doll on the back of the painting table so as not to touch the wet paint, he grabbed his coat and headed out into the dance room again.

##

A gunshot rang out in the hall and John almost wasn’t surprised. Women had been screaming for a while and a couple of fistfights had already broken out. The unfortunate losers were draped across tables and chair like Dali’s clocks, blood running off their faces. Stage three was reaching breaking point. John watched a man in front of him fall to the floor holding his leg from his hiding place behind an overturned drinks table. As the wounded man hit the floor another shot tore through the room. A few intact glasses shattered as the slug struck them and the shrieking women nearby were covered in dregs of beer and broken glass.
Relative silence descended on the house as the shooter realized what he’d done. John stood and walked over to where the man who had been shot lay. Trickles of blood rolled through his pants and he was screaming a lot, but otherwise he looked fine. John pushed through the crowd of people surrounding the scene to find Willhem standing there. He held the gun gently in his hand, like he was afraid he would break it.
“Willhem!” John found himself shouting out before he could stop. It was one thing to have one of his wife’s friends shooting, but with Willhem…. The man just smiled at John.
“Hello John. It’s good to see you out of your shell a bit.” John flushed and then felt foolish for doing so. “He did something to her,” he said, pointing at the man he had shot, “she may not be the best wife, but she’s mine.” The color drained out of John’s face, dragging his feeling of foolishness away with it.
“What did he do, Willhem?” John could hear sirens in the distance, but he didn’t care just at that moment. Willhem shook his head.
“Something in her drink, he hit her, he slept with her. He did something John, so does it really matter?” Willhem took a step towards him. “I defended her, and that’s good enough for me.” John saw him slip a hand inside his pocket and for a moment thought that he was going to bring out another gun, to shoot him too. But, Willhem pulled out a simple gold band. It didn’t glint as much as it reflected. It was almost like a mirror. Willhem slipped the band onto John’s finger. “You protect her now.” John tried to protest, but Willhem shoved him and said it again, “You, you protect her now.” The sirens got closer, crashing at John’s ears, wanting to break in.
“Where is she?” He asked. Willhem pointed behind him with the gun. John followed the barrel and saw Jane’s crumpled form, one of many coating the sticky floor. He looked down at her body, lying quietly, like she was sleeping. A glint of metal caught his eye and he glanced at the ring on her hand. He kneeled to get a closer look. It was a mood ring, a cheap silver mood ring, and the stone in the middle was black. Eyes brimming with tears, John kissed the ring and it flared red for a moment. Happiness. Jane’s eyes slipped open and she smiled at him. They said nothing for a moment, but looked at each other, lying on the floor of the party spent house, sirens and lights flashing all around them.
“Is it?” Jane asked again. John smiled
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.” She said, and the party slide gently into stage four.